The Grady Profile provides basic printing support for all users — you can print a copy of the current page of an open Grady Profile, or (using the Print Profile… function,) print a selected set of pages.
In addition to these features, Grady Profile site license customers may purchase a reporting option, which offers additional reporting features. This section describes some of those features.
The Reporting Option will be available soon. We are currently working to complete the Windows user interface.
Because reporting can offer a virtually unlimited set of options and choices, user interfaces for reporting tend to be a bit more challenging than other kinds of user interfaces. In Grady Profile, we've attempted to do our best to make the reporting interface as easy as possible, without losing the ability to create powerful and elaborate reports.
The Report panel in Profile Manager (and the similar one in Master Tailor) provide the starting point for creating, modifying or running a report.
The reporting system is based on named, saved reports. That is, you create a report (giving it a name so you can refer to it again) and save it. Then you can run it, use it over again at a later date, share it with co-workers, etc.
And the stored report system includes the idea of parameterized reports. That means that you can create a stored report which contains one or more quantities (like a date) that you specify when you run the report. This use of parameters makes it much easier to reuse a report — instead of having to change a report (for example, to specify new starting and ending dates) each time you run it, you can run a report and simply choose the starting and ending dates at run time.
There are three kinds of reports supported by the Reporting Option — Simple Reports, Individual Reports, and Aggregate Reports.
A Simple Report is similar to the reports you create using the Print Profile… function — it consists of a sequence of standard page reports. However, in this case, the report is named and stored for reuse.
For reuse to make sense, you need to specify the list of pages to include in a more general fashion than in the Print Profile… function; otherwise you'd get exactly the same set of pages every time you ran the report.
In this example, the report calls for printing all of the pages from the current timeframe (i.e., current year or semester) Language Arts domain pages in the Writing Contents topic.
And as you can see, the reporting system helps you specify what you want to include, without having to learn any special syntax.
Individual (and aggregate) reports represent a completely different approach to reporting than simple reports. These reports are ad hoc reports. That is, you have complete control over the content and appearance of these reports. You can include data from different pages of a portfolio on the same page of a report; you can collect data, use the data in numerical expressions and include the result of the calculations, conditionally include data based on user-selectable criteria, and all with full formatting support.
Features of the ad hoc reporting system (for both individual and aggregate reports) include
In an individual report, each student's data is processed independently and cannot be mingled or aggregated with data from other students. However, you can choose to apply to the report to a list of students, and a collection of reports will be generated, one for each student in the list.
Reports are laid out using the same type of graphical user interface as is used for customizing portfolio pages.
You add elements to a report by dragging items from a report palette to the report design panel, and use an item inspector to specify the properties of the report element.
In contrast to individual reports, aggregate reports are specifically designed to perform multi-student aggregation/disaggregation of data. When you run an individual report and specify a group of students, you get one report for each student (i.e., the data for each student stands alone); when you run an aggregate report and specify a group of students, you get a single report containing data from all of the students collectively. This allows you to compute expressions (such as averages, standard deviations, etc.) that involve multiple students.
Filters have a special significance in aggregate reports, because they allow you to select subgroups for special mandated reports. For example, if you need to generate a report that only includes students who participate in a school lunch program, you can easily do that in an aggregate report by specifying a ‘school lunch’ filter to the whole student body.
And the break expression feature is ideal for associating report breaks with particular groups of students. If you are required, for example, to report student performance by ethnicity, break expressions are a useful tool for building the report.