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Streamlining the school accreditation process through AWS Cloud solutions

Services offered: Full-stack application development, AWS cloud and QA testing

Introduction

The manual school accreditation process is time-consuming and resource-intensive. Any mishandling of data could eventually lead to inefficiencies and data loss. To address the mounting challenges of data management and the real-time accreditation process, Amzur Technologies developed an AWS Cloud-based full-stack application for FCIS (Florida Council of Independent Schools) to make the process easy and smooth. We leveraged the power of the “test early and test often” strategy to ensure the application is bug-free and streamlined the entire accreditation process of 150+ schools with a few simple clicks – resulting in 30% of time spent on data management.

Customer

In the education industry, admissions & enrollment, data management, and accreditation processes are crucial. FCIS is the premier accrediting body for independent schools throughout Florida and wanted to develop a cloud-based solution that can automate the accreditation process while considerably reducing the paper and manual work. FCIS also represents the interests of independent schools in matters of legislation and regulation.
For this, they approached Amzur to build their entire process and host infrastructure on AWS Cloud to keep track of committee visits and make data available 24×7.

Challenges

Relying on manual processes like visiting schools and verifying their records of previous years for evaluation and accreditation is time-consuming and turns out to be inefficient. Transforming traditional school management systems with high technology-enabled automation tools to support the administrative and accreditation process remains a challenge for FCIS.
FCIS found extensive paperwork, record verification, school visits, and manual accreditation processes are the major hurdles in the current technology-driven education system. They struggled with the following:

Generating various committee reports using standards on every school visit

Keeping track of all the critical data for more than 100+ schools

Bringing data into real-time accessibility

Hence, the client was looking for an integrated cloud-enabled solution to bring critical data from all its schools into a single platform and manage activities.

Solution and Strategy

To scale and streamline operations, Amzur’s expert team collaborated with the FCIS team and suggested building a full-stack application using Ruby on Rails, MYSQL, and AWS, which in turn, takes care of independent school registration, its evaluation, and the accreditation process by reducing manual intervention.
The solutions comprise of –

An admin panel where once a school is added between the school head and FCIS, all reports and visitings get tracked. The admin panel was developed using Ruby on Rails.

The Schools and data are maintained and tracked through their own MySQL database.

Reports were customized as per designs shared by the client. It also has an inbuilt SURVEYS management system.

The entire infrastructure was hosted on AWS EC2.

High availability and Load balancing capability were inherited from AWS with deployments in multi-AZ.

VPC was used along with NAT servers to ensure the security of the infrastructure.

Tech Stack

Ruby on Rails (RoR):
We used Ruby on Rails to develop front and back-end solutions. The cost-effective RoR platform benefits the application in numerous ways including, security, scalability, and quality.
MySQL:
It is a relational database management system used to store anything from a single record of information to an entire database of schools. Because of its high availability, flexibility, and scalability, MySQL handles traffic effectively at any point in time.
AWS Cloud:
To eliminate unnecessary manual intervention, errors, and maintenance costs, we leveraged AWS cloud to make the data available anytime across all devices.

Improving the quality of FCIS application

We adopted an agile application testing strategy in which different modules of the application have been tested concurrently to identify bugs and resolve them in the early stages. As FCIS is a full-stack application, we’ve used JIRA/Redmine tools for functional testing to check the application’s functionality across browsers. Database testing tools are used to examine the errors in the linked database of software. Above all, our “test early and test often” strategy helped develop and deliver a bug-free application that streamlined the accreditation process with a few simple clicks resulting in 30% of the time spent on data management.

Why Amzur

Amzur has wide experience in developing EdTech solutions for the past 15 years. Our in-depth expertise in Ruby on Rails full-stack development and delivering custom AWS cloud solutions drove FCIS to choose Amzur as their technology partner.

Benefits

With the above solution, FCIS witnessed numerous benefits than before. They include,

The FCIS members with admin access were also able to track all the accreditations and address them without hassles.

FCIS saved 10% of its operational costs and up to 30% of time spent on data management.

Clutter-free communication among organizations and communities

Conclusion

It is always crucial to find schools with quality education and standards. With numerous schools in Florida, their evaluation has become the biggest challenge for students and parents to make a decision.
FCIS is the premier accrediting body for independent schools in Florida, representing over 157 member schools with more than 73,000 students. To address the challenges associated with the accreditation process, FCIS thought of developing a cloud solution for integrating critical data from all its schools into a single platform and managing all the activities on priority.
FCIS approached Amzur with numerous challenges including, paperwork, process inefficiencies, and mundane school visits. Our full-stack development and AWS cloud architect teams have helped them build an integrated platform for real-time school management and a hassle-free accreditation process. FCIS’s advanced technology solution further helps schools set the standards and advance the quality in matters of legislation and regulation.