ESKA^® Academia is a state of the art software system for the management and e-enabling of educational institutions, including schools and universities. The system helps in making education an enjoyable experience and provides an easy-to-use suite of Web-based tools to perform the never-ending daily routines of such institutions.

By providing advanced institutional management tools, up-to-date information, and a rich variety of online resources, ESKA^® Academia takes its users a step further towards excellence.

Built on a choice of databases and using the latest Microsoft .NET technology, ESKA^® Academia provides a seamless integration of functions to maintain the best in the management of educational institutions. The system serves an unlimited number of users and enables effective communication and interaction within the educational pyramid (students, instructors and parents). Its flexibility and scalability allow for expansion, which is achieved by adding new integrated modules and making the system customisable to the optimal utilisation of modern institutions.

 Benefits

• Enhanced communication between parents, instructors, students and advisors via a variety of easy-to-use communication tools
• Streamlined integration of functions, by making information seamlessly available for every department
• Higher work efficiency and accountability
• Efficient distribution and management of the academic staff’s administrative workload
• Reduces result-processing and publishing time

 Key Features

• Support for multi-level institution of structures and centralised administration
• Web-based application
• Modular design
• Multilingual support
• Self-management of user profile and services within given authorisation
• Advanced tools for users to dynamically generate the educational body structure (headquarters, institution branches and departments)
  

 E-Educational Institution

The E-Educational Institution part of ESKA^® Academia supports interaction between students, instructors, parents, and administrators through special Web-based modules. These modules can be accessed using a unique login name and password for each user, obtained upon registration. This access control provides reliable security and confidentiality of the handled data.

• Students Area
  The Students Area part of ESKA^® Academia allows students to view their grades, schedules, attendance records, and calendar. Information can be filtered, sorted and presented in the form of professional reports which are easily understood by students. It also allows for interaction through text messages and discussion boards. In addition, students can view and print posted assignments and quizzes and submit their work to the instructors’ inboxes.
• Instructors Area
  The Instructors Area allows instructors to record, analyse, and report their students’ grades and attendance records in an efficient and accurate way. ESKA^® Academia also provides instructors with a variety of tools to interact with students and keep parents updated with the day-to-day activities and students’ performance. In addition, instructors can easily post quizzes and assignments to students and receive students’ work through their inboxes.
• Parents Area
  Upon the institution’s preference, parents are allowed to log into the system anytime and view up-to-the minute records of their children’s progress by accessing student grades, schedules, events, and attendance records. Parents can also send and receive messages, conduct chatting sessions, and post messages to the online message board.
• Advisory Area
  The Advisory Area in ESKA^® Academia enables advisors to provide assistance to students throughout their learning journey in terms of education and conduct. This is achieved by guiding students to use the system for completing procedures such as admission, registration, examination, evaluation, major transfer, institution transfer, and graduation. The system also allows advisors to guide and assist assigned instructors and evaluate their performance periodically.

 Higher Administration

ESKA^® Academia caters for higher administration needs of organisations that have more than one educational institution, such as groups of schools, ministries, and universities with international presence.

The Higher Administration features help centralise the administration processes and monitor activities. The system dynamically defines the physical structure of the educational body, classifies and sets educational models (grades, courses and streams), and provides the institution with administration control over educational policies and regulations with the inherited enforcement on the institutional system.

• Rules and Regulations
  The Rules and Regulations module incorporates the different rules of an educational system and adheres to the diverse needs coming from different emerging education standards such as boards, grades, load and drop standards, and government standards and compliances. Moreover, the system enables educational institutions to customise rules that fit for specific cases.
• Organisation
  The Organisation module is where the organisational structure is defined. The module offers a tool that helps build the organisational structure dynamically down to the designated number of levels; this includes the internal organisational structure. The organisation’s staff are defined and assigned to roles, and system users can have full information about each defined entity in the organisational structure.
• Academic Affairs
  The Academic Affairs module is where academic data is defined in a way that would fit all related institutions. It covers the different programs that the institution(s) provides, and allows defining streams and specialties under each program. The module also provides full information about each available course and the course equivalents in case of institution, stream or plan transfer.
• Academic Calendar
  The Academic Calendar module manages the institution’s academic years and semesters in addition to the events that the administration defines for admission, issuing certifications, exams, assessments, adding subjects, withdrawing subjects, graduations and holidays.

 Educational Institution Management

ESKA^® Academia provides advanced features that enable management of student transactions as well as interaction between parents, instructors, and students.
Most system transactions take place through this working area of ESKA^® Academia.

