Jenzabar now offers SONIS, a student information system (SIS) oriented around the needs of smaller higher education institutions. Jenzabar supports the former SONISWEB product since its acquisition of original developer RJM Systems in 2015.
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TeacherEase
Score 7.9 out of 10
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TeacherEase is a learning management system (LMS) for technology-rich K-12 classrooms -- especially 1:1 computing, BYO programs, or frequent users of laptop carts, designed to help teachers move through the technology adoption curve, from Common Goal Systems.
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.
TeacherEase is very user friendly for teachers to enter grades. It is more simplified and fewer steps than most student management programs. Other teachers find no problems following a few simple steps to enter grades. Other programs have multiple steps with multiple screens to complete the task of entering grades.
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.
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.
TeacherEase provides so many integrations of student management into one seamless program. Other programs are just one facet of the functions TeacherEase provides. TeacherEase encompasses so many of the features that other vendors provide as standalone products.
The district was able to reduce time-consuming training that other student management software needed in order to use them. TeacherEase was much more user friendly.
TeacherEase combined the student information as well as the gradebook into the same software. This alleviated having to have multiple software vendors or pay for multiple modules to operate.
TeacherEase is userfriendly and alleviates the constant need for tech support.
