More than 1 billion students around the globe have been impacted by COVID-19. Forced to now learn from home, students of all ages need access to bandwidth, learning devices, applications and more to continue their education in today’s new remote learning environment. This places significant pressure on educators, administrators and specifically, IT leaders to ensure both students and educators have the tools they need.
Some schools had an early start on the online learning front before the pandemic with one-to-one computing programs or device take home programs already in place. While they may have had a slight advantage when learn-from-home was first instituted, every school now faces the same uphill climb. How can you ensure students and teachers have the right tools they need to maximize their learning? What should users do when something breaks? (They can’t after all walk it down to your office for repairs or updates and field IT teams can’t visit classrooms.) And, how can IT teams be sure everyone is using the provided tools for maximum ROI and productivity?
Also Read: Six Things to Do Now to Prepare for Remote Learning
3 Time-Saving Actions
Because there are never enough hours in the day for the small IT teams that serve school districts, time-saving measures for managing your online learning program efficiently are key. We’ve compiled three actions you can take today that will provide great benefits in the months to come.
- Activate web usage and device usage analytics. According to recent education insights from Absolute, approximately 40% of the time spent online by students is dedicated to learning including learning management systems and other educational tools. Absolute customers rely on Web Usage so that school leadership and curriculum designers can measure how engaged students are with online curriculum. The reporting provides detailed insight that allows you to drive better learning outcomes by identifying valuable or underused learning resources and direct students toward them. The tool also shows you habits and websites that aren’t student appropriate so you can protect the safety of your students online. You can also compare classes, schools and districts to help you build a budgetary plan for the future.
- Adopt Absolute’s device collection guide. COVID-19 forced a new normal on schools and now, many are still deciding what to do when the end of the school year comes. Some are allowing students to keep their devices over the summer, or even until the student graduates. Others are requesting they be returned to the school before summer break. Regardless, schools are making the decision most appropriate for their district. Absolute has a step-by-step guide with best practices based on years of working with K12 districts on collecting devices at the end of the school year. It includes how to plan, execute, collect, control and monitor your student devices throughout their lifecycle so you can reclaim student devices with ease.
- Use Reach scripts for remote IT and helpdesk needs. Not only are devices remote, but so is the IT team responsible for managing these devices. With remote learning, IT teams need to continue to address device IT issues and ensure they are protected against cyber threats. Absolute Reach is a remote scripting solution for Windows and Mac devices that allows you to scan, secure, and enforce updates and configurations even when the device is off your network. Using 120+ prebuilt, automated workflows, you can manage remote devices at scale and resolve issues from the more traditional helpdesk tickets. There’s also a device collection notice script that can be used to notify end users of the key collection information so they can return their device.
To support Absolute education customers through these challenging times, we’ve enabled all customers to access crucial Absolute features at no added cost through August 31, 2020:
- Web Usage for insights on student online learning Absolute Reach, our remote scripting solution
- Application Persistence for 3 of the most widely-used VPNs apps
If you would like more tips on how to save time managing your online learning, listen in to our webinar, 3 Immediate Actions to Save Time While Managing Online Learning.
