5 Best Project Management Software for Education (2024)

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Educators and educational institutions of all types will benefit from using project management software.

Whether you need to coordinate a project with peers in your school or district or simply look for software to help you keep your lesson plans and courses straight, project management software can help.

Software and technology are evolving to the next level, away from disparate applications solving single problems into complex suites managing entire spectrums of an operation.

Project management tools will help you improve your efficiency and focus on the teaching work that matters. 

What is project management software?

Project management software is an application installed on a computer or mobile device or based in the cloud.

The software is designed for the management of complex tasks, projects, and collaborative efforts.

Most project management software helps you stay organized by borrowing tools such as Kanban boards and Gantt charts from the business world.

Other features generally include tools for communications, file-sharing, time tracking, and task management. 

Most importantly, project management software integrates these functions into a single location.

Instead of opening six different applications for chat, mail, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and scheduling, you can centralize these operations in one application. 

Why would an educator benefit from project management software? 

First, project management software is designed to manage a long-running, complicated project with many tasks, sub-tasks, and milestones.

This is analogous to running a classroom. Second, project management software features the ability to manage individual tasks at a granular level.

This means that you can generate a task, such as “History of Computing, Chapter I,” and then generate sub-tasks, such as “Section A: The Abacus” and “Section D: Alan Turing.” 

Features like this will help keep your lesson plans organized and maintain awareness of your class’s overall status and progression.

Finally, project management software is built for collaboration.

When you have a task that requires feedback from or collaboration with peers, project management tools allow for easy and clear communication on specific work items or tasks. 

Do you need to be technically savvy to use project management software?

While some project management software is very detailed and requires technical sophistication, many applications are easy to use for the non-technically minded.

It is likely that you already use a variety of tools on the computer and mobile devices to do your work.

If you are comfortable using basic tools such as email and word processors, or if you have engaged with social media using a mobile device, you will be able to utilize project management software. 

Is project management software free?

Some project management software is free.

If you are using it for your own purposes or with a small group, you will find that there is a wide selection of free project management software available for you.

If you are managing a larger project, such as revamping curricula across a district or collaborating with more than a handful of peers, you may need to find paid software.

Generally, fees associated with project management software are charged per user per month.

Many companies will offer educational discounts if you ask. 

Why use Project Management Software for Education?

Project management software for education is useful for educators, students, and institutional staff members alike.

This is due to the flexibility that this project management software provides.

Educators, whether they are regular teaching faculty, lecturers, administrative staff, or others, can stay connected and manage duties and responsibilities using project management software.

Many project management software includes calendar functions or interfaces with calendar apps, allowing educationists to organize and control their work schedules.

They are able to record extracurricular activities, lectures, and even academic accomplishments and development that must be made.

Students can use project management software’s task management features to keep track of their classes, assignments, and projects, work together with teammates if they have a group project, and even upload homework for proofing and approval for teachers to view.

Tip: monday.com Monday.com has a range of automation features that can help streamline workflows and reduce the time needed for administrative tasks.

What makes good Project Management Software for Education?

A good project management software for education should have the following feature:

• Task and project management
• Collaboration and communication tools
• Time management tools
• Resource management tools
• Analytics and reporting tools
• Robust security measures
• Integration possibilities, and
• An intuitive user interface.

Also, the software should be flexible and adaptable to various sizes and types of educational establishments, ranging from elementary schools to colleges.

It must be capable of managing several projects at once, with various teams and stakeholders engaged in each one.

These features make it possible to manage tasks and projects effectively, communicate and collaborate effectively, manage time and resources effectively, gain insightful information via analytics and reporting, and maintain data security and usability.

Tip: Zoho Projects allows students to create a project, invite their team members to join, and assign tasks and deadlines.

How to choose the right Project Management Software for Education

With the following factors in mind, choosing the right project management for education can become simpler:

Check to see if the software enables collaboration between teachers and students.

An ideal project management application should enable instructors to give students project work, and exchange grades and performance evaluations with them online.

While searching for project management software, check for these characteristics to promote greater communication between your instructors and your pupils.

Examine the software’s capacity for integration.

The project management platform you choose should be able to link with any attendance and time-tracking software your institution already employs for teachers and students.

This will make it simple to sync student data and ensure overall data consistency.

Tip: monday.com is accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, making it easy for educators and students to work from home or on the go.

