Case Studies
Attendance Manager Cloud provides user-friendly documentation and reporting tools that instructors, administrators, and program coordinators rely on. But don’t take our word for it — take theirs!
Case Study: Streamlining Attendance Management at Crawford Tech
Meet Kristen Deets, the Cosmetology Instructor at Crawford Tech since 2014.
The Challenge:
As an experienced educator, Kristen juggles a busy schedule and the unique challenges that her state-mandated program requires.
“There are a lot of rules and regulations that we have to follow that other shops don’t. One of the million things that you have to do is get a quarterly report sent to the state.” Kristen explained.
These quarterly reports must include details like student hours, attendance, grades, and other important data. Ensuring that these reports are accurate and submitted on time is no small feat.
Previous Software Struggles:
Before her time at Crawford Tech, Kristen taught at a school where she had to manually input student hours every day. This process was time-consuming, especially since she had roughly 40 students arriving from seven different districts. Keeping track of their attendance, arrival times, and departure times was a daily ordeal.
“You needed a cheat sheet or know what kid goes to what school because we had staggered start and end times,” Kristen said. “I’d spend twenty minutes at the end of each day putting in everyone’s hours. That might not sound like a lot, but it’s a lot for a teacher. Twenty minutes is gold.”
When Pennsylvania’s State Board of Cosmetology altered how they wanted student hours to be submitted, completing the task took Kristen multiple days and the assistance of in-school tech support.
“It was such a headache. Without some type of software, it is an absolute headache.”
Seeking a Solution:
Kristen’s ideal time-clock solution was an app that could be customizable to create reports aligned with the state board’s requirements, offer ease of use, and eliminate the need for manual data entry.
First Impressions of the Attendance Manager Cloud:
Kristen was introduced to Attendance Manager Cloud when she joined Crawford Tech.
“When I came here and met the instructor that I was taking over for, we were talking about student hours. She said, ‘They’re gonna clock in and out every day, then you push this, this, and that, and print a report, and you’re done.’ I was speechless. I was relieved and amazed that it was going to be so easy,” she said.
Other Features and Benefits:
The feature of Attendance Manager Cloud that impressed Kristen the most is its simplicity. “It allows me to have the time to focus on a lot of other things that I need to be doing.”
Kristen also liked that the fingerprint scanner empowered students to take responsibility for their hours, making the process more accurate and transparent. “I stress to them that every minute is very, very important. I’ve got one district that, because of when they come and when they leave, they can only miss about five days a year. If you’re clocking out five minutes early, that time really adds up!”
Kristen was also impressed by the customer support Disceryx provides. “Bob and his team are awesome. I really appreciate how quickly I can get a hold of him, whether it’s a phone call or email, he gets back to me almost immediately and that’s been great because that’s just not how it usually is,” She said. “Usually when you try to get a hold of someone, you have to hit sixteen different numbers to get a hold of the right person to talk to, then they’ve got to call you back and they don’t and it’s just a nightmare.”
Commitment to Continued Usage:
According to Kristen, Attendance Manager Cloud is perfectly aligned with her program’s unique requirements, leaving her with no reason to explore alternative solutions.
“This software is geared toward exactly what I have to do. I can’t even think of a reason why I’d use a different type of software or about any problems that I have with it,” she said. “If your school is doing something that’s taking more than a minute each day to double-check that students are all clocked in, and then more than five minutes to print a report and get it to the state, you should definitely look into this.”
Conclusion:
Kristen’s experience with Attendance Manager Cloud underscores the transformative impact that innovative time-clock solutions can have on a teacher’s life. The simplicity, efficiency, and accuracy of Attendance Manager Cloud saves her time, which she spends focusing on other tasks.
Case Study: Enterprise App for a Technical Institute
Meet Josh, VP of Informational Technology at a Career and Technical Institute
The Challenge:
Josh’s school comes with unique challenges in attendance tracking.
“We needed a time-clock solution because we have about seventy faculty,” Josh explained. “Without one, they’d have to look up seventy different classes and send seventy different reports twice a day. It would take significant time.”
Seeking a Solution:
Josh’s school needed a workplace-type clock system built for students. Their strict time-clock and attendance policies prepare students for the workforce by instilling the habit of treating every day like a day at work, even though they’re in school.
“We’re here to produce really good technicians and employees for employers coming to the school to find well-trained students,” Josh said.
First Impressions of the Attendance Manager Cloud:
Josh’s initial reaction to Attendance Manager Cloud was highly positive. He recognized it as a valuable product that met his school’s specific needs. For example, the ability to customize reports and send them to faculty for review proved to be a game-changer.
Other Features and Benefits:
Josh appreciated the flexibility to customize the software to align with his school’s specific attendance policy. The institute’s attendance system is points-based and has multiple formulas for different date ranges. Attendance Manager Cloud is tailored to handle all these intricacies.
Customization also extended to the daily attendance reports, which are automatically sent to faculty members ten minutes after the start of each school day and 20 minutes after the students leave. This improved transparency and efficiency and has reduced the number of questions their attendance person receives.
