EDLD 5362 Informational Systems Management Week 3 Assignment

Directions For this week’s assignment, you will evaluate and discuss your local school district’s Student Information System (SIS). Your local school district employs a SIS which handles many of your district’s needs involving the management, sharing, and reporting of student information. For this assignment, you may want to consult with your campus’ SIS manager, district SIS managers, and other teachers who use the SIS. You will want to ensure that the sources you draw from are appropriate and insightful so you will be able to formulate an informed opinion. You may even draw from your personal experience (if relevant) with your district’s SIS. These consultations will aid you in the evaluation of the efficacy of your district’s SIS. Before you begin, here are some factors to consider when evaluating your school district’s Student Information System. The factors below will help guide your thinking:

1. Total cost of software ownership including reoccurring ongoing costs. Many products have various tactics to appear inexpensive, yet have higher reoccurring or start up and configuration costs (i.e. software licenses, training, software maintenance and support). We receive SIS services from our region service center. It hosts the web-based site and is responsible for all updates and data warehousing. The business manager informed me that we pay $7000 quarterly for RSCCC (both the program and support) and $600 quarterly for web-hosting. The total is approximately $30,000 per year

2. Feature set. What are the base features of the software, as well as the secondary features? Most school districts select a SIS with as many functions built into the system as possible. What functions does your school district’s SIS serve? Our student management system (SMS) is much more than just a student data collection tool. It gathers data in the categories of budget, requisitions, asset management, human resources, finances, attendance, discipline, grade reporting, registration, scheduling, special education, student health, and test scores. Secondary features in each of these main student categories, respectively, are tardies, special population reports, master scheduling, instructional settings, shot records, and state assessment data.

3. Texas-specific functionality. Texas is a unique state in that it requires many specific reports and assessments from its school districts. Items such as Texas-specific tests, and attendance reporting require school districts to provide pre-identification files and loading of test scores back into the system. How does your district’s software provide a solution for these requirements by the state of Texas? Evaluate the software’s ability to handle these processes. Every year at the end of September, PEIMS Coordinators throughtout the state submit all the demographic data for every student enrolled in the district. The districts are sent pre-code labels and pre-code answer documents for the year’s testing using this data submission. The SIS also generates reports for TAKS, TELPAS, Fitnessgram, and several other data uploads. When the state declares that data is needed for a specific program, then our SIS programmer creates an upgrade that adds this utility.

4. Ease of use and reporting. With the many data elements your school district is required by the state to track, users need to have an easy and intuitive solution to maximize productivity and use of their time. Staff resources can be overburdened by a product that is cumbersome to use. Is your school district’s software user friendly, offering ease of navigation? Does the software ever require duplication of data entry? Our SIS is very intuitive and user-friendly. It is easy to navigate and is about to go web-based for access from any internet connected computer. It will soon be possible for district personnel to work on data entry from anywhere. I know, first-hand, that this program is not cumbersome or confusing because I used it daily and have never been to any training. The functions I can’t figure out can quickly and easily be answered by one of the office employees who use it more often than I. Also, it does not require duplication of data entry. In fact, it populates many satellite programs with its database of student information.

5. Customer support and experience of the support staff. Customer support and service is as important as the solution itself. During the evaluation of your school district’s software, you will need to assess the types of support available: e-mail, telephone, Web and the vendor’s commitment to quality of support. Does the vendor provide timely support with useful answers? Since our region service center hosts this service for the district, we get unlimited support with the service contract. We receive support by phone, usually, immediately, but always within one day. I recently helped set the district user computers up for the new web-based version of the program using a product called BOMGAR whereby the service center connected with my computer in much the same way VNC used to work. This makes it possible to have support personnel remotely view or control my computer to help with upgrades or with problems.

6. Thorough training in the software system. Are your school district’s users adequately trained in the proper use of the software system? In order to ensure that the use of the SIS is successful, all users need to be properly trained on the product. Are your school district’s users trained through the district, through the vendor, or both? Were you trained in you district’s SIS? If so, was the training adequate, and thorough? Additionally, there should also be a component available for ongoing training. The district users who are responsible for state data and financial submissions are trained frequently. They usually have training once a month or every other month to stay abreast of the new upgrades. Our district users aren’t trained throught the district or the vendor; they’re trained by region service center personnel. I have not had any formal training, but have learned to use the system for my own uses on my own, or as I mentioned earlier, by other district personnel. There is a component of ongoing training. Our personnel attends all trainings offered by the region service center.