Fedena Gradebook
Fedena is a student information system (SIS) used by over 40,000 schools and colleges world wide. Examination management is an important part of any SIS. Fedena had two examination systems (CCE and ICSE) as per requirements from its largest user base in India but they fell short to meet most users. International users of Fedena also wanted a system that was flexible to be used for their systems and not as per the Indian standards. Report cards were a problem for almost all users and customized designs as per their format was not affordable for all schools.
Detailed Case Study
Type: Fedena Webapp and Mobile app
My Role: User Researcher & Product Manager
Problems:
Schools used customized grading systems even if they followed a nationalized system for the country. Each school wanted flexibility to tweak the default system by using custom formulas and groups of tests to evaluate a student in an academic year. The current systems were based almost entirely on one system and provided little to no configuration options.
Schools were increasingly following a mix of academic test-based system and an activity or behaviour based evaluation system for a wholistic evaluation of the student.
Report cards given at the end of a test or grading cycle were designed by each school and they were not willing to use one default format of report card. Often faced with little budgets for technology and modernization, customization of report cards in the current system was expensive for schools.
Approach:
Phase 1: MVP
Executive buy-in for building an MVP of a new module called Gradebook (using the terminology understood by most schools) was obtained from the leadership. In this version, a minimum version of the product that supported the creation of multiple terms and exams was proposed and built. Schools could use basic formulas to combine multiple tests as well as use the new activity module to evaluate academic parameters. This version was given a limited beta release to schools who used the new CBSE examination system in India. Two report card designs were introduced with the system able to support more template designs in subsequent releases.
Phase 2: Expansion and Report Gallery
In this phase, more features were added like recording attendance, non-academic parameters like behaviors was introduce along with more comprehensive formulas and exam types. Refinements and bug fixes on the beta launch were done taking into consideration user feedback from the previous launches. End of term remarks could now be added quickly from a remark bank and it automatically completed with smart replacement of student first name, gender and grade. The report card gallery was expanded to include 4 more designs covering many other use cases including multi page designs. Report cards could now be customized for a small fee for schools who wanted to introduce more information or follow a particular style. The gradebook features were made available in the fedena mobile app also.
Outcome:
The new gradebook increased product usage by over 30% as it met the needs of many existing and new customers. Almost all new customers adopted the gradebook module and existing customers moved to gradebook over the next 2 years. It also reduced customization requests by over 50% as examination as well as opened up a new revenue channel in terms of customized report cards.
Early whiteboard plan of Gradebook
Sketch of the first custom report card design
One of the final report card design templates
Remarks bank with smart replacement