Category: Student Information System

Many education institutes have adopted new ways of teaching and learning, powered by modern technology. But what about student record management? Here is how the student information system reduces the management of administrative and academic records and can increase the productivity of staff by 70% (Read CECOS Collge, London Case study). 

What is a student information management system? 

A Student Information Management System or Student Information System (SIS) is a software application used for collecting and managing student data. SIS serves as a centralized data repository to support key academic and administrative processes organization-wide by providing access to real-time information to the departments. 

Continuous improvements in technology and the availability of high-end resources have boosted the functional capabilities of SIS. It is now used to automate a number of daily tasks and increases employee productivity by several folds. Since it is an electronically managed and maintained database, access to information is very fast, and economically viable than traditional sources. 

It can be used for any educational organization, be it a school, college, university, or training institute. Institutes can manage student data throughout the student lifecycle using SIS.  

Important Features and Functionalities in a Student Information System (SIS)

• Automating Admission Process

With the help of this system, the admissions team and admins can automate a variety of operations in the admissions process. Once the data is stored of an applicant in the system, the information can be used for — applicant engagement, tracking the admission process, queries, and communicating messages on a large and individual scale. The system can also be used to send acceptance or rejection letters to the students and communicate any other important information.

• Programs & Courses Management and Assigning Teachers

Easily create classes, assign teachers, manage courses, do lesson planning, etc., digitally. Student information systems are usually packaged within ERP software for education institutes. This means, not only do you get the features to manage student information but the information stored within SIS can be securely shared across various in-built modules and power digital operations using ERP in full capacity. 

The student information system records the course enrollment information and subject choices. Using this admins can digitally manage teachers, timetables, classes, resources, etc. 

You can also use the software to configure optional subject choices, program paths, course paths, fee structure, examination structure, grading method, and other related elements. 

• Managing Daily Student Activities

Education ERP solution maps all sorts of academic, financial, and administrative records to the student ID in the student information system. This means a faculty or the administrator can pull student records for attendance, examination, health, fee, discipline, and more anytime as authorized by the super admin. 

This provides a better opportunity to manage the student lifecycle, and make decisions that are best for the student’s success. The student information system software eliminates the manual work of administrative and academic staff. 

Not only, does the software serve as a tool to manage and record the student data of a variety of things, but it also tracks the communication between staff and students, notices released to the student, actions are taken to discipline the student, and more. 

• Scheduling and managing examination

Examination management and execution becomes very easy. The software provides specific tools and functionalities to manage and execute the examination phase with utmost success. Right from examination notification to form-fills to exam execution and result publication, the software provides all the necessary tools and functionalities to manage the examination phase successfully over a digital platform. 

• Timetable Management and Lesson Planning

The system makes it easy for an administrator to track and check the available teachers on particular data and most importantly, whether the course syllabus for a subject is completed on time or not.

It helps an administrator adjust their human resource for optimal functioning with fewer resources. It also allows it to check the calendar, manage timetables for multiple classes,  manage national holidays, and schedule tests and exams as per the available information. 

• Facilitating Communication between Parents, Teachers, and Students

Student Information Management System can facilitate communication between parents, teachers, and students. Since, the system stores all the contact information of all three stakeholders in an online database, it can be used to share important information, notifications, and news to them regarding ongoing and upcoming school activities. Parents can check the student’s progress and performance in real-time and request to connect with teachers to participate and involve in their ward’s education.

Conclusion

From the above list, you can see that student information system software is highly efficient in pivoting the regular and tedious everyday academic activities and automating these processes end-to-end. It can help you free up your resources and utilize them for more important tasks and operations in the institute. It improves efficiency and transparency in the operations and eliminates the common problems faced by teachers, staff, and students to bring more meaning to the operations.

So, what are you waiting for? Contact our ERP expert today to learn more about Academia SIS (Student Information System) and reap the above-mentioned benefits. 

Teachers and schools have long collected data, that is usually unused. What many institutes fail to understand is — they are sitting on a goldmine. Unlike a few years ago, technology now is more efficient and provides opportunities to use data and analytics for improved teaching. 

