Turning a Crisis Into a Triumph

Background

This is the story of how the third largest canton of Switzerland implemented the use of Teamup calendars in all its school structures to cater to quickly changing communication needs amidst the Covid19 pandemic. 

Who: Schools in Canton of Vaud in Switzerland

What: Use of Teamup calendars in its 93 school structures

Trigger: COVID-19, first nation-wide lock down in March 2020

The third largest canton of Switzerland, French-speaking Vaud is in the western part of the country and has a population of almost 800,000 people. 

Among the 800,000, there are over 92,000 pupils within mandatory education. 

When 92,000 pupils and almost 10,000 teachers were sent to continue school work via remote working during the lockdown of spring 2020, the school administrators were confronted by a new challenge: how to guarantee a smooth transition of information between schools, teachers, pupils, and parents?

The Start:

A New Communication Platform, Quickly!

Before the pandemic, all school structures, schools, and classes had various ways to communicate with pupils and their families. A paper-based notebook was the default communication option, and the implementation of any other tools and platforms was up to the individual teachers and schools. 

In the new remote learning environment, schools needed to create a new system that would allow them to pass on information about upcoming virtual classes, transfer homework assignments and learning materials, and keep pupils and their parents informed about all of the above. 

To overcome the challenge, a solution was needed quickly. 

Fortunately, a veteran educator, François Jaeger from the cantonal school administration, quickly came up with an idea. He had previously used a collaborative calendar app, Teamup, to publish a calendar of school holidays and school weeks. He thought the app might lend itself to this kind of use as well, so he brought the idea up within the cantonal administration.

Within one week, he managed to set up the first iteration of the Teamup system in the school environment. It covered over 93 school structures within the district and linked over 92,000 pupils and their families with almost 10,000 teachers. 

Early Stages:

An Easy Solution without Additional Accounts and Passwords

The biggest strength of the Teamup system from day one was its simplicity. 

François Jaeger and his team set up a calendar with an individual link for all the classes: approximately 4,900 classes in total. 

Anyone with the link – a teacher, pupil, or parent – could find the calendar and access the information regarding the class content, video sessions and learning material. No accounts to create, no passwords to memorise. One simple click was enough. 

“The fact that Teamup didn’t require all users to create an account, a password and then confirm it was a huge asset. We believe we would have lost many users if we had asked them to create an account,” François Jaeger reminisces. 

Along the Way:

Tackle the Resistance with Simple Education

The situation was stressful for everyone back then, François Jaeger reminds us. Families had to juggle remote work, childcare, and home-schooling, while teachers were forced to adapt their teaching method and adopt new technologies overnight. 

In a complex situation like this, a simple one-click solution was like a gift. Jaeger points out that the Teamup interface is also extremely easy for teachers to use as it reminds them of a text editor. No additional, distracting features: just quick, functional tools to allow them to focus on their work.

Another challenge many technological implementations face is resistance to use of new tools and systems. The educational teams in the canton of Vaud worked through the implementation phase with the help of easy, actionable training. 

The core of support given to teachers and users of the new Teamup calendars were video tutorials created by Jaeger’s team. 

Tutorials were short and sweet, 2-3 minutes maximum, to keep viewers engaged.  

Wave two:

More Organised and Tailored Calendars

While the goal of the first implementation was to offer a functional solution to ride out this crisis, the following summer and autumn months gave the implementation team a chance to revise the solution and upgrade it in several ways. 

Over the autumn semester in 2020, the cantonal school administration improved the customisation of links, so that a link shared with families automatically only showed the information relevant to their child’s class. 

Changes were also made to sharing settings to gain better control over the editing rights or lesson plans and content. The number of calendar events continued to grow steadily and surpassed 300,000 in spring 2021.  

“The first iteration was set up very quickly, which was really impressive”, admires the Teamup co-founder and CEO Jenny Zhan. “When it came to refine the implementation for a new school year, we were more prepared for the challenges and uncertainty that may lie ahead for changes of this scale.” Thanks to a highly skilled implementation team at canton Vaud and a generous product offer by Teamup, the year-long pilot project allowed each of the schools to independently explore best ways to match their practical needs with Teamup’s unique capabilities. The pilot was successfully concluded before another new school year started!

After the Crisis:

The Emergency Solution Turns into an Innovative Tool

While the crisis has subsided and schools have avoided mass closures, Teamup has found its way into everyday school life. 

Cantons’ school structures have also found innovative ways to leverage the system; for example, many schools were able to use Teamup to manage resources, reservations or integrate class information to schools’ websites.

