Introducing school administration software SchoolTool

A Zambian case study. In early 2010 Mpelembe Secondary School on the Zambian Copperbelt was chosen as one of the schools to receive a grant for custom development of the school administration software, SchoolTool.  In order to ensure that the software would be as useful to Mpelembe as possible, the school could count on support from SchoolTool for the installation and to tailor the software to Mpelembe’s needs. The intention was to use the experience to develop a custom version of SchoolTool with features made specifically to fit the needs of Mpelembe and the Zambian Ministry of Education.
 
SchoolTool is a suite of free administrative software for schools. It can be used with no licensing fees, and can be used by schools for a single purpose, by individual teachers or small teams within schools, or as a whole-school comprehensive student information system, encompassing demographics, grade books, attendance, calendars and reporting[1].
 
MpelembeSecondary Schoolsubmitted their application for the grant with the intent of bringing other Zambian schools on board later. At the moment of the grant application, the other schools did not have the technical infrastructure and support staff in place which is required in order to implement a school administration solution effectively, so Mpelembe set off on the process alone.
 
Getting Started
The first step in the process of integrating the use of school administration software was to present the concept to the school’s Administration. As with many African schools, Mpelembe’s Administration was, for the most part, run with pen, paper, and an elaborate filing system.  When approached with the idea of a computerized system, they were hesitant at first.  In order to gain the support of management, it was explained to them that the system could be phased in, using bits and pieces of it as needed rather than transitioning over all at once. Once this was clarified, the management became very excited and supportive. Most of the administrative staff at Mpelembe including Principal and Vice Principals are computer literate, but were not yet willing to give up on the hard copy calendar, student files, and grade sheets.  In order for them to approve the grant application process and move forward, it was necessary for them to learn about the benefits of SchoolTool and to consider a longer term migration strategy.
 
Jen Overgaag was working as temporary staff with Mpelembe at the time, and was able to support Mpelembe in the crucial steps that had to be taken to make it work. She sat down with Mpelembe’s Administration and IT staff and together figured out what the most time consuming and redundant part of their day or term was. They then tried to find a way to automate or streamline that with administration software.  Some of the requests that came forward from this assessment were out of scope while others were very creative and highly possible.
 
Technical Capacity Aspects: the software and steps taken
The SchoolTool software contains a standard set of features, namely:

• Customizable demographics;
• Student contact management;
• Calendars for the school, groups, and individuals;
• Resource booking;
• Teacher grade books;
• Class attendance;
• Report card generation.

The first and highest priority custom feature requested by Mpelembe Secondary School was the integration of FET data and SchoolTool by importing and organizing the timetable data. It took a few iterations to get this right, but once it worked and populated the calendars, it generated a few problems, such as double period showing up as two classes on the calendar, something which was extremely confusing for teachers. The technical team was able to adjust the software to allow for importing calendar data which includes double periods.
The next feature was creation of a printable Teachers and Subgroup timetables.  These timetables were created and had a PDF export option to make them easy to print.
The final feature was creation of custom student grade sheets.  Sample grade sheet templates were provided to the SchoolTool developers in order to enable the software to work with the grade sheets as used by Mpelembe.
 
In August 2010, a huge effort was made by all to get the software up and functioning.  After preparing the server, the IT staff at the school went through every student record and entered the information into the database, showing the secretarial staff the process along the way.  The staff information as well as group data was entered.  A backup of the database and import spreadsheet were created in case future upgrades or FET imports corrupted the database.
 
Basic requirements for a school to install SchoolTool are a local area network with a server to deploy and use the tool. In the case of Mpelembe, an Ubuntu server was used to install the Zambia build of SchoolTool. The server was upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, and as features were added and refined the packages were installed or upgraded.
 
For more information on the technology requirements for using SchoolTool, see the following link: http://book.schooltool.org/htmlhelp/system-requirements.html
 
 
Human Capacity Aspects:  Enhancing individual and organizational capacity
Several formal training sessions were held to ensure that the staff at Mpelembe could continue the momentum.  The training sessions were designed for three different groups of people: IT staff, secretarial staff, and pilot group of teachers.  
 
The training for the IT staff included Ubuntu Server maintenance, ‘what if’ scenarios on the server including restarting services, and general server maintenance. The training also covered SchoolTool specific items including installing SchoolTool, basic setup using the Graphic User Interface (GUI), importing data using one of the several import spreadsheet templates, detailed explanation of import files, backing up/restoring the database, and daily/weekly/term/yearly tasks. A challenge encountered in enhancing the capacities of IT staff was that different staff members often left town to mark papers or to take leave. This provided a challenge to roll out a coherent training programme and building on knowledge and skills acquired during previous sessions.
 
The secretarial staff were given the big picture overview about what the software could eventually be used for, and how much time it could save them once all of the records were being managed using the software.  This ‘big picture’ was to generate the motivation on their part to spend the time learning the software and to be dedicated to entering student information.  Once convinced of its value, the secretarial staff was taught how to enter data, manage the teachers and students information, manage the groups, search, edit, export data for print, and manage the school-wide calendar.
 
