Every educational institute is finding ways to deliver the best and right information to students and their parents. Having a uniform and effective way to communicate is important when the information is coming from the authority.
To have a website is not enough if you wish to share all the personal information of each student, manage teachers’ schedule as well as all the processes done by the admin department.
For that, you need an education portal. A portal will allow you to manage all the activities discussed above in a much more efficient way.
But there are some things to keep in mind before you implement education portal development for your institute. Let’s discuss it in detail.
Have Clear Insights Before Implementation
Before implementing the portal, make sure to collect all the possible information and objectives from all the departments and align it with the project’s objectives. Aligning the objectives and expectations is a strategic process as every stakeholder will have its specific objectives. Let us see how.
1.  Admin
The admin department will have to deal with the teachers, students, and finances.
- They will manage teachers’ schedules, courses, attendance, and leaves.
- They will handle all the financial activities like fees, salary, and other payments. Manage scholarships and financial aids for students.
- They will manage students right from the admission to leaving certificate.
2.  Teachers
Teachers will manage three other things namely course, grading, and timetable.
- They can track courses and the progress of each, and upload assignments and exam papers. They will be able to use the portal for grading, feedback and result declaration.
- Organize tests based on courses. Once the papers are checked, they can share it back on the portal. After the students are shown the papers and there is no change request any further, the grades can be added to report cards.
- Teachers should be able to manage the timetable on the portal. And the portal will ensure that there are no overlaps. If the teacher is absent or going to be on leave then the schedule can be managed accordingly. Thus, this way it will also be easier to manage the working hours for the admin team.
3.  Students
The students get the benefits to view courses, checking their grades, and learning things from the portal.
- Students can select any course from the catalog and receive information about each course. It must have teachers’ information, real-world applications, credits, etc.
- They can easily check their performance based on tests, assignments, attendance, etc. They can also track all the extra credits received from the extracurricular activities.
- The knowledge base repository must be accessible to all the students for them to learn new things. It is like an online library accessible to students 24/7.
Ensure it is User-Friendly
The portal must be designed keeping in mind that its users will be nontechies. It is unfair to consider all the members using the portal are digitally literate. For the admin and teachers, the portal must be easy to update and publish information. Your portal must have the following features.
- Inline Editing: The user must be able to easily create and update in a single click.
- Widgets: Auto creation of widgets showing the latest news, blog, case studies, images, documents, etc.
- Calendar: In-built calendar for teachers to make roasters, conference room bookings, staff availability on particular dates, etc.
- Events: Details regarding any upcoming events must be published in a few clicks.
Before your portal actually goes live, test it with your teachers, admin department, and students of varying digital literacy. This will show how easily they are able to understand the flow and whether it requires any other changes or not.
Centralized Custom Dashboard
The end-user of this portal is students and parents. The portal must be able to access all the relevant information from the system. The portal must be able to form a custom dashboard where the parents can see all the related information about their child. This custom dashboard will fetch all the information from the relevant sources and display it. At the same time, the admin can manage the security permissions in order to control the information flow.
Mobile Responsive Website
Smartphones are excessively used and are a medium to quickly access and get answers. And this applies to students, teachers, and parents. So, the portal you leverage must be mobile responsive. This way the parents will be able to access all the information related to their child, upcoming events in school, forms, contact details, etc. Ensure it has some amazing features on the mobile site like:
- Push Notification: This will ensure parents and students get important information like notices, events, announcements, etc.
- Loading Speed: The portal must quickly load the entire view.
- Mobile apps: A mobile application appears more professional. It will ask to log in for the first time and then remain logged in for future visits by parents.
Integration With Other Systems
- CMS (Content Management System): With a CMS, teachers, students, and the admin department would not have to scroll to find the relevant information. It helps you organize the content and present it in a convenient way. It allows you to easily add, update, and share the data. Thus, portal management will be easier with CMS.
- CRM (Customer Relationship Management): Just like CMS, CRM helps you manage students, teachers, and admin departments. It will manage all the data and thus it will be easier to keep track.
- Single Sign-In: After signing in once, the users can use the portal anytime without logging in. This will save their time and not irritate them by making them log in every time they open it.
Conclusion
Implementing an education portal correctly is vital for the educational institutes because if not done right it can keep students, parents, teachers, and administrators clueless every time they try to find something. So, ensure to keep in mind the above points before implementing the education portal on your official website.
Summary
For educational institutes, websites are not enough these days as almost all the processes and classes have moved online. To incorporate all of it in one place, portals are the best solution.
Author Bio
Mr. Maulik Shah is the founder of CRMJetty, a hub of innovative customer relationship solutions, that provides ready to CMS integrated portal solutions for various CRM, Education portal development. Maulik is a tech enthusiast and writes about the various aspects of e-commerce technology.