Alberta TWINS - Teaching Record Update
The Albert Learning – Teaching Record Update program was created to send the required employee information to Alberta Learning. This program will produce either a report or a CSV file that contains the data in the format that is expected (i.e. CSV - Comma Separated Value). If you choose the merge option, the generated file should be able to be sent to Alberta Leaning without modification.
All employees that are in the specified employee categories will be reported regardless of whether or not they have assignments. Of course, the Employee Status prompt lets you exclude terminated employees if you choose to. One record (line) per employee will be generated.
The Assignment ASof Date Range report is used by this program to determine what location, position, grade level, and FTE values should be used. If an employee has more than one position or location as of the date range specified, the system will determine which position and location has the most FTE applied towards them, and use those codes. For example, if a teacher is a teacher for .6 and a vice-principal for a .4, a position of teacher will be assigned to this employee.
You can control what assignments are used to collect the information by using the Include Leaves or Assignment Code List Source prompts. Refer below for more information on what these prompts do.
The program also displays the employee's teaching certificate number. In order to know which certificate record to use, you will be prompted for the certificate source: certificate type, class or code.
This report also does some rudimentary validation to make sure that the information collected if complete and valid. The below table contains the checking and error messages that this program will perform:
CERT NO IS BLANK
CERT NO IS NOT 7 CHARS
CERT NO IS NOT VALID FORMAT - FIRST 6 CHARS ARE NOT NUMERIC
CERT NO IS NOT VALID FORMAT - LAST CHAR IS NOT ALPHABETIC
LAST NAME IS BLANK
FIRST NAME IS BLANK
ADDRESS 1 IS BLANK
POSTAL CODE IS BLANK
POSTAL CODE IS NOT 6 CHARS
POSTAL CODE'S 1ST, 3RD AND 5TH CHARS MUST BE ALPHABETIC
POSTAL CODE'S 2ND, 4TH AND 6TH CHARS MUST BE ALPHABETIC
CITY IS BLANK
PROVINCE IS NOT 'AB'
COUNTRY IS NOT 'CA'
AREA CODE IS BLANK
PHONE IS BLANK
EMAIL ADDRESS DOES NOT CONTAIN A '@'
These warnings will appear on the report under each employee's information to help you ensure that the data being sent to Albert Learning is as it should be.
The Position, Location, Level, Subject and Assignment Type Translation Databases are used by this program to ensure that Alberta Education receives the codes that they are expecting. This allows you to use whatever position, location and level codes you want in the HR System while still enabling you to send the correct codes to Alberta Education. For example, you may be using a position code of TEACH in PRM, but Alberta Learning requires a position code of ‘Teacher’. The translation databases allow you to accomplish this.
All five translation tables (position, location and level, subject and assignment type) MUST be set up in order for this program to work properly. Please refer to the documentation on these modules for more information.
This program will ignore position, location, and level codes that do not have a corresponding value in the Translation Code Database.
For example, if you have a PRM level code of ELEM, you should give this a corresponding new code of 1-6 in the Level Code Translation database. If this report detects that an employee has a level on their assignment of ELEM, it would then translate this to 1-6 and store a True in the appropriate column on the report (or CVS) file.
Alberta Learning requires that the (grade) level information be set to them by indicating True of False for the following four groupings: ECS, 1-6, 7-9, and 10-12. A 'T'rue values must be assigned to each of the four groupings that the teacher teaches. To accommodate this requirement, the level translation table expects you to enter one of the following codes: ECS, 1-6, 7-9 or 10-12. The program will then convert these codes to the appropriate True of False values when the data is reported.
Another requirement is to report the employee's total FTE as well as the employee's teaching FTE. The employee's total FTE is calculated by adding up all assignments selected by the selection criteria. The employee's teaching FTE is calculated by adding up all of the assigned subject/level FTE for which there is a corresponding code in the level translation table.
Let's say for example that a vice-principal works a .8 as a vice-principal and a .2 as a regular class teacher.
If you have entered this as two separate assignments, then on the Vice Principal assignment you would enter an FTE of .8 and either leave the assigned subject/level fields blank, or use a level code for which there is no corresponding level translation code. On the teaching assignment, you would enter a level code for which there is a level translation code, and apply the entire .2 FTE against that subject/level.
If you have entered this as one assignment, then you would choose a level code for which there was a corresponding level translation code and enter a .2 FTE against it. This would allow the system to properly differentiate between total and teaching FTE.
If you choose the Merge option, a CSV file will be created in SRB$PRMEXP and will be have the following name: ######.CSV where ###### is the 6- character job number.
To deal with the situation where you want to report a position for employees who do not have an assignment, the program will do the following: if there is no most assigned position, the employee's category will be used as the assigned position. If it exists in the Position Code Translation table, then the translated position code will be used. This may require the set up of extra positions that are the same as employee categories. For example, if you have a category of 'S' for substitute teachers, and you will first have to create a position code of 'S' and then add it to the Position Code Translation database.