How MMC digitally transformed a premier META (Middle East, Turkey, and Africa) region-based university.

MMC is a learning management system that is meant to be implemented in universities, institutes, and colleges for the effective deployment of learning resources and to transform students into intelligent learners capable of innovative solution providers. Also, MMC is implemented in small and medium enterprises to impart training and professional development to employees.

We shall discuss the MMC case study implemented at a premier university in META region. This university has around 7000+ students and imparts hybrid education in arts, science, and engineering. This case study reflects upon the huge positive transformation made by the university in creating a flexible, scalable, and measurable academic ecosystem since implementing MMC. Also, the ease and comfort level achieved by the administrators, faculty, students, and parents in leveraging the academic functional flows were noteworthy and adorable.

Management Perspective

• Before Implementation

  Prior to the implementation of MMC, the process of admission and onboarding of students was done manually resulting in bottlenecks, congestion, and backtracking. Student information reports were sent by post to individual parents across geographical areas. Rules and Regulations book, university policy handbook, and other handouts were printed as hardcopies and delivered to students and parents, resulting in huge financial resources. Academic notifications were sent to faculty and students through a circular ignoring the absentees. Physical meetings with department heads were creating scheduling problems due to tough academic engagements. Faculty performance reports and review was time-consuming resulting in management’s enhanced stress levels. The review of university performance every year was taking too much time with data not forthcoming. The academic documents maintained by different schools and departments were not uniform. The question paper design was not controlled centrally with little or no implementation of Bloom’s taxonomy.

  The administrators were not in a position to review the classroom transactions of both faculty and students in terms of project collaborations, assignment allocations, and submissions. The usage of knowledge repositories by both faculty and students was practically nil. The assessment and grading of student performance took more time due to the manual evaluation and mark entry. Overall, the academic processes were not completely digital with no proper integration with various academic functions. Communication and information processing between the stakeholders was taking more time and causing delays.

• After implementation

  Four users are created in the MMC portal. Using the respective login credentials provided, Admin, Faculty, Student, and Parent can log in to MMC and engage the innovative features it offers.

  The process of inquiry, admissions, and onboarding using MMC software has become easy resulting in far more effective documentation.

  Student information reports in terms of attendance and results are sent to email and SMS. Students and parents were given separate login and passwords to track the academic components and performance resulting in the parent dynamically motivating the student.

  Academic notifications are sent to individual students, faculty, and parents on various events and activities using MMC. The policy manuals, rule books, and other handouts are sent digitally to all the students, parents, and concerned faculty, resulting in cost savings.

  Departmental meetings are conducted using MMC. The semester-end professional training of faculty members are also organized using MMC. The overall university performance is visualized through a dynamic dashboard with filters.

  Reviewing and monitoring of student and faculty members’ academic performance became very simple and flexible. Admin can track the question bank created by faculty in all the subjects. The question paper quality is automatically maintained through centrally controlled Bloom’s taxonomy principles resulting in outcome-based education.

  Assessment and grading of tests and exams are done in real-time and the results can be viewed both by students and faculty through their respective logins. The collaborative projects and assignments are being monitored by the administrators/ Principal/ HOD.

  Administrators used the MMC settings tool to globally enable features across the university level such as school programs, learning type, question paper type, question settings, Bloom’s taxonomy percentages, assessment, and grading customizations. The administrator can view the dashboard which reflects the academic performance of the university graphically.

Faculty Perspective

• Before Implementation

  The faculty used to interact with the students in a traditional way and most of the communication was not well documented. The lesson planner, fortnightly syllabus coverage, attendance record, and marks entry were all manual.

  Sharing of learning material, allocating assignments, and submissions were executed manually. Faculty used to take special classes to cover the lost classes by scheduling classes on Saturdays and Sundays. The question bank was distributed manually to students and there were no checks and accountability on the utilization of these question banks. The faculty had no tools to monitor and track the academic progress of individual students continuously. The confidence level of both students and faculty was not very high. The redundancy of the academic functional flows was rampant. There was no provision to engage students during holidays.

• After implementation

  The faculty feels academically empowered as never before. They can automatically document the lesson planner, and fortnightly syllabus coverage, continuously share the curriculum, take attendance digitally, and publish the results online to students. The dashboard reflects the academic performance of the faculty graphically.

  The faculty can engage students individually using the virtual classroom platform and can deploy multiple boards to make teaching and learning more efficient. The faculty can use collaborative tools, survey and quiz tools, graphs, diagrams, videos, YouTube content, open e-books, and analyze case studies using MMC. The faculty can ask individual students to reflect on their learning by writing on the board. The faculty members are interacting with students very effectively using MMC.

