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How One School Enrolled 350 Students During Covid-19

by Jennifer Rees

You can also read this article in German, Spanish, French, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese and Russian.

Looking for a safe and efficient registration method, one school turned to a single PDF tool to enroll its students for the new school year.

Finding the Right E-Signing Tool to Register 350 School Students Remotely

COVID-19 hit right before the beginning of a new school year. Due to the many implications, a secondary school principal and her school administrators were concerned. After all, they didn’t only have to consider how they might facilitate remote learning but also find ways to register their students remotely.

A quick internet search led the school to find the right e-signing PDF tool that supported the complete registration process and became a key PDF tool in the day-to-day running of the school's administration. But how did this school manage this first-time remote registration process?

Preparing the Documents

In principle, the school didn’t require any new or different information to register students. That’s why the school administrators recognized they only needed to digitize their registration forms—as scans or in their original digital form. They made sure that their digital registration form included the following information fields for parents to fill in:

  1. Name
  2. Surname
  3. Physical address
  4. Emergency contact number
  5. Allergies
  6. Health insurance details

In the process, they ensured that these fields were editable before uploading the document to the eSign tool. At this point, it was ready to be sent out to student parents or guardians to complete and sign.

Requesting Signatures From Parents & Showing Them Where to Sign

Once the enrollment form was uploaded to the eSign tool, teachers or school administrators could simply add the parent's or guardian's email address into the tool, prompting them to sign. The “Drag & Drop” feature was used to add a note to the PDF, showing parents where to sign.

After the document was prepared and signees were added, the administrators could send the documents for signing. The parents and guardians then received a link to the document, including instructions on how to fill out and e-sign the enrollment form. Once signing was complete, everyone involved received a link to download the signed and completed document for documentation.

Saving the Signed Documents

When a parent or guardian completed and signed the form, administrators received real-time notifications plus a link to the completed documents via email. From here, they could open each document and save it to their computer or mobile device.

The school in question made use of Dropbox for document storage. Since Smallpdf offers a Dropbox integration, document storage worked seamlessly, eliminating the need to download documents before storing them in the cloud. Other integrations include Google Drive integration and a Gmail extension.

Getting parent signatures has always been a challenge for schools and administrative staff, and the expectation was that electronic signatures would be no different. It turned out that getting parents to electronically sign documents wasn't just a successful alternative during a pandemic, but a long-term signing solution for the entire school, still in place today.

Got a document you need to sign?

Jennifer Rees
Jennifer Rees
UX Writer