The Plans module in Otus allows educators to design district-specific academic, behavioral, or personalized learning plans for any student and track their progress across classes and school years. It all starts when an administrator creates a template.
Note: While teachers can add students and update items to a student's plan, templates can only be created from Admin accounts.
With the flexible tools in the Template Builder, it's easy to create a unique template for administrators and teachers across the district to enter data and monitor student progress on any type of plan.
Looking for an overview of Plans? Start here.
Article Table of Contents:
Create the Template
From the Plans module, select Create Template in the top right corner:
➡️ Title and Settings
Provide a title, overall scale, and description, and choose customization settings.
Title: Enter a descriptive name for the Plan. (60-character limit)
Status: Choose a scale to use in the Status drop-down menu.
The status allows educators to identify the current overall status of the plan for each student. The scale used here can be different from any Item status (see Add Sections and Items section below).
Note: The scale used in the status menu cannot be changed after publishing (For more information about editing published templates, click here).
The list of scales is drawn from the Grading Scales available in your district. (See FAQ for more)
Template Description: Describe the goals and objectives of the plan. (5000 character limit)
💡 Tip from the Otus team: Include specific instructions about items in the plan, examples showing what should be entered in each column, and/or what the expected goals or results are.
Customization: Toggle ON/OFF Allow educators to customize plans.
ON (default) - Allows teachers and administrators to show or hide certain plan items from specific students (click here for guidance on customization).
OFF - No items in the plan can be hidden or shown by any teacher or administrator including the administrator who authored the plan.
Note: Customization can be toggled ON or OFF again after publishing. For more information about customization and editing a published template feature, click here.
Example: |
Add Sections, Columns, and Items
Item rows in the template are comprised of customizable columns. Each section can have a unique set of columns. For reference, examples of completed templates are included at the bottom of this section.
➡️ Sections and Columns
Enter a Section title (Required).
Enter a Section Description (Optional)
Enter an Items column heading (Required). (140 character limit)
Enter a Status column heading (Required). (140 character limit)
Delete Column
Or move the column Left or Right, if there are additional columns.
❗️Use caution when deleting a column from a published template, click here for guidance.
Add Text, Status, or Date columns
Note: Needs a minimum of one Status column.
Add Section
Delete Section
❗️Use caution when deleting a section from a published template, click here for guidance.
Example: |
➡️ Items
Enter the name of the item (Required). (140 character limit)
Delete item
❗️Use caution when deleting an item from a published template, click here for guidance
Choose a scale (Required): Establishes the grading scale used for this item. It can be the same scale as the template's overall status, or each item’s scale can be unique. However, the scales cannot be changed after publishing (for more information about editing published templates, click here.)
Add a new item to the section.
Example: |
➡️ Reorder Sections
To reorder sections of the plan template, click the Reorder Sections button.
Click on the section you'd like to move, drag it to the correct order, and select Save.
Save & Publish (or Save as Draft)
➡️ Save as Draft
Click the Save button to save a draft. The current progress of the template will be saved into the template list.
In the Plans list, a Draft tag on the row indicates that it is only visible to you as the author of that template. Once published, the Draft tag is removed.
➡️ Publish
Makes the template immediately available for the district.
💡 Tip from the Otus Team: Complete the template entirely before publishing. If changes need to be made to the article after publishing, be sure to follow the guidance in this article.
Example Templates
Clone or Send a Copy of a Template
➡️ Clone
When using Otus Plans, a template can be cloned to allow for easy recreation of the similar content or structure. To clone a template in Plans, follow the steps below.
❗ Please note - cloning templates can only be done from an administrator account. Teacher accounts are not able to clone templates.
Step 1: Navigate to the Plans module.
Step 2: Identify the Plan you'd like to clone. Select the ellipsis to the right.
Step 3: Select Clone.
What happens when you clone a template?
The clone is placed at the top of the Plans list.
The word -Copy is appended to the end of the title.
The cloned Plan is marked as a Draft. Once the title is changed, the Draft status will be removed.
➡️ Send a Copy
Step 1: While on your list of plans, select the ellipsis next to the desired plan and choose Send Copy.
Step 2: Type in the email address of the administrator you would like to send a copy of the plan template to, then select Send.
You will receive one of two messages:
 The copy of the plan template was sent successfully. |  The email address entered was incorrect. |
Things to Consider
If the recipient of the copy is not in the same district as the sender, all non-points grading scales will be removed. The points grading scale will remain. The recipient will need to add grading scales to those items.
If the recipient of the copy is in the same district as the sender, the template will remain exactly as is, with all of the same grading scales.
If you are not the original creator of the plan template you wish to send a copy of, you'll want to clone the plan first. Then, you can send a copy of the clone.
Otus Live
Below is a video from our Otus Live series on how an admin can get started with Plans, and specifically how to create a Plan template.
FAQ
Once published, who can see this Plans template?
All teachers and administrators in the district can see and add students to the Plan. For more information, click here.
Can we create a Grading Scale that is unique to Plans (and not used in Assessments)?
Yes! From the Main Admin account, in Control Center, create the desired Grading Scale and keep the boxes for Viewing and Creating Assessments unchecked. See this article for more information.