Using data, teachers can track student progress in real-time, compare their progress in minutes with historical academic records, provide a personalized learning experience, differentiate between instructions for improved results, and have an insight on students that might just need a little more push. Data-driven decision-making in education can prove transformative for students and teachers both. 

Use data analytics to fight long-standing issues

Globally, education systems are now addressing the inequalities in education. There are significant gaps present between the achievements of students from low-income households to that from high-income households. The increasing wealth disparity is one of the biggest contributors to the increasing number of children that are deprived of equal opportunities in education. 

By analyzing data, educational researchers can understand the role of nutrition, parental involvement, pre-K programs, and other factors to fill these achievement gaps. Data provides granular reports to assess the positive and negative effects of interventions and policies on student outcomes and key learning milestones. 

Use data to improve teaching practices

Data in general can benefit all the departments in an institute, especially the academic staff. Teachers can use the data to reflect on their teaching practices. Traditionally, teachers use only one approach to engage students in learning activities. However, there are researches available that indicate the effect of teaching methodology may vary from person to person. 

Hence, it is imperative for the teacher to provide personalized learning experiences to students for increased student outcomes. Using data, teachers can daily observe, make inferences, and adjust their teaching methodology according to the needs of the students. 

Use data to optimize administration

Administrators can use data to learn more about students’ participation and behavior in the classroom. Processes like these can help catch the students that are likely to fall through the cracks and handhold. Data analytics provide precise insights into the gaps present in the curriculum coverage and help administrators better align of curriculum across departments and grades. 

Understand what data cannot do

Data analytics is an involving field in technology and it has a long way to go. Even though what you are experiencing right now through data is simply a scene out of a sci-fi movie, there are some big limitations to the technology. The key to finding the right answer through data lies within the data set. The more appropriate the data set is the more precise results it drives. 

Keep an eye on the trends

Many factors outside of a teacher’s control come into play that can influence student success. For example, the family life of the student might impact their academic performance in the institute. Hence, a teacher that is well known for these issues can provide better guidance to the student and work out a plan to ensure the growth and success of the student. 

Data can help a teacher analyze a student’s behavior based on their attentiveness in class, attendance in the class, punctuality, assignment submissions, and involvement in extracurricular activities.  Request Demo Now

The education industry is known to run a certain way. But today the entire world has come together to change that. Education policies and paradigms are changing drastically around the world. But are you ready for that? 

At the heart of this discussion lies an impending need for changing the current infrastructure to digital. Over the past few years, colleges, schools and training institutes have gradually paced towards using digital technology for managing their organizations better. It gave them a competitive edge and helped them cope faster with the changing scenario of the education industry. 

Meanwhile, there are remarkable tools and technologies available specific to meet the needs of the education industry, Student Information System is the most discussed and perhaps the most widely-adopted. The reason is the software’s multi-functionality. Most decision-makers believe the Student Information System is a record management tool for education organizations. On the contrary, in this blog, we would be introducing you to this multi-faceted software product and how investing in it benefits your organization. 

What is a Student Information System? 

SIS is one of the most powerful words of the time. The dire need of every industry is to get the right information to the right people so that they make the right decisions. The word means “facts about someone or something”. Powerful, isn’t it? 

For years, like any other industry, education too used papers to manage student information. Everyone was shackled to paperwork. Papers are hard to manage and more prone to destruction, and extracting any information from them was like searching for a needle in the hay. Most of all it was very expensive. 

With digitalization, things shifted to modern and robust digital infrastructure. Things became cheaper and Student Information Systems came to light. As the name suggests, the tool allowed institutes to manage any student-related information in form digital format. It increased accessibility to the data and over years, people started becoming more creative in the use of digital technologies. Today, Student Information Systems are integrated with modern technologies such as AI (Artificial Intelligence), ML (Machine Learning), BI (Business intelligence), and more. 

Education organizations started storing student grades, course history, student records, academic information, non-academic achievements, and so much more. It is a secure, easy-to-manage, cloud-based solution that increased the usability and longevity of the student data. It improved schools’ understanding of their students and how they can improvise to gain a sharper edge in the market. 