  The faculty members are glad to provide customized learning content in various formats to individual students. Various formats include Docs, PDFs, Excels, images, and videos. These learning content are sent directly to a student account. Faculty can allocate different assignments to students digitally through registered email thereby documenting the process. Faculty can also send reminders to students on the due date of assignments.

  The faculty member can create a question bank with answers in MMC in their respective subjects per the lesson number. This facility is made available to students to engage in question banks continuously and is round the clock remotely. Also, the faculty can track the number of practice tests engaged by individual students and motivate them accordingly. Different types of questions and answers can be created, such as, MCQ, TOF, FIB, subjective, and comprehensions. Each question is allotted marks ranging from positive to negative depending upon the type of assessment.

  Bloom’s taxonomy-enabled exam and test-related question papers are designed and published by faculty. MMC ensures the question papers are strictly BT compliant and no faculty can miss out on this important step.

  Individual student performance is tracked continuously by faculty, creating personalized learning paths to measure cognitive levels and access to all types of learning resources.

  Remedial classes are scheduled by faculty in their respective subjects to impart education and train slow learners during free hours, Sundays, and holidays thereby improving productivity. Also, Parent-teacher meeting is being scheduled remotely using MMC at a mutually acceptable and convenient time.

  The virtual classes are automatically recorded and stored for a couple of weeks enabling students to revisit the classes repeatedly for doubt clarifications.

Student Perspective

• Before Implementation

  Students used to interact with faculty offline. Often, teachers were too busy with other academic activities, thus making the present-day interactions between students and teachers dangerously low. Students used to spend lots of time trying to meet teachers to know their attendance, marks, assignment, and other academic components. Some students had the habit of visiting libraries while some did not bother to expand the knowledge space. Most of the information gathering was done through notice boards and circulars. When some students missed the class, they had to depend on friends to copy the notes and to seek clarification. There was no question bank to practice lessons and topics. Students had this feeling that access to academic resources was lacking.

• After implementation

  Students of the university started experiencing a distinct feel-good factor after using the MMC. They are reflecting on the kind of empowerment that MMC has done and the kind of productive enhancement that has taken place as never before.

  Students are getting all types of notifications, alerts, and reminders on issues of the fee paid status, attendance, results, events, and other activities in their MMC account.

  Student’s participation in the virtual classes is complete and the interaction between teachers and peers has gone up considerably. Students are very much excited to collaborate with peers in the class and also reuse the recorded video multiple times to understand the lessons properly till they are satisfied. The calendar of events depicts various events scheduled by the teacher and the student participates in all the events.

  The question bank has enriched the knowledge of students immensely as it enables the students to conduct their own practice tests under each unit, lesson, and topic. They can appraise their performance themselves and contemplate growing up their cognitive levels. The practice tests can be engaged remotely at their own pace and chosen time.

  Using their respective login credentials, students can view curriculum, subscribe to extra and co-curricular activities, and project works, view the report card, receive and submit assignments and know the percentage of syllabus coverage dynamically. Students are continuously provided with extra learning content by teachers and the same is fetched upon in their window. They can interact with teachers to seek clarification even during non-working hours.

  The dashboard reflects upon the academic performance of the student graphically in all its dimensions.

Parent Perspective

• Before Implementation

  Parents had little or no control over the academic performance of their kids. They had to attend campus meetings periodically to know the results and progress made by their wards. Most of the parents were missing the parent-teacher meetings due to a lack of time. Monitoring was too difficult as the information gathering through the postal service was a challenge. Overall, parent participation in the academic progress of their wards was limited.

• After implementation

  All parents were given access to MMC using their respective and confidential login credentials. They can now track all academic activities and progress of their wards easily. Based on the information, they can take stock of the situation to create a conducive environment at home to further the academic goals of their wards.

  Parents can view the courses registered and their curriculum, as well as track the syllabus coverage. They can keep a tab on the notifications, alerts, attendance percentage, result card, grading, team activities, project activities, event schedules, extra learning content provided by teachers, and assignment status. Parents can also verify whether their wards are continuously taking the practice tests at home, and monitor their cognitive levels.

  Parent are now attending PTM online using MMC thereby saving lots of time and energy. After MMC implementation, parents are exhibiting confidence in their ward’s ability to learn and the overall academic ecosystem of the university.

  They can utilize the dashboard analytics that reflects the academic performance of the student graphically.

Conclusions

For the university, the decision to select and adopt MMC at the university-wide level has proven to be crucial in realizing the goals and objectives.

The experience gained in this initiative goes beyond the implementation of MMC. Any organization with the intent to digitize the academic flow, expand the existing efficiency and effectiveness, impart outcome-based education, and achieve competitive advantage should never procrastinate to use MMC.

We sincerely hope that sharing this experience of MMC deployment and the lessons learned can lead to many more new and successful initiatives.