Request Demo

Type your keyword below

Author: Hemant Mahajan

Online Examination System: 10 Tips for Student Assessment

Posted on by Hemant Mahajan

As today’s time is critical, families, faculties, and students are learning at home, it is important to follow and monitor their activities with online examinations and student assessments. Teachers and parents will need to use efficient tools to discuss and meet the students, along with this it is also important to check whether the students are performing progressively or not.

For all this, it is important to keep a check on each student. By having an understanding of individual students, you can determine what interventions and pathways will be supporting their learning journey. And just after having proper knowledge about each student’s journey, with proper – tools such as the Academia Examination Management Module you can determine how to equip and support the entire student population with effective, united, and well-timed programming with a track record of their achievement.


Let’s discuss some of the key factors for understanding properly about student assessment with online examinations:

  1. Non-Intellectual Factor Determination 

It is important to check the non-intellectual skills in students. This skill includes resiliency, motivation, and confidence in academic performance and social settings, this hugely impacts the student’s overall performance and assessments, meanwhile all these things are really important in the online assessment. For example, think about the students who just joined the college, the faculties might know very little about them outside the basic demographic info and their past academic history. So having known their initial factors related to intellectual and non-intellectual aspects can help in assessing them in online examinations. 

Non-intellectual skills are generally measured by having a written assessment or in a video meeting. Academia works with institutions to help them perform non-intellectual assessments every year. 

  1. Risk Analysis 

It is also important to analyze the risk level by gathering data and using it to predict things about student outcomes, campuses are better prepared to be proactive in their student interventions. This risk analysis is essential to have a smooth run of examination in this current scenario. It also helps in tracking metrics to better understand what may help to improve the student just before the examination and what he can improve every year before the assessments. 

  1. Circular and Engagement Activities 

Having the Academia Online Examination System, you can create various assessments for circular and engagement activities that you run in the whole academic session. It is always noted that students who are involved in circular and engagement activities are more likely to persist and get good results in examinations. Fun learning activities are always appreciated by the students and their parents as this helps them in more focused studies with pace. This kind of activity also helps the teachers and parents to understand the concentration and learning speeds of the students which eventually helps in getting good results. 

  1. Internal Performance and Academic Activities 

Tracking the student’s performance inside the classroom is also an essential task that institutions need to focus on.  Students’ success majorly relies on classroom engagement and performance along with the last examination assessment. 

Internal performance aspects that must be focused on:

    • Class Absence:

The student’s absence in the online class also defines his dedication towards the studies, so it is important to set criteria for student’s attendance through the Academia Attendance Management System, through this the teachers can mark the attendance that is easily accessed by the students and their parents. 

    • Monthly Assignment:

Teachers need to allot monthly assignments to students to keep them engaged and encouraged, and also check their regular processes. Academia provides a complete system to provide a lot of assignments to students and to check those assignments easily. You can provide them with a series of structured assignments in various courses that you are running. Having this the teachers can evaluate the real position of students forcing them to do more struggle for studies before their midterms. 

  1. Assessment Result 

Along with the final assessments, it’s common for campuses to survey and access the students after the result declaration. Many institutions work with check-up surveys of the first semester students to make sure that the students are satisfied with their studies and satisfied.

  1. Discussion with Students regularly 

With all the above-mentioned points, it is important to check to discuss student progress regularly with students, parents, and teachers. This helps in knowing the student’s areas of strength and areas of improvement. You can create feedback forms using Academia online examination and student assessment focusing on the collaborative success of teachers, students, and parents.

  1. Periodical Online Assessment 

While the teachers are teaching online, it is also important to check periodically whether the students are getting interested or not, so to do this, you can ask questions in the middle of the online class to check the student’s responses in your session. This can help students to focus on their studies giving you good results in exams. 

  1. Sharing experiences and incidents 

Teachers need to make an emotional connection with students, like in the current scenario of COVID-19, it is important to provide support to students to address any issues they are facing providing them with real-time help that they need. This helps the students to make a connection with the teachers and institutions along with having a good focus on studies. 

  1. Quick Results For Assessments 

It is important to provide quick results to students after the assessments. Quick results encourage the students to focus on their studies in both the cases of low marks or high marks. So using the Online Examination System, you can easily evaluate accurate and instant results for any kind of assessment or examination. 

  1. Motivate for Self Learning 

The best advantage of online learning is that students can learn anytime and anywhere according to their needs, so provide them videos and online study material that they can access easily, this will help them learn faster and grasp more. Motivate self-learning through Academia Mobile App, which can help students to check every academic and administrative activity over the phone, like the online course videos, their attendance, their fee structure, timetable, examination arrangement, and all other things.

Conclusion 

Online learning is considered the best way of learning even in the post COVID world by the experts, it is helping the students to learn and grasp things easily, and meanwhile, it also helps the institutions to manage their academic and administrative operations easily and efficiently. Various Academia modules can help you increase the productivity of your institute bringing success and achievements. So don’t wait for any time, book your demo now to know more.

How to reduce the burden of the examination officer at an Institute

Posted on by Hemant Mahajan

Examinations have always been a crucial part of academic assessments. Exams require to be conducted smoothly and it depends on the examination officer to establish the processes. The examination officers play a key role in educational institutes in the administration, management, and conducting of examinations. The exam office staff also supports the teaching staff and the students and is overburdened with responsibilities.

To understand the severe workload examination officers carry, it is important to understand the role of the examination officer or manager, broadly.

