Alma SIS 사용 후기 및 리뷰

Glad we're using Alma

장점:

Unlike other SIS's, Alma actually looks and feels like it was made in the 2010's. The system is solid, and has essentially every feature a smaller school like ours would want (and many more that we don't need to use). The gradebook is excellent, and it's easy to transfer classes and students from year-to-year. Their customer service has been great (we accidentally deleted multiple report cards in different places the other day and they quickly and helpfully solved our issue by restoring to a backup), and they are continually adding features and improving the platform. And the cost has been at least 50% less than quotes we were getting from major competitors. Many reasons to switch to Alma.

단점:

The latest transcripts update was helpful - there are still a couple of features we'd like on the transcripts front, but that's mostly because our school has a unique curriculum. This is totally just a personal preference, but I'd also like to be able to search for classes in the search feature in addition to contacts.

One site for all functions, that's every teacher needs

주석: Most of the time it's fantastic. I can check the report and study progress not only for this year, but many years ago. And I can see students' progress for other subjects also, it helps me to have an overall vision and understanding to the student's study condition.

장점:

One site for all functions On alma teachers can take attendance, record study progress, make report card, contact parents and students easily through email automatically, report incident. Parents and students can check the attendance, study progress and contact teacher as well.

단점:

Sometimes it's out of service. It happened many times already. Showed a Bad Gateway.

Alma review

주석: pleasant, would recommend to colleagues in search of a new SIS

장점:

Ease of use, colorful UI, plenty of features

단점:

Lack of honor role option on report card, newness to our state has caused some road blocks

고려된 대안: PowerSchool

Alma SIS 선택 이유: Needed a more user friendly SIS for both staff and families

Alma SIS 전환 이유: Cheaper price than powerschool with similar features

The absolute worst year I've had as a professional school counselor.

주석: none.

장점:

You can log in quickly. The people who have come in to assist with how horrific this year has been have been mostly humble and at least tried to help.

단점:

Absolutely impossible to have what we need at our hands as high school counselors. Everything is laborious or actually impossible to do. It has taken MONTHS to get even tiny bits of advances to make this usable. Transcripts, which are an essential piece for our kids, took 6 months to have functioning, and they're still inaccurate. Scheduling is months behind because the programming is inept for a school this size. It lacks confidentiality and privacy that's important for our students. Household units are not available, access to other buildings makes it impossible to know who has siblings and other people living in their home, which poses a safety issue when filing reports to CPS, report cards are still completely wrong and inaccurate. I could truly go on for an awfully long time, but I digress. At the end of the day, I think I can vouch for every person in my building when I say that this program was rolled out in a deplorable way, changes and improvements are slow and sometimes non-existent, and it's made me reconsider even working in this corporation due to how terrible this system is. A program in its infancy has been detrimental to every single stakeholder in this corporation, and I've been disappointed since the first day of training in August.

Adopting Alma SIS

주석: Although we're still on the learning curve, it's been a very positive experience.

장점:

Best part of the interface: It's very intuitive, logical, and organized. Best part for the tech crew: The tech help staff are very helpful, professional, and supportive.

단점:

Worst part of the interface: The colors can't be customized to be our school colors. Worst part for the tech crew: The people running the system can't impersonate another user, which makes it hard to see what the user is seeing when you're trying to help someone.

Alma Software Review (SBG school)

주석: Support has been very helpful, typically it seems we have questions that either haven't been asked before or are not implemented yet. Faculty/staff is able to access the reports tab which helps them track students and contacts quickly and has access to student records and class schedules.

장점:

Alma is easier than our former software and allows us to use our Standards Based Grading which is our priority. Parents were able to quickly learn how to use the system and the attendance feature is great. Students were also able to learn the system and although it doesn't have a comprehensive calendar with their schedules and our school activities, they were able to use the daily tab to track their classes.

단점:

The calendar is static and unable to be exported to phones/other calendars so we had to create an app for that. The reports are not as in-depth as needed and we aren't able to save our filters/criteria that we use often. They are still working on SBG reporting so many items we aren't able to track as we typically do through reports. The report card set up is limited for what we need in our report cards; we had to use every work-around to get a report card as we needed, but they do work now.

