The Software Systems Educational Providers Actually Need

Educational providers are the subject to constant pressures to adopt new technology. Software vendors promise that their systems will change their operations and outcomes and address issues that the administrators were previously unaware of. The reality is that training providers need very few operational software systems—the right ones that work and integrate.

The challenge is not identifying software systems. The challenge is discerning which software tools are used for operational realities and which ones complicate the operation without offering a good return on investment.

Student Management Systems

An important operational domain for training providers is student data: enrolments, attendance, progress, completions, certificates, and all the paperwork that has to go with it. Organizations that try to manage this in a combination of spreadsheets and filing cabinets eventually reach a tipping point when volumes become unmanageable and errors inevitable.

A proper student management system is the operational backbone that handles all these processes. It has to accommodate the entire student lifecycle, from inquiry to enrolment, program delivery, assessment, and certification. It has to track who is enrolled in which programs, monitor their progress, and assess them to produce the completion certificates or statements of attainment they need from the organization and authorities.

For registered training organizations in particular, purpose-built platforms that cater to their compliance and reporting needs are much less trouble than trying to make a generic educational management system work. An rto sms designed for Australian training organizations manages AVETMISS reporting, USI integration, and audit reporting in ways that generic educational management systems cannot.

The critical operational feature here is integration. The student management system should integrate with other essential operational systems rather than be a standalone system. If administrators must re-enter data from one system to another, any efficiency gains are lost.

Learning Management Systems

Learning management systems (LMS) manage the delivery of learning and track what students do when engaging with learning materials. For organizations that deliver online or blended programs, an LMS is necessary infrastructure. For organizations that only provide in person programs, an LMS might just be unnecessary added complexity.

The approach that many organizations take to add unnecessary complexity is adopting LMS technology because this is what contemporary educational providers must have rather than because there is a clear sense of why it is needed.

If the only use of the LMS is the creation of an online repository for documents that students never consult, the organization has not gained any value from it.

The adoption of an LMS does make sense if there is an organizational commitment to create a stock of digitized learning content and design online learning experiences. Organizations need to be realistic about whether this commitment exists or whether simpler approaches would produce the desired results.

Communication Tools That Students Use

Training providers need effective systems for communicating with students about upcoming courses and programs, program requirements, deadlines and administrative issues. Email is fine but information soon gets lost in busy inboxes.

A better approach is probably a combination of several tools: email for detailed communications, SMS for important reminders, and possibly a student portal for retrieving important information and documents.

The key here is consistency. If students know they will receive important information through communication channel X and only through channel X, they will pay attention.

Many student management systems come with communication tools built in which means that communications can be integrated with messaging systems. Cohorts can be targeted, messages can be sent at times that make sense, and communication history can be recorded without any hassle.

Assessment and Certification Tools

Organizations need systems for assessing students, recording assessments, and generating certificates. Relatively small organizations or organizations with relatively simple assessment needs might manage this through their student management system. Larger organizations will likely need a proper assessment system.

The key requirement here is compliance. Organizations need to provide a record that auditors can accept. Organizations need to show what was assessed, when it happened, who assessed it, what the results were. If they cannot produce the records, they have serious problems on their hands.

Digital assessment systems offer benefits beyond record keeping—they save time in marking assessments, they ensure assessments are marked consistently, they can manage online assessments, and they provide analytics on assessment results across students.

Payment Processing Systems

Training organizations need to keep track of course fees paid by students, they need to send invoices, they need to refund fees, and they need to generate reports.

Some student management systems build basic payment processing systems; others might require integration with off-the-shelf accounting systems such as Xero or Quickbooks.

The decision point here is complexity. Organizations with simple fee structures may be able to manage everything through their student management system. Organizations with more complicated fee structures, payment plans, scholarships and affiliations with more than one government agency probably need proper accounting systems.

The central requirement here is keeping track of payments being received and linking financial information with enrollment information. If administrative staff can see who has paid the course fees and who still owes them money, it saves them countless hours of searching through spreadsheets or email.

Software Organizations Do Not Need

Educational organizations can be upsold on sophisticated marketing automation platforms even though they do not need them. These platforms make sense for organizations that have complicated marketing processes for enrolling students or clients. They are just a burden to small organizations with simple enrolment processes.

Sophisticated analytics dashboards sound amazing, but if no one has the bandwidth to review them regularly, they will not provide much value.

The ability to reject software systems that do not meet real organizational needs is the discipline that separates organizations that are operationally excellent from those that are buried under software.

All software systems need attention in terms of training staff how to use them; they need to be maintained; and they cost something to subscribe to or purchase. The threshold for acquiring a new system should be high.

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Building A Functional Tech Stack

Operationally effective educational organizations will usually have a small number of integrated systems that form a tech stack that provides the organization with the technology it needs to run efficiently at scale.

Organizations should focus on systems and technology that reduce manual work for staff, avoid errors and enhance compliance with regulatory obligations. It should also help resolve challenges faced by operational staff so that they have time on their hands to deliver good educational experiences, rather than grappling with administrative problems. Anything that does not do this probably should not be on the tech stack.