  1. Liaising with internal and external stakeholders
  2. Keeping abreast of examination changes each academic year
  3. Managing invigilators by training and updating on rules and regulation changes annually
  4. Updating examination-related policies
  5. Managing the examination entry process
  6. Managing the examination preparation process – creating timetables, seating plans, securely storing confidential examination materials; administering the internal assessment, etc.
  7. Supporting the access arrangements process
  8. Managing examination days from starting an examination, dealing with emergencies, to ending the examination and dispatching the examination scripts
  9. Contingency planning
  10. Managing examination results
  11. Dealing with requests and administering post-results services
  12. Issuing examination certificates

An automated system can take care of all the hassles related to examination management while saving on time and manual effort. It keeps track of every detail accurately such as admin details, student details, and faculty details. It is also equipped to generate attendance reports and marks.

These systems are designed to manage access permissions for users so there is no misuse and mismanagement of legal and official data by unauthorized users.

An Examination Management Software has some inbuilt features like –

  • Creating Examinations
  • Hall ticket generation
  • Question Paper generation
  • Subject wise mark sheets
  • Different report formats
  • Certificate Generation
  • Real-time mobile updates

An automated examination management system is a robust and scalable solution and is increasingly being opted for a very important reason – the benefit of lessening the burden for examination officers. Some of the topmost benefits are –

Time-Saving

With manual exams taking an enormous amount of time for activities such as creating and printing exam papers and answer sheets, preparing a list of teachers and assigning tasks to them, managing student records, allocating rooms, and much more.

This entire process is time-consuming and mentally daunting. With a student examination system, these activities can be streamlined and executed effortlessly saving a lot of time and effort for the examination officer.

Streamlined Process

Examination officers are under the immense pressure of conducting exams safely, without the risk of malpractices. Sometimes even with digitisation of exams, there could be malpractices and fraudulent activities which could lead to serious issues and spoil the institute’s reputation. An effective online exam management system with a centralised storage of student data including photographs and personal details can help examination officers and staff to cross-check the data on the exam day and conduct a fair examination.

Accuracy of Results

Exam results are a crucial component that helps students secure admissions to higher studies or kickstart a career. Therefore, there is a tremendous responsibility to release the results on time without errors. With an exam management system, answer sheets can be accessed easily and mark calculated precisely in no time. With the marks stored in a centralised database, the marks can either be sent to students online or displayed publicly online or on notice boards.

The Exam Management module in Academia ERP is an excellent automation system that has been designed to make the examination process smooth, efficient, and also paper-free. The exam management portal helps to automate the entire examination process from pre-exam preparations like receipt of enrollment forms and examination forms, exam timetable, grading criteria, handling logistics, allocating invigilators and processing of results, and printing of certificates and statistical reports.

The examination module takes care of all the required forms to be filled up to register for exams. Since the module is connected to the student database, it retrieves all necessary student information whenever the student name/Id/enrolment, etc is entered.

Academia’s examination module, which is part of an award-winning comprehensive educational ERP, provides easy and effective management of examinations at the institute –

Some of its benefits are –

  • Automates processes for exams at all the stages
  • Saves time and energy for the staff
  • Reduces duplication of work and makes it error-free
  • Generates student’s progress report which helps to improve learning outcomes
  • Eliminates manual forms and has paper-less processes
  • Simplifies exam processes making them easy and transparent

To sum up, an effective examination management software can take the burden off examination officers by creating and organising student-related paper records by automating the process. It saves the effort and time of the examination officer’s staff. resources and thus helps in remarkable cost savings.

 

Technology and Automation in Education

Posted on by Hemant Mahajan

Nowadays, the situation is demanding digital transformation for all industries and education is the most important sector that is seeking digital transformation, automation in education has various benefits for the management, admin staff, administration, and students. 

Just think about how your institution can grow and how the students will get more time to study and learn with the spacious time that your institution is spending in the academic and administrative tasks just from the admission process to the examination process. Automation in Education can make everything simple and easier for them. 

Now let’s understand how technology can change the education sector in tremendous ways:

How technology plays an important role in education?

Technology is changing the overall ways of working and opening new doors of innovation and creation for the world, almost all industries are making their way to opt for online and technical things that can help them in growing more. It has a specific role to be played in the education sector, having a tech hand you can incorporate to aid and enhance the overall education experience. 

Technology has made it possible for the administration to handle the overall academic and administrative tasks easily and efficiently, it also has made it easier for the students to have individual learning than group learning instead of online classes they can get any of the required data anytime and anywhere according to their convenience, it ultimately results in more output creation than other things. 

What is Automation?

Automation is a method or technique of operating and controlling a single or different process, its core focus is to minimize the manual work in repetitive tasks, and it helps the teachers, faculties, and admin to focus more on the proper teaching and learning process of the students. 

Looking at the aspects of students, automation helps in optimizing the time along with helping them to learn whenever they want, whatever they want, and however, they want.

How can you access code-free automation?

It is often one of the most common challenges for the school administrations, as not the faculties, admin staff, and management knows about coding, so it becomes difficult for them to grasp the coding process. But most of the automation in education processes involves no code and they work the same way to eliminate the manual process of the organization. 

The organization opting for the automated systems just requires some basic training that can help them to understand and execute the automated system.

