The academic structure in openSIS defines how your institution organizes:
Before students and teachers can begin using the system effectively, these foundational academic components should be configured properly.
openSIS provides institutions with flexible academic configuration options so schools, colleges, universities, and training institutions can structure the system according to their own academic model.
A typical academic setup flow in openSIS follows this order:
Each component is connected to the others and helps define how scheduling, attendance, grading, and reporting work throughout the academic year.
The academic calendar defines the active school year and instructional dates used throughout the institution.
School → Calendars
or
Settings → School → Calendars
Institutions can:
Although multiple calendars can exist, only one calendar is usually used as the primary default academic calendar.
The calendar controls:
Marking periods define how the academic year is divided into grading terms.
School → Marking Periods
or
Settings → School → Marking Periods
openSIS provides institutions with complete flexibility to create their own marking period hierarchy.
Most institutions commonly follow a 3-level structure:
Example:
Full Year
→ Semester
→ Quarter
However, institutions may configure:
depending on their academic model.
All marking periods must:
Marking periods may also include optional:
These dates control when teachers can submit final grades.
This helps institutions:
Grade levels define how students are academically classified inside the institution.
Settings → School → Grade Levels
Institutions can freely configure grade levels according to their naming standards.
Examples:
Typical fields include:
The Grade Level Equivalency field helps openSIS understand the academic category of the student.
This is used to determine whether the student belongs to:
This distinction may affect:
The Next Grade field helps automate:
Periods define the instructional time blocks used during the school day.
Settings → School → Periods
Institutions may configure:
Each period typically contains:
During period setup, administrators can determine whether attendance will be taken for that period.
This is important because:
Schools using rotating schedules or block systems can configure those structures inside the period setup area.
This allows openSIS to support:
openSIS follows a three-level academic hierarchy:
Subjects
→ Courses
→ Course Sections
Subjects help categorize academic offerings.
Examples:
Courses represent academic offerings under a subject area.
Courses → Course Manager
Examples:
Courses may be mapped to:
This allows institutions to organize academic offerings according to their curriculum structure.
Course Sections are actual scheduled instances of a course.
Example:
Algebra I → Section A → Period 2 → Mrs. Smith
Course Sections define:
Teachers and students are not directly scheduled into Courses.
They are scheduled into: Course Sections
This is one of the most important academic concepts inside openSIS.
Once the academic structure is configured, institutions begin scheduling operations.
The typical flow is:
Scheduling → Schedule Teacher
Administrators assign teachers to Course Sections.
Teachers become responsible for:
Scheduling → Schedule Student
Students are scheduled into Course Sections according to:
Once students and teachers are scheduled into Course Sections, teachers can begin taking attendance.
Attendance depends on:
Missing attendance tracking also depends on these configurations.
Teachers can:
or
Grade configuration is managed at the Course Section level by the scheduled teacher.
This allows grading structures to vary between:
depending on institutional requirements.
Final grades can only be entered during the grade posting period configured inside the Marking Period setup.
This helps institutions:
The academic structure affects nearly every workflow inside openSIS, including:
Proper setup ensures accurate academic operations throughout the school year.