Following the success of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, the school’s leaders established the National Network of Digital Schools (NNDS) to bring the benefits of online education to students and school districts everywhere. To do so required the organization to build a student information system (SIS) and service delivery infrastructure that could scale with the growing school network. NNDS implemented Microsoft Dynamics CRM for managing student accounts, school accounts, and the help desk and integrated it with Microsoft Dynamics GP for financial management. The organization also created its own SIS based on capabilities present in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Development took minimal time and resulted in a powerful SIS that, together with the Microsoft Dynamics solutions, helps NNDS support the rapidly growing number of member organizations committed to excellent online education.
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By moving away from traditional education and other online-education models, we aim to offer more active engagement, more interaction, and more commitment from the students so that they take responsibility for their learning. We implemented technology to that end, and it serves us well. |
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Dr. Nick Trombetta, CEO, Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School |
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Situation
Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School (PA Cyber) is one of the oldest and most innovative online charter schools in the United States. Since its inception in 2000, PA Cyber’s popularity has grown immensely. Originally established to serve 50 students who were left without educational services because of a school district that had closed, the school’s attendance grew to 500 students in PA Cyber’s first year. Since then, attendance has expanded well beyond 9,200 students. Seeing the positive results of PA Cyber, Dr. Nick Trombetta, the school’s CEO, established the National Network of Digital Schools (NNDS) in 2005 to make PA Cyber’s successful model for online education available nationwide. NNDS is a 501(c)3 nonprofit management foundation dedicated to providing the highest-quality K-12 online curriculum and comprehensive management services to traditional charter schools and cyber schools focused on expanding educational opportunities for students. NNDS also serves traditional schools that look to complement their classroom environment with more flexible and well-proven online offerings.
Reflecting on the early years of online education, Dr. Trombetta notes that, “At first, the technology platform for building the first cyber school was very much trial and error.” In its early years, PA Cyber relied on Intuit QuickBooks for financial management and a host of off-the-shelf and open-source systems to help facilitate online education for teachers and students. When NNDS grew out of PA Cyber, this technology soon was challenged to support a U.S.$20-million-a-year organization with growing numbers of schools and students. NNDS management understood that the organization would need more advanced financial-management tools and a more versatile SIS to enable it to deliver educational services of outstanding quality and support students, families, and teachers effectively. Nicole Granito, Academy Leader for PA Cyber, says, “Considering our growth, size, and the extensive educational services we provide, not many schools are comparable to PA Cyber. We had exhausted the capabilities of the software we used at the time. Most applications fell short when it came to compatibility with other applications. Students could track their courses, but they couldn’t see their attendance records or receive their email.”
To better support the growing organization and meet the demand for online education, NNDS management decided to develop a new IT strategy. NNDS looked for a richly featured SIS and a flexible, reliable financial-management solution that could integrate with other systems, make administrators’ and teachers’ lives easier, and align with the goals of supporting the best educational experience possible.
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Backpack Community brings social-networking capabilities to
online education. |
Solution
After reviewing available technologies and vendors, NNDS decided on Microsoft Dynamics GP for financial management. Easing integration, the organization then decided to take advantage of Microsoft Dynamics CRM as the key component to its education enablement technology. NNDS leadership saw that Microsoft Dynamics CRM offered robust out-of-the-box functionality and an extensive set of development tools to support and manage many different types of relationships.
Flexible Platform
Treating Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a platform, NNDS acquired a solution called “Backpack” with all the capabilities NNDS wanted to provide to students, families, and schools. Built on the xRM application development framework of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Backpack offers comprehensive educational management and delivery tools for teachers, administrative staff, students, and families. The solution comprises two components: Backpack Community and Backpack SIS. Backpack SIS is an information management system with a broad set of capabilities to enable educational services. The system helps to facilitate:
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Enrollment, registration, and master scheduling.
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Course and class management.
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Attendance and seating charts.
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Grade book tasks.
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Health records management.
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Discipline and incident reporting.
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Special education.
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Team and club tracking.
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Bus route management.
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School and state reporting.
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Notification and alert subscriptions.
“Online schools need an effective, reliable SIS that can easily be delivered and customized over the web. Microsoft Dynamics CRM provided us with all the tools and resources to develop such an SIS with great efficiency,” says Scott Orr, Chief Architect at NNDS. “Even better, the graphical user interface in Microsoft Dynamics CRM looks like Microsoft Outlook, which accelerates adoption. We can make the best use of our skills as Microsoft .NET developers to extend the solution to the exact needs of online schools.”
