Saskatoon Public Schools
Saskatchewan School Division Learns the Value of Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003
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Company Overview
Saskatoon Public Schools is one of the largest school divisions in Saskatchewan, operating 44 elementary and eight high schools that serve 22,000 students and employ 2,000 staff. Part of its mission is to foster a community that is focused on learning, and SPS places a priority on involving a wide variety of stakeholders in the education process.
Business Challenge
As part of a larger provincial effort to Web-enable public agencies, and to help SPS realize its learning goals and maximize its information technology investments, the division decided to implement a technology infrastructure that would help teachers carry out administrative tasks, give students a better way to track their assignments, and provide parents with a means to actively monitor their children’s education.
“We looked around at different regions and their ways of approaching education and asked ourselves, ‘what are some of the key pillars, in terms of administration and instruction, that are required to build a learning community, and that also consider everyone who is accountable for a child’s education?’” says Daryl Koroluk, general manager, information systems, Saskatoon Public Schools.
SPS held a forum and invited other school boards to attend. Together they brainstormed on ways to bring education stakeholders closer together, but it wasn’t until SPS officials undertook a fact-finding mission to Australia that they found the solution they decided to emulate – they even adopted the name: Learning Space.
SPS built the first version of Learning Space using Microsoft-based technology, including Microsoft® Class Server 3.0 and SharePoint® Portal Server 2000. Once live, it enabled teachers to access an intranet where they could search for important documents related to curriculum and administrative tasks.
However, teachers were still using standalone applications to manage their email, much of which was related to administration. As well, Learning Space drew on older, legacy applications related to student and library information, which were not able to integrate with the portal. Teachers also wanted to get more involved in making Learning Space an environment for interactive learning. SPS soon realized that an even more interactive and robust version of Learning Space was needed to help foster a true learning community.
“That’s when the concept of a portal started to take shape. We wanted to offer teachers one place where they could not only browse for documents, but have the most important documents pushed to them. The portal would also enable them to search the library system and pull up student information as required, and even give students a place to log on and access education resources and the material that was covered in class – something parents valued as well,” says Koroluk.
SPS set about upgrading Learning Space, and once again enlisted the aid of Microsoft.
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Solution
SPS needed to strengthen the capability of Learning Space and make it a more effective tool for teachers. Enlisting the help of partner, Pangaea Systems Inc. of Calgary, SPS chose to rebuild Learning Space using Class Server 4.0 and Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 2003. To ensure that the new applications were integrated together as tightly as possible, SPS programmers rebuilt the new Learning Space using the Visual Studio® Development System, taking advantage of Microsoft ASP.NET and Visual C#®, as well as the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. The ease of the .NET Framework-based development system helped programmers to meet their deadlines.
“They were very keen to learn how to use the .NET-connected tools, and were happy to get that expertise – it provided them with value that was an improvement over what other partners had provided them in the past,” says Sandy Kohler, vice-president, Marketing, Pangaea.
“We found that the Microsoft developer tools and their common development format helped us better manage our technical skill sets by allowing programmers to be interchangeable on applications. The tools were also very easy to work with, and they enabled our programmers to really hit the ground running,” says Koroluk.
Customized with Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 2003 helped Learning Space centralize document storage and access, and enabled teachers to restrict their view of documents to those most relevant to them, and included some integration with SPS financial and human resource systems stored in Microsoft Active Directory® as well. Class Server 4.0 also featured closer ties to SQL Server™ 2000, enabling SPS to expand the use of the database software. The portal can also integrate with Exchange Server 2003, giving teachers the ability to check for email while they search for job-related information.
As a school board, SPS had come across projects that were based on the Linux platform, but was convinced that only the Microsoft platform could help it realize its vision for Learning Space. “A project of this size requires support and the ability to integrate in near-seamless fashion. If SPS were to download these comparable tools, they would spend much of their time working to make them integrate, rather than making the application work for students,” says Kohler.
Business Benefits
Taking advantage of the latest Microsoft productivity applications, Learning Space is now a unique education tool that is attracting attention from jurisdictions around the world. Nearly 100 teachers in 15 schools are already accessing Learning Space, with plans to expand its use. The solution offers all stakeholders – teachers, administrators, students and parents – a means to become further engaged in the education process, and gives SPS a means to realize its goal of making the education process clearly visible to the community at large.
“Learning Space has enhanced communication and learning in our community. The parents and students have really engaged on that – it’s what they want. By creating Learning Space we’re only doing what’s expected of us as an educational institution,” says Koroluk.
Teachers are more effective
Knowing that their important administrative and curriculum-based documents are stored on the portal and are quickly accessible, teachers have become more organized. Working through Learning Space, teachers can divide classes into virtual groups, targeting learning content more suited to individual students and their unique learning style.
“Instead of writing an essay and handing it in, a teacher may use Learning Space to craft an interactive assignment that sends students off on a Web quest, pulling in information from a wide variety of online resources,” says Koroluk.
By always having Saskatchewan’s curricular objectives close at hand, teachers can not only grade students on individual assignments, but also quickly and easily match those marks to overall provincial objectives – metrics that are instantly viewable by parents – thus bringing more context to individual grades.
Students and parents are more engaged
Learning Space is an effective tool for students as well. Teachers report that children are more attentive to their assignments and responsibilities, which are clearly defined on the portal. Students are able to quickly visit Learning Space and view what has been assigned and when it’s due.
“Not surprisingly, that’s also the same satisfier for parents – the ability to drop into Learning Space and determine what assignments their child has completed, and even view the marked assignment. Parents now know what’s going on,” says Koroluk.
A scalable architecture
Taking advantage of the .NET Framework, and the application programming interfaces included in Class Server 4.0, SPS has acquired Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2004 in a bid to completely integrate its legacy Student Information System package into the Microsoft environment once its licensing arrangement expires next year.
“BizTalk will further enhance our move to integrate applications. It will likely become central to our planning, because it will improve upon our point-to-point integration efforts – it’s part of our five-year roadmap,” said Koroluk.
Enabled SPS to meet its budget
SPS briefly looked at non-Microsoft technology, but soon realized that it was not well-suited to its vision. It was important that the applications be able to quickly and easily integrate, and the solution also had to be affordable, meeting the organization’s tight budgetary requirements.
“Class Server was very affordable, and we found the licensing for all the products to be very reasonable. This meant we could grow the application and push it to more teachers and students,” says Koroluk.
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For more information about Pangaea Systems Inc., call (403) 262-7888 or visit the Web site at: www.pangaeainc.com
For more information about Saskatoon Public Schools, call (306) 683-8200 or visit the Web site at: www.sbe.saskatoon.sk.ca
