Customer Solution Case Study
/ / HarrowSchool Builds upon Teaching Excellence with Innovative Technology Solutions
Overview
Country or Region:United Kingdom
Industry:Education
Customer Profile
HarrowSchool is one of the world’s leading independent schools, which specialises in providing a high-quality boarding school education for boys.
Business Situation
The school wanted to develop its information and communication technology (ICT) solutions that support its dedicated staff, and maintain high standards of teaching and learning.
Solution
Microsoft® SharePoint® Products and Technologies have been used to develop several innovative solutions, supporting teaching, learning, and administration.
Benefits
Best practice adopted across school
Teachers take control of e-learning
Anytime, anywhere access to resources
Less paperwork in administration
More than £20,000 (U.S.$35,565) saved in development costs / “If teachers can give me 20 minutes of their time, I can save them hours, and give them ownership and control of e-learning.”
Gary Cooke, Director of Computer Services, Harrow School
Harrow School is one of the world’s leading independent boarding schools. It is committed to developing information and communication technology (ICT) solutions that support its dedicated staff, and maintaining high standards of internationally-recognised teaching excellence. The school has used Microsoft® SharePoint® Products and Technologies since 2002 and has developed several innovative solutions. A set of course templates have been created that support all curriculum subjects and ensure best practice in e-learning. Students are taught Web site design and actively contribute to school Web sites. Also, many routine administrative tasks are now supported by Microsoft Windows® SharePoint Services. These have reduced administration time and costs, and empowered staff to take ownership of solutions. Network management has also improved through the use of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005.
Situation
As one of the world’s leading independent boarding schools, Harrow School sets high expectations of its pupils, and prides itself on dedicated staff and excellent standards of teaching. To improve learning outcomes, the school is constantly looking for information and communication technology (ICT) solutions that support teachers, students, and administrators.
The school has been using Microsoft® SharePoint® Products and Technologies to support teaching and learning since 2002. It started by establishing a collaborative environment for teachers and pupils to share learning resources, class room skills, and teaching practices. Harrow was keen to build upon this success by using Microsoft Windows® SharePoint Services to support other functions across the school. The overall aim was to develop online teaching and learning resources that could be used easily, by all.
Gary Cooke, Director of Computer Services, Harrow School, says: “It’s important that everyone who contributes to teaching and pupil welfare—staff, parents, and children—can communicate and share information quickly and efficiently.” His aim is to further improve the flow of information between staff and students to create a ‘community of learning’.
Harrow also wanted to use the same approach to enhance traditional teaching methods, by making use of familiar tools. “We were looking for a managed learning environment—something that would help teachers, students, and parents to access and contribute materials to a central repository at any time, without having to learn any new skills,” says Cooke. In addition, the school was keen to extend this policy to provide support for its administrative and IT functions.
Solution
In early 2003, Harrow School attended an information management seminar, run by Microsoft Gold Certified Partner DPR Consulting. Cooke was particularly impressed by Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003, a secure enterprise portal server that provides access to relevant applications from a single Web page. It also includes personal workspaces, targets information to specific audiences, offers a powerful document-searching functionality, and notifies groups of document changes.
Harrow installed SharePoint Portal Server 2003 along with Microsoft Windows® SharePoint® Services, which is used to share information and collaborate with others. Users can create lists and develop additional units of information containing Web-based content, called Web Parts.
Cooke showed SharePoint Portal Server to Harrow’s Head of ICT, Nick Marchant. Cooke says: “It was clear to us that SharePoint Portal Server 2003 would open up new opportunities for our teachers and pupils, but we also wanted to see how much we could achieve with Windows SharePoint Services, which is available for download, free of charge, to schools using Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, part of Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software.” Harrow has built an advanced Microsoft Learning Gateway framework, delivering a range of solutions for teachers, students, and administrators.
Cooke and Marchant developed a set of templates to support teaching across the entire school. The objective was to present a consistent experience for students and teachers, regardless of subject or course level. He began by building a subject site template using Windows SharePoint Services that reflected the structure required. There are sub-sites for the different course levels taught, including the subject syllabus, modules, notes, past examination papers, and model answers.
Heads of subjects gave feedback from the initial stages of development, as Cooke was keen to let them control the content for their subjects. “If teachers can give me 20 minutes of their time, I can save them hours, and give them ownership and control of e-learning,” he says. “I feel such an approach can benefit any school that wants to make the most of ICT.”
Teachers can manage site content and monitor user activity, without needing special technical skills. They ensure that content in public and private directories is kept consistent, by using the document management capabilities of SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Information can be published to specific audiences, based on the properties contained in user profiles or distribution lists. “Instead of putting something up on the site and expecting students to find it, the system targets those who need to be informed,” says Cooke.
Students can access information, news, and announcements for each subject. Teachers add specific content using Web Parts. For example, the economics site includes a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) business news feed from the BBC. Personalised Web pages for every student are being deployed, using the ‘My Site’ capability of SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
Since adopting SharePoint Products and Technologies, several new solutions have been introduced to improve school administration functions. Cooke says: “In the past, administrative procedures across the school were largely paper-based. This meant it was not possible to get a current picture of a situation, which was far from ideal. With Windows SharePoint Services, I can identify and develop a solution in half a day, including ‘thinking time’, and a couple of hours of development work.”
