Frequently asked questions
What is the cost of the application and services for higher education institutions?
Our prices is shown in our AWS Marketplace storefront is negotiable. Currently we offer monthy, yearly and two-year tiers with unlimited students, courses and analytics. We will work with you to understand your requirements and determine the best price for your organization.
What we can expect during the pilot?
A pilot usually involved two phases and can be completed in 2 weeks.
In the first phase, we provide the schema of the data that the application will ingest. The data is divided into three categories: student data, faculty data and location data. Student data include emails and course registrations. Faculty data include email accounts and course assignments. Location data include, classroom info include maximum allowed capacity and nominal capacity.
In the second phase, we ingest in the system test data for 20 students, 5 courses/sections and 5 locations. We provide to the institution test results from the QA environment that the system works. We debug issues that are specific to the institution.
After the pilot and after a decision was taken to proceed with production, we launch the web site that the university students will go to access the app e.g. back2classroom.institution.edu, we ingest all real data and launch the app in the production environment.
Is the application appropriate for conferences and other events?
The application can be deployed to support conferences, trade shows, sports and other events. Very soon by June 2021 our video analytics will allow safe return to all campus activities and to common areas such as arenas/ stadiums. Contact us if you want a partner for deployments outside the calssrooms.
Is the app be appropriate for secondary education / schools ?
Yes, the app is designed to address any institution that requires attendance control. We are working to attract sponsorships both corporate and at the state level to be able to offer the application at cost to schools.
What are the three main ways educational institutions benefit from the app?
First, the administration has complete control how any students can be in a classroom at anyone instant in time. Operational teams mark the seats that students are permitted to sit, include the number of seats as part of the data feed into the app per classroom and the app takes over from there. So they solve a logistical nightmare especially when they try to maximize the available capacity of seats they have across thousands of courses in the campus.
Second they have the ability to do contact tracing as the administration can retrieve the students that sat with the student of interest in all classes over the last two weeks.
Third, even after COVID is gone, they have an automatic way to mark student attendance and they are able to correlate attendance and academic performance. Further they can use the analytics as a planning tool to see the true demand for each course and assign the right space for it.
Can we use the app for Libraries and other common spaces in the campus?
Yes, the app can be used for every space that there is a need to have controlled attendance. In a library setting students are assigned a QR code that expires after a programmable period of time, configurable by the administration. We are working to provide even more flexibility in the open space setting via video analytics.