Alma SIS review

주석: Good, we really like the software and it meets our needs at the elementary level. Their customer support is excellent.

장점:

Alma is intuitive and easy to navigate. Setup and implementation was smooth, overall, it is very user friendly and easy for teachers and families to navigate. The reporting is excellent and the report cards look professional. Accessing data is easy on a day to day basis.

단점:

There are some simple features missing, like schedule send, more editing options with school announcements which would have a bigger benefit.

Alma Joy! Sweet as Chocolate

주석: 5 Star! I work with report cards and transcripts. My families love the electronic report cards sent right to their email for their convenience.

장점:

User friendly. Thinks how I think. Attractive. Love the webinars. Everyone in Customer Engagement and the Techs are so sweet and caring.

단점:

Can't really think of anything at this moment.

Lesson Learned

주석: Great and communicative. The really know their clients.

장점:

Simple to use, integrates well with other programs, and keeps getting better

단점:

there are glitches, they fix them quickly

Great product

장점:

It's a very professional and easy to use platform

단점:

The price is high compared to the features needed for our use

Alma Review

주석: Overall this has been a great student management system from the teacher perspective. It was easy to learn, and just takes some time to get used to the new/different features after transitioning from a different system.

장점:

Alma is very user friendly; you can figure it out without much training at all. The gradebook has great color coding and customization options. Many features have streamlined options such as the "mark all present" for attendance.

단점:

Alma does not currently have the ability to link standards to gradebook assignments in a way that categorizes sub-scores on report cards. I also wish it had features such as a "fill-down" button for gradebook assignments. There's also my multiple "click-steps" to entering a a score in the gradebook, which is tedious at times.

We are happy with Alma

주석: We are very pleased with Alma and the implementation process.

장점:

Its ease of use is perfect, Easily adaptable to our school environment.

단점:

there are a few minor features that are missing

Moving in good directions

주석: Far better than any other software I’ve used to manage classes, but still approaches the problem from an administrative, quantitative standpoint, rather than a student development standpoint.

장점:

There are concessions made to narrative evaluation, which is great for an alternative school. Each block, the system gets cleaner and easier to handle as we write our evaluations for the kids, and, since our output is so much more complex than a single letter grade, it’s really important that the cognitive overhead for each evaluation be as small as possible. I’m really gratified that Alma continually improves this aspect.

단점:

Touchscreen integration is clunky but getting less so. It’s often hard to see what I’m doing, as column headers disappear as I scroll. There are a bunch of interface elements like this that make interactions awkward or repetitive, which induces frustration and boredom, which leads to errors. It feels like evaluations are 90° off. I want to be able to evaluate a student, but it’s easiest to evaluate not only one class at a time, but one skill for the whole class at a time. It discourages thinking holistically about individual students and encourages comparing them in each skill. I think this makes it harder to do evaluations and makes them less accurate. Daily evaluation notes go nowhere. We take attendance each day, which is dutifully reported, but any qualitative expression we have is thrown away. This does a great disservice to students because it means that, in the course of a day, it’s harder to make qualitative assessments of a student, leaving us only with their attendance data — a quantification that’s easy on a database designer but is hostile to learning.

Alma SIS in a small, rural, school district.

주석: The staff at Alma are excellent. The transition was difficult because it needed to occur over a short timeframe. But the support was there and we pulled it off.

장점:

Alma integrated well with Google Apps and provided integrations with other third party software. The interface and design were well thought out with the end-user in mind. Running reports and editing the data are easy and intuitive - and those are the most important aspects of an SIS. The support was excellent, and always available through the Alma Academy.

단점:

We would like a module that would allow our cafeteria software to integrate so parents could see their child's lunch balance in the same place they view their child's schedule, teacher, and fees. There were also growing pains, as state-required data collections differ in every state and sometimes this meant there were duplicate or similar data fields that confused some of our clerical staff.

A flexible and responsive product. Unbelievably effective and efficient.

