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22/12/2020

Using Edulink One forms to help organise Covid-19 testing

avatar Author - Abigail Mosley

As schools have been tasked with organising Covid-19 testing from January, many customers are currently exploring solutions for gathering parental consents for Covid-19 tests.

Edulink One’s forms and parents’ evening functions can help.

Using forms for parental consent

Some of our Liverpool-based customers took part in lateral flow testing in November as they were in Tier 3.

Based on their experiences, they managed to successfully use forms to quickly gather consent from parents. They then exported the responses or used the ‘form manager’ role to allow other employees to view the responses.

If you haven’t enabled forms yet, you can do this very easily from the Edulink One settings. Once enabled, you will need to log out and log in again to see the functionality.

Any member of staff can create new forms and view/export the results of their forms. Form managers can view/export the responses of any form that has been set up in Edulink One.

Edulink forms setup

Creating forms is really simple.

Go to the forms page and select the NEW button to reach the form build screen.

New form button

Build your form

Create a form title and a date due.

You then build the form on the right hand side.

Add a SUBHEADING and/ or an introductory PARAGRAPH.

NOTE: Once the due date passes, the form will disappear from all recipients screens but the form creator will still see the form.

Add questions

Add multiple choice questions by using CHOICE.

For questions with a free text answer, select the TEXT option. You can choose a multiline response if needed.

Mark questions as ‘required’ if needed.

Other form options

SUBHEADING allows you to create a heading e.g. if you want to section off the form or add a subheading to the form name.

PARAGRAPH allows you to provide a paragraph of text.

EMAIL allows the respondent to input an email address.

Select recipients

Once your form is laid out, select the RECIPIENTS button.

Choose who you want to complete the form, paying attention to select the ‘parents of‘ button in the top left and to ‘select all‘ for a whole year. Click DONE when finished.

When parents reply, the form creator and form managers can see their responses by going back into forms and clicking the orange VIEW button by the relevant form. You can export all responses if required once you’ve selected the form.

Using parents’ evening function for scheduling test times

A few of our schools have been using Edulink One’s Parent Event function in a creative way to schedule testing of students.

Firstly you need to create new teacher accounts in SIMS to correspond to the number of bays and call them ‘Bay 1’, ‘Bay 2’ etc. depending on your set up.

Create parent event box

Create empty event

Then login to Edulink One. Using the create a new event, you need to create a virtually empty event using the event wizard and then edit the event to customise it.

Set the date, time and appointment lengths of your testing event.

Your school can book students directly onto their appointments or you can open it up to parents for booking directly if you want to.

If you don’t want parents to book, we recommend only opening up the ‘available to parents’ function for a few minutes as a work-around.

Initially, only add one student – it doesn’t matter who as you will change this later.

Then on the subjects screen, deselect all subjects and create the event.

Edit event manually

From the events overview screen, select your testing event to edit it by going to DETAILS.

From here, add your ‘teachers’ manually, which will actually be the bays you set up earlier in SIMS. You should now see these new teachers called ‘Bay 1’, ‘Bay 2’ etc. as selectable options.

Next, add all the students you need and remove the one you used to set up the event.

You’ll then be asked for a subject relating the the new teachers and you can add the names ‘Bay 1′, Bay 2’ etc. These will then show as the subject in the booking options.

We also recommend you edit the event information line to add some instructions such as ‘Only arrive 5 minutes before your slot and queue up on the left hand side’.

Booking students in

To book in students manually (if you haven’t opened the event to parental bookings), select the TEACHER name from the event screen e.g. ‘Bay 1’.

Go to BOOK, and select the student/parent you want to book in. You’ll then be shown a list of available slot times. Just select the time you want to book them in.

As soon as you have done this, the parent will be able to view the student’s appointment time on Edulink One in the Parents’ Evening tab.

Please remember to notify students and parents, particularly if you are booking in manually.

Covid-19 lateral flow testing sample permission form structure.

One of our Liverpool-based customers has kindly shared their permission form structure for lateral flow testing. You may find it helpful if you use Edulink forms for collecting parental consent.

FORM NAME:
CONSENT FORM Covid-19 Lateral Flow Testing – Year 11

DUE DATE:

SUBHEADING:
Mass Asymptomatic Lateral Flow Testing for Coronavirus/ Covid-19

PARAGRAPH:
Dear Parent/ Carer,
Further to the letter that has been sent out today, please discuss this with your child, then complete this form by [DATE]. If we do not receive your recorded consent, your child will not be tested.

CHOICE:
For students under 16 years old: Consent for Coronavirus/ Covid-19 Test. Please select an option below:
YES, I have discussed this with my child and if they are unable to give consent themselves to be tested, I give consent for them to be tested for Coronavirus/ Covid-19
NO, I have discussed this with my child and if they are unable to give consent themselves to be tested, I do not give consent for them to be tested for Coronavirus/ Covid-19
Required

TEXT:
If ‘No’ please give reason(s)
If you wish to provide a reason, please type here
Multiline
Required

CHOICE:
I understand that by submitting this form electronically, it is providing an electronic signature.
Agree
Disagree
Required

PARAGRAPH:
Thank you for completing this form. Please submit it by [DATE].
Headteacher


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