Our main priorities
- Offer a user-friendly and device-agnostic system.
- Enable automated workflows and third-party integrations to meet the bespoke needs of our College.
- Connect the school community.
- Enhance administrative and learning experiences.
- Better engage the school community in student day-to-day activities.
How we selected our software partner
Prior to our partnership with Compass, the College operated multiple systems without centralised integration and lacked a unified learning management platform.
This led to a fragmented experience for both staff, who managed various applications for daily operations, and parents, who navigated multiple portals to access student information.
Recognising the need for an integrated solution, the College first established a clear vision and set of priorities for a school management and learning management system. Our aim was to find a partner aligned with our long-term goals—one who offered an intuitive, innovative, and collaborative platform. Key objectives included streamlining workflows across systems for teaching, learning, assessment, and reporting, and leveraging data-driven insights to enhance performance and efficiency.
With our vision defined, we undertook an extensive needs assessment (fig. 1) for a new learning management system before engaging prospective vendors. Each shortlisted vendor underwent a thorough analysis of their offerings which we compared to our needs assessment. Additionally, our focus group of 50 members completed surveys about the vendors and provided feedback which helped inform our decision.
Our implementation process
With Compass’s support, we organised introductory sessions for both staff and parents, ensuring all stakeholders were familiarised with the new system. We also conducted training using Compass resources such as the Knowledge Base and Training Modules. We appreciated the weekly meetings with Compass which helped achieve module rollouts that aligned with our implementation plan. The implementation plan was developed with the assistance of the Compass team. This is essential for gaining stakeholder buy-in and allows us to reference our vision and priorities throughout the change process, making it easier for stakeholders to accept.
We encouraged staff to take ownership of the product. Staff were informed of the timeline when the vision and priorities were presented, which meant they could better prepare for and adapt to the changes. For the implementation, we used “champions” and early adopters to deepen their knowledge of the Compass platform before rolling it out to a broader audience.
Change management was crucial to success.
Here’s how we ensured a transparent and smooth experience.
Multi-channel: Newsletters, regular updates, success stories, intranet resources, FAQ and posters and digital signage.
Educational workshops: Introductory sessions, Compass onsite training, tailored workshops, leadership briefings and strategic impact sessions.
Leadership sponsorship and advocacy: Leadership endorsement, designated champions within departments and recognition for workshop participation.
Feedback and continuous improvement: Surveys and polls are tools used to gather feedback and identify areas for improvement.
“We undertook this project on a relatively short timeline and were thankful to Compass for supporting us in actually getting started using Compass from the beginning of Term 1 2023 – only two months after we had agreed to the contract and much earlier than our projected timeline for vendor selection and uptake.”
Expectations and initial impressions of Compass
Implementing Compass enabled the College to consolidate six separate applications previously used for school management into one cohesive platform. This transition streamlined practices and processes, significantly reducing the administrative workload for teachers and staff while enhancing operational efficiency.
Since going live with Compass at the start of 2023, we have found the Chronicle module to have the biggest positive impact as it allows us to put a large amount of our student data in one place. We use Chronicle for behaviour reporting and commendations, file storage for learning support and NCCD data, contact records and more. It allows us to segment the college across the four schools, making it easy to use and find information about our students.
The Learning Task and Reporting functionalities have further streamlined assessment and reporting processes. As a result, teachers and parents have enjoyed being able to access students’ tasks and results in the same application rather than having to log into multiple programs.
Another module that has been very beneficial is Events as it saves time for teachers and staff and makes it easy for parents to consent and pay for excursions and camps. As it has the risk management component, it enables effective compliance reporting.
We’ve had the benefit of Compass sitting on top of our current SIS which took the stress out of having to do a hard cut over when we went live with Compass. The next phase is to look at further consolidation of legacy systems.
