7 characteristics that Digital Educational Platforms must have
Today, it’s not a matter of whether technology should be integrated into the school environment, but how it should be integrated. Digital transformation is a crucial step for educational centers to adapt and stay relevant.
Digital educational platforms enhance the efficiency of daily school operations and boost student academic performance.
Today’s school needs new technologies for integral and centralized management of all areas of its daily operations (administrative, academic, didactic, financial), enhancing efficiency and improving its primary responsibility: the education and progress of students. Educational software is crucial in this context, as it integrates all areas of the school center to achieve effective and coordinated management while supporting all members of the educational community (students, teachers, families, etc.).
Equipping the center or network of schools with educational software improves student outcomes, facilitates individualized teaching plans, and provides data for greater visibility of learning processes. But what key features should a digital educational platform have to be truly productive and effective? Here are seven essential characteristics:
- It must allow for integral and unified management.
- It must manage information securely.
- It must be flexible and adapt to the needs of each center.
- It must include Business Intelligence tools.
- It must provide tools for pedagogical innovation.
- It must optimize internal and external communication flows.
- It must have a support and advisory service.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these key features.
1. Comprehensive and Unified Management
A digital educational platform must offer comprehensive management of the center, covering all areas of the school without needing additional management programs.
When data is not integrated, errors often arise due to the need for continuous cross-checking across multiple independent systems. An integrated software solution centralizes all academic, administrative, financial, and communicative information into one system. This centralized approach ensures that information is updated in real time with each operation within the ecosystem, leading to significant time and cost savings.
Centralizing tasks in a unified system represents a substantial reduction in both time and costs.
A comprehensive educational software must address all aspects and parameters involved in managing a school center:
- Billing
- Enrollment management
- Schedule coordination
- Evaluation
- Accounting
- Virtual Learning Environment
- Communication
- Customer service
- And more
The ecosystem should provide specific tools and functions for each of these areas, enhancing the efficiency of all processes from a single platform, without the need for external implementations. Recent studies show that 97% of teachers believe that having all applications unified in one place allows them to spend less time on routine administrative tasks and focus more on what truly matters: the education and progress of their students.
2. Cybersecurity
The security of data is indispensable in any educational software, which must have top-level infrastructure. The platform must effectively safeguard the school’s data and control all access points to prevent information leaks that could compromise integrity and privacy.
To ensure security, the system must be comprehensive, offering solutions for each department’s specific protection needs through various modules. Centralizing all information in a single system is also crucial, as data migrations between systems can lead to losses and issues due to an unreliable database.
Security certificates are essential, as is a robust cloud service that ensures data protection. Prevention programs are particularly important, as a lack of security culture and awareness about proper data use among the educational community can increase vulnerabilities.
3. Flexibility
An educational software must be easy to implement, understand, and manage by any user within the educational community, making user experience extremely important. Additionally, it must be flexible enough to adapt to and improve the organization and operation of processes specific to each school.
This is crucial because digital educational platforms can vary greatly in scope. For example, a software might manage grades effectively but not align with the specific grading parameters of a particular school.
The ability to adapt to the unique needs of each institution is a key requirement for any digital educational ecosystem.
4. Business Intelligence
Academic management presents complexities that require proper information handling. In this sense, it is essential that the software integrates Business Intelligence functions due to the significant benefits it provides.
The fundamental objective of BI is to analyze the data provided by the center to transform it into relevant information for decision-making, whether in the academic, behavioral, or financial fields. BI provides contextual information, customized graphs, and reports to maintain effective control over two key areas of school management: academic and economic-administrative. On one hand, there is a lot of valuable information for monitoring students (grades, behaviors), and on the other, for administrative efficiency (billing, collections, inventories).
Data analytics is key to understanding the ‘why’ and making decisions accordingly.
The good thing about the digital world is that everything we do in the ecosystem leaves a trace that can be measured and analyzed. This characteristic has great potential, as, for example, the interactions a student has on the digital educational platform can provide very useful information for the teacher (their progress, the difficulties they face, and the achievements they obtain).
Since analyzing information allows for real-time diagnostics, data analysis in schools is also becoming an important tool for detecting risk cases, such as school dropout, and acting before the problem escalates.
Despite the significant benefits they provide, implementing BI tools remains a challenge for many digital educational platforms. However, the most prestigious educational institutions stand out not only for the quality of their didactic programs but also for the degree of technological innovation they implement in their management systems, including Business Intelligence tools.
5. Pedagogical Innovation
Educational software must also be a gateway to pedagogical innovation. Quality teaching is enhanced by a virtual learning environment that supports personalized teaching and learning processes. Each student has unique needs, and the ecosystem must address these individually.
Learning Management Systems (LMS), such as Moodle, are essential components for developing new learning methods. These systems facilitate the administration, documentation, automation, and creation of training programs, among other functionalities.
Virtual learning environments should provide individualized teaching and learning processes.
Virtual learning environments should support:
- Personalization of content
- Didactic programs for various disciplines and levels
- Tutorial programs to guide students
- Simulators in dynamic environments
- Digital tools like word processors, spreadsheets, and graphic editors
- Virtual encyclopedias
- Gamification (educational games) to incentivize learning through rewards
These 'virtual classrooms' improve teaching dynamics by offering interactive and user-friendly spaces. They also streamline class planning and boost student participation, ultimately enhancing academic performance.
6. Communications
Centralized communication is crucial for enhancing academic management through technology. The digital educational platform should serve more than just didactic or pedagogical purposes.
It must be an integrated solution that facilitates communication among all members of the educational community—students, families, teachers, principals, and staff.
Communication should flow through various channels such as email, web portals, and mobile applications. This setup allows for effective dissemination of mass or individual messages, announcements, circulars, calls, and tutorials, addressing both institutional matters and individual student situations.
7. Support and Advisory
Finally, a digital educational platform must include a support and advisory center available during school hours to provide ongoing assistance. This ensures that any questions are promptly answered and that users can fully utilize the platform’s features and tools.
Implementing educational software is a step-by-step process that becomes straightforward with proper guidance from consultants and specialists who can tailor solutions to the specific needs of the educational center.
SM Educamos
Are you ready to take the leap and implement an educational management platform with all the essential features?
SM Educamos offers a comprehensive digital ecosystem that connects people, learning solutions, data, and effective tools for the complete management of your educational center. It supports your transformation towards a more innovative, distinctive, and efficient model, engaging all members of the educational community—families, teachers, principals, and students—in the digital world’s vast possibilities.
SM Educamos focuses on four key areas:
- Data Analytics: Leverage Business Intelligence tools to exploit relevant information for informed decision-making.
- Center Communication: Utilize agile and intuitive tools to streamline information flow among all members of the educational community.
- Center Management: Achieve centralized management across academic, economic, administrative, and operational areas.
- Pedagogical Innovation: Access a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to integrate both your resources and third-party content for enhanced teaching and learning experiences.
We guide you through the digital transformation of your school, supporting you at every crucial step of the process—diagnosis, planning, implementation, maintenance, and evaluation. Our Global Support Service provides proactive, personalized, and continuous assistance to ensure a smooth transition.
Additionally, our ‘Comunidad Educamos Cerca’, available 24/7, is dedicated to managing queries, incidents, and requests, addressing your educational center's needs swiftly.
Interested in learning more about our product or requesting a demo? Contact us, and an advisor will reach out to you promptly.