Processes that need automation in an institution:

  • Course Registration and Pre-admission 

Through automation it becomes very easy for institutions to register the courses and also to complete the admission process thoroughly, they do not need to distribute forms for admissions, collect them, and not even register them manually for individual courses, all these things process out automatically without any data glitches and problems, so bringing automation in education you can make the admission process easier to manage without any error. 

  • Student Shortlisting 

Automation makes it easy to select students, there are various ways to shortlist students based on various criteria like EQ, IQ, etc. Students who apply and perform well based on your criteria can be eligible for admission, with a dashboard and list marking all the details. So in simple words, automation makes it easy to shortlist eligible and interested candidates. 

  • Student Grading and Assessment

When it comes to grading the students, faculties follow a manual and lengthy process of filling forms and report cards to mark the grades, meanwhile, automation helps them to do all these tasks simply and efficiently marking the grades with just one single click for particular students after having the quizzes, tests, projects, or any other form of assessment. This process even helps the students to get faster feedback to work forward for their next assignments. 

  • Attendance Record 

Through automation in education, you can manage all the small and big tasks of the academy and administration, one of them are to mark attendance, so with automation, you will need to take even a little bit of stress about registers and notebooks to manage the attendance, digital attendance will automatically record the date and time for each student with your one click, you will also have a systematic and updated data to check any attendance presence for any day. 

  • Administrative Tasks 

There are so many tasks in an institution to manage, administration, accounts, marketing, and a lot more. Imagine you can have access to all this information in just one click, seeming interesting? With automation, you can manage all the tasks eliminating the physical work and bringing efficiency, agility, and transparency to all the administrative operations. Just think how things will become easy for you to have Report Cards, Certificates, Payslips, and various other things in a single hand along with capturing them for a lifetime eliminating the files eaten by spiders and termites. 

  • Scheduling the Classes

In the manual and offline world, schools take the examination in the middle, and at the end of the year, it becomes a time-consuming process, just think of the situation that how automation can make the process easy for you by organizing the whole process automatically, the interaction between student and teachers can be quite easier and through as teachers can make the online papers easily and can check them using automated system meanwhile students can also study hard with any time available online courses, they will also get the opportunity to collect the hall ticket online instead of going to the school/college occupying their study time. All this can directly and straightforwardly impact the growth of the student and the organization.

  • Audit Report and Compliance 

Schools and colleges are the platforms that use and teach utmost regulations and discipline to students. All the things here need perfection and compliance. So using automation you can manage all the audits systematically without any paperwork. Automation in education helps in managing the complete system of accounting, auditing, and compliance. 

Conclusion 

There are numerous benefits of automation in education, it allows the administration and faculties to focus on their main motive which is the growth of students and the organization. 

Academia is one of the best platforms that provide thought-leading, flexibility, high scalability, and comprehensive services to institutions that are focusing on the great growth of their students’ organization along with driving efficiency, productivity, and transparency. s

So what are you thinking about?  Opt for automation in your institution to transform the complete work experience and output generation completely. So contact us now and book your free demo to learn more about how you can leverage automation through Academia in your institution.

5 Steps to Select the Best Management Information System (MIS) for Your Educational Institution

Posted on by Hemant Mahajan

‘Data’ a single word to describe the whole educational institution’s scenario, whether academic or administrative, right? Every segment of an educational institution needs to store data starting from student information, financial records, examination data, and various others. Every single piece of data in the institution owns its importance whether your institution is big or small. Let’s discuss how an education management information system can fulfill all these needs managing and properly storing all the student data.

Various boards like NAAC and NBA encourage institutions that keep accurate and systematic data that is easily accessible. It dignifies the transparency of all the activities and operations. 

Various institutions are looking for flawless distribution of data, resources, and services that can be beneficial for students, teachers, and the management. So with the increasing demands in the education sector, a good Education Management Information System can provide institutions with the needed progress moving their path towards success. 

What is a Management Information System (MIS)?

Management Information System is a self-understood term. It is a storehouse of all the data that can restore, gather, organize, and store student data processes and analyze it generating various reports from it. 

MIS in the broader term monitors the overall performance of the education events that are offered by the institute managing the distribution and allocation of all the educational resources. It also manages, plans, and strategizes the whole work processes to execute the education system smoothly. Meanwhile, it is important to note that MIS played a very significant role to help educational institutions to synchronize data properly and to grow simultaneously. 

Looking over today’s scenario various higher education institutions are looking forward to implementing various education management solutions that can help them to align all academic and administrative processes to provide a better student experience.

 

Steps to Choose the Right MIS for your Educational Institution 

The Education Management Information System helps manage the entire education system, so it is very important to follow all the essential steps that can direct towards choosing the right system. Let’s discuss some of the essential steps for the same. 

Here are the steps for choosing the right Education Management Information System (MIS):

  • Collecting information from various MIS sources 

It is the basic and most important step that is needed to take while selecting an MIS for your institute, the MIS you choose must provide all the information to the concerned users in your organization enabling them to conduct their different tasks and activities more efficiently.

  • Deciding for a better MIS source 

Decisions of administration are largely governed by the data insights that suggest student behavior. Opting for manual interlinking of data and finding various relationships is quite difficult. 

Meanwhile, using Powerful BI like education management and information systems can help to track and manage all the data easily and efficiently. 

An MIS is built after detailed market analysis, it includes the timely needs of various institutions and accompanying features that could help the organization’s services get a global insight. It directly or indirectly gives a new perspective that could focus and accelerate new growth & student success. 