주석: We have reduced our printing costs, improved communication with parents, and successfully submitted our PIMS state reports. Communication with Alma has been great! The online resources and chat feature are very effective. Chat is answered within 10 minutes, often in less time. They have been responsive to our needs. Feedback from the teachers about their use of Alma has been very positive.

장점:

The user interface is very intuitive. Everything is where one would expect it to be within the program. Migration to Alma from our previous SIS was so straight forward and seamless that I was not sure the SIS was going to be ready on schedule. It was ready on schedule and very few issues have been encountered. Issuing digital report cards is very easy and our parents love it. We also communicate with our parents on a regular basis by using the email feature in Alma. Parents also have expressed satisfaction with the parent portal for checking their student's grades. Teachers find it very easy to use the gradebook.

단점:

Any concerns/needs we have expressed to Alma have resulted in instant inquiry and potential solutions.

Not for High Schools

장점:

Honestly tough to answer. It’s nice as a club sponsor to be able to email whole groups of students (not just those in my classes).

단점:

Basically every single function/aspect is worse than Infinite Campus. Entering grades, making/changing seating charts, printing roster spreadsheets are all more difficult and time consuming than IC. This program is not suited for secondary schools.

It took a little getting used to at first, but I really ended up liking it.

장점:

First of all, I liked how often improvements were made throughout the year. It seemed that ALMA was always looking for ways to continue to improve the software in order to make it more user friendly. As a PE teacher, my grading system is quite different from the classroom teacher. I have 19 different classes (K-6) with about 30 students in each class. Each class would attend PE 2x each week. At first, it was very arduous to submit all the grades, one student at a time, at the end of each term. One of the improvements that occurred during this past school year, was to be able to submit an entire class's grades at the same time! That one change lightened my work load tremendously! And made it so I looked forward to doing grades instead of dreading it!

단점:

As I became more familiar with the features of the software, I became more comfortable using it, but I regret that it took me into my 2nd year using it, to become the most comfortable. Even so, the thing I liked the least about using this software was when I needed to make changes to the lesson details and maneuvering around the different tabs was a but cumbersome to have. Too many steps to have to make the changes I needed to. Hope that makes sense. Thanks!

Excellent Customer Service and Attractive Design

주석: Excellent communication with between admin, staff and school families. A plethora of helpful articles and a very responsive tech support make Alma very easy and satisfying to use.

장점:

Alma has a very clean aesthetic with intuitively easy to use. The customer service is top-notch. Even during the pandemic, the response time has been exceptional. The techs are supportive, humorous, collegial, yet professional. Really happy with this platform.

단점:

I am looking forward to their continued build-out of the transcript function of their platform. They register all suggestions with their engineers, and once they get enough "up votes" they add them to the next roll-out. Can't ask for a more egalitarian system of continuous improvement.

"Experience the Power of Alma's Innovative Software Platform!"

주석: We are using Alma to solve several business problems. Firstly, Alma enables us to manage our library/media collections and resources more efficiently and effectively. This includes providing our users with easy access to electronic resources and print materials, along with tracking and managing our collection. Additionally, Alma allows us to better serve our patrons by providing them with a more intuitive and user-friendly interface for searching, discovering, and accessing our library materials.The benefits we have realized with Alma include improved organization, ease of access and access to electronic resources, increased collaboration, and improved user experience. Alma has made it easier to manage our library materials, given our patrons greater access to resources, and allowed us to provide more personalized services. Additionally, Alma has allowed us to easily share resources between users and collaborate with other libraries in our area. Finally, Alma has enabled us to provide our patrons with a more intuitive, user-friendly interface for searching, discovering, and accessing our library materials.

장점:

The most impactful features of a product depend on a variety of factors such as the type of product and the industry it serves. Generally, features that provide the most value to customers, such as ease of use and integration with existing business processes, are most impactful. Additionally, features that provide a significant advantage over competitors, such as advanced analytics or automation, are also likely to be very impactful.

단점:

I feel that the product could be improved by adding a feature to allow users to easily customize the look and feel of their project dashboard. It would be helpful to have more options for customizing the layout and design of the dashboard. Additionally, it can be difficult to find specific tasks within a project or to quickly filter tasks. It would be great to have a feature to allow users to quickly filter tasks by keyword or tag. Integration with existing business processes could also be improved by providing more options for integrating with external services, such as Slack or Google Calendar.

