MS Office truly revolutionized data management across all industries. Word made word processing a breeze, Excel was used keeping records, creating complex spreadsheets, financial management and much more. Outlook made email management a lot easier. And let’s not forget PowerPoint, which truly changed the face business management across industries, including education. In fact, MS Office is one of the first tools taught to children as part of digital learning in schools even today. However, when it comes to organizational management, especially in the field of education, the time has come to go beyond MS Office for increased efficiency.

Use of MS Office in Education So Far

1. Maintaining records – student and employee records, admissions records, query records, vendor records, and many more, year in and year out were maintained on Excel or Word documents for the longest time

2. Bookkeeping – keeping track of revenue and expenses before handing them over to the inhouse or outsourced accountants

3. Lesson plans and learning management – over the last decade, many teachers and schools went digital and created lesson plans, assessments, and examinations on computers instead of paper, and used MS Office for the purpose.

These are only some of the ways educational institutes have used MS Office to simplify their operations.

Changing Landscape of Education

Education has undergone many changes over the last decade, and more so in the last two years since the advent of the pandemic. A few cases in point –

1. Online or hybrid learning formats – learning is no longer restricted to the conventional brick and mortar format. Several institutes offer only online programs of varying durations, and many more rely on a hybrid format to propagate learning. This also calls for collaborative learning formats being used extensively.

2. The Evolved Parent – in the last two years, parents have been an integral part of the learning journey of their children. They have begun to and want to understand what their child is doing, and are more aspirational in their expectations as well.

3. Multi-centre institutes – while many educational institutes have been running several centres for many years, this has become more of a trend recently and requires data consolidation at several levels – including but not limited to financial data, student, employee and vendor records and knowledge databases.

4. Data at fingertips – The days when data could be stored in MS Office files and left for later are long past. There is certain data which is required to be accessed at frequent intervals, and some data which may be required for an emergency. Case in point – lesson plans to be used by teachers, which they may at times be working on from home, or medical data of students, which may be immediately required during an emergency, like allergies or blood group.

These are some of the key changes that the field of education has witnessed in recent times. Going beyond MS Office, augmenting the use of those products with tech-enabled products designed for educational management has become essential – a hygiene factor if you will.

Solutions for Efficient Education Management

The key factor when it comes to education management today is efficiency – when management is efficient, the focus can shift to the area which is most important, execution of learning. There are several solutions which enable efficient education management and actually enhance the output of the institute.

Eduwonka offers several such solutions including Learning Management System, Financial Management and School Management System to enable and create 21st century educational institutions.

The benefits of augmenting School Management with tech enabled solutions beyond MS Office are several

1. Streamlining educational operations – Just like any other industry, educational institutes need to operate like a well-oiled machinery for optimal delivery of learning. Technological intervention through third party solutions specifically designed for learning institutes enable different aspects of operations to come under a single roof, augmenting focus on learning while improving operational efficiency.

2. Data security – while educational institutes have digitized a huge chunk of their data with the help of MS Office, there is still dependence on hardware. A crash of the hard drive, virus attack, or even a physical calamity could cause serious loss of data. With the help of pay-as-you-go data plans which come with School Management Systems or Learning Management Systems, data remains protected not just in terms of loss, but also in terms of encryption for privacy.

3. Data Analytics – MS Office provides the basis for data analytics, but creating those reports manually requires effort both in terms of time and trained manpower. Good digital solutions for education automates the creation of these reports, thereby directing efforts in the right direction. The best of solutions will also take account of customising solutions as per the institute’s requirement.

4. Professional projection – an educational institute depends as much on the projected image as the achievement of learning outcomes. After all, first impressions matter. By employing solutions beyond MS Office, a school can project a far more professional outlook than otherwise.

In days to come, MS Office is likely to be known as the Parent of the modern educational systems. However, just as parents and schools provide input for the growth of their children, much the same way, new technologies build upon an existing structure but provide solutions more pertinent to education and education management.