How to create vertical integration classes
Vertical Integration refers to when students of different year-levels are brought together into a class.
Some example use cases:
- Vertical Roll Classes - Classes with students from some or all year levels come together for roll call, mentoring, personal growth etc
- Staged Electives - Students, say, in the middle years of high school come together to study some elective courses
- Accelerated Students - Clever students that get added to classes in higher year levels to accelerate their academic growth
We offer 2 ways of doing this:
Multi-year structures
Normally, there is a distinct structure for each year-level, without mixing. We call this the 'top-level structure' for each year-level. However, you can create a structure which joins together two different year-levels, e.g. Year 11 & 12. To do this, go to the "DataEntry > Structure" screen and in the toolbar dropdown for year-level, tick the two relevant year-levels. They will then appear on the same screen. This will then enable you to create structures which span both structures, i.e. a line which spans both top-level horizontal structures.
Linking
In the "Data Entry > Structure" screen, you can right-click on the class you want to vertically integrate, and you'll get the context menu. Select "Link > vertically". Then click on the other class you want to link it with, and hit ENTER. This will then do one of two things: if the structure can be rearranged to naturally put those two classes into a vertical structure, without otherwise changing your semantics, then Atlantis will do that. If this is not possible, then Atlantis will draw a blue line between the two classes to show that they are linked. We call this latter situation an 'undecomposable structure'. Undecomposable structures are not very commonly used.