Most higher education institutions were unprepared for the challenges thrown at them by the COVID19 pandemic. A combination of disparate, often incompatible technologies was quickly assembled to get things done. However, this meant a lot of additional work for faculty members, high risk of errors in migrating data from one system to the other, and substantially higher costs as multiple licenses needed to be purchased. Social media was swamped with posts from students who were not happy with the experience, with many challenging the effectiveness of such learning environments.
CollPoll®, an end-to-end enterprise platform, has been leading the digital transformation of key academic and administrative processes. It is trusted by top educational institutions such as OP Jindal Global University, Ashoka University, Manipal Dubai & Malaysia, MIT Academy of Engineering and DY Patil International University, among others.
CollPoll® conducted an in-depth study of the key challenges faced by different stakeholders and developed targeted solutions. After eight months of research and development, CollPoll has launched a unified digital education stack to specifically meet the requirements of higher education institutions. The stack includes Meticulous AMS™ (Academic Management System), Classroom LMS (Learning Management System) and Examplary EMS™ (Examinations Management System).
The CollPoll Stack
Unlike ed-tech companies, regulated higher education institutions are required to institute strict and transparent processes for academic administration, comprising
- curriculum definition
- setting up course registration processes
- allocating minimum learning hours
- scheduling the terms and classes, and,
- defining the Outcome-based Education (OBE) framework at each course level
Each is a complex task requiring collaboration among different stakeholders and is evolved over multiple iterations. Traditionally, institutions have employed tools such as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and Emails, and some have built home-grown systems to suit their needs. CollPoll’s Meticulous AMS™ is an academic management system which manages all these processes seamlessly and organises the data in an efficient manner. This data becomes the basis for course management and delivery--which is handled by CollPoll’s Classroom LMS.
Classroom LMS is a learning management system (LMS) available on the web, as well as via Android and iOS apps with a wide range of features to boost collaboration and engagement among students and faculty members. Classroom LMS is connected with the time-table data and OBE framework of Meticulous AMS™ and hence, all the changes are reflected in the real-time. Faculty members have the option to plan classes in three modes – in class (physical classroom), live online (synchronous) or pre-recorded (videos). To facilitate online classes, Classroom LMS is integrated with video conferencing tools such as Zoom, Google Meet, etc. Faculty members can create class-links without stepping out of the LMS and publish them to students instantaneously. Youtube and Vimeo videos can be embedded or proprietary videos can be directly uploaded and streamed within the learning management system. Apart from this, the system offers tools to schedule assignments, conduct quizzes, host discussions and comes loaded with analytics.
With many partner institutions requesting for an online testing solution, CollPoll built an Artificial Intelligence (AI) proctored examination platform which has conducted thousands of tests in the last few months. The system has AI to validate the right candidate and continuously track the students during the course of an examination to check for impersonation, help from another person or absence. The safe browser feature disables the copy paste option and does not allow students to go out of the exam screen.
In an academic institution, there is so much more to examinations over and above conducting tests. There are many complex processes such as creating assessment and grading schemas at each course level, managing the lengthy exam enrollment process, scheduling exams and orchestrating the question paper creation and evaluation responsibilities. Post evaluation, results must be published to students, grade-sheets to be generated, and post result applications for re-evaluation, paper-seeing and re-registrations needs to be handled. Examplary EMS™ is an examination management system which handles all this and more. It is flexible enough to adapt to the varied rules and processes followed by different institutions.
With the launch of this unified digital education stack, CollPoll® will further strengthen its position as preferred enterprise technology partner for higher education institutions. “We have invested substantially in R&D, and hence the product clearly gets differentiated from others. We are aligned with the larger goals of education and will continue working towards helping our partner education institutions achieve higher efficiency and effectiveness.” says Hemant Sahal, Founder & CEO, CollPoll.
