The first step to calculating instructional units for students in Nebraska schools is adding instructional minutes for each course, but doing so individually is monotonous and takes time. With the Mass Assign Course/Section Data feature in jmc Office, save time by assigning instructional minutes to all courses at once or to courses with students in a specific grade level. Simply enter the number of minutes and select the courses to update and jmc will automatically update instructional time for all courses.

To assign instructional minutes in bulk, head to Schedule > Course > Mass Assign Course/Section Data.

Step One: Select "Instructional Time Planned (noncalculated)" to overwrite the number of instructional minutes assigned for each course section with the number of minutes you enter in the "new value" field.

Step Two: Enter the appropriate number of minutes in the "new value" field to indicate how many minutes should be used by the state to calculate instructional units for each course section.

Fun Fact: According to the NDE's Rule 10, an instructional unit is defined as 900 classroom minutes. In the context of course planning, a semester-long course is typically assigned 5 instructional units, which equates to 4500 minutes of instructional time. This value can be entered in the "Instructional Time Planned" field. On the other hand, a year-long course is typically assigned 10 instructional units, totaling 9000 minutes of instructional time. This value can alternatively be entered in the "Instructional Time Planned" field, depending on the specific setup of courses on the Edit Course Data page.

Helpful Tip: To streamline the calculation of instructional time in your courses, jmc offers the option to select "Instructional Time Planned (calculated)" from the value drop-down list. This feature utilizes your bell schedule, calendar, and course information to automatically calculate the instructional time. When assigning this calculated value, it is recommended to choose "don't change it" from the "If a course section already has a manually entered value in the field" drop-down list.

Step Three: Select "All" from the "for courses/sections in this building with students in grade level" drop-down list to apply changes to all courses or select a grade level to apply changes to only courses with students in the specified grade level.

Step Four: Click the "Assign Value to Course/Section Data Element" button to change instructional units in bulk for the specified courses.

Step Five: Click the "Print Summary" to print a summary of assigned course data or click "Cancel Summary" to return to the Mass Assign Course/Section Data page.