Best Curriculum Management Software

What is Curriculum Management Software?

What are the Common Features of Curriculum Management Software?

What are the Benefits of Curriculum Management Software?

Who Uses Curriculum Management Software?

Teachers and professors: The most likely users of curriculum management software are those writing the curriculum. These are typically teachers at the K-12 level and professors at the college level. Instructors use these tools to design their curriculum, plan individual lessons, add materials, and share their work with other educators.

Curriculum coordinators: School administrators responsible for overseeing curriculum development across an institution use curriculum software to get a higher-level view of educators’ course plans. A curriculum coordinator can use these tools to monitor the curriculums created or modified by individual teachers or teams. Having plans from multiple teachers available allows curriculum coordinators to spot redundancies or opportunities for collaboration.

Department chairs: Faculty who lead an academic department use curriculum management software similar to curriculum coordinators: to guide the development of the various curriculums that faculty in their department are creating. Access to up-to-date plans from multiple teachers streamlines the process of ensuring the curriculums meet the department’s standards.

Administrative evaluators: Supervisors often evaluate teachers and professors on their ability to plan effective instruction. An administrator responsible for evaluating educator performance might use curriculum management software to view an instructor’s plans as part of their professional review.

Software Related to Curriculum Management Software

Related software solutions that can be used together with curriculum management software include:

Student information systems (SIS): Student information systems (SIS)  or student management systems track all student data. Teachers, students, parents, and educational institutes use these solutions. Through SIS integration of curriculum management systems, students, parents, and educators can access all relevant information to the school.

Learning management systems (LMS): Learning management systems (LMS) allow schools to access course material from anywhere. Educators rely on LMS for curriculum and content management and for allowing students to take control of the learning process.

Education ERP systems:  Education ERP systems are used by employees in the school district office to manage the resources of the school district as a whole, as well as by office staff at individual schools. Colleges and universities often have employees in multiple offices who use one or more aspects of an ERP system, including enrollment, accreditation, and academic advising. Adding an integrated ERP system to a curriculum management software solution provides a seamless way to manage both course catalog management and school resources in a single system.

Challenges with Curriculum Management Software

As an education software tool, curriculum management software faces two key challenges to potential buyers: curriculum learning standards and a lack of educational software integrations.

Incomplete learning standards: In the United States, educators are responsible for curriculum mapping that aligns with the learning outcomes created by school district authorities. Each state’s government determines its standard learning requirements, there are dozens of different sets of standards, and a given curriculum product may not come pre-loaded with all of them. Suppose standards alignment is a focus for a school considering purchasing curriculum management software. In that case, administrators should investigate whether the potential curriculum management system has the standards that their teachers need to avoid the inefficient practice of copying and pasting standards from government websites.

Lack of integrations: Some curriculum management products integrate with a range of learning management systems, student information systems, and other edtech products, giving administrators the flexibility to use the tools with systems they already have. These integrations streamline sharing lessons, assignments, and assessments directly with students, so teachers don’t have to enter student information or find another avenue for sharing manually. However, some curriculum platforms may have few integrations or may lack integrations with the software a school uses, making it important for buyers to research a curriculum product’s integrations before purchasing.

How to Buy Curriculum Management Software

Identifying the teacher's exact needs may prove difficult, and that's the starting point of determining which curriculum management software to purchase. Suppose the school requires a software solution that measures student success based on curriculum plans. In that case, they can visit G2 to see a comparative analysis of what other institutes in the school district have purchased.

Once it is determined which specific features and curriculum tools would best serve the buyer, a criteria checklist should be developed, preferably by the institution's learning objectives. The list serves as a guide to remind the buyer of non-negotiable items such as built-in assessment capabilities or program accreditation requirements. In addition, supplying the teacher or professor with a syllabi resource library would also serve as a bonus feature.

Compare Curriculum Management Software Products

Buyers have multiple options to compare curriculum management systems; the first thing to identify is essential "must-haves."

Create a long list

Long lists are created by eliminating the options that do not provide critical functionality. For instance, buyers looking for curriculum management software should consider something other than software exclusively for course data entry. A typical long list should include at most ten products unless many options are similar. In this case, additional details like curriculum design or professor approval workflows can be used to eliminate vendors.

Create a short list

From the long list of curriculum management vendors, it is helpful to narrow the list of vendors and come up with a shorter list of contenders, preferably no more than five. With this list, schools can produce a matrix to compare the features and pricing of the various solutions. For buyers in the United States, this may be an excellent time to look at their prospective state's curriculum requirements.

Conduct demos

Demos are an excellent opportunity for buyers to see how curriculum management systems work. Buyers should determine whether the platform is open-sourced or closed-source during the demo. Only the shortlisted vendors are invited to demonstrate their software solutions. Demos should be performed live, using the system, not through slide decks and screenshots. All vendors should follow a predetermined scenario that illustrates the teacher and student experience. A typical procedure for curriculum management is to display real-time curriculum approval, then go through the integration steps with learning management systems.

Selection of Curriculum Management Software

Choose a selection team

Before purchasing a curriculum management software solution, the buyer must draft a successful software selection team to work together throughout the buying process. For institutes with multiple instructors teaching courses, curriculum development is typically a collaborative process in which teachers contribute their ideas to the curriculum plans. 

Including numerous instructors in the selection team will be beneficial as they'll identify product efficiencies best suited for the institute. A good starting point at more prominent universities or school districts serving urban areas is to aim for three to five people in senior roles such as provost, academic advisors, or board of education members. The software selection team may be smaller at private institutes, with few participants multitasking and taking on more responsibilities.

With the continued growth of digital educational tools, finding a well-organized, easy-to-access, and up-to-date digital course curriculum software can be challenging for instructors at schools, colleges, and universities. The selection team should compare the software demos' notes, facts, and figures.

Negotiation

As some curriculum management tools offer customized pricing based on the school district or school type, opening up a pricing conversation is imperative. For example, the software provider may be willing to give a discount to private or charter schools.

Final decision

The final decision should be based on the information gathered and the institution's needs. During the final decision-making process, it is imperative to do a test run of the program to test software competencies for the instructors. Conducting a test run with a small sample size of users will ensure all needs are met. If the tool is well received, the buyer can be assured that the selection was correct. If not, repeat the process until a confident decision can be made.