Reference sheet prepared by Jolene M. Morris, District Technology Director, Grand Co. School District
OASIS is two programs
OASIS is a computer program written by the Utah Office of Education. OASIS stands for Off-line Applications for Student Information System. It is actually two main programs in one. It allows schools to keep track of the bookkeeping associated with student attendance. And it allows teachers to keep track of the bookkeeping associated with student grades. We have the OASIS program on the network at each school.
Attendance
Using OASIS, a school can keep track of attendance in one of three ways:
Teachers mark bubble sheets for attendance. Office staff scan the bubble sheets into the OASIS program.
Teachers report attendance to the office manually (in writing). Office staff use the computer keyboard to manually enter attendance into the OASIS program.
Teachers use the computer keyboard in their classrooms to manually enter attendance into the OASIS program.
In Grand County School District, our secondary schools have elected to use bubble sheets and the elementary schools use manual entry by office staff. At the end of a school quarter (or reporting period), the attendance data can be sent from the OASIS program to the state's mainframe computer (SIS: Student Information System) for printing on report cards.
OASIS has excellent reports which the school can print locally. Teachers, staff, and administration can access these reports on the screen or print them out in their office or classroom.
Grading
Using OASIS, a school can keep track of grades in one of three ways:
Teachers mark bubble sheets with grades at the end of a reporting period. Office staff scans the bubble sheets into the OASIS program then sends the data to the SIS.
Teachers mark bubble sheets with grades at the end of a reporting period. The bubble sheets are sent to the USOE to be scanned directly into the SIS mainframe computer.
Teachers use the computer keyboard in their classrooms to manually enter test and assignment scores into the OASIS program. OASIS calculates the grades. Office staff sends the data from OASIS to the SIS.
In Grand County School District, a few of our secondary school teachers have elected to use OASIS as their grading program and do not complete bubble sheets. The majority of the secondary teachers in the district, mark their grades on bubble sheets.
Access to OASIS
Although the OASIS program is on the network, teachers must obtain a login ID and password for OASIS (in addition to their network login ID and password). This added security to OASIS is necessary so students do not have access to change attendance and grades. A teacher may or may not be given access to the attendance area of OASIS -- this is a building decision. A teacher may access only the grades of students in his/her classes.
If you would like to use OASIS to do your grades, contact the building attendance/office secretary, the principal, or the district computer/network technician.
Doing Grades with OASIS
There are many different grading programs. Some are simple programs for teachers who grade a specific way. Others are complex programs that may be configured to any way a teacher grades. The more complex the program, the better it will meet the needs of a particular way a teacher computes grades -- but the more difficult the program will be to use.
OASIS is a program with medium-complexity. It is flexible enough to meet the needs of most teachers, but it is not difficult to learn to use. Although it is not difficult to use, it will take some training to use it effectively. OASIS grading does not have a documentation manual (and the online help is inadequate). If you'd like help learning to use OASIS, contact your building sysop, a teacher who has used OASIS in the past, or the district technology director.
Is OASIS still full of bugs?
When Grand County School District first received the OASIS program, it had just barely been written and it had several bugs (problems) in it. Many teachers, remembering the days when it had bugs, don't want to use OASIS. OASIS still has a couple of minor bugs; but it works just fine for the most part. Considering the program is free to schools in Utah, it is an exceptional bargain. The bugs that are still in it are spelling errors and cursor-movement errors. Nothing in the program will calculate your grades inaccurately.
In the past, some students did not appear in the OASIS list; and often students would appear in your class list who were not in your class. This problem was fixed in the Spring 1995 OASIS update.
Are we doing away with OASIS?
We will be able to use OASIS as long as we want to -- we own the program. The USOE has awarded a programming contract to another company to write a different attendance/grading program for schools. This program will be available (hopefully) by the 1996-1997 school year. When the new program is available, we will be encouraged to change to this program; but we will be allowed to continue using OASIS if we choose. However, the staff at the USOE will be limited in the support they will be able to provide for older program such as OASIS.
