Acquiring SIMS Learning Gateway??

[Kenneth_Ting]

Hi all,

 

We are currently exploring the option of acquiring Learning Gateway. At present, our SIMS users are only able to connect to SIMS within the campus and also as some user uses Mac who has to connect to SIMS through Remote Desktop, which is really the pain! I've learnt Learning Gateway could possibly be the solution. however, there are couple more issues that we are facing hopefully someone could share their experiences of SLG.

 

1. Does SLG allow parent to online contact info? can we customise the contact info form to collect data? does it directly feed into SIMS DB?
   
2. Group email - At present, teacher has to manually compose their distribution list to email his student and parents of his student. Does SLG offer the automation process or teacher can extract the teaching group he wishes to email to?
   
3. Frog is place serving as parent portal. How much features and functions overlapping between the two systems?
   
4. The weaknesses of SLG? there is no perfect fit, I would like to know what are the major downside of SLG. I have arranged demo with capita next week, I am sure they would only show me the good side, but if we decide to acquire this module I would like to know what I am facing and manage the user expectation accordingly.
   

 

Much appreciated any thoughts

 

Ken

Edited January 28, 2015 by Kenneth_Ting

[glen_j]

For the most part, the sims learning gateway is read only. as far as i can see you cannot edit student details etc although you can view info and take registers, reports, marksheets, behaviour and achievements. No facility to group email that i know of. PM me if you want more info we've had it running for a while now.

[CAM]

Parents can contact the admin team to get their details updated on SIMS. It has the ability to edit registers and marksheets as well, but you might want to take a look at the teacher app as well. If you don't want the online reporting side, it could be cheaper.

[tmcd35]

It's based on Microsoft Sharepoint, which like most MS enterprise products is a bit overly complicated and a beast to tame. We had SLG for 2-3 years but never really used it to any level. It looked OK for what it did, which is a basic web based read only front end to SIMS, but I always found Sharepoint got in the way. We moved over to Go4Schools which has had a very successful whole school role out. Web based, integrates with SIMS, easy to use, parent access. Seems to be the best fit for us.

[localzuk]

We used SLG for a number of years, to allow teachers to fill in marksheets at home. However, we found it clunky and just not reliable enough for teachers really - there was a constant stream of complaints about it. So, I introduced a Windows RDS server and published SIMS though it, so staff can use full SIMS at home instead.

 

As far as I know, there's no contact features included in it either - so no parent contacting, and no group emailing.

 

You'll have to give some more details as to what you're currently showing to parents in Frog - every setup is different.

 

SLG isn't particularly pretty or user friendly in my experience. But, it is based on Sharepoint which is massively customisable.

[CalM]

Does SLG allow parent to online contact info? can we customise the contact info form to collect data? does it directly feed into SIMS DB?

You can ask parents to check and update information about their children through SLG. It's only customisable in a very crude "I do want the page asking if their address is the same, I don't want the page asking them about their child's allergies" kind of way. You can't alter the individual questions. If a parent makes changes it doesn't just upload straight to your SIMS database - you have to manually approve them first. SIMS will NOT automatically tell you if anyone has sent changes in, so you just have to get into the habit of checking that page every so often just in case.

Group email - At present, teacher has to manually compose their distribution list to email his student and parents of his student. Does SLG offer the automation process or teacher can extract the teaching group he wishes to email to?

I believe it is available as a bolt-on if you want to pay extra for it. Our school already had ParentMail, so we didn't bite. The welcome page you get after logging in is common to all users, and you can put a general announcements box on there.

The weaknesses of SLG? there is no perfect fit, I would like to know what are the major downside of SLG. I have arranged demo with capita next week, I am sure they would only show me the good side, but if we decide to acquire this module I would like to know what I am facing and manage the user expectation accordingly.

We went with the option for Capita to host it for us. That pretty much locks you down to a number of site themes rather than making the appearance customisable. Most of the available themes are garish and/or have other schools' logos plastered all over them. If you want your own making then you'll have to pay Capita extra (and your theme is not exclusive, so anyone else can use your expensive theme for free). If you go self-hosted this isn't an issue though.

 

SLG displays info through webparts. I find them a nightmare. You pick them from a list, which just gives names with no explanation as to what they do. The documentation goes into great detail as to how you adjust a webpart's title or remove the border line around it...but still doesn't tell you what it does. So you basically have to pick something that sounds likely and add it in. Did you get a blank box? Well, there are two possible reasons. It could be that there isn't data in the right part of SIMS (good luck finding out what/where it is). Or it could be because there are no test accounts or even examples of what output to expect. So unless you (the admin) happen to also be a parent, you will have to find one who will let you log into their account so you can see what on earth you just did. Even after all that, the webpart designs are really clunky and parents don't find them at all intuitive to use, so you'll end up having to write a guide book just to explain to them how to see their child's attendance.

 

All changes are live. So you'd better hope that no parent logs in during their lunch break or something while you are trying to figure out what a webpart does. Also, you'd best remember to remove that "grades" webpart you added, otherwise teachers entering grade card info into SIMS marksheets will find that what they write is being published as they type it in (and then the parent rings up asking why they have some grades but not others and why the accompanying message is full of typos).

 

And finally, the biggie. We decided to release reports through SLG only (save paper etc) and my experience is that everyone hates it. Some of it can be chalked up to technophobia - Capita quite rightly insists on strict password requirements, but that means I pretty much have to right-off the week after reports are released because all I will be doing is answering phone calls and emails asking me to manually reset their passwords. You can set up a "secret question" system that allows them to reset their own password. But you can't force them to use it, so most of them don't. This also applies to students - the initial passwords are auto-generated jumbles of characters and 11 year olds really struggle with them. And no, you can't change passwords en mass.

[zag]

There are far better systems available other than SLG, Task insight. Teacherwebfolders are just a couple.

 

They are also a fraction of the price.

 

Avoid SLG, its horrible due to its reliance on sharepoint.

[eean]

Also, you'd best remember to remove that "grades" webpart you added, otherwise teachers entering grade card info into SIMS marksheets will find that what they write is being published as they type it in

You can select which marksheet templates are published to SLG. We were advised that teachers do not enter data into a live SLG marksheet, but that you use a duplicate sheet containing a relevant subset of data. These can be published when the data is ready.

 

I will be doing is answering phone calls and emails asking me to manually reset their passwords.

 

It's easy to get a list of default passwords from SIMS so we send them a reminder every time they need to login. (We haven't let them change their password). Although the parents still find that difficult.

 

The accounts are just AD accounts, so it would be possible to reset them using a script.

 

Does anyone know of a simple (cheap) tool that would allow self service password reset to email?

[vikpaw]

@eean - We're just looking at ManageEngine - i won't say it's cheap, but it has lots of nice features. There is a free version of the change password tool, but limited to 50 users.

We already use the AD Manager part of it, so looking at adding the change password bolt-on. It also has options for allowing password change from an app, another website, at login screen on a mac - it's pretty cool.

We don't really want the reset password option, which is similar but slightly different.

 

Reset password insists on needing them to login and have created memorable data, whereas for a change they already know the old password, so it's just a way of allowing them to change it themselves. We're looking at using it for staff and students as well for when their passwords expire away from school. There is a way to do this through Outlook Web Access - but the NM hasn't found a way to implement it yet.

 

Sorry to digress slightly on the OP, this is relevant in terms of the issues faced with these sorts of systems.

 

We're not using SLG, but for linking to Frog and our own Portal, we are looking at giving parents an AD account and login via LDAP lookup or single sign on, depending on the system (Engage, Frog, helpdesk..) . We're favouring this over individual setups per system to give it all some consistency.