Commitment to Continued Usage:
Josh enjoys his working relationship with Disceryx.
“When there are things that need to be fixed, Bob and his team are pretty quick to do that. That’s why we’ve stuck around for so long. When we wanted to work on a customization, they had it done in a very short period of time,” Josh added. “They’ve met a need that we have. It’s allowed us to keep track of attendance in a way that employers like to see for our students.”
According to Josh, the Attendance Manager Cloud is a good fit for educational institutions with unique attendance requirements like theirs.
“Everyone has different requirements for what they’re trained to do. If they’re similar to our school, I’d recommend it.”
Conclusion:
The technical institute’s experience with Attendance Manager Cloud highlights the impact that customizable time-clock solutions can have on educational institutions. The ability to automate and fine-tune attendance tracking while aligning with unique attendance policies is crucial when preparing students for success in their future careers. The trust and transparency in their working relationship with Disceryx further underscores the effectiveness and reliability of Attendance Manager Cloud.
Case Study: Save Time Clocking Time at Klein Forest Cosmetology
Meet Amanda Simmons and Celina-Ortiz Sykes. Amanda serves as the Technical Education Program Coordinator for Klein Independent School District, and Celina is a cosmetology teacher at Klein Forest High School, where she has been for 7 years.
Background:
Klein ISD has cosmetology programs at all five of its high schools. Each program has one instructor, and they all operate under the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulations’ (TDLR) parameters. Klein Forest’s teachers have up to 18 cosmetology students on the floor in their lab space at a time. Their students enroll in the program during their sophomore, junior, and senior years and graduate with their cosmetology operating license.
Challenges:
Before using Attendance Manager Cloud, instructors were manually documenting and reporting student hours.
While Celina was fortunate enough to never experience this, she equated the process to being like a part-time job. “Even if we had an Excel sheet to help us, it would have been a lot more work and a lot more time-consuming.”
“It was not a clean system,” Amanda said. “They were manually documenting things, which could have human error. If it wasn’t accurate and the hours were just based on their words, they [students] couldn’t apply and commit to their licensure.”
Seeking a Solution:
Amanda and Celina find that Attendance Manager Cloud saves them stress and time.
“Attendance Manager Cloud does not allow for human error,” Amanda said. “This is a true clock-in and out system that allows us to better facilitate the needs of classroom management. It took away that piece of argument between teacher and student or teacher and family regarding the completion of the program.”
As an instructor, Celina says it makes her job much easier. “We were excited when we went to the Cloud because we could access it anywhere, from our office, on the lab floor, or even from home. If something goes wrong and students can’t clock in, we know it right away.”
Celina added, “Everything I need is right at my fingertips. I don’t have to go to a certain room to download hours or print out papers and leave the students unattended. Now I can just be on the lab floor, send things to my printer, and get it for when they leave for their next classes.”
First Impressions of the Attendance Manager Cloud:
Celina stated that the Attendance Manager Cloud is simple to maneuver.
“If I go to ‘Reports,’ it’s a lot easier to figure out where things are as opposed to going in and checking different boxes,” Celina said. “It’s easier to configure. So like, if I have a problem, it already shows up and says what I need to do in order to fix it. For example, if a student doesn’t clock out, whenever I go to check the hours, it’ll bring up the name of the student, what time they clocked in, the time that’s blank if they didn’t clock out, and it’ll tell me to fix it before I put the hours in.”
Without it, instructors would have to call each other to figure out who knew what.
“I was happy that it was here when I came into this role because that’s one less thing that I have to worry about tackling,” Amanda said. “It’s allowed teachers to have what they need, so it’s not something that I need to worry about having to provide for them.”
Key Feature: Transfer Hours
Klein Forest often receives students transferring from other schools in the state. In a clock-hour program like cosmetology, students need to have continuous attendance reporting to the state with little to no lapses in their training.
Attendance Manager Cloud’s Transfer Hours feature makes this easy, You can enter a block of time a student acquired at another licensed program, allowing them to start at a new program right where they left off at their previous school.
“When kids transferred from another school there’s a lot of paperwork that goes between districts,” Amanda said. “I can tell from other districts that they are not using something like Attendance Manager Cloud because there are a lot of transfer issues. Whenever students come from out of district into our district, it allows them to input their information so that it’s a more accurate collection of data.
“Because our system is so clean, whatever record they come in with, our teachers can input it. They’re happy that it provides clean tracking and ensures clear measurement standards. If a student leaves our district and goes elsewhere, we can send on what the student has completed in our district as well.”
Commitment to Continued Usage:
“Our teachers always tell me, ‘This is it. We need this,’” Amanda said.
Celina echoed Amanda’s statement. “As long as they have it for us, we’ll use it because it’s easy!”
Conclusion:
One of the main goals for Klein ISD’s CTE programs is to ensure that their students are completing pathways that lead to successful career opportunities. For the students in their cosmetology programs, ensuring the accuracy of their recorded hours is required for them to graduate with their cosmetology operating licenses. With Attendance Manager Cloud, Amanda and Celina agree that achieving this goal is much easier than ever.