Featured Project

"MS Datastep is a key partner. Their ability to understand complex assignments and deliver targeted results consistently, has been critical to our success in several major endeavors.”

- Joe O'Conner
President, Kalpa Systems

Technology
SQL Server 2000
Active Server Pages (ASP)

The idea
Visionaries at KALPA Systems saw a need in the education market for a system to manage continuing education requirements. They approached MS Datastep, Inc. to develop an on-line application to track individual professional development activities of teachers, staff and administrators. The challenge was to design a site that monitors federal, state and individual district requirements. It must also eliminate the administrators paper process and allow teachers to track there own progress.

No Child Left Behind
President Bush passed new teacher requirement laws on January 8th, 2002, requiring school systems to prove their staff are highly qualified. Continued enhancements to the PDM web design have provided districts with an easy to manage system for organizing teacher qualifications and creating state and federally accepted electronic reports.

The step up
A pilot web application was developed in three months for the Troy, Michigan school district, which has 600 users. The feedback from this initial implementation lead to a full featured application within the year. The site now handles over 10,000 users and 16 school districts from Michigan and Indiana. The Professional Development Manager (PDM) features a robust registration system with over 150,000 course enrollments to date.

The registration system is simple for teachers to use, but provides some very complex features required by school districts. The relational database allows for 2 kinds of registration, viewed in 3 different ways. Teachers can pick from district course lists via a keyword search or a calendar display. They can also enter a "special request" for classes not found in the catalog, and ask for credit toward their continuing education requirements.

Districts have several way to monitor and control registration requests. They can let staff register for catalog courses without restriction, or require up to two levels of approval from supervisors and/or administrators. To further control attendance, a validation process is available with proof of attendance features. These optional control measures are very reassuring for administrators, and are available on a course by course basis.

The system continues to be enhanced based on user requests. Kalpa has been steadily adding new districts, and current schools eagerly sign up to participate again each year. MS Datastep has been there for all the systems development needs, and will continue to be there as the Professional Development Manager grows.