The integrated suite of Student Information System and the Learning Management tool provides learning communities with an updated software solution for tackling today’s problems and getting ahead of tomorrow’s solutions. All this can be achieved with the interface that promotes usage and acceptance.

Website: https://www.getalma.com/

What Users Love About the App

“It is easy to find grades and class rosters. The menu is user friendly, which is especially good for teachers that struggle with technology. I like being able to find information on each student, including home phone numbers and siblings in the school. I love that everything we need for school on a day to day basis is easily accesible, including the school calendar. I love how easy it is to upload comments for report cards and progress reports.”

“Alma is great for tracking attendance and organizing information for each student. Their support team is also very responsive and excellent at answering questions and troubleshooting issues that arise. I like that you don’t have to call them.”

“Alma is easy to use. I am the administrator at our school for all things related to Alma. I am not a computer engineer norhave any more than basic computer skills, but I am able to navigate my way through Alma without too much difficulty. If I do run into something I don’t know how to do there are great tutorials and the support is quick to respond and very helpful.”

“I like that you can copy grades and assignments in Alma. I also like the accessible attendance menu on the home page, and how you can access who last went and checked the attendance. Having student safety information handy is good to have around, too.”

“Alma has a very progressive approach to education that follows the pedagogical evolution all educators go through. It is a very easy to use interface and the layout and organization is excellent. I was first drawn to the SIS because of the Google Classroom integration (creating a true LMS and SIS combined system that informs one another is a game changer). Beyond this, I can’t say enough good things about the customer service. They are prompt, on the ball and so very easy to work with. All Principals can relate to this last bit because not all Ed Tech companies make it this easy.”

What Users Dislike About the App

“Most times it can be confusing for me to transfer grades from one class to the next. I would like to see some individual markers for each course I have, so I can tell which is which. While the site has its ups and downs in terms of usability, I do enjoy being updated on the changes being made to Alma’s website.”

“Alma’s progress report system is extremely clunky and frustrating, there are features that could be implemented to make things easier but they aren’t open to beta testing. The formatting for progress reports is a system where you enter information into a pivot table excel sheet (which is extremely time consuming), upload, and then check it against the template once done. My biggest issue is that we have 5 different categories, and there is no easy way to create a ‘page break’ within these so that all the sub categories are listed on the same page (or even a way to say, ‘title, continued’ at the top so it is less confusing). Again, this may be due to our usage as we have each class with their own template and these templates change for every progress report, but it’s extremely time consuming and frustrating for me.”

“I don’t like that I am not able to print grades for individual students, or print out class grades per subject. Sometimes I need to print out an individual students’ grades but I cannot. It stops me from showing them which assignments are missing, or below grade level.”

“There are some GUI issues in the grade portal. Alma should have customizable features for platform viewing and assignment type sorting. The mass alert system should be managed at the district level rather than an individual school level. The vendor for mass alerting is not ideal.”

“I wish students could turn in their electronic assignments directly to ALMA, that way I would be able to grade it within the system. Our previous grade books (Brainhoney, Google Classroom, Buzz) have allowed this in the past which made it possible for students and parents to verify that their work was turned in or not. It would also be nice to be able to distribute assignments through ALMA that are larger than what is currently allowed. It was easier to use a different platform that allowed me to upload all of my documents rather than use ALMA for some, but not all assignments.”