If you’re a teacher or school administrator, you’re probably part of the report card generation process. And chances are, you’ll agree with me that in most cases, it’s tedious. First of all, every report card must be passed to every subject teacher. Some teachers take a little bit longer to enter their grades. Some may even be on sick leave, leaving documents stranded half-way through. Whether or not this takes place manually using pieces of paper, or electronically using a shared location, it can be frustrating.

Then after all the grades and comments are keyed in, the report cards are usually passed on to a homeroom teacher for their overall assessment.

At some schools, it’s then passed on to the principal for comments and for a final-look over. Finally, it can be bound together (if it’s paper), or printed (if it’s electronic), and then mailed or passed to the student.

If you’re talking about a school with 500 students, the above process has to be done 500 times, and 2-4 times a year.

How can it not be tedious!

Which is why I get so much joy whenever we implement QuickSchools.com at a new school. Invariably, the first feature we roll-out is the grading and report card module. I think it’s a work of art at how our approach makes it so much easier on teachers during the report card generation process. And to see the teachers amazed at the end of a grading session, well, that’s really satisfying.

How do we do it?

Well, first of all, we can’t claim all the credit. We owe our approach to the supply chain software industry. You see, in supply chains, the processes and volume of transaction are magnitudes higher than in the report card generation process. Supply chains also involve many people, with differing levels of computer ability. They’ve been forced to discover and implement innovative approaches to collaborate effectively in the supply chain.

So, we simply borrowed the concepts. (Oh, and it helps that some of the key designers of the QuickSchools.com software came from a supply chain background).

Here are some key ideas behind our report card generation flow:

• The system remembers what you were working on. When you log into the grading module, the system presents you with the students from the class/subject that you were last grading. So you can get right to it.
• The system only shows you what you haven’t worked on yet. If you’ve alredy graded 5 students out of 15, the system remembers this and only shows you the 10 students you haven’t graded yet. So again, you can get right to it. (But don’t worry, you can always see the students you’ve graded a click away).
• The system only shows you what you need to work on. You don’t see the whole report card, you just see the fields that you need to make an assessment, and the fields you should fill in. So the screen is uncluttered and simply.
• The system automatically routes the report card. When you’ve done your part, the system routes the grades to whoever needs to see and act on it next.
• The system allows people to work concurrently. Multiple teachers can enter their section in at the same time. No need to wait for a lock to be cleared, no need to wait for a piece of paper to arrive at your pigeon hole.
• The system allows for reverts. If you notice a mistake, you can revert a section back to the appropriate teacher.
• The system gives full visibility into the status of the report card. See who hasn’t filled in their part yet.
• The system automatically generates the report card based on your template. Once everyone has done their part, you can generate and print the report cards in one click. The report card is completely customizable.

See the following picture which shows an English teacher grading attainment and effort, two sample fields. The system doesn’t burden you with extraneous fields. Just see what you should fill in. It doesn’t get any easier than this.

Check out this video presentation which shows graphically how our grading process helps schools.

When a school decides to roll-out QuickSchools.com (or any other system for that matter), a decision has to be made.

1. Roll-out all features at once?
2. Roll-out the most value-added features first, and phase in additional features over time?

I understand many schools prefer option (1). They just want to do a big-bang, get everything out there, and be done with it. And then they can proudly look back and say they’ve done it.

However, after seeing many roll-outs of school systems and other kinds of systems as well, I’m in favor of option (2). 

The reality is, it’s easy to overwhelm users when you try to do too much, too fast. Users (teachers, administrators, parents etc) have a lot on their plate already. And chances are, if you ask if they’d like to start learning a new system today that can help them do their work, the fear of having to learn a new unknown system (combined with bad experiences in the past) would probably drive them to push back against the introduction of a school management system.

And all that before they’ve even had a chance to look at the system.

Now, let’s say we take the conservative approach and roll-out in phases, focusing on the most value-added features in the first phase. Usually we find introducing the grading and report card generation the most value-added process as this is a very tedious process for most schools.

At the beginning, teachers are fearful. But when they log in, they see a very small number of menu items. It almost looks… bare. Certainly not very frightening.

 

As they start to grade (and really, it’s almost brainlessly easy), their confidence in the system and in their ability to use the system grows. Remember, we were focusing on the most value-added features first.

“Hey, not only is this easy, but this really helps my job!”

Before you know it, they’ll be telling you that they want more!

“Can I get a report that shows the students by district? How about a feature where I can check for the allrergies of my students?”

At that point, it’ll be a cinch to roll-out the rest of the features.

QuickSchools.com has been carefully designed so that you can expose only a subset of the features first so that the user’s screen does not get cluttered with features. Take advantage of this to ensure a smooth, successful roll-out.