Imagine you come across an antique piece of art and now you have to preserve it. The success of your entire career stands on the success of this project. This can be a truly game-changing event in your life. But, you do not know anything about art – the material, the artist, or the medium. How would you feel about it?
This is how educators – teachers and admin staff – feel when they meet the new batch of students. A student seems new every year (even if they have been studying at your institution for years) without history or past information. So, teachers and admin staff go through a laborious process of knowing the student’s learning and behavioral patterns every year. This affects the students’ progress and overall institutional growth.
This is where interoperability comes in. Interoperability gives you access to student information making a centralized data system where teachers and admins understand how the students performed in the previous grade, their attendance percentage, which subject they excelled in, and which subjects need attention. Tying all your systems; SIS, LMS, and CRM, interoperability not only builds a healthy teacher-student relationship but also connects departments of your institutions.
Admins know what kind of assistance the teachers need and the teachers can directly help sales and marketing with well-performing student data. Thus, your institution receives an overall holistic growth in terms of student performance, graduation rates, and new enrollments.
Educators think interoperability in the education sector is still a far fetched idea. Brett Emerson, a teacher from Shelby County School says, “Teachers are not clear about the concept of interoperability and how it will benefit them. Most of the teachers still believe in traditional practices such as teacher-led instruction, a lecture model of teaching, etc. If that is their firmly-held belief, data interoperability is never going to be important to them.”
So, educators need to know why interoperability in education is a necessity:
Why Do We Need Interoperability in Education?
The major stakeholders in the education industry are admins, teachers, students, parents, and the sales and marketing team. Establishing a new practice is only possible when they decide to move the baggage of the past and move to the future. Therefore, here is a list of benefits these stakeholders will enjoy once they understand the meaning of interoperability:
How Administrators Benefit from Interoperability
Streamlined Operations and Decision-making
- Centralized Data Management: Interoperability allows administrators to access data from multiple systems such as admissions, attendance, and finance through a single platform, simplifying management and reporting.
- Improved Efficiency: A smoother workflow is established by integrating SIS, LMS, and ERP eliminating redundant tasks. For instance, student enrollment data can automatically update fee records and class schedules.
- Compliance and Reporting: Generating reports for regulatory compliance or accreditation becomes faster and error-free with an interoperable system.
- Data-driven Decision-Making: Analysing student data and making decisions out of them is not possible till the departments are interconnected. Nowadays, AI also can help you make data-driven decisions. Classe365 integrates AI’s power to interpret data and automate tedious manual tasks of data analysis. However, interoperability is the basic need for analyzing holistic data from various departments to make informed decisions about resource allocation, student support, and academic policies.
How the Sales Team Benefits from Interoperability
Boosting Engagement and Efficiency
- Unified CRM Integration: Interoperable systems help the sales team manage prospective students or partner organizations effectively. No lead falls through the cracks when CRM systems are integrated with other tools.
- Improved Communication: Automated data sharing between CRM and email marketing tools allows for personalized communication with prospects based on their preferences and history.
- Real-Time Insights: Sales teams can access data about student inquiries, enrollment trends, and feedback, enabling them to optimize their strategies and improve conversions.
- Better Collaboration: Seamless integration between sales, marketing, and admissions systems creates a smoother pipeline for student recruitment.
How Teachers Benefit from Interoperability
Enhancing Instruction and Collaboration
- Personalized Learning Paths: Emerson from Shelby County School has explained interoperability in one word and that is ‘seamless’. He said that a teacher must have access to a student’s history related to the standardized assessment process to know their learning pattern best. Interoperability helps teachers with this seamlessness. An integrated LMS and SIS help teachers with students’ performance, attendance, and behavioral data to tailor lessons accordingly.
- Time-Saving Automation: Grading, attendance tracking, and assignment submissions are streamlined when SIS and LMS are connected. So, the teachers can focus more on instruction and strategizing new student engagement plans. As Emerson has rightly placed, interoperability is equal to seamlessness.
- Real-Time Access to Resources: Integration with content platforms such as digital libraries, multimedia tools, etc enables teachers to create more engaging lessons. The best part is that the teachers do not need to switch between systems.
- Collaboration Across Departments: Teachers can collaborate with colleagues across subjects or grades by accessing shared data and insights, fostering a cohesive learning environment.
How Students Benefit from Interoperability
Creating a Seamless Learning Experience
- Unified Learning Ecosystem: When interoperability is in place, students can access all their necessary information through one unified dashboard. For instance, dashboards allow students to go through their class schedules, assignment grades, extracurricular details, and attendance reports. This system eliminates confusion, improving organization.
- Adaptive Learning Opportunities: Integrated systems enable teachers and admins to view real-time data of a student. Thus, they can help students with personalized feedback and learning recommendations based on performance analytics.
- Enhanced Communication: Interoperability creates an improved system for communication between students and teachers. An LMS engages students in a peer learning environment through discussion and quizzes. Teachers can gauge their progress as well as enhance their communication skills.
- Access to Holistic Support: Apart from academic performances in their institution, students can get holistic guidance in their career and professional life. Hiree365, a career-building platform, integrated with Classe365 helps the institution to place its students in well-recognized organizations. Besides, they get all the interview and placement-related assistance as well. So, interoperability brings a 360-degree holistic development in students’ lives.
- Realtime Feedback and Access to Progress Report: Emerson says that students must know how attending or not attending classes impacts their performance. Suppose a student attended 9 lessons out of 30 in a semester, he/she can immediately find out how their performance was in the previous semester where they attended 25 classes out of 30. When students themselves can see the difference, they will be more focused.
How Parents Benefit from Interoperability
Better Engagement and Oversight
- Transparency: Parents are the biggest stakeholders in their children’s educational journey. They deserve all the information about their children in one place. Interoperable systems give parents better access to their children’s academic progress, behavior, and attendance in real time through parent portals. Student management systems like Classe365 allow access to all information in one unified dashboard. Interestingly, if more than one child is admitted to the institution, even with different grades, parents can access their data altogether at the same place.
- Efficient Communication: Parents should have clear access to the communication tools. So, they can stay connected with teachers and administrators. Interoperability assists in that. Integrated communication tools keep all the stakeholders connected and ease the communication process.
- Ease of Payments: Integration between financial tools and parent portals simplifies fee payments, installment tracking, and reminders. The more payment platforms are added, the easier the fee payment process becomes.
- Personalized Insights: Children spend more time with their parents than in school. So, once parents know their children’s progress status and the reason behind it, they can better guide them at home.
Interoperability lies in the heart of a well-organized institution. All institutions flourishing exponentially in your district have implemented interoperability successfully. So, be a smart doer and tie up your institution in one knot where everyone is connected.