Formal education is great; it teaches you lots of valuable lessons. These lessons, in turn, add quality value to life. The logistical side of it? Not so great; messy, untidy, bordering on chaotic. Good teachers are hard to come by, so schools remain understaffed. In most cases, students are not given a choice about classes or class hours. The fact of the matter is: education has gone corporate, with hierarchies and roles and goals to be met, all of which negatively affect the core of it – growing and developing young minds.
If you are an academic professional, you should think of education as a constant exchange, which should be seamless. Technology enters the stage right here. There is a nice little solution that educational institutes of every shape and size can make use of. The solution is a custom web portal. Web portal solutions work for everyone; all you need is a custom portal development company to draw one up for you. Before you invest in one, let’s dig a little deeper and check out all the benefits of using an education portal.
First, let’s get into the basics: You should have an existing database of all your admin staff, teaching staff, and students. When you manage such a database in a CRM, you can connect these separate components. The right people have the right access. Your level of access depends on whether you are a teaching faculty, a member of the administrative staff, or a student.
Let’s understand the portal, one level of access at a time:
Admin Level:
As an admin staff member, an education portal can work wonders for you by streamlining your work to a great extent. If you are a college/school principal, you can oversee all the operations of your institute.
Here’s how that works:
- As your data and resources are managed online, you can do away with the redundant paperwork.
- The personnel management feature helps faculties manage their classes, schedules, and grading work in the education portal.
- You can have a bird’s-eye-view of your institute’s financial status with a receipt and fee management system.
It’s not necessary for an admin staff member to monitor the progress of each student, but you can have easy access to an overall view of the students scoring the highest or those competing in various school-wide competitions. Moreover, you can see the course completion status by the teaching staff, how many extra-curricular activities they are conducting, or their progress with grading work.
Members of the general admin handle all the records of students and teaching staff. They assign classrooms for lectures, help students sign up for courses or competitions, arrange for consolidated reports for each student, and arrange examination schedules.
Benefits of the Education Portal at the Admin Level:
- Once set up, an education portal remarkably cuts down unnecessary tasks. You can be sure that lecture rooms are not double-booked.
- Professors and students alike will not have conflicting schedules.
- The education portal lets you manage the fee details of every student. You can customize it to alert the students and their parents when fees are due.
Teaching Faculty:
A teacher has many responsibilities, and they are not limited to just taking classes. There is way more going on in the background. An education portal helps the teachers by aiding them and making accomplishing tasks easier.
Here’s how that goes:
- As a teacher, having your class schedule in sight and arranged properly gives a sense of relief.
- When the students sign up for your course at the beginning of the year/semester, you will be able to have a clear view of how many students have done so and how many more you can take on. Once this is done, you can add the details of each course and the breakdown of classes. This sets up a course plan, and you can keep track of it.
- You can set out assignments and tests for students, see when they turn them in, grade them, mark attendance, accept medical leave requests, and even request leaves for yourself from the admin staff.
- Moreover, you can track each student’s progress based on the exams, class tests, and attendance records.
- If you have to take an extra session, you can add them to the portal, which notifies the students about an extra class. A good feature here is that the portal only lets you book a slot when all your students are free.
Additional benefits include an overview of the calculation of students’ grades, attendance percentage, etc., once the metrics are set up. At the end of the year/semester, each teacher can send in their grade reports, which the admin staff can use to create consolidated reports of each student.
Student Level:
Students only have viewing access to most of the modules. This portal is helpful in providing them with an overview of their progress during a particular academic year.
Here’s how:
- They can view all the courses they are taking, along with their timetable.
- They are able to view all their grades, which is helpful if they are falling behind in a class. A comprehensive view of their grades allows them room to improve, which is not limited to that test but also their overall graph.
- Students can submit medical leave requests in addition to medical certificates. That particular faculty member can send in their approval and grant them the needed attendance.
- Students are able to view their overall attendance, along with a breakdown of each class.
- Should the need arise, students can submit their test for rechecking for any course. After the professor rechecks it, they can make changes to the grade. The student is able to view this replaced grade. The change reflects in the final grade also.
- At the end of each semester, when the students’ consolidated grade is ready, they can view them and even print them out. The school’s logo and other important details, like the affiliated board, are automatically included.
Any school or college is an intricate structure with numerous variables. It not only shapes the lives of children but also of those whose careers are intertwined with the functions of education, from the admin staff to the people teaching. Running a school is no easy task. There are scores of students taking a variation of 20+ courses each, which can get challenging to manage, especially adding the role of each professor and their course to the mix.
An education portal aims to make that complex workflow a little easier. Schools require comprehensive, flexible solutions to expand it should they need to, which is why solution is for you.