  • Enabling planning and policies 

After finalizing an MIS, it is important to check with the plans and policies of the MIS that are necessary to address objectively identified issues, you will also need to set quantified targets, and realistically estimate the resources that are required to implement plans and policies in your institution. 

  • Check how the MIS you are choosing is helping you in your day-to-day operations

The MIS you select must contribute to improving the efficiency of day-to-day operations of the complete education system in your institution, it is also essential that it should provide relevant and reliable information as and when required storing it properly. 

  • Identification and selection of priorities where MIS is required 

After deciding upon the importance and need of MIS, it is important to identify and select the priorities where MIS is required, let’s say you have 3 branches of your institution so it is important to decide that whether you want to implement MIS on all 3 of the branches and all the sections of your institutions. 

What Should You Expect From an MIS?

Management information systems for education are mainly helpful to check and track student behavior. It stores important data such as student data, examination records, hostel, library, and all other kinds of student information. 

Using MIS an institution can store proper and systematic information of the student that is impossible in manual or real-time insights, it indirectly helps the institution to have a better and timely decision making providing more scope and growth for the future of the student. 

Having varieties of MIS available, you still can choose the best MIS that is Academia MIS. It is a reliable, reputed, and successful education management system used globally.

How Academia can provide you with the best Management Information System?

We at Academia believe that automation and streamline services can bring digital transformation in institutions and using Academia MIS you can add systematic arrangement, centralization, and smooth flow of data in student, faculty, and administration logins. Along with this, we at Academia are focused to work on a mission of digitally transforming institutions to provide growth and success. We believe that by using technology you can conquer your goals and targeted outcomes for your institution. 

Conclusion 

All kind of education institution needs a user-friendly and efficient MIS system that can help them to manage and store all the data in the right direction and can increase the efficiency of student success, university, college, school or, any kind of educational institution can opt for education management information system by Academia to track the data that eventually will lead to better institution management. 

5 Higher Education IT trends in 2021

Posted on by Hemant Mahajan

Like other industries, higher education too got severely hit by the pandemic of 2020. Classes moved to online and hybrid environments, budgets got squeezed and higher education IT needs evolved dramatically.

Educational institutions all over the world are looking at IT infrastructure to prioritise and provide the high-quality experience that students expect. While the remote and hybrid modes of learning will be the way education will move in the immediate future, delivering efficient and flexible IT solutions will be the primary focus for institutions. The year ahead will be a pivotal one for technology in higher education and it is crucial for institutions to invest in the right solutions to reach the next level.

With institutions ready to take the best path forward, here are five IT trends in higher education to look forward to in 2021.

  1. More demand for Advanced Learning Management Systems: Even before the pandemic, online learning was on the rise, but it was limited to a few institutions. With Covid 19, learning environments were upended and institutions rapidly evolved. Higher education IT played a crucial role in making sure that classes continued virtually, and the staff was able to work remotely.

    Institutions are bringing on sophisticated systems making learning experiences in future virtual semesters more collaborative and interactive. There will be a rise in sophisticated video conferencing platforms, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality. With traditional enrolment decreasing, IT will also support digital marketing, customer relationship management (CRM), and analytics.

  2. More Robust Networks to Come: An increasing number of students will rely on laptops and mobile devices to do their coursework. Hence, it is important for universities and colleges to upgrade network infrastructure to manage the additional traffic. There will be network optimization tools and services employed to ensure broadband equity.Outdoor wi-fi will be a common feature with parking lots and other outdoor locations having wireless access. The aim is for students and faculty to be able to connect to the network from anywhere on the campus and off it too.
  3. New Ways of Remote Assessment: One of the biggest challenges COVID-19 has created is remote assessments. There have been serious privacy concerns raised by online proctoring services and it is crucial to have strategies to prevent dishonesty in remote assessments. However, with online learning here to stay, there will be a rise in alternative ways of appearing for exams. The coming year will present numerous ways of remote assessments, in place of virtual exams, which will be satisfactory to both students and institutions. Instructors will be able to create assessments where students will have to interact more with the material and use resources for further research, to gain deeper learning.
  4. Adoption of IoT: The Internet of Things is set to bring about revolutionary changes to education. With IoT devices getting cost-effective, they will be used widely and effectively in the higher education segment.IoT will help with digital attendance using biometric, tracking student location, or even keeping a tab on the consumption of electricity in the campuses as it can detect the human presence in the class and can switch on or off electricity as required. IoT can track the total time taken by students for completing a particular assignment which can provide useful insights and can be compared with class performance.
  5. Radical business model transformation: With downward pressure on tuitions and rising operating costs, higher education business models are being reconsidered. Institutions are looking at integrated education models that merge undergraduate education with higher-level research. This is meant to benefit the institution financially and boost growth through sponsored research by driving the development and adoption of the new financial and business models. This is also critical to reduce operating costs while increasing efficiencies by focusing on research and academic operations.

Conclusion

Institutions will need to decide on business models that are scalable, cost-effective, and accessible to take care of the needs of this decade and beyond. Higher educational institutions will be seeking innovative solutions to meet the challenges ahead.

