How to Build Student Information Systems in Knack

Introduction to Building a Student Information System

Hey there, my name is Dimitri and I’m here to show you how to build a student information system with Knack. Let’s dive right into it.

So unlocking the full potential of primary and secondary education is Knack’s MO. Knack’s no code database offers a transformative toolkit for educational institutions. Empowering staff with a very user-friendly online experience, Knack streamlines workflows without coding, enhancing overall efficiency for faculty, administrators, IT, and leadership.

The platform ensures accuracy in grading, attendance, performance, and reporting. This altogether allows for precise data input without complex coding. Institutions can create a more student-friendly environment, and Knack adapts schedules to evolving needs. Communication can also be simplified with personalized student comments and built-in features like online directories and automated notifications. And with flexible scheduling and course request tools, institutions customize workflows effortlessly.

More efficient course request management can help streamline attendance tracking to save time and enhance overall operational efficiency. I’m just trying to not be inefficient at school. I don’t know. By implementing Knack’s no code database, institutions embark on a sophisticated journey, fostering efficiency, accuracy, and improved communication throughout the K–12 ecosystem.

Benefits of a No-Code Platform for Education

Let’s review some of these benefits in more detail. Choosing the right no-code platform makes it easy to move quickly into the build phase and create an app that meets your specifications. Leveraging predesigned templates and visual drag-and-drop builder tools, you’ll be ready to launch your app in days rather than the weeks or months typically associated with custom software development.

And because you don’t need to rely on IT resources or external software developers, you can continuously improve your app based on user feedback or changes in requirements or priorities. Iterating and refining the functionality, user interface, and workflows will improve app engagements and provide opportunities to dig deeper into analytics and reporting capabilities to generate important insights to guide and optimize your strategies and performance.

How to Build a Student Applicant Tracker

So let’s talk about how to build a student applicant tracker. Knack’s no-code platform offers an innovative and efficient solution for school districts, private schools, and small colleges seeking to improve their applicant tracking systems.

This versatile tool stands out for its ability to create custom enrollment management solutions tailored to meet the unique needs of educational institutions. It streamlines the admissions process, making it easier for staff to manage and engage with applicants effectively. With Knack, schools can offer a seamless application experience, ensuring that every interaction from initial inquiry to enrollment is straightforward and positive.

The platform’s capabilities are particularly beneficial for simplifying the complex admissions landscape. It allows for the creation of mobile-enabled, responsive forms, making it easy for applicants to submit their information from any device. This feature not only enhances the application experience but also fills the admissions pipeline with relevant prospect data. Real-time inquiry alerts enable quick engagement, ensuring that no prospective student slips through the cracks.

Moreover, Knack facilitates comprehensive applicant tracking and reenrollment processes. It offers customizable admissions milestones, allowing applicants to monitor their progress and stay informed about their status.

As you can see here, this is the applications that can be put inside of your Knack experience showcasing all the different ones from the “all” or the “pending,” “under review”—all these different aspects. And you can even add documents to the application to give more context as to the person. It has the attendance report here. You can edit the attendance report here. There’s so many different things that can be done with this application tracker.

Knack just saves time for admissions officers and enhances the overall experience for applicants. You can go to knack.com/school-applicant-tracker to get access to this template.

As you can see, you can monitor all of these different applications, and it also has the capability for customizable fields for applicant details, status updates to track progress through enrollment stages, communication logs for interactions with applicants, and reporting tools for insights into application trends. These templates can also support document management for submissions and integrate with existing educational or administrative systems to streamline workflows and improve efficiency for both administrators and applicants.

It’s just such a simple process here to manage your applications with Knack.

How to Build a Student and Parent Portal

Now let’s talk about how to build a student and parent portal. The student and parent portal template can be accessed by pressing start from a sample app and going to the education section and typing in “student.” Go to the parent and student portal and press Create App.

This app aims to streamline communication and information access, which thereby enriches the educational experiences for all involved. For parents, the portal offers a straightforward and intuitive interface through which they easily keep track of their child’s academic progress, including grades and report cards.

I’m sure many of you have experienced some of these different portals or websites where it’s just like a hodgepodge of information and it doesn’t really look great. But this app is instrumental in creating a supportive atmosphere for students at home, allowing parents to be more involved in their children’s education.

