How to Create a Student Portal In 3 Steps
Create a Student Portal In 1 Day
A student portal is a comprehensive web-based application designed to provide students with easy access to a wide range of academic and administrative services.
It serves as a one-stop-shop for students to manage their academic life, from course registration and grade checking to accessing learning materials.
Essential Features for a Student Portal
A student portal needs to have a range of features to support the academic and extracurricular journey of students.
One of the most critical features is user authentication and profile management. A secure login system with multi-factor authentication means your portal is secure. This a necessity for educational institutions. Students should have the ability to create and manage their profiles, reset passwords, upload profile pictures, and update personal information.
The portal should also provide academic information. This includes functionalities for course registration and classes. Students need access to their current and past semester grades, the ability to generate PDFs, and integration with the academic calendar to stay organized and informed.
Next they’ll need access to course materials, syllabi, and an assignment submission system should be provided. Integration with e-learning platforms like Moodle and Canvas should also available.
Obviously, there’s some other features as well but those are the basic ones to get you started off.
Build or Buy Your Student Portal
When it comes to implementing a student portal, institutions face a crucial decision: should you build a custom solution or buy an off-the-shelf product?
If you build one using Five for example, you’ll be able to develop exactly what you need without the unnecessary bloat. This allows and accommodates for your institutions requirements.
Building a student portal means you can also connect to your existing IT infrastructure, allowing you to have a single source of truth across all systems. It also allows for compatibility with legacy systems, working around the constraints of older software which you might not be able to replace.
Having control over your data is also extremely important. This means keeping all student information under your direct supervision. If you buy an off the shelf student portal there’s no guarantees that your students information won’t be leaked.
Building a secure student portal becomes a lot easier with Five. Five offers several advantages: it significantly speeds up the portal development process, requires no extensive coding knowledge, is far more affordable than hiring a developer, and allows you to customize your student web portal to meet your specific needs.
Building a custom solution would also be cheaper in the long run. The licencing costs of these off the shelf solutions can get costly really quickly. Most student portal solutions cost $50,000 to $250,000+ annually.
Given the significant costs associated with many of these solutions, this further supports the argument for building a custom solution, especially for institutions with unique needs or those looking for more control over their digital infrastructure.
Creating a Student Portal Can Be Easy
Building student web portals used to be nearly impossible without extensive coding knowledge, leading many organizations to hire “expert developers” who often delivered subpar results. Customizations were either unattainable or required rehiring the developers, often doubling the initial cost.
Fortunately, times have changed, and creating students portals is now much easier with rapid portal builders like Five. These tools simplify the process, making it quicker and more accessible.
Using Five, you no longer need to learn various coding frameworks or spend hours researching the best off the shelf portal which has absurd licensing fees. Instead, you can jump right in and have your online portal built and running in a single afternoon. While there is still a slight learning curve, this approach is objectively the best compared to traditional methods.
With Five, you can
1. Set up your web interface in minutes, and
2. Create a user-friendly, login-protected web interface for your portal.
3. You can also easily import your existing data, meaning you can get started quickly.
Get free access to Five here and start building your student portal.
How to Create a Student Portal
So how can you create a student portal in Five and what are some prerequisites that you should consider.
Step 1. Access Five
If you haven’t already, sign up for free access to Five. Five offers a free trial for 14 days with no credit card required. Depending on your project’s complexity and data storage requirements, you may need a paid plan.
Step 2: List Out Portal Attributes
Start by compiling a complete list of all attributes relevant to your student portal. Think about what matters to your students and your institution: students’ personal particulars, grades, news, extracurricular activities, etc. Your student portal should be a “single source of truth”, so ensure it’s as comprehensive as possible.
Here are some must-have attributes that are typically included in a student portal system:
- User authentication and profile management
- Course registration and management
- Grade viewing
- Tuition payment tools
- Campus news and events
- Learning management system (LMS) integration
- Career services
- Library resources access
- Student life and extracurricular activities
- Health and wellness resources
Follow our YouTube tutorial on developing a membership application which is similar to a student portal. This seven-step guide covers everything from database modeling to previewing your completed application.
The first tutorial step explains how to create a database table in Five. This four-and-a-half-minute video is highly recommended if your main goal is developing a student portal.
The video also demonstrates how to assign different SQL data types to your table fields and visually inspect your database schema using Five’s database modeler. Additionally, it shows how Five automatically adds primary keys to all your tables.
Step 3: Launch Your Portal Online
Once your student portal’s database is ready and well-defined, you can begin populating it with the necessary data.
Using Five, you can easily upload CSV files directly into your SQL database. Simply ensure that the columns in your CSV align with the fields in your database, and import the data into your database tables.
Additionally, you can create a user-friendly, web-based database graphical user interface with Five. This interface can feature forms for adding or editing student records, charts for visualizing academic data, and the ability to generate PDF reports, such as transcripts or academic progress reports, using data from the database.
When you’re ready to deploy your student portal, sign up for one of our paid plans, starting at just $29.99 per month per application. This plan includes unlimited end-users and provides you with a custom URL to access the portal online.
For more detailed guidance, check out one of our step-by-step code-along guides.
Conclusion: Building a Student Portal
A well designed student portal is a necessity for educational institutions. With modern tools like Five, the process of creating a custom student portal has become more accessible than ever. No longer do institutions need to rely on expensive developers or settle for one size fits all solutions. Instead, they can rapidly build and deploy a student portal that truly serves their unique community.