Academia, as a leading provider of higher education ERP software, is at the forefront of designing solutions to meet each and every new challenge in the year ahead. For a detailed demo on how you could prepare yourself to move ahead, get in touch at https://www.academiaerp.com/request-demo/

 

Budgeting For A University Management ERP

Posted on by Hemant Mahajan

The successful implementation of any ERP for university management is based on the budgeting for it. It needs proper financial research and feasibility analysis related to it that eventually decides the cost and budgeting. Preparing for an ERP implementation budget for your university is not an easier task, it needs the same mind shuffling as you will need for any other project. You will need to learn several things about ERP budgeting for university management. So let’s discuss the budgeting of ERP in this blog.

It’s often a topic of discussion on what amount should the University invest in acquiring a University Management ERP System. It is usually a herculean task among the finance and IT teams of Universities in planning for a successful ERP implementation. Budget is usually the first parameter that a university’s management ponders upon while deciding to buy an ERP package. Let’s look at some of the important factors to discuss before finalizing the ERP. 

Factors Affecting the Budgeting of ERP for University Management:

  • Deployment model 

Deciding for a budget to opt for ERP you must take into consideration how you want to deploy it in your university like on-premise or Cloud ERP or any other. There are benefits of each deployment model. With all this, you need to check the price of the ERP model for your institute according to the formation model that you have chosen, the maintenance cost for every year is an additional factor. 

  • Licensing process

The licensing process depends on the formation model that you choose, there are two main categories for licensing, subscription or software as a service (SaaS) and on-premise license. Both methods include different patterns of the cost that you must understand after having a free demo with the university management ERP implementation team. You need to understand the hardware, database, and middleware software, etc. before proceeding further. 

  • Numbers of branches of the university 

The size of your institute, the number of branches it has, the functions and responsibilities, and of course structural considerations of your institute play an important role while deciding the budgeting of the ERP for university management. 

Whether you have just one university or several branches for it, you will require some users for a license that can control the ERP at every end, meanwhile, it is up to you to share the access with partners, suppliers, and extended users. 

  • Applications and special modules 

The university management needs to decide about the specific applications or feature sets that you must expect from your ERP, it is one of the most important factors for the evaluation phase of the ERP.

Looking for the functional area, the project team checks the challenges that the university is facing and which modules of ERP are more important for them to improve the overall process that can bring positive change.

So when setting a budget for university management ERP, the chosen applications and modules affect the costing.

  • Development and Customization 

After finalizing the application and modules of the ERP, you need to focus on the development and customization that you think are important for your institute, for example, if you are thinking to have a customized feature in the fees module that can keep the fees of especially disabled students in a different section than the budgeting for the ERP will include extra charges for the same.

  • Training for the ERP System

It is also important to understand completely about the ERP system to implement it in the future, so after deciding all the things the ERP implementation team will provide you a proper training program so that you and other users can understand it properly to get the best returns of the ERP system.

It involves a proper training program of the new or upgraded ERP system for the university, so while setting up the ERP budget, it must consider the pricing of the training courses, educational materials, and other useful things that can develop the training more effectively. 

  • Support and maintenance 

Having an ERP for your university, you will need maintenance of it from the ERP implementation and support team. So while setting up the budget it is necessary to calculate the cost of support and maintenance, in some cases it costs annually and it gets included with the overall pricing of the ERP system. 

  • Scalability of the ERP system 

While thinking about having an ERP system for your university make sure to consider whether it supports the current technological aspects and whether it will support the upcoming new trends in technology providing you continued growth and success. It is also important to check whether the ERP system will help in planning for the future growth of your organization. 

Conclusion 

So with the understanding of the above points, you must have known about the budgeting factors of a university management ERP. Academia ERP system will not only help in simplifying the overall management process systematically but also will open the doors of success and new achievements. Discuss today with us to collaborate as we are happy to join hands with a university that focuses to drive change and bring digital transformation.

 

 

If budgets are tight, Academia ERP offers you allthe bells and whistles when compared to other well-known ERP systems at a fraction of the cost.

Academia ERP: Software as a Service (SaaS) Model

The annual license is also known as the subscription or software as a service (SaaS) fees which are billed annually. Annual per-user-per-year fees are all-inclusive of the yearly license, technical support, software maintenance throughout the year. The subscription fees will decrease with more users, usually on a tiered basis.

The benefit of SaaS licenses are:

  • The license fees are spread evenly over the life of the contract.
  • Low upfront costs – only implementation services and first-year annual license.
  • Annual licenses are purchased out of an Institute’s operational budget which can be easier to access than an
  • Institute’s capital budget.
  • License Model

This is the original enterprise software licensing model. In the perpetual model of licensing, the client makes an upfront, one-time purchase of the Academia, and then the client owns the software.

With a perpetual license, the client usually has to decide on the number of licenses (generally linked to the number of students) the client needs upfront. The cost per license will decrease with more licenses, usually on a tiered basis. The major benefit of perpetual licenses is that client has to pay just once and they are set to use Academia forever. The client then will only have to pay a fixed AMC each year.

Benefits of Analytics and Reports for Educational Institutions

Posted on by Hemant Mahajan

Analytics and reports help in discovering, interpreting, and communicating through patterns in data and using tools that can empower educational institutions. 

Looking into analytics in the context of education can significantly transform the way of working by enabling new ways for prospecting students, increasing student enrollment, improving student retention and completion rates, along boosting faculty productivity and research. Analytics can enhance teachers’ performance and higher management along with giving a deep understanding to students. There are various benefits of using analytics and reporting in day to day operations of any educational institution, let’s discuss some of the benefits of using analytics and reporting for educational institutions.