More than just a Student Information System

The world of technology is fascinating. It sits at the core of every industry today, but if go back in time we would see how wondrously every industry has evolved over the years as technology grew. 

In terms of the education industry and Student Information Systems too the case is the same. The SIS was introduced in form of a record management system, but technology changed that. Information – as we said earlier it is a very powerful tool. It encourages better decision-making and backs your decisions to derive desired results. 

In today’s scenario, the Student Information System is used collaboratively by various departments to take the right decisions. Right from creating unique student IDs to managing academic records to managing student behavior, everything is done within the Student Information System and the data is used by decision-makers to improvise their academic strategies, marketing strategies, fee policies, and most importantly – encouraging diversity at their institutes to attract better student prospects at their institutes. 

More or less, the digitally-run institutes have a data-backed understanding of the weaknesses and strengths of their education system, and they use this information to broaden their scope for improvement. 

The five best reasons to invest in best Student Information System

To help you understand how a Student Information System software would benefit you, here are six reasons: 

• Boost performance 

An education ERP (Student Information System) allows you to store a vast amount of information in the system. In the backend, it compiles this information and saves it for using the data for various operations. It is a centrally integrated system where the information can be cohesively used by various departments to offer the best services to the biggest stakeholder in the education industry – the students. 

Using the information, various departments can take better decisions and put in place better strategies to improve student outcomes. It helps them boost student performance individually and for the class as a whole. Furthermore, it promotes communication as the teachers/ faculty have information about students and they become more accountable for overall performance improvement and student experience. 

• Fee management 

Online payments have taken over the world. Students and parents prefer to pay for the fees online as it is more convenient and faster. Most institutes currently don’t have the digital infrastructure to receive payments through online channels.

A Student Information System thus allows you to integrate your database to the online payment channels and provides you with real-time updates on the payment received, payment pending, and more. It completely eliminates the paperwork from the fee management process and allows you to digitally store the information in the system. 

Most Student Information System software vendors follow the best practices while building and integrating SIS software into your database. They follow security protocols such as role-based access and PCI compliance. Furthermore, tracking and mapping of the online payments with unique student IDs are done accurately within the system. 

Taking the ease a step ahead, you can add automation to it which would give you and student/ parents an automated reminder for pending fee payments, the payment received, receipts, and more. 

• Security 

Cyber security haunts all industries. Education is no exception. Also, students and parents are very particular nowadays about data security and they do ask institutes a lot of questions relative to it as ed-tech becomes more of a routine thing. 

Investing in a cloud-based education ERP (Student Information System) allows you to get both flexibility and security. It is a powerful system that allows you to keep the database secure. With more and more digitalization; students, faculty, and other staff members are using the web and mobile applications to perform various tasks. Furthermore, these apps collect data at several points which are stored in the database. 

A secure Student Information System thus has to be implemented to ensure the data collected by your institutes is secure. Also, since cloud-based ERP solutions and Student Information Systems follow the security protocols and are not prone to physical threats you can trust an efficient service provider and ensure security at par. 

• Course management 

The beauty of the Student Information System is that it goes beyond just recording and compiling information. The tools are very handy in giving support to teachers and parents to help students in their academic pursuits. The Student Information System gives real-time updates on attendance, activities, classwork, homework, performance, and other relevant information on a student. It promotes transparency and thus, allows teachers and parents to participate in the growth of the students. 

• Resource Management 

Students are primary stakeholders in an education ecosystem, and most decisions are taken around them. Having a vast amount of information about students gives you a scope to improve the resources and facilities in the system and improve the student experience. 

Student Information System: Smart Resource Management for Enhanced Learning

It allows you to administer each department, classroom, hostel, and other resources well. It ensures the facilities are streamlined to the needs of the students and if there are any gaps they are informed to the authorities and faster decisions can be taken for faster implementation. 

Key takeaways

Student Information Systems are very helpful in administrative and management tasks for universities, colleges and schools. They come with various benefits and allow secure and easy management of large sums of student data that can be used collaboratively within various departments for improved student performance and experience.