ESO revolutionise their academic timetabling

Founded in 1951, the Maidstone campus accommodates the School’s dedicated teaching clinic where students offer treatment to the public. ESO aims to provide a friendly and supportive atmosphere in which to study.

The ESO uses SEAtS Software to capture and report student attendance, provide early alerts for students with low engagement, and to schedule timetables for lectures and clinic sessions.

The Challenge

The ESO’s motivation to go digital was initially in reaction to UK Student Visa regulations requiring up to date attendance data to show that students were meeting minimum compliance requirements.

The old paper-based system was not fit for purpose due to inconsistent attendance capture, human error, and the time-consuming administration of managing requests from both lecturers and students in relation to their attendance and timetable.

The ESO needed an attendance solution that was able to report on student attendance across both lectures and clinical sessions, remove paper from the process entirely, provide early alerts for students with low engagement, and save time for students, lecturers and faculty. A key requirement was ease of use that would encourage fast adoption.

At the same time, the ESO’s current timetabling solution was becoming more and more time consuming. Each academic year timetable was taking over 4 weeks to create and populate, with each lecturer receiving manually created timetables. Uploading paper schedules often caused inaccuracies in the data.

The Solution

SEAtS Software combines live attendance reporting, hybrid timetabling and targeted student support with automated communications for better outcomes.

• OnCampus attendance – is captured using SEAtS mobile app connected to iBeacon’s located in each class. Students simply click a button on their mobile app and the iBeacon confirms their attendance. Lecturers have the option to manually attend students if necessary, using a Classroom a tablet mounted in each room.
• SEAtS Alert – notifies faculty when student engagement in their studies drop or change suddenly so the student support team can reach out as soon as possible.
• SEAtS Schedule – simplifies the scheduling and distribution of timetables for students and lecturers, and is available on SEAtS mobile app or desktop. Create weekly recurring instances which can be tailored around holidays or reading weeks.

The Impact

The biggest impact for ESO following the implementation of SEAtS has been the time saved for faculty, students and lecturers.

SEAtS Schedule has reduced the time it takes to create and share a timetable for a term from 2 weeks to one day. Lecturers and students no longer need to contact faculty for information about their attendance and timetable as it is now available on their smartphone.

Lecturers no longer need to pass a paper attendance sheet around during class, saving at least 10mins from each class and the added distraction that comes with it.

Student support services no longer need to chase lecturers for updates on specific student engagement. Instead, SEAtS Alert proactively identifies students with low engagement so faculty can quickly reach out and offer support.

Changing a scheduled class in the timetable now takes one click, with mobile notifications automatically sent to students and lecturers to avoid confusion.