One example of an administration solution is the handling of student absence and sickness records, which are now maintained automatically on a daily basis. Another is the booking procedure for rooms and other resources, which can now be made through the online calendar, with availability, clashes, and cancellations visible in real-time. Student year group study options are made through a survey using SharePoint Portal Server, and the results can be collated and analysed online using familiar tools.
The school has also implemented Microsoft Operations Manager 2005. The IT team can set up one server to monitor the other servers in use across the school. Alerts keep the team informed of the condition of the system by SMS or e-mail messages, and they can manage all their servers from a single point, making the system easier to manage.
Benefits
Improving Teaching Methods and Communication
The solution saves time for teachers and dramatically improves efficiency. “By combining administrative and academic processes in a SharePoint Portal Server environment, communication is enhanced and paperwork is reduced,” says Cooke. “The course templates we’ve developed ensure a consistent online teaching experience across the entire school, building on existing best practices.”
A reduction in paper processes frees up teachers’ time from administration, to concentrate on teaching, assessment, and one-to-one communication with individual students. Teachers can find teaching records and student work quickly and easily. Files are stored in a database, which teachers can search for relevant topics, rather than dig through files, which may be out of date.
Teachers have been delighted with the opportunities that the solution has presented, supporting and enhancing traditional teaching methods. “It makes communication easier between colleagues and with students,” says Cooke. “It gives teachers the opportunity to extend their teaching practices outside the classroom to meet the needs of individuals rather than having to treat the class as a single unit. It also provides a new way for them to gauge student progress and achievements without relying on traditional assessment methods.”
Enhanced Learning Experience for Pupils
Students benefit from viewing personal feedback on work, and answers, in the same environment, from a single point of access. The school has expanded its wireless network capacity, so that students can access information from laptops in their rooms. This improves the provision of learning opportunities available to them. Students can access feedback and learning resources anytime, from any location.
Cooke and Marchant have introduced Web site design into the curriculum, addressing student interest, and providing engaging learning opportunities, supported by competitions. Many students now help teachers maintain Web sites for school clubs and societies. In some cases, students take responsibility for maintaining content. This has resulted in the creation of more than 200 school Web sites, reflecting the high level of student interest and motivation.
Standards of achievement are expected to improve, with better access to resources and information that has been carefully selected by teachers. Students are more likely to find projects and schoolwork more interesting when it is presented in such a dynamic, user-friendly way. “Pupils will no longer be tied to a desktop environment during school hours to do their homework, work on assignments in teams, or gather research and resources,” says Cooke. “They also have a manageable, paper-free way of compiling all their work.”
Most importantly, the technology responds to the fact that students develop and learn at different rates. Users will benefit from more one-to-one communication with teachers and have a chance to identify new strengths and develop the confidence to contribute to work, which can sometimes be difficult in the classroom.
Keeping Parents Informed About Their Child’s Progress
Parents can track their children’s progress online, using the new system. For example, Cooke has automated the administration of school sport from team allocation to fixture lists. Parents can find out online where and when their child is playing a particular sport. They will soon access more school information from home, as more of the intranet becomes available through My Site. These developments mean parents can become more involved in their sons’ schooling, encourage academic progress, and get involved with key activities.
Cooke says: “We have lots of boys whose parents live overseas and miss out on musical concerts, plays, and so on. We have put media clips of those events on the site so that they can experience them too.”
Improving Administration, Enhancing Morale, Reducing Costs
The range of solutions that have been implemented have greatly reduced the time and paperwork required to achieve routine tasks, and enhanced teamwork across the school. The IT team can manage the system flexibly and proactively, and provide more support to the school. These improvements have also helped increase staff morale across the school.
“The support applications we have developed using SharePoint Products and Technologies have each required a couple of hours of development time, compared to around £4,000 (U.S.$7,113) quoted by external companies,” says Cooke. To date, more than £20,000 (U.S.$35,565) has been saved in development costs, with further savings expected as future projects are deployed.
Creating a 21st Century School
Cooke says: “The solution has helped the school to create a solid foundation of technology that it can build upon, in line with academic objectives.”
The ‘building blocks’ approach of Learning Gateway makes it easy to develop a more advanced framework. Students will be given increased learning support tools and resources that use the My Site feature of SharePoint Portal Server 2003, including online digital learning portfolios. Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003 is to be introduced, adding real-time collaboration and presence to familiar desktop applications, helping group activities to take place online more easily.
Crucially for academic institutions, the solution will encourage new, more flexible ways of learning, while keeping costs low and utilising in-house skills and knowledge. This helps to boost attainment levels, and enhances the reputation and value of Harrow as a school of choice. “I believe Learning Gateway can help every school to improve their teaching, learning, and administration processes by using ICT,” says Cooke. “The solutions we have put into place at Harrow can be used anywhere.”
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