Love this tool. Love the customer service even more.

주석: We moved from a very expensive and ridiculously difficult system to this one and it has made things so much easier. So far we use Alma mainly for the Grade Book and Attendance and it works really well. Attendance has gone through some changes since we signed up in September 2015 and this has caused a little confusion but once you understand what's happening (contact support) it's quite simple to use. Don't let this deter you though because I've already been assured that changes are coming. Speaking of which you won't get empty promises from these folks. I've requested a couple of updates since we signed up and some were even implemented within a couple of weeks. Everyone is nice to you when they're trying to get your money. The true test of a company's motives is the way they treat their customers after the sale. Well Alma have passed this test with flying colors. Every user (teacher and admin) has direct access to support so queries are usually dealt with pretty quickly since there is no need for support requests to go through me :) One of the best things you can do when you get started is to go through the online documentation in the support area. Many of my questions were answered right there. Be warned though - you may need to actually read :O As far as I can tell there is no perfect system out there (and I tried a ton of them before I found Alma) but with the constant improvements, beautiful interface and top notch customer support you'd be hard pressed to find a better solution. Creating reports cards was actually enjoyable and teachers were very pleasantly surprised by the simplicity of the process on their end. We also haven't been compelled to adopt all the modules at once. Adopting one small section at a time has made transitioning from our old, very outdated processes quite smooth and I for one can't wait to dive into the other features like parent portals and school fees. You guys have a fan for life here :)

Alma user

주석: Alma is great for keeping all students, staff, family, etc., in one place with numerous options for reporting.

장점:

The software is easy to use and produces so many report options.

단점:

During Covid the response time to questions/problems has sometimes taken over a day. When a teacher or parent needs something the delay in resolution leaves the school appearing less professional.

Grading Software

장점:

ALMA allowed us to do standards based grading in a very efficient and seamless manner. ALMA had Florida standards uploaded for us, so it made it very easy to choose standards for grading. It was very easy to design the template that we wanted to use for our report cards. Responses to questions were almost immediate. ALMA is very intuitive to use - especially for someone like me who is technologically challenged.

단점:

Nothing stands out as a negative. I would be searching to find something that dissatisfied us.

Amazing ALMA

주석: As I alluded to the Alma support staff is excellent and we have our SJA support staff for Alma too so we are doing well with the transition. Teachers have more at their finger tips for flexibility with report cards and that makes all of us so happy...actually its terrific to see them so pleased.

장점:

There are so MANY things at your fingertips as you delve into this great student information system! If you can't find them and/or understand them Alma's excellent support team will walk you through it.

단점:

Change in all facets of life is a challenge. Being accustomed to my previous SIS program there are things I miss and just can't have. Student Attendance is an important part of my daily life. It frustrates me that though student names are still alphabetical they are presented in reports by first name not last. In a true emergency LAST NAMES are what we are accustomed to look for. Sure I can go in and make up my own special document from excel but most likely NOT during an emergency.

Excellent customer service!

장점:

Alma has been a great solution for our attendance, grading and communication systems needs. There is a seamless integration with Google classroom and it's very easy to communicate with a single student, their family or the whole class. Health information is readily available and I can also see a student's attendance and progress in other classes. When I have contacted ALMA for assistance, the response is almost immediate. There are emails with information about new features and how to integrate them. They have been extremely responsive to educators' needs during COVID-19 homeschooling this spring .

단점:

It would be nice to be able to change a grade transferred from Google classroom without needing to go into that assignment in Google. Automatic grade updates or syncing from Google classroom would be helpful too, as I often forget to re-sync Google assignments in ALMA.

Alma makes it easy

장점:

Alma is a great software package. The gradebook feature is easy to use on the administrator end. If features need adjustment, you can contact the company and they LISTEN!

단점:

There's nothing to not like. Teachers and staff are still learning to use the features, and that's typically the most difficult thing - getting folks to change practices based on old software.