School Portal Vs School Management Software Infographic

School Portal Vs School Management Software Infographic

Many people (including school owners) often mix up both of them because they may perform similar functions sometimes. But there are some key differences worth noting.

What A School Portal Is And A School Management Software(SMS) Isn’t

1. The Portal’s Function Is Quite Narrow

It primarily serves as an online hub or community for sharing information regarding all school activities including academics, research, seminars, conferences, and other events. This is made accessible to current/prospective students, staff, and alumni, as well as the public.

2. It’s Your Gateway To Learning Management System

A portal provides a web-based environment for delivering online courses and managing virtual learning communities. Moreover, it gives instructors the ability to create and share content to increase engagement, like social course activities (social media, blogs, wikis, forums, chats).

3. Let’s Not Forget The eLibrary Integration

A portal provides remote access to licensed resources often restricted to current faculty, students and staff to cater to their learning needs. Resources include eBooks, eImages, eJJournals and Library Tools. Most eLibraries allow for a search option (or finder) depending on what type of material you are looking for (journal articles or monographs, citations, abstracts, or full-text?) or whether you are looking for a known item (known citation, particular journal title) or you want to search for whatever information might be available.

4. The Word “Management” Part Clearly Stands Out

SMS enables control of all the different facets of the educational establishment including admission, fee management, transport management, inventory, payroll, etc…The list is endless. It functions to increase productivity and performance. A portal is not versatile in that regard (Read point #1).

5. It’s All About The Reports

An efficient SMS is equipped with a reporting module that allows for generating lots of reports to meet the needs of the different users of the system. These reports are very comprehensive and provide analytics that can help administrators to learn more about how the school is performing and help them to create plans for the future. With an increased automation, paperwork is almost eliminated from the day-to-day work process.

6. Detailed Result Analysis

Yes, on a portal, students can log in and access their results. The same results can be viewed by teachers and administrators to assess students’ performance. But that’s where it pretty much stops. What an SMS offers is a comprehensive look at how each student is performing against their peers. Students’ results are computed in real time and include granular information needed for assessment such as the average score in class or the highest score in class from the previous term.(read more)