When I was a student, the only way of requesting information from student families was by using paper notes. In many schools today, that is still the case and the number of forms is ever increasing as the demands on schools to capture information grows.
At Canberra Grammar School, an ongoing project is transforming paper forms into electronic forms, and making quite a difference to the way the school operates. The School uses a proprietary form system called Infiniti from Intelledox, an Australian company based in Canberra, but the benefits could be seen using any forms system, even HTML forms.
The forms system is being used to collect information from families and staff. Coupled with an electronic announcements system, this has changed the way the School requests and collects information.
The Figures
Advantages of an Electronic Forms System
There are a number of advantages to using an electronic forms system.
- Less frequent information requests
Forms feed directly into the Student Information System (SIS), in our case a system called Synergetic, but again that’s not critical. Once stored securely in the SIS, information can be accessed on demand or used to create reports, so information only needs to be provided by families once or when updates are needed. As the forms system knows the user, there is no need to duplicate what they have provided before. When an excursion is undertaken the information is already available, so there are no paper forms to be passed back-and-forth at the bottom of student’s school bags. - Reduced manual handling
Because form data is added directly into the SIS, no paper handling is involved. Time saved receiving and handling forms could be estimated to be equivalent to a full time employee; that time is offset by the time taken to developing the form in the first place. However, time spent filling forms and submitting is greatly reduced for both staff and families. - Reduced printing and postage costs
If time is money, reduced handling and filling times are saving money, but these are hard to convert into objective figures. It is possible to estimate a few more tangible items, such as printing and postage. In the last 12 months, based on forms completed, relative to past printing and postage practices, we can estimate significant cost savings as shown above. - Facilitating processes
It is possible to use electronic forms as part of a process, passing through a number of people before being finalised. This is has proven to be very useful and simplifies process handling, particularly for staff. We are now discovering processes where there was previously no paper form, or a paper form followed by manual processing, and establishing new processes using electronic forms.
Of course, a forms system does not come instantly. We have spent more than two years improving the way we create forms. Several forms have been created over a number of weeks and never used, so there is now an emphasis on involving stakeholders, defining needs and testing. A number of database-integration hurdles have been overcome to get to the point we are now.
Uses for Forms
The forms are used to collect a range of different kinds of information.
- Student data and choices
- Student enrolment
- Absence reporting
- Policy agreement for staff and students
- Staff data
- HR data collection including applications
- Event registration
As well as data collection, the forms system has become another interface to other systems, such as the SIS. Where the SIS has a cumbersome and complicated user interface we can provide an alternative interface that is streamlined for our own context. Coupling this with the ability to drive processes, the forms system is becoming more than just a data collection system. In terms of the SAMR model, we are going beyond substitution (paper for Web) and higher levels of transformation.
In conclusion, the forms system is proving itself to be beneficial for the wider School community and we are discovering new uses for the system over time.
Michael de Raadt 