Benefits of Incorporating the Analytics and Reporting for Educational Institutions:

1. Understanding and recognizing the demographics and behavior: Through advanced analytics, any institution can seek transformation along with understanding and recognizing constant demographic trends and behavior in pursuing administrative services. Let’s take an example of community colleges. These institutions include students who balance work along with their education. So with this type of student, the college authority needs to maintain records more conveniently to understand and recognize the demographics at any time. 

2. Optimizing the use of resources:

By implementing an analytics and reporting engine you can optimize and achieve your desired targets in a better way. Like organizations that opt for a well-designed and systematic analytical system can capture, manage, share, and store their information online easily, and if any problem arises you can de-escalate any of your problems easily.

3. Recruitment of students: Higher education institutions, schools, or even any educational institution often face various complications following traditional recruitment modes. Having proper analytics and reporting, it can become easier to recruit students in a more systematic way.  Let’s say an organization XYZ, is using a predictive model to define which applicants are most likely to be the best fit for the institution if they are admitted. It will help the administration to find the best candidates. There are various other services for students that can be improved using an analytics system.

4. Helping the students to learn things more properly: Institutions having analytics and reporting systems can provide proper and systematic learning to the students, as having the power of modern educational systems enables faculties to get more insights related to the student’s performance – providing abundant opportunities to grab and learn. Students get the chance to learn according to their pace and convenience, courses and facilities remain just one click away from them to help them anytime.

5. Creating data transparency: In institutions, there are various things that you can not access any time with the traditional system, but having a systemic analytical process, you will get the opportunity to access anything at any time creating data transparency for all like faculties, students, and management.Having data transparency through analytics, institutions will be able to take a snapshot of how students are engaged and how well they are performing, the management can also check the efficiency of faculties and how excellent teaching is taking place. Using advanced analytics, institutions can maintain a clear and clarified data transparency that can be accessed anytime by any authoritative person.

6. Demonstrating higher education efficiency: Analytics is one of the most important aspects of higher education, it can be used to maximize strategic outcomes. Institutions can use analytics to provide more efficient and effective interventions that will result in increased success and persistence.Having analytics in your institution is just the beginning, it further helps in managing several tasks and solving tough problems easily. People at higher education institutions just need some energy to work on the insights from the data along with enabling analysis of the data. Implementation of analytics requires several changes in the institutional culture, policy, and processes, but after implementation, it improves overall efficiency along with strengthening the institutional wants along with pushing further to manage all areas of the institution that need improvement.

7. Improving administrative services: Analytics and reporting can help in improving administrative services if you are having a systematic approach and an ERP system you can manage entire campus operations and complete administrative services like student admission, student enrollment, recruitment of faculties, examination management, and many more things in effective and efficient ways. Through advanced analytics, institutions can improve and strengthen their internal administrative capabilities. Analytics and reporting help the institutions to transform operations effectively. 

8. Minimizing the cost of education: There are ways in which analytics can help you save the cost of education institutes opting for a proper education management system have an arrangement of a systematic teaching and learning program for teachers as well as students, which even helps the management in saving cost ultimately affecting the cost of education for students as well. 

How can institutions seek development with a systematic analytics system?

Analytics and reporting engine has been established now in every area and activity, using it in your organization you can manage several tasks simply and efficiently. With systematic analytics, you can provide insights into students’ and faculty’s behavior along with understanding their use of data. Institutions can attempt and improve their overall experience through implementing analytics and reporting engines or in simpler words having an education management system. 

Conclusion 

So, do analytics and report engines sound interesting and useful to you? If yes, then Academia allows educational institutions to focus on their entire administrative tasks and assist in all the internal and external activities through analytics and reporting.

Tips to choose the best Student Management Software

Posted on by Hemant Mahajan

Student Management Software, with its unique characteristics, is hugely popular in the educational sector and has helped innumerable schools and higher educational institutes. From proficiently maintaining and updating student data to analysing and creating reports, the software has helped change the way educational institutes operate. However, it is extremely important to get the right SIS to meet the requirements of an institute.

The end goal of every educational institution is to enhance the performance of the students. This is done using competent analytic tools to analyse the performance of each student. According to the results obtained, effective and corrective measures are taken to help them perform better and reach their potential. 

Student Information System (SIS) helps institutions manage every single detail about students in a holistic, organized, and cost-effective way. It eliminates the need for faculty members or other staff to spend a lot of time compiling student data and allows them to focus on the students and their performance enhancement.

An SIS helps to manage efficiently the huge amount of data an institute generates. It maintains a student’s life cycle and helps teachers to track assignments, tasks, performance, attendance and leaves, academic planning, activities, timetable, and exams. This student database management software enables data to be accessed from anywhere by students, teachers, and other stakeholders and helps them make informed decisions.

In the present dynamic educational scenario, the requirements of education campuses are changing. A proficient and productive student management system software will leverage the best of technology and allow faculties and staff to track all kinds of student-related data.

Let us look at some of the features and capabilities to look out for while choosing the RIGHT Student Management Software:

  1. Maintenance of Student Records

With the right SIS, the huge amount of information generated for every student is efficiently updated on the student data management software, ready to be used as and when required. Updated report cards can be issued effortlessly, student’s transcripts managed, and any kind of information obtained on the go. The ideal SIS should help to effortlessly track a student’s progress with the help of various analytic tools and dashboards, along with various types of filters. 

