Help setting up database for tracking students earning points in a Citizenship program

[Mark_Stuckless]

Hi All,

I have exported the data from an old FileMaker Pro database that is used to track students earning points in grades 4-8 at a small rural school in Ontario, Canada. Students can earn points in three areas (Academic, Extracurricular, and Citizenship) and these are given out over three terms that coincide with progress report/report card distribution (Term 1, 2, and 3). Teachers give out points on a class list and then I manually enter those points in the FMPro database and print reports etc.

I am trying to move to something web-based that allows for input from cell phone or tablet etc. I exported the data (and all of the fields used in the old FMPro database) into Airtable. I used the student’s name as the primary column and all data has transferred over correctly to Airtable. I am trying to make it so homeroom teachers (and say coaches for teams/clubs) can go in, sort the students by grade/homeroom teacher and allot the points they are responsibe for giving in each of the three categories and for each term. What is the best way to go about this? Use the main database I have imported students and points in as the “master” airtable base and then create a secondary base for each teacher that they use to give distribute points?

When working from a PC, I have used the Kanban view to make it so only say Term 1 appears for a particular grade/teacher homeroom class in the three areas (Academic, Extracurricular, Citizenship). But this view doesn’t work on phone (not android one anyway). Also, I am worried about the integrity of the data if multiple people are working on the database and editing it etc. so that is why I thought there should maybe be a secondary database for each teacher which occasionally submits data to the “master” database. That way, only one person (me) is actually working with the entire record of all students and their point totals.

Am I on the right track here? Is there an easier way to do this? Are my concerns about protecting the data from getting wonky with many teachers having ability to add/remove points warranted? How should I proceed?

Your advice is appreciated!

Thanks!

[andywingrave]

Hey! Welcome to the community!

It sounds like you’re definitely on the right track! Have you tried looking through Airtable Universe for inspiration here to see how others have done something similar?

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[Mark_Stuckless]

Thanks for the reply. I will take a look other airtable databases for ideas. I guess the important part I am looking for an answer to is:

** Is it a good idea (or even possible idea) to have a second database/airtable that teachers use to award points and then from it submit the points to the “master database”?*

I need some clarity on how to proceed and for that I am looking for a yes or no answer (or at least what is “best practice” in this situation).

Hopefully, someone can advise the best direction to proceed. The old adage “too many cooks spoil the broth” comes into play. I do not want data to get messed up with too teachers many having access to the whole database as it currently stands.

[andywingrave]

The short answer is “Yes”

The long answer is something someone with a pHD could wax lyrical about for hours. As a rule, with relational databases, you want to consider your core objects that drive your business logic. In this case, you have:

Teachers
Students
Points

If you start from there, you might soon realise that you have other objects you need to consider, as you build it out…But that’s a good a starting point as any