The Backpack Community component of Backpack provides a secure, immediate social-networking experience that aligns with educational objectives. By using Backpack Community, students can view their schedules and how they are doing in courses, access course profile pages, create blogs, “friend” each other, join clubs and teams, and more. Backpack Community is also of value to parents because it enables them to review students’ coursework and performance. Although PA Cyber has not yet implemented the Backpack Community functionality, Granito notes, “Parents are going to be thrilled. Because Backpack is based on Microsoft technology, it works with our applications, so we can improve the customer experience by providing them all their information in one place.”
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With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics GP, and Backpack, we deliver a repeatable, dependable solution that can support PA Cyber and all NNDS member schools, current and future, for years to come. |
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Brett Geibel, Executive Consultant, National Network of Digital Schools |
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Brett Geibel, Executive Consultant at NNDS, adds, “The Backpack solution is reinforcing the concept of community that we work hard to establish through our online schools.”
Integrated Financial Management
Through Backpack Community, students can also access an online store to pay fees and make purchases. These activities connect with the inventory management functionality in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which in turn updates the financial-management records in Microsoft Dynamics GP.
In addition, when students register for courses over the web, integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM associates those courses with student accounts and creates a sales order in Microsoft Dynamics GP, which then notifies NNDS warehouse staff which materials to ship to the student.
Reflecting on the solution’s financial-management capabilities, Geibel says, “It was extremely important to us that we could meet the intense auditing requirements of public schools, and we were able to customize Microsoft Dynamics GP to do exactly that. For example, if we need to provide information on what happened with computers and equipment we furnish to the schools, it’s a small task to ascertain where we shipped items, whether any of them were returned to us, and if we shipped them elsewhere.”
Responsive Customer Service
NNDS also uses Microsoft Dynamics CRM at its customer service desk. About 35 support professionals help students, family members, teachers, and administrators from the many NNDS member schools with setting up and operating their computers, working with the Backpack solution, and other concerns. By using Microsoft Dynamics CRM, service team members can immediately access individual and institutional accounts, review their histories and past communications, and render well-informed assistance.
Benefits
For PA Cyber and NNDS, having its SIS based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM has proven to be the right move to help meet the growing demand for excellent online education. Says Geibel, “Because of the flexibility of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we are able to keep up with the evolving needs of the member schools and continue to support the best educational experience possible.”
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We based our development on Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the tools that came with it…. In this way, we were able to shorten the development time by at least three years, but probably more. |
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Scott Orr, Chief Architect, National Network of Digital Schools |
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Enable High-Quality Education for Students Everywhere
With a streamlined infrastructure consisting of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics GP, and Backpack, NNDS delivers excellent educational services, providing students and schools with the best possible results from an enriched educational experience. With the technology first implemented for PA Cyber and successfully brought to NNDS member schools, Dr. Trombetta and his colleagues continue to build on the achievements that outstanding online education is capable of, making PA Cyber’s successful experience available to a worldwide community of students, families, and teachers. Says Dr. Trombetta, “As the number of online schools grows and competition increases, we have to continue to increase our quality to keep NNDS vital. By moving away from traditional education and other online-education models, we aim to offer more active engagement, more interaction, and more commitment from the students so that they take responsibility for their learning. We implemented technology to that end, and it serves us well.”
Accelerate Solution Development
By developing Backpack from within Microsoft Dynamics CRM as opposed to starting from scratch, Orr and his developer team delivered a powerful SIS in minimal time. Says Orr, “To create a solution that would provide us even with the more basic capabilities of Backpack would have been a major effort and taken a very long time. We based our development on Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the tools that came with it and incorporated into our work all of the research and development that Microsoft made available in the product. In this way, we were able to shorten the development time by at least three years, but probably more.”
Scale with Growth
With the growth of PA Cyber and the participation of many more online schools in NNDS, both the integrated solution of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics GP that powers PA Cyber and NNDS operations and the Backpack solution have easily kept up with increasing workloads and a wide variety of usage scenarios. Since its founding in 2005, NNDS has extended to support more than 50,000 students and includes partner schools from 15 states and international locations. PA Cyber expects to grow from today’s 9,200 students to 15,000 over the next five years—growth that Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics GP, and Backpack will be able to support. Says Geibel, “With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics GP, and Backpack, we deliver a repeatable, dependable solution that can support PA Cyber and all NNDS member schools, current and future, for years to come.”
Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office, which means less of a learning curve for your people, so they can get up and running quickly and focus on what’s most important. And because it is from Microsoft, it easily works with the systems that your company already has implemented. By automating and streamlining financial, customer relationship, and supply chain processes, Microsoft Dynamics brings together people, processes, and technologies, increasing the productivity and effectiveness of your business, and helping you drive business success.
For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to:
www.microsoft.com/dynamics
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information PA Cyber products and services, call (888) 722-9237 or visit the website at:
www.pacyber.org
For more information about National Network of Digital Schools products and services, call (866) 990-6637 or visit the website at:
www.nndsonline.org
