Moving MIS - Staff Training Days

[ASA-Simon]

I'm currently going through the tender process for moving away from SIMS to a new MIS.

 

One of the questions that has come up is how much CPD time would be needed to train up staff to use the new MIS.

 

I expect certain key staff would have quite a fair bit more training to get through than a teacher.

 

I would be interest to hear from anyone who has gone through the move, for the training that was delivered to all staff, how much time did you need to dedicate to this?

[londonbg]

Which system are you moving to?

 

Have done this a few times now and I think the key thing to remember is that whatever the salesperson for your new MIS system tells you (Big shout out to K***** at Engage) he will almost certainly be lieing to you in order to get the sale!

Edited January 25, 2024 by londonbg

[ASA-Simon]

Not sure yet. It will probably be between Arbor, Bromcom and Compass. Still very early in the process.

[FragglePete]

We completed a migration from SIMS to Arbor over the Christmas break.

 

Their process is a 16 week programme - the first 10 weeks is the pre migration up until your Go Live and then a further 6 weeks post Go Live.

 

They have an online training academy which is either just videos, instructor led webinars or 1 to 1 online consultations which is really reserved for the real 'data movers' within your School. For most staff, mainly teachers, just the basics sessions is enough but then giving them the time to have a play. We run twilight sessions throughout the year, that is, staff stay back until 5pm to the training they would normally on a TD day. These had to be members of Senior Membership Team selling the idea (has to come from the top) to staff, and a chance to get hands on. For teachers we created a sort of 'treasure hunt' where they had to find certain information, create indicidents, etc and report back. Worked well.

 

For your admin staff, a little bit more in depth required but most got the hang pretty quickly as longs as there are given the time.

 

My only other advice, is you really need your data manager, anaylsts, timtabler, whoever to really understand and know how your data works within SIMS and know how that will translate over to Arbor. It's these few users that will really struggle initially as your about to change their job completely. From working in SIMS to 8 hours a day which they will know inside and out, to something completely different. On the flip side, you'll get a lot of users that will be amazed at how much quicker and easier it's made their lives who only really dipped into SIMS now and again.

 

Pete

[Chris_Cook]

Most staff will probably do ok with a session on the basics. Personally I've found the Arbor documentation to be pretty good, and a number of things I understand much better now than I ever did with sims. Things like Census are much more streamlined on arbor, and the guide is much shorter.

 

Where you will need to focus is on Exams, Behaviour, Attendance, Permissions, and parent/student communications, etc.

 

These will require some development and setup to ensure they work the way your school wants them to. This will need to be fed back to staff so they understand how to log incidents etc.

 

Much of this will be on-going over a period of time - Sims will have been tweaked and learned over a number of years so getting staff up to the same speed on the new system probably isn't going to happen overnight. You might also see ways the new system can work better/differently so its worth engaging with one of their experts and having an open mind/taking a list of things you always wished sims could do.