Dynamics 365 Portal: Top Grade for the Education Industry

The online education industry has seen tremendous growth in the last three years because of the global pandemic. This has gone hand in hand with sophisticated advancements in live streaming, virtual reality, augmented reality, etc. While there is a big difference in the overall approach and mode of delivery, traditional schools can also benefit from integrating technology into their workflow, which goes way beyond classrooms!

One of the best ways to seamlessly integrate and introduce technology to fairly traditional school workflows is by investing in an education portal. While the idea of an education portal is not new or innovative, the new technologies, platforms, and capabilities have made the education portal seem like a novel idea. For instance, Microsoft’s powerful and widely-used platform, Dynamics CRM, can integrate a Dynamics 365 portal for education. It seamlessly helps educators and institutions manage their students, teaching staff, and admin staff and helps them work in cohesion with each other.

If you want to explore the endless possibilities and benefits of integrating an education portal into your current workflow, then you are reading the right article. We are going to be exploring the necessary features of an education portal required by three main user types: Students, Faculties, and Admin. And according to tech and education industry experts, a well-thought and well-designed education portal always has three sides: student, faculty, and admin.

Before we dive deep into the necessary features for all the different user types, let’s do a quick introduction to what is an education portal for new explorers.

What is an Education Portal?

While the term portal is often used to describe a website, here, an education portal refers to a uniquely planned and access-only site that gives different groups of people like a class of students, educators, administration, parents, policymakers, and councils to interact with each other. The interactions include but are not limited to sharing pressing information about the courses & exams, exchanging ideas, accessing different types of resources, scheduling classes, marking attendance, and much more.

In simple words, an education portal can be described as a one-stop platform that helps all the involved parties interact and work with each other in cohesion while ensuring a safe and accessible way of sharing and storing all necessary information.

Apart from being an easier and safer way to share information and collaborate, an education portal, when integrated with the right platform like Dynamics 365, can benefit you and your institution in several ways. Here’s a quick glimpse at the different advantages and benefits of investing in an education portal:

• Personalized Learning

Since faculties and students will be getting personal spaces to manage their schedules and classes, they will be able to interact with each other more personally and efficiently. Faculty will be able to set up tasks and assignments at a class as well as individual student level giving learning a more personalized touch. And students will be able to update their assignments and homework and check their grades from the portal itself, they can easily raise a ticket or quickly contact their teacher with any concerns.

• Promoting Collaboration

An education portal can have a Community page where students and faculty can invite and encourage discussions that are accessible to all parties. These discussions can lead to better educational discourse, both in general as well as in assignments. It can also make collaborating on group assignments easier as students can pass access to each other, and faculty members can see each group member’s contribution and grade them accordingly.

• Staying Connected with the Parents

Traditionally, parents get the information that students choose to share with them. But with the education portal, parents can be easily notified of their ward’s grades, attendance, and any other general update. Field trip acknowledgment and permission slips can also be sent via the portal.

• Secure Access

The Dynamics 365 portal for education is built with security in mind for various purposes and reasons. Faculty members should only be able to access their classes, profiles, and profiles of their students once they are enrolled in their classes. Similarly, students should only be able to access their records with view-only access.

Since we are now well-equipped with the ins and outs of an education portal, let’s see some of the features that all three user types, i.e., students, faculties, and admins, would need:

Education Portal Features for Faculty

With the education portal, faculty members can:

• Maintain their profile
• Add research work
• Configure class rubrics
• Set tests and quizzes
• Mark student attendance
• Put in leave requests, etc.
  

For each semester’s course fair, faculty members can offer their course details as well as class timetables for students to sign up. Once the sign-up period is over, they can lock that module, and the students who picked their class and time will automatically be enrolled for those. Once enrolled in a class, the faculty member gets a class schedule with the attendance module, quiz segments, assignments, and so on. They can easily mark students’ presence, update the assignments they turn in, and grade them from right there.

The Dynamics 365 portal gives faculty members a cohesive view of their profile, classes they have taken, and what they covered in those classes.

Education Portal Features for Faculty

With the education portal, students can: 

• Maintain their profile
• Pay tuition and other fees
• Keep a tab on their attendance
• Request reassessment

Role-based access ensures students get view-only rights to things they should not be able to modify, like attendance, grades, etc. They can temporarily access to configure things like their courses and timetable during the course-selection week, and then it gets locked. Students can use the portal to keep an eye on their attendance, submit assignments, ask for rechecking of tests if they feel their grade is not suitable, as well as submit medical certificates if required.

Dynamics 365 portal features for education for admin staff 

With the education portal, admin staff can: 

• Perform logistical tasks
• Plan events
• Onboard students and faculty
• Keep tabs on fees and salaries
• Monitor performance

Admin staff can oversee the entire school’s functions with the portal. They can easily perform logistical tasks like classroom assignments, plan events like field trips, games, education fairs, etc., as well as onboard students and faculty.

Onboarding students and faculty is seamless, with a 360° view including their contact information, classes, leave application, counter, and fee/salary breakdown.

Admin can keep an eye on student and faculty attendance as well as performance so they can better monitor the institute’s performance. They can also keep parents updated on their ward’s activities as well as the school’s activities.

With the education portal, admin staff can also block course and examination rubrics easily once passed by the faculty.

If you’re in the education industry, you’ve seen the benefits and the operation flow. Integrate a portal from a reputable portal solutions company that also specializes in tailoring their solution to best fit your need and you’ll see smoother operations!

The post Dynamics 365 Portal: Top Grade for the Education Industry appeared first on CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365.