7 Benefits of Karen for Educational Institutions

Online scheduling system is a perfect solution for various educational establishments such as schools, colleges, universities. An online scheduling application dramatically simplifies all kinds of scheduling tasks for Colleges and Universities.

Providing your staff and students with robust yet easy to use web scheduling tools, eliminates many phone calls otherwise needed to register students for tests, interviews, counselor sessions, workshops and classes.

Karen can be used as an internal system, allowing only your authorized staff members to access schedules, registrations and students records; or it can be opened up for students, so that they can self-register for certain academic tasks, such as exams or seminars.

The major use case involves

• Admissions scheduling
• Academic advising scheduling
• Class and workshop scheduling
• Seminar scheduling
• Test and exam scheduling
• Providing support to international students
• Parent teacher conference scheduling

In this article we will see how Karen helps universities, colleges, and schools simplify the pains of appointment scheduling.

1. Schedule more effective advising appointments with students

Karen allows you to optimise your office hours and make the most of your time while you are at work. It provides you the flexibility to offer advisement at a time that is convenient for both you and the students.

2. Making time for the admissions process

Coordinating schedules between representatives and students can be a tricky job. Karen helps the prospective students to schedule an admission tour with couple of clicks.

Scheduling admission interviews is a time consuming activity. Many applicants were evaluated on their written application, rather than the actual qualities: work ethic, aptitude in the field, communication and comprehension abilities.

Not having to copy paste the entire information from one form to another data source and then send multiple emails was a challenge in itself. Karen helped in creating a well-rounded interview process. The applicant gets reminder of the interview which decreases the no-shows. If the applicant clears first-round he is sent to another round of interview. The streamlined workflow reduced human error and improved the admission process.

Karen specifically helped in

• Conducting more admissions interviews
• Reduced technical difficulties and no-shows in the interview process
• Quick and easy implementation and onboarding

3. Make parent-teacher meetings more convenient

The marathon conference nights where parents need to conference with their children’s teachers is a major nightmare. Karen ensures that parents can conference at a convenient time and receive valuable progress update.

The customers prior to using Karen would fielding phone calls and scheduling appointments weeks before parent-teacher conference began. Pen and paper made it difficult for the secretary to update faculty, teachers were unaware of their schedule until the day before conference. The manual system led to lots of errors, including writing wrong phone numbers and names. There were times when teachers would get double-booked, and parents would be frustrated because of the longer wait.

Karen leveraged the ubiquitous property of the internet to give parents the desired simplicity in parent-teacher meetings. Teachers were empowered to look at their conference schedules, the automatic reminder feature has increased the parent turn-out.

The sophisticated scheduling tool allows parents to book their appointment at their convenience, teachers can evenly distribute their workload, and the secretary has more time to ensure that the administration runs smoothly.

Karen helped in

• eliminating human errors while booking
• managed teachers' time more effectively
• made scheduling more convenient for parents
• the admin reduced his time on phone

4. Reducing admin burden and appointment no-shows

Scheduling a 1:1 with phone is a burden, even if there is a personal assistant involved, he spends an estimated 30% of the day fielding calls. Even if the schedules were properly arranged, chasing contact information and student details was a burden. With simplified scheduling, the administrative support staff can work more efficiently,

The results were fabulous it reduced no-shows and prevented the admin from getting overbooked

5. Making scheduling immediate and mobile for students

Karen’s rescheduling and cancellation features allow students to reschedule or cancel in a couple of clicks. The students no longer have to hunt for the phone number, dial during school hours, deal with a busy signal, or leave and wait for a voicemail.

The students can choose when to meet with the faculty member and if required cancel the appointment if a conflict arises.

• an increased number of students willing to schedule appointments
• this constant nurturing improved average grade of students
• availabilities were updated in real-time for last-minute scheduling, which increased the engagement

6. Integrating administrative tasks under one tool for interviews

An organization that was leveraging google’s tools had the following flow.

1. A google form to collect requests for meetings.

2. An admin would then put all of that information into a google sheet.

3. The google sheet information was then shared with the concerned consultant.

4. The consultant’s google calendar was then reviewed.

5. A calendar invite was sent to the student via mail.

6. Post the email, once the meeting was scheduled a follow-up call would be done

If the student intended to cancel the interview the entire process would have to be repeated to re-schedule the interview.

Karen simplifies the entire process, the institute embedded the event availability on its website. Students could pick the consultant, at a time convenient to them. Each consultant could view the schedule in his dashboard, approve or reject an incoming meeting. The students could cancel the event in advance. Reminders were sent to everyone to avoid no-shows.

The biggest benefit was

• Karen consolidated and automated administrative tasks with just one tool
• It helped people to book per their convenience, thereby increasing the outreach

7. Automating scheduling across the world for maximum efficiency

When it comes to scheduling counselling sessions or one-on-ones with international students Karen’s automatic time zone detection proves crucial. This minimises the staff’s interviews outside of business hours to provide availability to students in other parts of the world. The staff can now schedule hundred of interviews within a single month using time zone detection.

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