This year, Oakmont switched from Plus Portals to a new grading system called Infinite Campus. The change has brought mixed feelings, with students and staff sharing both positive and negative reactions.
With the new grading system, there come some growing pains. “I have to apply a lot of my energy to learn a new grading system, spending 1-2 hours a day on the program, and taking my time away from teaching and spending my time with the kids,” said Assistant Principal Mr. Michael Buswell. But Buswell understands that time commitment and training come with any new program.
Infinite Campus was a program founded in 1993, with its goal of making a bigger difference. Infinite Campus is led by CEO Charlie Krasch and is based in Minnesota. The company started in the basement of Centennial High School. Today, its headquarters are in Blaine, Minnesota, and it has more than 600 employees.
When learning new systems and transitioning, it can all transpire into how teachers can learn and figure out how to use the system. “I have been here long enough to see how other systems are when learning. This system is much easier, smoother, and the last time we switched was in 2015,” said Oakmont Counselor Mrs. Amy Doubovick.
After four weeks with Infinite Campus, there have been some concerns. At first, some students can’t see their assignments or grades, and it loads more slowly than Rediker’s Plus Portal. Teachers also speak of multiple steps to connect assignments to Google Classroom and find certain student information.
When choosing between the two systems, either Plus Portal or Infinite Campus, some students leaned more toward Plus Portal – probably because that was what people are used to. “I would rather have Plus Portals, the layout was easier, and I was able to see more information about my grades,” said sophomore Lucy Davieau.
Students in Mr. Nevard’s D-block journalism class were asked how often they visited Infinite Campus. As reported, 6 students are checked daily, 17 weekly, and 1 monthly. Even if students don’t check their Infinite Campus, parents have full access within the app.
Infinite Campus was one of the three choices among three other grading software. “Out of the three software, Aspen wasn’t able to link with Google Classroom, SchoolBrains had a boring layout, and Infinite Campus was looking promising,” said Buswell.
This isn’t the first time Oakmont has changed its grading system. Over 15 years ago, Oakmont made a switch from MMS grading system to Plus Portals, which lasted them over 15 years. It worked really well. Students really liked it for a long time, including Mr. DeHays, AWRSD, Director of Technology.
So, if a platform worked for so long, why get rid of it? With time Plus Portals started to run slower and harder for teachers to put in grades, and Infinite Campus should make it easier for everyone. Starting with teachers being able to enter grades for multiple classes at a time, and students view their grades faster and easier.
Although many growing pains are evident, mostly affecting teachers who are just getting introduced to this program, the potential for this system is clear.
“I wish they didn’t have to worry so much, wish that they could just be teachers. I was sitting with Mrs. Brown and Mr. Kostich, helping them figure out the grade book. We couldn’t figure out if it was calculating grades right. It’s frustrating that it’s more than teaching,” said Buswell.
While students find the program challenging, teachers face even more difficulties. Figuring out how to manage attendance, grades, and assignments, especially when communicating with parents, has been tough. However, DeHays said, “Teachers learned the program faster, and the support is better than with Plus Portals.¨
The front of the school, where the application is used to its ultimate degree, is managed by the administrator assistant, Mrs. Inga Morin. ¨ I love it, it’s much cleaner and real-time responsive to not only us but to anyone looking on the portal. It allows us to keep very accurate attendance per block. Our previous system took much more data massaging to get the info we were looking for and the portal would not update in real time.¨
Many school districts are switching to Infinite Campus after a data breach in 2024 with SchoolBrains. SchoolBrains’ data breach gave out about 312,000 teachers’ social security numbers, and 900 students’ in South Carolina. With this information, many schools switched over to Infinite Campus. Infinite Campus promises features such as mobile accessibility, seamless user-friendly experience, and fostering a better grading system to help parents communicate with teachers more effectively.
Infinite Campus is occupied by 8-10 million students, and is being used by 10 state agencies. Within Infinite Campus is an e-hall pass system, a lunch system, and a payment process throughout. When being used, Infinite Campus is composed of 1,500+ core tools for school systems to use.
Some positive outlooks keep Oakmont optimistic. “When using this system in the future, I think it will be much easier, much quicker, and a more modern feel within the system,” said Dubovick.
Even though we may have a lot of struggles trying to learn how to use Infinite Campus. As a whole school, it has been an easier learning process on how to use the program, and for administrators navigating their way throughout the system.
