Manually organising hierarchies

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Introduction
• Hierarchy levels and types
• Initial setup
• Organising the students
  • Adding students to the hierarchy
  • A new school year
• Organising the parents
  • If parents need course access
• Teacher and staff hierarchy management
  • Core structure
  • Sub-groups organisation
  • Departmental and course assignment structure
  • Course teaching assignments
  • Benefits of this approach
• Hierarchy roles

Introduction

A hierarchy is the organisational structure of a school or district. The school or district itself is at the top of the hierarchy, with sub-hierarchies added for schools, users, classes, and courses. As users are added to a site, they are assigned to a hierarchy, providing a structured and searchable organisation.

This article covers manual hierarchy management in itslearning, following a recommended structure. This approach prevents known issues that can occur when a participant is manually moved within the hierarchy. By setting up a predefined structure where all participants remain in the same position throughout their time at the school, it is also easier to remove users when they leave.

Hierarchy levels and types

The root of any hierarchy must be defined as a Site. You cannot add a site under a site. Organisations for which you want to add terms, policies, and privacy rules must be defined as a Site or School.

The logical rule is: one site, and several schools within that site, but not several schools within a school. If schools have sub-hierarchies such as classes, they should have the hierarchy type Class. Below a hierarchy defined as School, you can have hierarchies defined as Class and Unclassified.

Initial setup

When creating or changing a hierarchy, build the hierarchy structure before importing participants.

The top level of your site is always the site level. Certain system administrator settings are defined by what lies beneath the site, such as global settings. Any change to a global setting applies to all organisations on the site.

The following shows a typical hierarchy with a site (Lind demo) and its schools/organisations. The small house icons represent the organisation level:

Click Add to create a new level in the hierarchy. In this example, a new organisation called "The school of Bergen" is created:

Click Save after entering the name. The new school now appears in the hierarchy tree:

Organising the students

To maintain control over where all participants are in the hierarchy, create a node called All students. Under this node, create a sub-node for each enrolment year. Students who started school in 2016 are placed in the 2016 node, students starting in 2017 are placed in the 2017 node, and so on. Students remain in this position in the hierarchy until they leave the school.

Under the school, create a hierarchy for grade levels that change from year to year, for example Grade levels 2024/2025. Under this hierarchy, create the grade levels for your school. At the start of a new school year, students move from this hierarchy to a new one (for example, Grade levels 2025/2026). Their permanent home remains in the All students hierarchy.

For larger schools where students need to be further divided into classes, define these as additional sub-nodes:

Adding students to the hierarchy

There are two ways to add students to itslearning: manually, one by one, or by importing them using a CSV file.

Once the hierarchies are in place, assign each student their correct hierarchy memberships. First, add the student to the enrolment year node that matches when they joined the school, for example All students > Students 2024. This membership does not change for as long as the student remains at the school.

Next, add the student to their current grade level under the active school year hierarchy. For example, a student from the 2024 cohort starting in 1st grade is added to Grade levels 2024/2025 > 1 Grade. The following screenshot shows an example hierarchy membership structure for a student in 1st grade:

In this example, the student has permanent membership in All students 2024 because that is the year she enrolled. She is also a member of Grade levels 2024/2025 > 1 Grade for the current school year. This grade-level membership is used to add her to the courses she needs to attend during 2024/2025.

A new school year

When a new school year begins, create a new hierarchy mirroring the previous year's structure, for example Grade levels 2025/2026:

When the 2024/2025 school year ends, remove students from Grade levels 2024/2025 and add them to their new classes under Grade levels 2025/2026. Students can be moved individually or in bulk.

Organising the parents

To maintain control over where all parents are in the hierarchy, create a node called All parents. Under this node, create a sub-node for each school year, following the same pattern as the student structure. Parents of students who started in 2024 are placed in the Parents 2024 node, parents of students starting in 2023 are placed in the Parents 2023 node, and so on.

A parent may be a member of several parent nodes if they have multiple children who entered the school in different years. For example, a parent could belong to both Parents 2019 and Parents 2022.

When the class of 2017 leaves the school, the Parents 2017 node can be deleted. After deletion, affected parents retain only their All parents membership. You can then search for parents who no longer have children enrolled and delete those accounts.

If parents need course access

If the school uses information courses for parents, or parent representatives require access to certain courses, create a separate hierarchy that defines parent groups by school year, for example Parent groups 2024/2025:

Under this hierarchy, create parent groups for each grade level or class. These groups are then used to give parents access to relevant courses where the school shares announcements and updates for their children's classes.

Parents in this hierarchy move to a new year-specific node at the start of each school year, while always retaining their original membership in the All parents hierarchy.

Teacher and staff hierarchy management

Core structure

For teachers and staff, create a single permanent hierarchy called All teachers and staff. This hierarchy remains constant and should not be renamed in future years.

Sub-groups organisation

Under All teachers and staff, create sub-groups for different categories of staff, such as:

• External colleagues
• Internal colleagues
• Teaching staff

These sub-group names remain constant from year to year. Memberships are updated annually as teachers join or leave the school.

Departmental and course assignment structure

For subject departments with sub-hierarchies such as Biology, Chemistry, and so on, there are two approaches:

Course teaching assignments

The key principle is to create a new year-specific parent hierarchy rather than renaming existing class hierarchies each year:

1. Create a new school-year-specific parent hierarchy, for example Teaching staff 2025/2026.
2. Create new class hierarchies as sub-nodes under this parent.
3. Assign teachers to the appropriate class hierarchies for the new school year.

Benefits of this approach

This structure ensures:

• Teachers are not carried over into outdated hierarchies when transitioning between school years.
• No risk of old participants being included in new courses.
• Clean separation between academic years.
• Easier management of teacher assignments across years.

Hierarchy roles

There are four roles in a hierarchy: Administrator, Employee, Student, and Guest. These roles cannot be changed and must not be confused with profiles. The local administrator is responsible for managing the school's dashboard.