Loading and copying existing comments

You can load existing comments that have been entered for a subject into any other subject. This saves time, as you do not need to re-type comments that are identical or only slightly different to those from another area.

You can modify the contents once they have been copied, and adjust them to suit the new assessment area. This also allows you to use a standard comment-coding format. See Comment bank.

To load or copy existing comments:

1. Select Module > Assessments or Students, then Subject Assessment Area Maintenance.
   The Set Subject Assessment Search Criteria window is displayed.
   
   Tip: You can also access the Set Subject Assessment Search Criteria window by clicking or .
   
   
2. Search for the subject assessment or area that you want to load comments into. See Searching for subjects and assessment areas.
3. Open the relevant Comments sub-tab. See either:
   • Subject Assessment Maintenance - Summary tab - Comments sub-tab
   • Subject Assessment Maintenance - Area tab - Comments sub-tab.
4. Click .
5. In the Assessment Code field, select the subject assessment that you want to copy comments from.
   
6. Select the comments to be copied.
   
   Tip: You can use the mouse and the normal Windows Shift and Ctrl keys to select multiple records. Hold down the Shift key and click on the first record you want to select. While still holding down the Shift key, click the last record. All records in between your two selections are highlighted. Alternatively, you can hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on different records in the list to highlight them.
   
   
   
7. Click .
   The comments are loaded into the subject assessment or assessment area.
   
8. Update the comments to suit the subject assessment or assessment area, if required.

Points to note about comments

Gender references

Gender-based references (his, he, she, her and so on) in a comment automatically change depending on the student's gender if the comments are entered in the masculine format.

If your organisation is co-educational, gender references only change if the comments were written with male gender references. Gender references do not change if the comments were written with female gender references. For example, the comment 'He has done unusually well on his term project' would change to 'She has done unusually well on her term project', but 'She has done unusually well on her term project' would remain unchanged.

If your organisation is single-sex then enter the comments as they should be for that gender.

Name substitution

Wherever a question mark (?) is encountered in a comment, Synergetic changes the ? to the student's preferred name by default.

Alternatively, the system administrator can determine whether the student's given name is used. See CommentName configuration setting in the System maintenance manual.