How to manage student weekly scores

[kareemt]

Hello,

We're an edtech startup for high school students.

In addition to the in-app exams and quizzes, we also run offline exams in Telegram groups to mimic school exams (around 3 times a week).

We send out a pdf to a group chat, and then each student solves the exam by hand, and then takes a picture and sends it back to us. Our teachers then give each student a grade and reply to that student. This is important because we want to see the steps in their solutions.

These offline test scores need to saved so we can achieve the following:

- Keep track of each student's scores over the school year

- We send out report cards based on these scores

- Check if a student doesn't have a score recorded, so we can check if they didn't do the assignment (assuming it wasn't an error on our side)

- Keep track of when our teachers submit a score (to ensure timely responses)

Right now this is all done on sheets.

We were thinking of using Airtable.

Do you think this is something that can be achieved? I didn't find many use cases with weekly trackers for a full year.

We'll need probably good base design and good interfaces (or we send the data to somewhere like looker studio).

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

[Marcelo]

Hi there
yes, it can be done with airtable using a good base design, automations and interface dashboards.

Here you can watch some examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrarbwI-UjU&t=130s

For further help, you can send me a DM.

best,

Marcelo

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Yeah, you could probably do it with Airtable, but do note that transitioning a workflow from Sheets into Airtable might be more work than you might expect.  The weekly tracking for a full year thing should work fine, you'd have a table where each record represented a single student and one week and you'd create your summaries from there via linked fields and rollups

What's making you consider making the switch over to Airtable? 

[kareemt]

Thanks @Marcelo - I'll definitely try to apply something similar if we figure out the base.

@TheTimeSavingCo completely agreed on the amount of work, this is why we're trying to do it before the first semester of next academic year starts.

The main challenge we have with sheets, where Airtable can help is:

- Right now, we have to duplicate 100 sheets (one for every teacher). Any change we need to do after needs to be done in 100 different sheets

- Gathering data into one place can be a bit tough

- Managing reassignment of teachers is hard

- With Airtable, we can have one base, and then a locked and personal view for the teacher to see their students

Will that mean we'll have one column for every test? We'll end up with about 150 columns... it's a tough one

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Ah yeah, that duplication of sheets one especially sounds super tedious

Would the teachers need the ability to edit the data or just to view it? 

Do you have an estimate of how many rows of data you create in a week?  Airtable has a limitation on the number of records per base (varies by plan), and so I worry you might end up hitting that given the sheer number of teachers and students you appear to have

--
re: Will that mean we'll have one column for every test? We'll end up with about 150 columns... it's a tough one

Hm, I'm not too sure what you're referring to, but we definitely wouldn't want to have one column per test, we'd generally want any kind of dynamic data to be in a row and not a column

[Kamille_Parks · Accepted solution]

Hi @kareemt. I did. my best to walk through a simple build of your use case on this morning's episode of the BuiltOnAir podcast (S18 E04). I talk through what your base structure might be at a high level to track these different pieces of data. Heed the other commenters' warnings about record limits though and select your plan accordingly.

I don't do personal consulting anymore, so feel free to use my example as a starting point in talking with consultants if you need help building out your base.

https://www.youtube.com/live/FmX-GNd9VqQ?si=s-pJio39W5upBKlR&t=2596 

[Marcelo]

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@kareemt wrote:

Thanks @Marcelo - I'll definitely try to apply something similar if we figure out the base.

@TheTimeSavingCo completely agreed on the amount of work, this is why we're trying to do it before the first semester of next academic year starts.

The main challenge we have with sheets, where Airtable can help is:

- Right now, we have to duplicate 100 sheets (one for every teacher). Any change we need to do after needs to be done in 100 different sheets

- Gathering data into one place can be a bit tough

- Managing reassignment of teachers is hard

- With Airtable, we can have one base, and then a locked and personal view for the teacher to see their students

Will that mean we'll have one column for every test? We'll end up with about 150 columns... it's a tough one

---

No. you should manage that with tables and relations.

[kareemt]

Wow that was super helpful Kamille! Thanks for sharing!

We'll dig deeper into it to tailor to our use case and see if we can roll it out. Much appreciated.