  1. Cloud-Based ERP

It is crucial to have a cloud-based education ERP that is customisable and flexible that will be suitable for all kinds of institutions with varying requisites. Cloud-based software does not require the institute to appoint any engineering staff to oversee it, making it almost maintenance-free and cost-effective. In a cloud-based ERP, the limited/no hardware required on campus is maintained by the software vendor.

  1. Online Admissions & Registration

An efficient SIS enables students to apply and register online for admissions. The students get timely notifications and emails informing them about admission processes taking place online. The data can be customised by the administration allowing themselves to be transparent in their allotment process while keeping confidential data secure. Students also have the facility to keep track of their applications.

  1. Online Fee Payment

The right SIS provides a secure fee payment platform for educational institutes. An ideal student management system will enable fees to be paid online by parents and students through any mode of payment ensuring hassle-free and error-free fee payment without any of the staff getting burdened. Automated receipt notifications are sent keeping the transaction transparent and secure or reminder SMS alerts are sent for pending payments. 

  1. Seamless Communication

A good SIS makes communication effective, transparent, and quick. It ensures communication between administration, faculty, students, and parents are fast and reliable, allowing any member to reach out to anyone at any time with just a few clicks while keeping the information exchanged private and safe.

  1. Analytics tools and Dashboard

A good set of analytical tools help the management to make decisions quickly. Organized data is an asset when it is required to be processed in different ways according to different requirements. An SIS helps in presenting the data in a simpler, easier, and coherent form and the various filters help to sort further sort the data according to the users’ specific needs.

  1. Mobile App

A well-built SIS enables access through a mobile phone which tremendously helps to take care of all communication needs. With packed schedules, it becomes convenient for teachers, the administration, and students to do away with offline mails and notices and communicate quickly and easily.

  1. Organised with Reduced Paperwork

SIS software is designed exclusively for academic institutions and helps educational campuses to streamline and manage all tasks involved in student administration. It saves time and reduces paperwork considerably by digitising processes.

Academia SIS is trusted by some of the leading educational institutes in India and abroad. Academia solutions have a track record of being reliable and compliant. With decades of experience and expertise in working with various institutes, Academia understands that every institute works differently, and hence the requirements are also different. 

Academia offers customised Student Management Software which is developed to meet the specific needs of an institute keeping in mind the administration, teachers, and students.

Call us for a detailed demo on Academia SIS.

Interdisciplinary Universities: Need of the Hour

Posted on by Hemant Mahajan

As the world evolves, it has become necessary for education to keep pace. Interdisciplinary courses are allowing for more context-specific programmes, and preparing students better for the future. While it has become crucial for universities to become interdisciplinary and universities are moving in that direction, technology is the vital tool that is making it all come together.

 In the new dynamic world of education, the significance of interdisciplinary studies is being recognised by the industry, and universities are switching over and developing their own programmes. Interdisciplinary studies is a complete package that allows multiple disciplines to be combined. It allows students the advantage of learning by making connections between concepts and ideas across different disciplinary boundaries. This makes it possible for students to apply the knowledge gained in one discipline to another discipline and enhance the learning experience. Interdisciplinary studies benefit academics too, as research councils shy away from funding research in a single discipline. They look for broader views and sharper insights that come from the combination of different disciplines defining new territory, for the purpose of allotting research funds. 

The need for interdisciplinary studies

Today, more and more universities are offering interdisciplinary degrees as the challenges the world is facing or will be facing in the future, are inter-related and cannot be solved by single-domain expertise. These problems or challenges need an understanding of the bigger picture and need expertise across domains to be utilized in order to get solved.  

To optimise interdisciplinary teaching and learning, it is important for professionals from different departments to work together towards a common purpose. These interactions allow new knowledge construction and a deeper understanding of ideas.

Benefits of interdisciplinary studies for students

  • Students are greatly motivated as they get a chance to pursue topics that are interesting to them. The content is more often than not rooted in life experiences, which gives students a real purpose to learn and relate to real life.
  • Students explore topics more deeply by comparing and contrasting, which enhances and develops critical thinking skills.
  • Interdisciplinary studies can be great for students with specific interests that cannot be met through a traditional degree.
  • Sometimes, between the traditional disciplines, there could lie some worthwhile topics of research.
  • Interdisciplinary studies can make graduates more sought-after in the workforce. A lot of interdisciplinary studies graduates have a range of skills suited and required for employment in a particular position.
  • Creative thinkers can thrive with interdisciplinary studies as it allows them to explore and make connections between different ideas, methods, and ways of thinking. Instead of being passive recipients of knowledge, students of interdisciplinary studies become active contributors to the learning process.

NEP 2020 calls for interdisciplinary studies

In India, the newly introduced NEP 2020 is set to revolutionise education, while advocating interdisciplinary studies. The primary focus of NEP 2020 in Indian higher education is to transform HEIs into large multidisciplinary universities, colleges, and HEI clusters, with 3,000 or more students each. The policy foresees all existing HEIs to evolve into three categories of multidisciplinary institutions by 2040 –

  1. a)     Research-Intensive Universities (RUs)
  2. b)     Teaching Universities (TUs)
  3. c)     Autonomous Degree-granting Colleges (ACs)

NEP 2020 is designed to generate interest among students in the specialised area of research which will lead to new discoveries. It is meant to develop a versatile learning system, with the freedom for students to learn at their convenience which will create open-minded and well-rounded individuals. With an end to high stake examinations and allowing a student to choose different subjects and move out at any exit point, the system will motivate students to follow their passion in their chosen field.