“Some schools use the system to manage reservations, such as computer lab bookings or iPad case reservations. Others integrate special excursions to the school website, so that parents can see the upcoming events,” Jaeger gives two examples.  

What started as a fervent search for a functional system to link schools and families amidst the pandemic has turned into a successful digital transformation, which has improved the communication between schools and families in the long term. 

By now the schools have adapted to the system well and use it in their own unique ways. Thanks to the tool’s adaptability, teachers and schools are discovering many new ways to use the tool as they get more familiar with Teamup.

“Teachers are discovering, for example, that they are able to plan their lessons using Teamup without revealing the unfinished plans to students or even their colleagues. As we continue to improve the adaptablity and the scalability of the solutions, we are excited about many innovative ways to be supporting our schools in the years ahead,” Jenny Zhan says. 

Timeline: Key milestones and Iterations

March 2020

• Schools close due to a national lockdown
• First iteration of Teamup for schools set up
• Teachers use Teamup to communicate assignments, lessons, and share materials with pupils
• 40,000+ events added in the first week
• 27,000+ documents uploaded in the first week
• 100,000 users in the first week

May 2020

• Pupils progressively return to classrooms

August 2020

• Autumn semester begins

October 2020

• Schools continue to operate
• Second iteration of Teamup set up in schools
• Link-sharing is optimised
• Calendars are set for each class separately

2021

• Schools adapt the use of Teamup to meet their needs
• New use cases are adapted, such as resource reservation

2022 and onwards

• Continued match-making between the needs of the schools and what Teamup is capable of, such as draft lesson planning directly on the calendar for teachers with privacy protection.
  

5 Ways to Use a Teamup Calendar in Schools

1. Classroom agenda for lessons and events with links, attached documents and images. Serves an audience of 190,000 parents, 9,300 teachers and 95,000 students. 
2. Parents’ Agenda for different teaching cycles or half-cycles that parents can subscribe to via their smartphones. 
3. School agenda for communication between teachers, staff management and school directors. 
4. Resource booking for rooms, sport arenas, devices and hardware.
5. Integrations: MS Teams integration, website integration, external calendars (Pedagogical Infos, Holidays VD, Weeks VD), Outlook and other calendar integration. 

This embedded calendar helps parents stay informed of their kids’ schedule and activities at school. It is always up to date, accessible anywhere on the web or on a smartphone. Imagine how many calls and other forms of inquiry to the school administration, along with all the stress and time that can be eliminated because this information is so easily accessible to the parents!

8 Perks of the Teamup Calendar System

1. No account creations or passwords needed
2. Simple sharing with one link
3. Intuitive interface which is easy for anyone to use
4. Link sharing can be customised with various access permissions
5. Works on a desktop as well as mobile devices
6. Bulk import and setup automation with .csv files
7. Shared management at multiple levels, simple and secure
8. Easy to scale to meet growing needs of organisations

Practical Advice for Getting Started

• Setting up a system like Teamup is an iterative process. Create the first version, see what works and what needs to be improved. 
• Set aside time for testing the system. Testing allows you to see how end users perceive the interface and how the set-up could be improved.
• Try to imagine the future. What kind of needs will your organisation have in 3 months, 6 months, or a year? How could Teamup meet those demands?
• Invest time in learning to use the tool. Even the basic features can be used in most creative ways.
• Automate what you can. In Teamup, for example, names of users can be imported in the form of a csv file. This makes user management quicker. 

Facts & Figures

In Canton of Vaud, the Teamup implementation included: 

93 school structures

4,931 classes

9,945 teachers

92,717 pupils

In a Nutshell: Case Study Recap

Why was the transition launched?

During a period of remote teaching and due to an increasing number of absences, teachers needed an efficient and simple way to communicate with families and pupils.

What made the situation challenging?

Schools weren’t using a platform or a tool that could have been adapted to meet the needs of teachers as the COVID-19 crisis hit. 

Why Teamup?

Team members had good experience with the software previously, and it met the required criteria of simplicity and ease of use. It was quick to set up under exceptional conditions. 

Which challenges were confronted along the road?

The implementation needed to be extremely quick, however the staff did not have experience with Teamup. The challenges were confronted with high-quality educational materials on how to use the software, mainly tutorial videos.

What makes Teamup a great tool to develop in the future?

Teamup is extremely scalable and adaptable which makes it a perfect solution for dynamic, quickly changing environments.