• Admission
  Through the Admission module, users can track detailed applicant information, such as demographic information about the student’s parents, sponsor (individual/ association), and guardian. It also enables users to track all processes concerning the student transactions, including the waiting list feature which enables administrators to place students on waiting lists throughout the academic year. Moreover, the system manages the processes of rejecting, accepting and expelling students partially or completely
• Registration
  The Registration module facilitates students’ enrolment in the proper courses throughout the academic semester and year. The system offers students online registration services such as student registration, group registration, and homeroom registration. The system also offers course management features to add, drop and withdraw from courses. In addition it supports internal and external transfer processes, plan transfers, and network transfers. The module also manages graduation and annual promotion processes.
• Certification
  The Certification module manages grades through the following functionalities:

  • Fills in grades according to academic subjects and assessments
  • Acquires the approval on student grades from defined instructors before submitting the grades live to be viewed by students and parents
  • Automatically calculates percentages, average marks, cumulative marks, and ranks in a class
  • Provides statistical reports on marks and rankings
  • Provide many templates for certificates and reports to be used by different schools and universities
  • Shows grades in points, symbols or percentage formats
• Scheduling
  The The Scheduling module significantly reduces the time spent creating complex class schedules with sophisticated scheduling algorithms, considering the instructor availability, class capacity, facilities types and sizes, course rules, and gender diversity. The Scheduling module is carefully designed to help with organising the students' optional subject choices and creating all specific divisions of classes into groups.
• Fees Management
  The Fees Management module handles all student financial-related issues and enables easy fees settlement. All institutional fees and discounts are defined at the beginning of each academic year; the system provides the tools to create bills templates, customise bills for each student and parent, and monitor all financial transactions between ESKA^® Academia and the applied Financial System.
• Student Affairs
  The Student Affairs module allows instructors to maintain student attendance logs for each class, and depict details concerning student performance and conduct through rewards and activities. It also maintains student health records in matter of medical history and taken vaccines. In addition, the module maintains student records of incidents and disciplinary actions.
• Sections Management
  The Sections Management module enables users to manage all issues related to sections, such as the creation, approval, and rejection of sections, as well as the definition of section attributes.
• Exam Scheduling
  The Exam Scheduling module automatically generates exam schedules according to the nature, class capacities and facilities of the exam, in addition to the period setup and exam policies. The module also allows for modifying any course after the automatic generation of schedules to re-set the time and place manuall
• Communication
  The Communication tools of ESKA^® Academia help the educational institution enhance interaction channels between all stakeholders and set the ground rules for building a collaborative learning community. ESKA^® Academia provides a variety of advanced communication tools including:

  • Institutional Calendar, which provides a full schedule for the student during the academic year
  • Forums and Chat Rooms, which provide an interactive environment for students, parents, and instructors to communicate
  • News and Events Room, which enables the institutions to publish news and events online
  • Messaging Tool, which provides a tool that connects instructors with parents and students, and vise versa through sending individual and bulk emails
  • Marquees and Notifications, which provide a comprehensive communication tool that allows users to announce news and events by posting marquees online and sending notification emails
• Internet-to-SMS
  The system provides a Web-based SMS Notification module that allows targeted and direct transfer of messages to the mobile phones of parents, instructors, administrators, and students, individually or by group (bulk SMS). Furthermore, the administrator can schedule the sending transaction for later dates and times. The system also provides reporting on the SMS delivery.
• E-Library
  The E-library module enables users to check library information and availability of books through the Web. Users can easily check library hours, lending hours, and Frequently Asked Questions on lending, and search for publications, in addition to the privilege of virtually borrowing books.
• E-Learning
  The E-learning module enables instructors to create e-forms (surveys, assignments, and quizzes) for different subjects. Students on the other hand can log in to find and fill in the e-forms they are eligible to use. Moreover, the E-learning module enables instructors to follow up on exams and quizzes after they are corrected manually or automatically by the system.
• Fleet Management
  The Fleet Management module assists institute administrators to manage and follow up on their vehicles and student distribution on buses. Vehicle movements are tracked along with allocated drivers from departure to arrival points. Vehicle history is recorded in details covering information such as vehicle insurance, traffic tickets, drivers, supervisors, accidents, license, and fuel.
• Cafeteria Management
  The system supports the management of cafeteria stock, follows up on cafeteria transactions such as purchases, and places orders to other departments such as the kitchen and food stations.
• IBDP (Program Management for Schools)
  When the system is applied for schools, the IBDP module manages all students that are registered in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program. This includes managing student program registration, syllabi, past papers, exam registration, in addition to all extended essay issues.
• Integration
  ESKA^® Academia offers tight integration with the Financial, Human Resources, Payroll, and Inventory modules of ESKA^® Business Manager. This advanced integration facilitates the capture, consolidation, analysis and distribution of data across the institution, thus allowing comprehensive and efficient processing of information.