SENSE Online System Ready for Full Release!
After almost a year in design, development and testing, the SENSE Online system has finally completed BETA testing and is now ready for fully release to all SENSE schools.
Updates
Several updates have been completed to the SENSE program including new payment options, more accurate reporting for graduation, certificate, and wallet card development, student archiving, and student online testing. Our development team is still in the process of adding in new features, but we believe that the current features are stable and as bug-free as possible.
Release Date
Schools will start receiving emails from the SENSE Online system with the administrator login and password. Please be aware that we will be rolling this out in phases over the next week and a half. You may not receive the login information until the middle of next week if you are part of the last group. Please do not email us for earlier access, the roll out has been set to release your school at a given date.
School Administrators
The SENSE Online system used a top down approach per school. School Administrators (those individuals as the Program Administrator when the school was registered) will receive an email with their login information. School Administrators will then have to create accounts for the school’s welding instructors. This will generate an email with the individual instructors login information. AWS does not add individual instructors to the SENSE Online system. That function belongs solely to the SENSE Program Administrator.
School Name Changes
Several school have contacted AWS to have the name of their school changed. In an attempt to finalize the SENSE Online system, we have no begun updating school names. If the name of your school still has not been updated by the end of next week, please let us know and we will make sure that your school was added to the update list.
Warning
Please be aware that while the system was tested by a large group of schools, they were a fraction of the three thousand SENSE schools we have world-wide. While we tried to test the system for the type of stress it will be under in the fully release, we cannot replicate real world conditions. There may be features that stop working or work erratically. All we ask is that if you run into a problem, you email a description of the problem and your contact information to dhernandez@aws.org so that we may address the issues as soon as possible.
Thanks
AWS would like to thank all the SENSE schools that participate dint he BETA, but would like to extend a special thank you to Mike Anderson from the New Castle Area Career Programs in New Castle, IN who went well beyond the call of duty to ensure that the SENSE Online system was ready for full deployment.
Last Notes
Remember: If you run into an issue with the SENSE Online system, please email a description of the problem and your contact information to dhernandez@aws.org so that we may address the issues as soon as possible.
In order to access the SENSE Online System you can go directly to http://sense.aws.org or go to the SENSE Online Page at American Welding Online http://awo.aws.org/sense/. We will be adding a login box directly to that page for easy navigation.
One last reminder: The SENSE Online User Guide is located on the SENSE page of the American Welding Online Website at http://awo.aws.org/sense/.
Is it mandatory to do the testing on-line or can we test like we have before? At this time I like using the old way of testing. 30 years of teaching
We are not requiring SENSE schools to do the testing online. The SENSE Online System is an optional tool. You can choose to use only part of the system, such as the online gradebook and reporting functions, or none of the system at all. The key is that you have complete control over how you implement the SENSE program in your school.
David Hernandez