pickAtime

Efficient parent-teacher interaction is a key aspect in a student’s K12 education journey. However, the complexity involved in scheduling appointments can undermine the goal of these interactions and can even have a negative impact on a student’s academic growth. Headquartered in Bellevue, WA, pickAtime allows schools, colleges, and universities to overcome this challenge by giving full control over their scheduling process while reducing the administrative burden.

pickAtime's intuitive SaaS-based solutions, including parent teacher conference scheduling and other scheduler offerings, provide the flexibility for schools and universities to overcome the impediments in appointment scheduling. The parent teacher conference scheduling solution, in particular, allows K12 administrators to first set up an event schedule with date and time. Using this, parents can book an appointment with the teacher at any time, from anywhere. Teachers, on the other hand can view their appointment schedule in real time. Through the calendaring features, parents, students and administrators can be fully sure that their calendaring application is always up-to-date with the latest appointments. “We also offer a ‘lite’ version of our scheduler that smaller schools—with limited budget—can use to set up conferences within an hour,” says Anne Taves, Director of Client Services, pickAtime.

pickAtime leverages their engagements with numerous educational institutions to augment the efficiency of solutions. “The additional enhancements and personalized scheduling functionalities on demand are delivered within days, not weeks,” says Anne. “As a result of our continual enhancements, we are able to offer the richest feature set in online appointment scheduling.” For instance, the solution allows school admission officers to limit the number of appointments to a threshold value on any given day, so that the staff can chalk out sufficient time for their other important tasks.

The additional enhancements and personalized scheduling functionalities on demand are delivered within days, not weeks

A case in point is CUSD #305, a K12 district, which was struggling with the unproductive way of conferencing with parents. While teachers weren’t given advance notice about which parents to meet, parents had a long queue to clear before they could interact with the teacher. Lack of time and privacy to talk toteachers was also a hindrance. “After switching to pickAtime’s online scheduling solution, the response from both parents and teachers were overwhelmingly positive,” Anne points out. Through pickAtime, teachers had time to prepare for their appointments, and they even had the ability to reach out to parents who haven't booked in advance. A record breaking number of parents attended conferences, and school administrators were impressed with the process efficiency brought in by pickAtime. As a result, the district expanded to use pickAtime for scheduling of their yearly career fair, as well as for parent volunteer sign-ups. “With our free volunteer scheduling product, schools using the parent teacher conference scheduler can also have the same user experience and interface for all school related appointments,” says Anne.

Educational institutions use pickAtime for their other scheduling requirements such as guidance counselor appointments, school tours, admissions interviews, transportation scheduling, career fair appointments, and teacher training. “Our all-inclusive online scheduling product comes in handy for course selection meeting and college counseling appointments as well, providing a familiar user interface for parents,” says Anne.

pickAtime’s solutions are cushioned by a unique customer support. “Our ongoing client engagement allows us to continually refine the front end and the back end user experience,” highlights Anne. For the future, pickAtime plans to enhance the capabilities of its appointment scheduling solutions and continue to work with schools and universities to understand the user process and make improvement in their scheduling programs.