Mercado, W. R., & Morales, G. M., & Erdei, R. (2021, November), [Work in Progress] Iterative development of an IT solution supporting Early Learning Standards  Paper presented at 2021 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Meeting, Virtually Hosted by the section. 10.18260/1-2--38417

\bibitem{asee_peer_38417}
  Mercado, W. R., \& Morales, G. M., \& Erdei, R. (2021, November), \emph{[Work in Progress] Iterative development of an IT solution supporting Early Learning Standards}
  Paper presented at 2021 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Meeting, Virtually Hosted by the section.
  10.18260/1-2--38417

William Rigoberto Mercado, Gabriela Maria Morales, and Ronald Erdei.  "[Work in Progress] Iterative development of an IT solution supporting Early Learning Standards".  2021 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Meeting, Virtually Hosted by the section, 2021, November.  ASEE Conferences, 2021.  https://strategy.asee.org/38417 Internet.  13 May, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_38417}
  William Rigoberto Mercado, Gabriela Maria Morales, and Ronald Erdei.
  "[Work in Progress] Iterative development of an IT solution supporting Early Learning Standards".
  \emph{2021 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Meeting, Virtually Hosted by the section, 2021, November}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2021.
  https://strategy.asee.org/38417 Internet.  13 May, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_38417
author = "William Rigoberto Mercado, Gabriela Maria Morales, and Ronald Erdei"
title = "[Work in Progress] Iterative development of an IT solution supporting Early Learning Standards"
booktitle = "2021 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Meeting"
year = "2021"
month = "November"
address = "Virtually Hosted by the section"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://strategy.asee.org/38417}
number = {10.18260/1-2--38417}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This student report details our progress in providing technological assistance to a non-profit community partner whose mission is to continually improve the quality of education provided to children from birth through pre-kindergarten. Our community partner is The Children’s Center (TCC), a non-profit provider of early childhood education and childcare services [1] located in an affluent region of South Carolina. TCC’s purpose is to deliver quality early education and childcare services to the working family, providing services on a sliding tuition scale based on parental income [1]. TCC’s non-profit status presents a limited budget for information technology, and therefore certain processes that could otherwise be automated by expensive IT solutions must still be performed manually.

One such process is the generation of student progress reports, which follow the South Carolina Early Learning Standards (SC-ELS) [2]. These are state-imposed goals and developmental indicators used by early learning organizations to measure student growth. The SC-ELS indicators differ depending on the age periods of the children, from infants to older preschoolers. Further challenge is posed by language, as the diverse population served by TCC is approximately 50% English as a Second Language (ESL). Consequently, different report card formats are needed for each age group attending TCC, in both English and Spanish languages.

In response to this challenge, we developed, at no cost, a semi-automatic software tool that facilitates the process of generating report cards whose formats must be tailored to the different age groups and preferred languages served by TCC. The tool not only helps to expedite the generation of the report cards themselves, but it also enables the user to generate aggregate statistics about student performance. That is, it enables the user to analyze and interpret the data easier than the previous manual approaches that were time-consuming, error-prone and impractical.

Despite the current progress made, several sub-processes are still manually completed. Our ongoing efforts involve continual improvement of the tool through further process automation.

Works Cited:
• [1] “The Children’s Center Website: About Us”, Accessed: September 3, 2021, [Online]. Available https://thechildrenscentersc.org/about-us/
• [2] South Carolina Early Learning Standards 2017. South Carolina Early Learning Standards Interagency Stakeholder Group, “South Carolina Early Learning Standards”, 2017, [Online], Accessed: July 29, 2021. Available: https://www.scchildcare.org/media/57847/South-Carolina-Early-Learning-Standards-
2017_Accessible-Version.pdf 

AU  - William Rigoberto Mercado
AU  - Gabriela Maria Morales
AU  - Ronald Erdei
CY  - Virtually Hosted by the section
DA  - 2021/11/12
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - [Work in Progress] Iterative development of an IT solution supporting Early Learning Standards
UR  - https://strategy.asee.org/38417
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--38417
ER  -