level indicator

[Himitsu]

This is really strange. I have an English School in Japan and we have report cards for our students. Each report card has a bar indicator for each item they learn in that level. So the bars run vertically down the page, like:

ABC's OOOOOO

Verbs OOOOOO

Nouns OOOOOO

ect..

What I was wondering if there was some kind of way for a radio button or check box that the teacher could quickly just check and it would print on the report? I tried using the standard check box list values, but they are too wide. Then I started to create a field for each box, total of 6 fields for each item. But that came to 84 fields just for that one report. The space I am working for this year is very small. Next year I will simply put a radio button with a grade A to F and in the report I will just have a small field and that will just show the value checked... but this year I would like to save my teachers some massive coloring of boxes. Any help would be great. Thanks

[Riley Waugh]

its a bit of a trick, but you can begin by making 6 value lists. Name them bar 1, bar 2, bar 3, etc.

the only value in bar 1 will be 1

the only value in bar 2 will be 2

etc.

now, on your layout put a field such as "ABC's" and under format field, select radio button and value list "bar 1".

Size this field so that only hte radio button is visible.

Duplicate this field and in field properties set it to radio buttons with value list "bar 2". Again, make it only big enough to show the radiobutton and place it just to the right of the first "ABC's" field.

Continue till you have 6 ABC's fields next to each other showing one radio button each and with each rendition set to the next value list (bar 1 through bar 2).

This will look to the user like six circles to fill in the appropriate level.

Now, do the same for the rest of the fields. You use the same value lists over and over.

The advantage to you is that the ABC's field will have a numerical value which can be used in averages, etc.

[Himitsu]

Riley, that is great. I didn't even think to try that. Thanks for the quick post. Saved my teachers a ton of hours. You are the best! I see you are a newbie here, I hope you will get all your questions answered, I have had all my questions figured out.

thanks a ton.

[pmusaev]

guys, got a question about furthering this method. i have it all setup, but now i need to display the averages. i have created a new layout to calculate all the instances of each radio button and then average them out. any help would be much appreciated. cheers!

[Riley Waugh]

well, make a new summary field, let's call it Average_of_ABC. Make it an "Average of" ABC.

If placed in the body of a layout, this will then show the average of the ABC field in all records.... in other words the average of the whole class is...

I you want to know an individual student's average grade across all subjects, then make a Calculation field, let's call it Student_Avg.

Student_Avg = (ABC + Verbs + Nouns) / 3