eKool — Centralised Student Information System
Estonia , 2002 to Unknown
Compendium: Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
Background
January 2002, the Estonian Look@World Foundation had a competition to find new Internet-based public services. The eKool project was chosen as one of the winners. Today 330 Estonian schools (about 60% of all schools) use eKool as their school information system.
eKool contains data on the learning process and uses an Oracle database. The information accessible to users is always up-to-date and contains a full description of school lessons and information on grades, attendance, homework assignments and progress. Overall this means that pupils, parents and teachers have an improved picture of the information generated at school and in class plus the option to group such information differently and receive reports. eKool also implies development of seamless integration of assignments and eLearning material making it easier to recompose exercises and/or use existing ones again, and this makes it possible to track and evaluate results.
The motivation of the initiative
The project was started because there was a lack of communication between schools and parents. On the other hand, schools needed tools for organising essential information and to provide easy reporting to the municipalities and the Ministry of Education.
Participants
Schools, teachers, parents and pupils.
Aims and targets
Objectives of the initiative
- To make school activities and the information that is being created at school available to parents and students.
- To create an application that can be used by all schools immediately in line with each school’s readiness and needs.
- To generate most of the school reports required by the municipality and the Ministry of Education by making it possible to apply the same data used for analysing information in different correlations and for taking management decisions.
- To improve communication between pupils, parents and school and distribute information concerning the school.
Target group
The target group for the eKool project consists of pupils and parents who also constitute 94% of all users.
Methods applied to reach the objective (technological and/or pedagogical)
In pedagogical terms eKool works via a self-controlled environment in which the information in the database is constantly updated and improved by the users themselves. This bottom-up approach ensures motivation among users to use and improve the system. The technological method is a centrally hosted Oracle database. eKool is platform-independent and accessible by every major browser.
Strategy and actions
Level of implementation
eKool is implemented at the local level (schools).
Implementation
The web application is centrally hosted but the implementation is done by the potential users at each school. The project is voluntary and bottom-up which means that the data stored in the database belong to the school, the school decides the content and how it will be published. Thus, implementation depends on how each school, school leader, teacher, parent and pupil will use the application.
Monitoring and evaluation
Funding/Cost effectiveness
Budget
Schools pay a small monthly fee of up to €112 for using eKool. The fee covers initial training, application hosting, development and user support.
Sustainability/Transferability
Outcomes/impacts
Achievements
Specific results
eKool is now used by about 13 000 teachers, 63 000 students and 74 000 parents. Some schools outside Estonia
Success factors
Lessons learnt
The eKool project has shown that it is easier to engage users, if a bottom-up approach is applied. The voluntary participation of schools and teachers and the possibility to shape the content of the database in accordance with own needs ensures that the content is concordant with teachers’ knowledge and experience. By being able to constantly update the database the information is more precise and newer than if a top-down approach had been used. Moreover, the private sector has been involved in the project and ensured usage of a feasible business model.
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