Anthology Student vs. Jenzabar SONIS

I think that CampusNexus Student does what it is created to do. If you are looking for a customizable system to track student data, I have no complaints. If you are looking for the newest, shiniest software, this might not be for you. While it can be glitchy sometimes, and feels outdated, it does its job and I have never felt like I couldn't do what I need to do because of any of those things.

We often had students who came and took a class or completed a program, left, and then came back for something else at a later time. It was nice to be able to have someone in Jenzabar SONIS with multiple statuses. They could be in as a Student for the current class while still being in as an Alumni for the program they had graduated from. Most of our programs are set up so the students within that program are all taking the same courses at the same time. The bulk registration feature made it easy to enroll one student and then use that student's enrollment to quickly enroll all of the others in the program. That was a huge time saver. We had letters and emails that we wanted to send out at specific times in the application process. The Activity tool in Jenzabar SONIS made it easy for us to have some things that were automatically added to a person's record and others that we could add as needed. We could then run timed letters or emails and get our communication sent out. We had some challenges with Jenzabar SONIS because we have a number of certificate programs that are only one semester in length. We often had students who would complete one certificate (program) in the fall and then complete another one in the spring. Many of the reports pulled data only for the active enrollment so we had to go back and manually pull the data for the enrollment from the other semester if we needed something for the full school year.

• Particularly well, CampusNexus identifies at-risk students. In our school, and in any school, but in many city schools or schools with a lack of parent involvement or large populations, it is crucial to be able to identify students at risk of failing or struggling. This is something that is extremely effectively done here.
• An additional strength I see is the ability to track graduate requirements. This is easily shared with students, parents, and the rest of the administration, to track and assist in student growth.
• Academic records need to be shared and sent to colleges, parents and other high schools. Controlling academic records is a strength because it tallies the entire career of a student. Using this system helps to solidify communication.

• Great value
• Built in reports are great, but it also has add on reporting that is fantastic.
• Hosting they offer is phenomenal nearly no downtime, ever!

• Support and resolution of issues can be slow, even major issues that interrupt business operations
• Developers need higher quality control in their processes to mitigate bugs and defects
• Solution architects need higher level of ownership in aligning configurations with business processes
• Financial aid needs greater automation without requiring the purchase of the specific financial aid automation module

• SONIS sorts my advisees by class and then by name. This is NOT useful. There should be an option for sorting by name only. I advise almost fifty students. It wastes my time looking for them in the sophomore listing, then the junior listing......
• When registration of a student for semester courses is complete, there should be an option to print out only the courses scheduled, NOT the entire page which shows available courses at the bottom.
• SONIS sometimes kicks me out for no reason.

I have not come across other platforms that can do what CampusNexus provides. There are platforms such as Skedula for tracking grades. There are add-ins to websites such as MoodleRooms to provide curriculum and content management support. However, I have not found a platform that provides grades, curriculum, key functions for enrollment and tracking your own academic progress as well as analytical abilities. CampusNexus provides the output of data and results from a wide range of data sets. Tracking the data and being able to output it into charts and graphics for all educators, administration, and politicians can improve the culture of a school district. Providing all of this data can transform an entire educational institution.

We changed databases in 2011 because the company we were with was going to quit supporting our software. We evaluated a number of different SISs available at the time and felt Jenzabar SONIS provided the best tools for our school. Most of the others were either geared more for adult education, individual course offerings or for schools that primarily had degree-seeking students. We needed something that could address both needs.We felt Jenzabar SONIS did that best of the ones we reviewed.

• It helps us manage our current students

• Facilitates grade input by faculty.
• Facilitates course enrollment by students.
• Facilitates viewing student records and determining progress to program completion.