How to manage Student Care Monitor/Student Alerts. Read time (5 minutes). This article is intended for Admin.
The Student Care Monitor builds on the previous Student Alerts system, making it easier for staff to manage and prioritise important information about students.
It consolidates alerts into one system, and adds features like priority levels, notifications and a secure dashboard widget, helping staff stay informed while protecting student privacy. This update supports the "Lean In, Lean Out" and similar communication systems, promoting clear and focused communication to better ensure student safety and wellbeing.
Important notes:
- Any Student Alerts you have created in the past will now appear as a Neutral Alert, so you don't need to worry about information being lost with this new version.
- As these alerts are temporary and do not integrate into to any other area of VSware, they are not intended as a replacement for the AEN/Medical tab.
- Parents/contacts cannot view Student Alerts.
This guide covers:
- Access and Permissions
- Creating an Alert
- Viewing an Alert
- Priority Levels (and editing names of priority levels for your school)
- Notifications (varies for different alerts)
Access and Permissions
- Principals and Secretaries: Can create, edit and view alerts for all students by default.
- Teachers: Can only see alerts for students they teach - unless they're given extra permissions.
In Settings > Users & Groups > there are four permissions linked to the Care Monitor feature:
1. Allow teacher to manage and create their own neutral student care monitor alerts
This permission was previously known as “Allow teacher to manage and create their own
student alerts”. So anyone who had this permission previously, will have the same permissions with the new care monitor version and you don't need to take any action.
Note that this permission only gives staff access to create neutral alerts for the students they teach.
(If they also have the permission 'Allow teacher access to all learner profiles', then they can create neutral alerts for all students)
2. Allow teacher access to escalate student care monitor alerts
This permission means that staff can use the high, medium and low priorities when creating alerts for their own students. This permission also requires the base permission ‘Allow teacher to manage and create their own student care monitor alerts’ to work.
3. Allow teacher full access to student care monitor alerts
This gives staff the same access as a principal and secretary to student alerts so they can create alerts with any priority for any student regardless of who they teach.
4. Allow staff to create care monitor alerts for student dynamic/freeform groups only
This gives staff the ability to create care monitor alerts for student dynamic/freeform groups only.
Creating an Alert
Go to "School" and select Care Monitor.
View a list of all past and present alerts (active & inactive).
Click "Add New Alert" and fill in:
-
- Title
- Level (High, Medium, Low, Neutral)
- Recipient (individual student or group)
- Start & End Date (within the academic year)
- Description
Finally, click "Create Alert"
If you are creating an alert for more than one individual, you have two options:
- Create Separate Alerts: Apply this alert separately to each selected student. These alerts will not be linked, and any changes must be made individually.
- Create Shared Alert: Create a single, shared alert that includes all selected students. Changes to alert will apply to all students.
Viewing Care Monitor Alerts
The Care Monitor dashboard widget
There is a new widget on the dashboard called Care Monitor showing active care
monitor alerts. This widget is visible to every staff user, but the content they see in the widget
will depend on which students they teach and what permissions they have. (Secretary and
Principal users will see all alerts).
The widget can contain different priority alerts, Neutral, Low, Medium and High. The priority
of the alert is set when creating the alert:
NB - all staff will see the high priority alerts regardless of who they are linked to and regardless of their permissions.
You can also use the date filters, or filter by alerts from just today by selecting the 'Filter New' toggle.
Where else are active alerts visible?
For students with active alerts, you can see the alert icons on:
- Their Student Insights page
- Beside their photograph in their VSware profile
- Beside the student name on the mark attendance screen
- Beside the student name on the permission slips list
- Beside the student name on the assessments results entry page
- Beside the student name on a class list
Please note, in order to ensure sensitive information remains private, alert content isn't displayed when you hover over them, you must click to view details.
Priority Levels
There are 4 types of Care Monitor alert priority levels that can be applied to students.
The default names for these alerts are: High, Medium, Low and Neutral.
However, we are aware that some schools have existing systems in place, such as Lean In/Lean Out, and or other similar naming conventions when it comes to student alerts.
Therefore, we have built in the ability for schools to edit the names of alerts in System Settings.
In the example below, this particular school has chosen to rename Medium and Low level alerts to 'Lean In' and 'Lean Out'.
We will discuss notifications in more detail below, but please note that high priority alerts send an automatic notification to all staff, so this may not suit your school's approach and you may not want to use these alerts at all.
Notifications
High alerts - an automatic push notification will be sent to the all staff that have downloaded the VSware app and are logged into it (regardless of whether they are associated with the student or not, there is no way to prevent the notification from sending for a high alert.)
Medium and Low alerts - schools can decide when creating an individual alert, whether a push notification is to be sent for Medium or Low alerts.
These are turned off by default, so you must turn them on if they're needed. If they are turned on, the push notification will only go out to teachers of that student, or staff who have access to all learner profiles
To set your preference, go to Settings and System settings > select the relevant check boxes:
In the above example, notifications will be sent to all staff when a high OR medium alert is created.
Neutral alerts - no notification will be sent when a neutral alert is created.
Note on Neutral alerts: any Student Alerts you have created in the past will appear as Neutral alerts, so you don't need to worry about information being lost with this new version.