Campus Management System provides the availability of a common platform for management, faculties, students and staff to communicate, connect and share. This obviously reduces the infrastructure gap in the organisation. Bhawna Satsangi of Elets News Network (ENN) talks to industry experts to know the benefits of CMS
Acollaborative platform of different sub-platforms, comprising of a systematic process of getting things done securely and instantly is what is described as the Campus Management System (CMS) for most of the institutes and colleges across.
A modern educational infrastructure is the need of the hour. The colleges, institutes and students continue to grow in numbers and to fulfill the needs and requirements of the students, colleges and institutes, it is essential to streamline the workflow to get maximum benefit out of the job. It is a tedious job of managing a college and different complications associated with daily management of large students’ data and their daily needs at different levels.
To help easy management of an institution’s function, it is utmost necessary to deploy campus management system either through ERP technology or CRM, which are beneficial for the colleges. Most of the modules help in managing the teaching and non-teaching staff, students but there is more to it. The new age modules also helps in handling the registrations, admissions, cafeteria, library, time table preparation, fee collection, examination schedule, lesson planning, question paper, preparation, payroll, student inquiries, progress report, leaves of staff, holidays and much more.
| In the education sector, ERP has seen some sporadic attempts. The challenges of higher education institutions have changed over the years. Needless to say, as the size of the institution grows, they just need a campus management product as a factor to streamline the workflow |
“Campus Management System (CMS) is beneficial in multiple ways. Hundreds of students take admission each year and it is a tiresome job to gather all the data and use it on daily basis for different transactions and processes. Here comes the CMS for rescue as it provides a common data platform for the automation of administrative and academic tasks. Integration between different departments like account, academics, hotel and mess offer a smooth functioning in the campus,” feels Dr Reema Khurana , Professor-in-Charge, ERP Implementation at IMT, Ghaziabad.
COO,Crack Verbal
“The education sector is witnessing a huge change in the way prospective students are getting to know about them (digital marketing), engaging with them (social media), and converting into paying students (multiple influence points). Many of these students are in their teens or early 20s and hence are some of the earliest adopters of new technology. The dynamic nature of this demographic forces a lot of education companies to rethink how they are reaching out and talking to these students,” says Shreekala Kurup , COO, Crack Verbal.
Students and Faculty Management
Founder and Director, Eptitude.
In the education sector, ERP has seen some sporadic attempts. The challenges of higher education institutions have changed over the years. Needless to say, as the size of the institution grows, they just need a campus management product as a factor to streamline the workflow. “Students, parents and admin staff is equally important for the implementation of CMS fruitfully. I believe that anything which does not have a metric can’t be managed. In our center we do a timely assessment of the student. A proper assessment is done which a student can also review. For e.g. a paper based online test can be reviewed by student. The teacher can access the time student devote to per question. The teacher gets an assessment which helps him in analysing the progress of the student which in turn helps in improving his scores. Different students have different need so CMS helps in evolving the different needs of different students,” shares Abhishek Anand , Founder and Director, Eptitude.
This system is a suite of non-cognitive motivational assessments and predictive modeling that gauges students’ likelihood of persisting. Campuses use these data to identify at-risk students and student receptivity to institutional support. Using the data, their advising programmes, academic support services, mentoring programmes, and career services programmes target students who indicate both a need and a desire for assistance .
This type of technology can also help in assessing the faculty. All the faculty members connect with the students through the Campus Management System facility. So with the use of this technology, faculties can get the clear identification of learning objectives and communicating to the students even before the session star ts. If a foreign faculty is coming for a lecture session, they may plan their schedule and get in touch with the academics in ad vance. Apart from helping in teacher training, the CMS offers systematic and smooth evaluation techniques.
“IMT is rapidly adapting the concept of paperless and digitisation system but it will take time to come to a full-fledged concept. Currently, the sharing of document is being done through intranet facility and almost all of the documentation work is completed in the form of soft copy. The proposed Campus Management System at IMT, Ghaziabad will also be used extensively for sharing of documents. The document management systems help in versioning of documents, ensuring utmost security and centralised repository of documents. At IMT, Ghaziabad we follow a scanning policy for all-important documents of students, promoting long time preservation of data and space,” informs Khurana.
Teacher-parent interaction is also one of the important aspects that CMS caters to. Through the software the parent and teacher can analyze and keep track of the child’s perfor mance even at times when they are away. There are modules in the market with which teachers can directly interact with parents sending them SMS or email notification on their kid’s performance.
Students, parents and admin staff is equally important for the implementation of CMS fruitfully. I believe that anything which does not have a metric can’t be managed. In our center we do a timely assessment of the student. A proper assessment is done which a student can also review.
“A login user name and password will be given to the parents through which they can access the academic process of their wards and can directly interact with the administration and faculty members.IMT ensures regular feedback from parent through active participation on regular intervals,” says Khurana.
Security Utmost Important
Security of students plays a vital role in the infrastructural structure of an institute. Creating a safe and secure environment requires the involvement. Higher education institutions are legally required to mitigate the impact of threats to campus safety and security through effective all hazard emergency preparedness.
Parents should have the knowledge of the security apps that are available. They should review the app which will give a good idea about safety of the app. To have a knowledge of a good secure device is also important. Once the device is secure , it becomes easy to talk to a child about cyber safety. The virtual world is a window outside the world so that kind of education is necessary. Colleges have a secure infrastructure. Colleges need not use public wi-fi, it should be secured Wi-Fi, secure VPN is the best solutions, blockers and jammers have to be placed properly,” says Anindita Mishra, Online Child Safety Evangelist, Cybermum India, Intel Security.
Security is the most important element of Campus Management System, as it is the core of web based cloud systems. The security vulnerability depends on how secure the software is architecture wise. The security challenges in cloud system is high but in private cloud the security issue is relatively low as it is protected by a strong firewall on a private server.
“IMT has its own private cloud server and wider access is given to everyone, which is protected with multilevel password security mechanism. Also, we propose to conduct audit with the support of third party to do security check on regular intervals. Additionally, IMT intends to have a centralised monitoring of servers of all the campuses, based on security policy document,” says Khurana .
“I think campus needs to consider that there are insecurity policies to ensure to provide up-to-date security protection. Security policy should be in place which is very important. There are number of security devices that Intel offers to number of education providers,” informs Melanie Duca, APAC Consumer Marketing Director, Intel Security .
CMS addresses all issues. The ability of an educational institution to implement processes is hindered by the absence of single system. So, there is a need for a solution that is purpose-built to fit the unique requirements of the education industry.
