Interventions - Demo and Feedback — case study

Project brief

Research question
What are the feature that make/will make our platform's Interventions module stand out over existing modules in other MIS/SIS?

Schools involved in demos

We have received a lot of wonderful and feedback from these demo sessions with Hethersett VC Primary School, Alderwasley Hall School, and The Holy Cross School.

Two of the schools have already been using a different module for their interventions and one school currently do not have any module for interventions.
Two of the schools are new to our platform (have only been using it for one semester).
Two schools were excited to hear that our platform might be adding an interventions module. Cause they might not need to get a different module for this purpose.
We have received some similar feedback from these schools and some varying for each school.
Hethersett and The Holy Cross schools were interested in trying out the interventions module on our platform when it becomes available.

Top features

Comprehensive reports

We have had excitement around reports and some schools were considerings multiple uses for this module as well.

Reports are comprehensive and can be used to record different duties as well. Ex: Lunch duties or support staff who also have to be paid.
Itʼs really helpful that the total costs is broken down by the interventions.
Nice to see the individual student and then the interventions they are in and the individual cost associated with the student.

Customers on proposed outcomes

With our outcomes, we are focused on providing a module, that makes the process creating, maintaining and reporting interventions intuitive and user-friendly.

Seamlessly enrolling students and monitoring their outcomes/performance - The process of enrolling students to interventions and categorising them to groups (Intervention → Student) was a new workflow for schools because they module they were currently using were in (Student → Intervention) format. This was agreeable after explanation on how groups work and inherit the class properties.
Detailed insights on costs and funding sources - Schools have to provide cost analysis at a county level on what funds have been provided and how it has been used. This was an agreeable outcome.
Reports and provision mapping - This was a welcome feature/outcome and schools were also finding other use cases for this tab as well.
Track funding sources - Funding sources received for students need to be monitored. Reports and Administration funding sources were well received.

Student comments

The comments function in the studentʼs tab was loved by all schools.

Time stamping the comments was noted to be a useful feature. This is a nice addition as staff can when and how the student has been performing in the intervention.
Comments not being a long list, rather they are divided and is sorted by time was attractive.
Liked that performance can be easily monitored by the comments.
Itʼs easy to read and set up.
One school mentioned that the comments can also be used to mention what kind of funding is charged for this student.

Class properties in groups

It was well received that the groups in interventions will inherit the properties of a class.

Easier to add students from the class page.
Some interventions might only have 1 or 2 students in them, so having a class page and selecting students to add, is good. This has an advantage even when there are a lot of students in a group.
This feature is attractive as the attendance and timetable is default for class.

MLP considerations

These items in the prototype demo ware nice-to-haveʼs alternate views that should be considered for MLP.

Communication with parents

Schools had mentioned that it would be very much useful to be able to email/contact the parents of the student from the intervention page. Providing the overview of the intervention to the parent would be great. This also can let the parents know that their child is taken care of and is getting the support from their funding.

Communication with students

Sending email about their performance and outcome change is a desired feature. Emailing to a group of students about changes in plans or classes can also be considered.

Student to intervention view

Two schools were expecting to see the the module from ‘Student → Interventionʼ rather than ‘Intervention → Studentʼ. This is because funding might be provided for a single student and the schools set up interventions accordingly. Also the previous modules they were using provided this view and they were used to that view.

Student overview

The overview of the student intervention, plan, performance and outcomes on the dashboard or the student profile page was a nice-to-have.

Categories on dashboard

The category under which an intervention is group is an important aspect and it would be good to have it on the dashboard as a column. The name of the intervention might not accurately describe itʼs nature, this is why it is nice to see the category on the grid.

Pain points

Alternate view

Having just the intervention and the students in them without groups. The concept of having groups within the interventions was received with a bit doubt. But once it was explained with how classes and sessions can be set up with them it was better received. The architecture of the module from ‘Students → Interventionsʼ rather than ‘Interventions → Students

Student plan

Schools were expecting to see the student plan and the overview in the module. One school had mentioned it might be nice to see the the student overview of the intervention on the student profile page as well.

Unfamiliar with our platform

In the demo with 3 schools, two of them were just starting out with our platform. When the schools were presented with the interventions module, there was a lack of experience with how our platform works. This is not necessarily a pain point, but it might take some time for the schools to get used to the concept ‘Subjects and classes‘ before interventions can be used with ease.

One of the schools was unsure if our platform's interventions module was for them, cause they do not use/record staff costs and plans rather they use interventions plans. This maybe because they are a specialised school and need more personalised options like therapy nots.

Data migration

Importing and exporting students from a system they are currently, using into our platform's interventions module. One of the schools were concerned about the process who the staff are who are, who are working around here. So that would be, that would be his, his plan, so to speak.

Individual school nice-to-haveʼs

With the demos, each school had some uniques views that other schools did not mention. This is not summarised under nice-to-haveʼs and they are not MLPʼs because these are different for each schools, but might prove to be useful at some point in our interventions module.

Average/flat cost addition

Hethersett school has mentioned that it would be useful to have the feature to specify the cost for the staff automatically. Currently in the costs tab, the user/admin maintaining interventions has to manually update the staff costs. What was suggested is that, cost should be automatically updated when entering a staff.

Ex: The payment might differ for a teacher vs an assistant teacher, and when a staff is added to the costs tab, the cost that has been set for a teacher / an assistant teacher should be updated based on predefined rates.

Ex: The school can set up different rates for the staff. If it and assistant teacher they might be paid 30 pounds and if they are the lead teacher they might be paid 40 pounds. And these values can be specified in ‘Administrationʼ and when a teacher is added to staff costs, the position can be specified and the cost associated to updated. In the prototype we do this manually.

Categorising goals by categories in 'Administrationʼ

Alderwasley school had mentions that there might be a large number of goals for all the interventions and itʼll be a good addition if this can be categorised by the categories, in Administration.

Pulse integration

The Holy Cross school had mentioned that it would be amazing if we could have Pulse integration on the dashboard. (Just putting it in here cause it sounds amazing and we would also love to have this in the interventions module.)

Module in the app

Herthersett school mentioned it will be very nice to have interventions on mobile. Not with all the functionality but just the overview so parents can have a look whenever they want to.

Competitors - Edukay

Two of the schools were currently using Edukay for their interventions and they were happy to share with us the platform ,to give us better insights on what their expectations were. This is what Edukay provides:

Dashboard for individual student with performance and plans.
During the review is when the students are marked with the outcome, which are the grades. Review notes can also be added here.
The dashboard lists all the pupils enrolled in all interventions. They can be filtered by the funding source they had received.
Learning plan templates can be created and saved for the students.
Intervention plans are created for the student by adding the ‘Area of needs‘, ‘Outcomes‘, ‘Strategies‘ and, ‘Lead teacher‘. And multiple rows of this sort can be created for the student.
The ‘Outcome‘ or ‘Area of need‘ is visible to staff, so if they find that other students might be grouped under the same ‘Outcome‘ or ‘Area of need‘ this can be done.
The areaʼs of strength and concern can be specified.
The whole of the student performance, targets and plans can be downloaded as pdf.
The plans can be set a review date, which also send a reminder to review. A teacher can also be set as the person to do the review.
The ‘Target/Outcome‘ for the student can be added on the go, or selected from a list of available targets.
The ‘Summary‘, ‘Parent contribution‘ and ‘Pupil contribution‘ can be added to the student plan as well.