Smart Pass is a new app on Launchpad that teachers use to issue passes to students to go to places such as the bathroom, office or library. Smart Pass keeps track of who is out and where they are going. The app also gives the student a 6 minute timer and once that timer finishes, it goes into overtime, which alerts the dean.
Although the Smart Pass is good for those reasons, it also has its disadvantages. One being that it is very time consuming. For example, teachers need to issue the pass electronically, which means they must stop instruction to do so. Whenever a student needs a pass to go to the bathroom, the teacher has to stop their lesson, go to their computer, and accept it. There are problems that the students face as well. Sometimes a pass isn’t signed to where a student is supposed to go, so when they get there, the person they were sent to sees they don’t have a pass and the student gets sent back to get that pass. This causes students to be out of the class longer than should be necessary.
Smart Pass also allows only 5 people to go to a certain bathroom at a time. So if there are 5 people out, the student that needs to go next has to wait until one of the 5 go back to class. While this is good to make sure not too many students are out, this is another issue for the students themselves because if the student thats waiting in line has to really use the bathroom and 3 out of the 5 people are just walking around or staying in the bathroom talking, that student has to wait out that whole time until one of them go back to their class. It makes it even worse if that student is 2nd in line, 3rd in line, etc.
Smart Pass is a useful app for keeping track of students, but it needs to be improved. Improvements should include allowing more people out at a time to use the restroom, especially if any bathrooms are closed. Also, students should not be sent back just because the teacher or dean forgot to give a student a pass to that place. Finally, since this is a new program, leniency would help it be more effective.
