Calculating Student Hours in a Class

[selzlerb]

Hello Team,

I'm pulling data from a student information system that our district uses to take attendance. I need to be able to calculate the number of hour a student spends in a tutorial class that may be once a week, twice a week, or even three times a week.

The problem is, the entry and exit dates for the class could potentially be unique for each student. For example one student could be in a class that is held every Tuesday for an hour but entered the class on September 9, and his/her last class was November 25. Another student in the same class could have started later, or earlier and finished later or earlier.

Ultimately I just need the correct number of hours that students spent in each class and summarize them by school. But I'm not shure how to approach the problem an I don't know how to generate a script or calculation that would evaluate the variables and count the number of hours for each student.

Any thoughts on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

- Sez

[Oldsneekers]

The first question I ask myself is how is the current data entered, segregated, what constitutes a current record of data?

Off the top of my head, sort of quick and dirty...

If a record is StudentNamefield, ClassNamefield, HoursField, and a single student can have multiple records then the answer would be a scenario like this (assuming that each name is unique (if not than another ID needs be used) ...

Table: RawData (your current table of data)

Field: SummaryHours (sum of hour fields-total)

Relationship: RawData ---RawData2 matching StudentNamefield (a relationship to itself)

On the layout for RawData creat the field RawData2::SummaryHours

Now, RawData2::SummaryHours will display the total hours for that student in whose record is resides. Note that though the student in your list may have multiple entries, RawData2::SummaryHours wil be the same for all records for the same student. If you want to segregate the totals by class, school, or other data, add these as matchfields for the relationship.

Hope this helps

[selzlerb]

Thank you for this. It makes sense. However the big question is how to figure out how many hours are possible for an individual student based on their entry date into the class, how many times a week the class meets, and the exit date from the class.

Another caveat is the exit date. When a student is enrolled in the class the exit date defaults to the last day of school. Which wont help on any given day before the last day of school. So a piece of this will have to be to compare the exit date, and the current date.

I'm thinking some sort of if,then, else comparison that can identify whether the current date is before or after the exit date. And the calculation of the potential number of classes possible will be dependent on that calculation.

I've gotten to the point where I'm pulling the student data and the total number of absences recorded for each student via an SQL statement and connection the SIS database. But I'm stuck on the piece that actually calculates the potential number of classes. Once that is done its a subtraction problem...

- Sez

Edited February 28, 2009 by Guest