3 Ways an Online Form Builder Can Help During the COVID-19 Resurgence this Back-to-School

When COVID-19 forced schools to reimagine learning in the spring of 2020, Tennessee’s Hamilton County Schools purchased an online K-12 form builder to meet timely new data tracking needs. By choosing PowerSchool Ecollect Forms, the district was able to quickly and easily create forms to track student learning preferences, conduct wellness checks, collect signatures on student safety pledges, perform contact tracing, and more.

“We were able to stand up the form very quickly,” says Shannon Moody, Director of Accountability and Research at Hamilton County Schools, TN, “and then allow our parents to log into something already familiar to them through the parent portal, make their choice, and sign off. Immediately, in real time, (administrators) see that data of what parents were choosing for their students.”

Now, with the Delta variant upending many districts’ plans for a smooth back-to-school season, Hamilton County Schools can once again lean on these critical forms while creating any new forms needed for additional data tracking.

“Once we got our hands on the product and saw what it did, we had immediate uses for it. From there it just grew,” says Moody.

Hamilton County Schools can quickly configure PowerSchool Ecollect Forms to meet their evolving needs, so they’re better informed and better able to keep students safe, healthy, and learning in the location most appropriate for them.

Here are three top uses for an online form builder this back-to-school season to meet COVID resurgence challenges.

1. Track Student and Staff Vaccination Status

During the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak, vaccines were still a long time away. Now that they are readily available, many schools and districts have decided to track vaccination statuses for staff and in-person learners.

Ecollect Forms offers form templates for both student and staff vaccination tracking to make it quick and easy to get started collecting this key data. If you want to add or change the questions on the template, all forms are easily editable. You can even build a form from scratch in minutes. Data captured with Ecollect Forms is easy to access and report on, and form fields can be tied directly back to PowerSchool SIS, making it simple to get to the data you need to make key safety decisions.

“During COVID-19, the reporting feature was what made it possible to keep track of form completion. Not worrying about parents having to come in person made it easier for the school secretaries,” says Chris Gurrera, Information Systems Manager at New Jersey’s Hamilton Township School District.  

2. Learn Who Wishes to Opt Out of Wearing Masks 

Another new data point that many schools and districts need to track this year is which students have been given permission by their parents to opt out of wearing face coverings when attending school in person. As guidelines differ at the local and state levels (or they may continue to shift), teachers need to have a clear understanding of who should be wearing a mask in their classroom at any given time so they can maximize student safety while following district policy and respecting parental wishes. With continually evolving policies, Ecollect Forms makes it easy to quickly create this kind of form and also disable it if it’s no longer needed.  

“Creating a form is super easy. You can add or change something with ease.” Says Stephanie Stambaugh, Technology Support Specialist at Mississippi’s South Callaway R-II School District.  

3. Gather Student Learning Preferences 

When students and staff were sent home at the outset of the pandemic, we had to conceive of new ways to keep the learning going. Ultimately, three options emerged: traditional in-person learning, remote learning from home, and hybrid learning options. Having a way to poll families on their preferred learning method for their child became imperative so everyone could learn safely.  

“We’ve used Ecollect Forms to ask families during each survey window whether they want to remain virtual or come in-seat,” says Jeremy Ohnui, Data Specialist at Michigan’s Troy School District. “The data is then used to fuel several business intelligence reports (particularly through Microsoft Power BI) to aid administration in capacity planning and reporting to the Board of Education. We’ve got our staff accustomed to being able to quickly survey families by just creating another form.” 

While many schools and districts have kept fully remote learning options available for the 2021-22 school year, most have anticipated a return to in-person learning this fall. With the Delta variant complicating that return to full in-person learning, surveys for learning preference are again a critical need. Surveys are used not only used to collect initial back-to-school preferences, but also used for quarterly decisions as the pandemic situation evolves. 

Why Choose Ecollect Forms as Your Online Form Builder?

As the COVID-19 resurgence continues to showcase the need for timely, flexible, and customizable online data collection, every school and district should consider how an online form builder can improve student and staff safety. With the ability to create, edit, share, and report on unlimited forms, right from the PowerSchool SIS portals your staff and families are already familiar with, Ecollect Forms allows you to gather the exact data you need while saving everyone time, money, and stress.  

And while Ecollect Forms can be a vital tool for collecting timely COVID-19 data, it has limitless other data collection uses year-round. From permission slips and transportation requests to device tracking, parent-teacher conferences, and more, the days of paper forms, deciphering bad handwriting, and chasing down families for missing data will be over. 

“We’ve started to transition all our permission slips to Ecollect Forms, and the response has been incredible,” says Chris.  

About the Author 

Maddie Bala is the Senior Director of Solution Marketing at PowerSchool for the Student Information System and Enrollment lines of business. Maddie has spent her entire career in education, starting as an elementary school music teacher and eventually transitioning to a career in education technology. Maddie has been with PowerSchool for seven years and has held roles in Sales, Solution Engineering, and Marketing. Maddie considers herself to be a connector and relationship-builder whose key strength is inspiring others around the products and solutions she represents.