Schools Win with Campus Automation

By Faisal Haque
CEO ImperialSoft (PVT), Ltd

Education is a critical function of modern society. Collectively, schools, colleges and universities are institutions that shape society. In Pakistan educational institutions face many challenges – poorly trained teachers, lack of transparency, lack of proper facilities. With a growing population and limited resources, Pakistan’s schools are fighting a difficult battle.

Automation of campus management enables schools to adapt best practices in education and learning, provide transparency to parents and administrators and improve communications.

In addition, automation enables educational institutions to scale the student population without sacrificing the quality of education.

Issues faced by Educational Institutions in Pakistan
Educational institutions in Pakistan face many challenges:

  • Pressure to reduce costs
  • Improve quality of education
  • Grow Revenues

With the fast rising population and limited facilities, schools must shift to online classes. Campus automation is a prerequisite to online learning. Campus automation can complement the teachers with automated tools and allows administrators to monitor and guide teachers quickly and efficiently.

Benefits of Automation
Campus management system enables school management to maintain, manage and update the different aspects of their institution

  • Provide the ability to streamline processes
  • Reduces manual handling and consolidates information into one database
  • Easier to prepare and generate reports from different aspects
  • Improved service to students, Including Admissions, Advising, Receivable Accounting and Registrar’s offices
  • Deliver role-based, 24/7 access to information and services in a secure learning environment

Based on Deployment we have observed the following improvement in availability of information:

ProcessManualAutomated
Admission07 Days
Rs. 15K per semester
30 Minutes
No Cost
Student Registration1 Day10 Minutes
Course Registration2 Hours
Rs. 25K per semester
05 Minutes

No Cost

Display Result3 Days30 Minutes
Transcript7 Days10 Minutes
Fee Record30 Minutes02 Minutes
ReportsManual Calculation05 Minutes
Course Offer03 Days01 Hour

Benefits to Schools
Parents are increasingly looking for technology and tech-savvy schools command higher tuitions

Benefits to Administrators
Campus automation helps school administrative staff by improving communications. It enhances their ability to monitor classrooms and teachers, and provides instant access to all school records. Automation can also help reduce mundane tasks such as schedule creation, substitute management thereby freeing up administrators to focus on higher value tasks.

Benefit to parents
With an automated campus, parents are able to connect to the school and communicate with teachers and administrators much more effectively. They can monitor their student’s performance, and attendance in real time and ensure active participation in school events and programs. In addition, they make payments easily using online payment mechanisms.

Benefits to Teachers
The Campus management system offers several benefits to teachers. It eliminates tedious manual work such as attendance, time tables and schedules. In addition, it provides a much more efficient grading mechanism and computerizes management of grades. These free up more time for teaching and interacting with students. It also increases the teacher’s ability to handle a larger number of students. It upgrades the communications to allow instant exchange of information and reduces the amount of paper used in the class room.

Benefits to Students
Students gain the most from campus automation. Students get a new platform not only to gain but also to express the knowledge inside them. Some key benefits for students are:

1. Enhanced interaction with teachers, parents, and peers
2. Access to attendance, timetable, marks, grades and examination schedule
3. Liberty to publish articles and views, and participate in discussion forums
4. Freedom to browse through library books catalog and identify the book(s) to be issued
5. Prior information about school events and holidays

AdministratorsParentsTeachersStudents
Tech savvy schools get higher feesImproved interaction with teachersAutomated attendance and automation allow better organization and management of classAccess to grades, schedules etc.
Automate class/teacher managementReliable updates on progress, examsComputer management of grades, examsImmediate interaction with teachers
Instant access to all school recordsAccess to school reports, events via portalAccess to school reports, events via portalOnline resources
Effective communication between teachers, parents and studentsAvailability of more time for studentsInstant access to schedules, grades, and events

Conclusion
Pakistan’s schools can benefit from campus automation. It improves quality of education, introduces efficiencies and makes information available much more quickly. It simplifies exchange of information, billing, enrollment and allows the school administrators to maintain quality control

About the Author
Faisal Haque has worked in the Silicon Valley for over 30 years with companies such as Intel, Cisco and Qualcomm. He has chaired IEEE subcommittees, and is the author of two best-selling books on chip design, available at Amazon.com. His current focus is to bring Silicon Valley values to Pakistan, not just sell products but to make a difference. He is currently the CEO of Imperialsoft.