Students stand to benefit significantly from this app as well. It encourages them to take an active role in their academic performance, which fosters a sense of responsibility and motivation towards their studies. This proactive engagement is vital for their overall academic growth and success.

Teachers who are central to the education process find their tasks facilitated by the app’s functionality. It allows them to post course assignments and objectives seamlessly, enhancing the clarity of communication with students. Furthermore, the app simplifies the process of accessing student information and grading assignments, enabling teachers to provide timely and constructive feedback aimed at nurturing students’ academic development.

The app serves as a robust tool for school administrators across various levels, including elementary, middle, and high schools. It equips them with comprehensive oversight capabilities over academic records, ensuring the maintenance of high standards in education administration.

The app’s flexibility allows for the inclusion of additional resources and information such as school policies, enrollment options, emergency contacts, health services, and mental health resources, thereby addressing a really wide range of administrative needs.

As you can see right here, this is just awesome to see all your different assignments, all the different courses that you have. You can go through each student. Obviously, if you’re a teacher as well as the student, there’s multiple different views for you.

And by offering this really enhanced transparency, accessibility, and efficiency, it promises to transform the educational landscape, making it more inclusive and responsive to the needs of all stakeholders involved in the learning process.

Teacher Experience in the Portal

Now let’s check out the view from whether you’re a teacher. If you’re a teacher, it’s gonna be a little bit different. You can see that there is a myriad of different assignments that you’ve essentially assigned to people. You can check out the different student assignments that are within there, and you can also see the grade that you can give to different students and add different student assignments inside of the portal.

Extremely easy, and you can select who specifically you’re giving the assignment to and what grade you’re giving. You can also filter things out right there as well as send notifications to your students for info that you want them to learn.

This just allows teachers to grade student assignments so easily and let them know of different things without much effort. It really does allow admins the ability to quickly report up to the school board, and I like the fact that it implements robust security measures to safeguard sensitive academic information.

Security and Pricing Benefits

For any of you that know how difficult it is to be HIPAA certified, Knack is one of those tools that’s very useful if you’re trying to have a robust system that is HIPAA certified. So trust me, your data is gonna be secure.

Now let’s talk about some of the pricing advantages of using this instead of other portal systems at your university, at your small university or school.

Knack has an unlimited user-based pricing model, which is a much superior return on investment for building student-parent portals and application tracking apps, especially when compared to per-user pricing models—which are ridiculous—for several key reasons:

• Predictable Cost: With unlimited user access, educational institutions can budget more effectively, knowing their costs upfront.
• Streamlined Admin: Managing user licenses in a per-user model is extremely cumbersome. This avoids that entirely.
• Increased Engagement: When access isn’t restricted by cost, you encourage greater use of portals and apps.
• Optimized for Growth: The portal can scale with your institution without any new cost as users grow.

Real-World Example: Project Lifelong

An interesting study is from Project Lifelong. Project Lifelong, co-founded by Michael Sajid and Sean Leter Jarkin, is committed to positively impacting the lives of youth by fostering connections with positive role models, schools, and peers.

However, as Project Lifelong’s programs expanded, challenges emerged with their original member database. Built on Microsoft Access, issues with single-user access, reliance on inefficient paper-based forms, and the absence of role-based access necessitated a search for a more robust and scalable solution capable of streamlining operations and accommodating future growth.

The transition to Knack eliminated inefficiencies such as paper-based processes and manual data entry. Parents gained the ability to seamlessly submit applications, update emergency information, and sign forms online.

Staff and volunteers achieved flexibility and access from any location, overcoming the limitations of that previous system they had. And today, Project Lifelong’s student portal extends beyond a simple school sign-up system. The Knack-powered solution seamlessly integrates a referral intake system, a case management component, and recording for accident or information reports.

The referral intake system serves as a powerful community-level diversion program for parents in crisis and enables input from various stakeholders as well. In partnership with Knack, Project Lifelong has really set up a successful and secure, scalable solution that manages member data, streamlines processes, and improves communication.

Check out how you can do the very same thing for your institution by checking out knack.com today. Thank you so much for watching and we’ll see you in the next one.