Conclusion

The shift to interdisciplinary studies, will completely change the business models of universities in the future, along with their curriculum and delivery methods. The changes in the overall ecosystem will bring new challenges for universities. All through, technology is the integral support that will help in this seamless shift. 

With a majority of universities set to offer interdisciplinary studies programmes, it has become even more crucial to have the right ERP from a reliable and experienced company. Academia provides University ERP, which equips universities to transition to an interdisciplinary model. Schedule a demo with us to learn more.

A Guide To Choice Based Credit System

Posted on by Hemant Mahajan

The education ecosystem is changing rapidly, there are various changes and one of them includes a Choice Based Credit System (CBCS). This grading system changes the traditional teaching-learning system in India. 

To maximize skill-based education & enhance student learning outcomes in terms of their grades as well as skills, the National Education Policy has made some crucial changes in the traditional teaching-learning system in India. The right to choose subjects & the multidisciplinary education approach are the best takeaways. 

Do you know what a choice-based credit system is and how it can help higher education institutions? Let’s discuss it in this blog:

What is a Choice-Based Credit System?

The CBCS is a University Grants Commission (UGC) initiative and promotes the liberalization of the current conventional higher education models. With a student-based approach to learning or acquiring higher education, the CNCS allows students or learners the flexibility to choose their course from a list of elective, core, and soft skill courses.

A credit system for higher education measures different parameters like –

  • Student performance
  • Learning outcomes
  • Entrepreneurship skills
  • Contact hours
  • Innovation
  • Creativity & talent

UGC has categorized the groups as

  • Core Course – Core courses are there every semester and students have to compulsorily study the core or the main subject to meet the requirement of the program of that particular discipline.
  • Elective Course – Here, the student can choose any paper
  1.   Discipline-Specific Elective Course
  2. Generic Elective
  3. Project
  4. Ability Enhancement Courses
  5. Skill Enhancement Courses
  • Foundation Course
  1. Compulsory Foundation
  2. Elective Foundation
  3. CBCS moves away from numerical marking to grading semester-wise with two semesters in a year where students’ performances are evaluated and grading is done subject-wise.
  4. The CBCS works in compliance with other grading systems of institutes, all over the world.
  5. Different evaluation methods are followed, based on the suitability of the course approved by various legislative bodies.
  6. UGC recommends Letter Grades and Point Grade Systems to be applied
  7. Letter Grades are based on a student’s marks or percentage from his/her course
  8. Grade Point Systems are where marks are converted into grades based upon a fixed period.

What are the Features of CBCS?

Having multiple features of the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS), let’s discuss a few of them:

  • It is one of the best features as credits can be transferred if the student changes his/her branch of study
  • It has changed numerical marking to grading
  • It positively stigmatized the criteria of failing students
  • It facilitates student mobility
  • It provides potential assess to faculty members for student’s performance
  • It promotes easy course evaluation and is accessed to provide an effective and balanced result.

How Does CBCS Work?

The CBCS in higher education works on the simple principle of the choice being in students’ hands. Higher education institutions provide subject options to students, with a CBCS, students can choose subjects according to their choices and the credits needed for a particular semester. 

The students can attend any of the needed classes obtaining credits to pass any semester. 

A CBCS owns the following elements:

  • Semesters

In any educational institution, assessments are done semester-wise. A student progresses based on the courses taken rather than time like three years for science, arts, commerce, or four years for engineering, etc. The CBCS format provides flexibility in creating the curriculum and assigning credits based on the course section and patterns of learning and teaching. 

  • Credit system

Each course is assigned with a fixed credit. When a student passes a course, he gets the recognition of credit which is based on a course. If a student enrolls in a single course in a semester, he does not have to repeat that course later. 

  • Credit transfer

There are various ways for a student to cope with the study load and with a CBCS pattern he owns the freedom to study fewer courses, earn fewer credits and compensate for the next semester. 

  • Comprehensive continuous assessment

It provides a continuous evaluation of the student to the faculty members and also to the student himself. 

  • Grading

CBCS includes grading in a 10-point grading system. 

It includes

O (Outstanding): 10 

A+ (Excellent):9 

A (Very Good): 8

B+ (Good): 7

B (Above Average): 6

C (Average): 5

P (Pass): 4

F (Fail): 0

Ab (Absent): 0

Core Advantages of CBCS that Academia Modules Includes:

  • The student has a choice of inter/multidisciplinary courses:

With Academia, the students can select their inter/multidisciplinary courses in just a few clicks using the program and courses modules. Academia provides easier access to all stakeholders in the institutions starting from the faculty members, students, and parents for selecting, scheduling and finalizing the courses and subjects likewise. 

  • It promotes group work, research, examination, and assignments 

Using Academia modules like examination, assignments, and others, institutions get the authority to work effectively, research, and manage examination-related tasks and assignments, and more easily and efficiently at all levels like faculty members, students, and parents. 

  • Students progress at their pace

Students are the most important stakeholders of any institution, it is important to provide them with the best and Academia provides them with all the student databases provisioning, storing, and organizing all the student-related data and information. It can easily access, edit, or update data if needed.

Conclusion 

The implementation of the student-centric CBCS system is beneficial for institutes. Academia ERP, which provides the most reliable and trusted solutions to educational institutes, has inbuilt functionality to support the rollout of the CBCS for educational campuses.

Back to top