Only about 25% of the teachers at Mpelembe Secondary School were very eager to learn the system, had the required ICT skills, and saw how all the pieces (i.e. calendar, attendance, gradebook, report cards) tie together. These were mostly younger teachers. The IT staff identified five “power users” who would be part of an ‘early adopters pilot group’.  These power users were taught how to view their calendar, take attendance, enter grades, and search through students using the software.  They were amazed at how easy the interface was to learn, and continued to be impressed that their class roster and corresponding gradebooks were available to them at the click of a button.
 
At the time of the grant proposal there were four full-time IT staff, plus an ICT projects coordinator who was key in pushing the process at Mpelembe (Gonzalo Portal). Currently there is only one part-time IT staff plus Gonzalo left.  Over the course of the year the school lost nearly everyone in the IT department, which shows the effort and time invested in acquiring new staff as well as rebuilding critical IT competences which get lost due to staff turn-over.
 
 
Project Challenges

• Loss of key staff throughout the year.
• Limited/spotty Internet connection made downloads and research/ troubleshooting difficult.
• SchoolTool documentation ease of use:  Navigating the SchoolTool online documentation was sometimes challenging.  The required information was all there, but not always easy to find.
• Members of the Mpelembe team were only able to dedicate a fraction of their time to the process. If a temporary staff such as Jennifer would not have been available, as is the case in most schools, such a project would require a dedicated staff to ensure the process moves along and doesn’t lose momentum.

 
What worked well

• Gained enthusiasm and support from Administration, secretarial staff, and key teaching staff early on.
• Painted the big picture of what the software will be able to do down the road, this generated excitement and motivated everyone to put in the work.
• Had a dedicated Linux server (not dedicated to SchoolTool, but not being used by end users).
• Involved each member of the IT staff at each step in the process, allowing more than one person to know how to do each task and be involved in the process from start to finish.
• Created documentation throughout the process.  The same questions would often come up over and over again so it was possible to point them to the document rather than answering the question, thus also making them familiar with the support documentation.
• Convinced Administration and staff that SchoolTool could be rolled out and adopted slowly, piece by piece.  If that was not the case they would have been intimidated and decided to stop the project.  This way, they know that the first step is to import FET data and have the teacher’s calendars available online.  Once that becomes part of the routine, the next step is to keep the student rosters current and up to date, followed by use of the grade book.  This is easier to swallow because these steps can be spread out over the course of several terms if needed.
• Created detailed training material for the three target groups.  This way, if someone does not access SchoolTool for several weeks, they can easily reference their training material which has URLs, login credentials, daily tasks, monthly tasks, how to’s, etc, so there is no excuse not to use the software.

 
What could have been done better

• Stronger direct communication between the Mpelembe team and the SchoolTool team. Having a knowledgeable intermediary (Jen) worked well for efficiency sake, but in retrospect it would have been better for the Mpelembe team to take the lead and to drive the project.
• Repeat the staff training sessions three more times.  Despite the material being repeated in various training sessions, more sessions were (and still are) necessary.  Such new and challenging concepts need to be repeated several times before they become second nature and more likely to become part of one’s routine.
• Have a central place to log tasks and check progress of things like build status and to check whether assigned tasks had been completed, allowing for communication to be more clear and efficient (e.g. use Task Management tools)

 
Overall Lessons Learned

• Small steps are very important.  Take a small step in the process, repeat it once or twice, then take the next step. This will result in a slower, more fluidly moving project with repetition built in, instead of giant lurches forward which are difficult for staff to follow and fully understand.
• At Mpelembe, as with many African schools, staff turnover is a huge problem.  During the time of the grant project, Mpelembe lost 75% of their IT staff and 50% of the ‘power user’ teaching staff.  This puts even more pressure on the remaining staff to understand the software and train the new users.  Looking back, better and more documentation at each step is critical so that someone new to the team can get up to speed on their own, without one-on-one training time from their peers.
• Automate as much as possible.  Mpelembe is very lucky in the fact that they have one of the best computer studies programs in the country, as well as some of the best computer teachers and IT staff.  These teachers have good training, but very narrow.  They have not seen or been trained on many of the concepts being introduced to them through the SchoolTool project, making automation of tasks critical.  For instance, once the server was upgraded to 10.04, there were some services that did not start automatically every time the server was rebooted. Similar such problems have led to the server being considered ‘broken’ and remaining unused for months.
• People are resistant to change, especially when it comes to technology, so taking small steps is essential. The timeline for such projects would be more realistically set at two years rather than eight months as was the expectation in this case.
• Creating the product (software in this case) is the easy part of enhancing the education system by using ICT.  Actually getting the solution to the organizations that stand to benefit from it, getting it used, maintained, and sustained is the hard part.

This contribution was developed on the basis of Jen Overgaag's report of the SchoolTool project at Mpelembe. If you would like to know more about Mpelembe’s experience with using SchoolTool, contact Gonzalo Portal
For more information about SchoolTool, see http://www.schooltool.org/
  

[1]This text was copied from the School Tool website, http://www.schooltool.org/