Best Project Management Software for Education

1. Monday.com

Monday.com is a feature-rich project management application with a comprehensive range of tools and modules to assist you in project and task management.

Monday.com, a popular visual time management and planning tool, ensures that education teams can manage everything from a single board.

Monday.com allows you to keep track of projects and to-dos, as well as create personal and public boards.

You can email information to team members or other members of your institute, exchange files, and manage files.

The tool is ideal for preventing you from changing between multiple software while still being able to assist you to manage your workload because it has a variety of integrations and functions.

2. Zoho Projects

Zoho is a software company aiming to transform the future of work.

Among their suite of products is Zoho Projects, a comprehensive project management and collaboration tool.

Zoho Projects features the usual host of communication, file sharing, and task management tools in an intuitive and customizable UI.

Task management in Zoho Projects is comprehensive and includes an ability to set task priorities and reminders, a pleasant addition to the usual suite of features.

In the context of group or class projects, Zoho Projects’ time-tracking tools can be used to help keep students accountable to their peers and ensure that all members of a team are contributing to the group. 

Educators will also find a host of ways to utilize task dependencies.

Any course or project which requires an orderly flow from one task to the next can make use of task dependencies, whether it’s a group essay, a large-scale class project, or a coding problem. 

Zoho Projects can help your students or peers collaborate better.

File sharing and document storage integrate version control, meaning that groups can see who has made what edits to a document or project.

Educators teaching remotely will also find use in the Forum feature, where the group can discuss a centralized idea. 

Students or educators using outside applications will find that many have integrations directly into Zoho Projects.

Microsoft Teams, Dropbox, Github, Slack, iCal, and Gmail all integrate easily into Zoho, making this tool a flexible choice in today’s classroom. 

3. Trello

Trello is one of the most popular project management applications on the market today.

Built for the cloud, Trello can be used from a web browser or from a mobile application.

Trello’s user interface is based on a system of boards and cards and allows for a very refined approach to the task and project management. 

When you log in to Trello, your first step is to create a board. Boards are spaces where your cards will live.

Cards represent individual tasks or modules.

In the context of education, you might use an individual board for each class you teach.

If you are managing projects or teams, you might make a board for each relevant entity.

Inside a board, there is a Kanban-style interface where your cards are located. 

Cards are the heart of Trello.

In a card, you can place a description of the task at hand, build a checklist, assign peers or teammates, place labels, and add due dates.

Files can be attached to individual cards – for instance, you could attach your PowerPoint or lesson notes to a card used as a lesson module.

Finally, cards have a comment section that enables conversations between users on individual cards.

If using Trello in the context of a group assignment, cards are an excellent way to delegate and assign work and monitor team conversations and chats. 

In terms of cost, Trello’s free platform offers users access to a very robust set of features.

While there are paid versions available, users of the free version can enjoy unlimited boards and unlimited users.

This plus the ease of use and simple UI makes Trello one of the best project management tools for educators. 

4. Basecamp

Another excellent project management tool that’s good for educators is the cloud-based software known as Basecamp.

As the name suggests, projects in Basecamp are designed to contain all of the essential features needed to drive a project or class to success.

Students or faculty assigned to a project can see all of the relevant data they need in one spot: discussions and chats, files, tasks and subtasks, due dates, and more are stored in a centralized location. 

Basecamp’s notifications feature will help keep you informed of significant events on any projects or assignments you’re coordinating through the program.

If you’re worried about consistent pings or notifications from students working odd hours, you can mute notifications or set office hours to minimize interruptions. 

Other useful features included with this software include to-do lists and schedules.

Educators coordinating classes through Basecamp can send check-in questions to their students and have all responses filtered into a single thread, minimizing message scatter and complex email threads.

Integrated search allows you to rapidly find information that may require a deeper search in other applications. 

Cost is an issue for any organization and especially so in educational institutions.

Basecamp is free for teachers and students – all you need to do is send an email from your school account and supply proof that you are a teacher.

Once verified, Basecamp will give you free access to their product. 

5. Asana

Another popular project management software tool is Asana.

Asana is a cloud-based solution that allows users to manage projects, tasks, and subtasks.

While Asana is sometimes not considered a full-fledged project management tool because it does not include resource management or budgeting tools, it does contain powerful collaboration tools and a host of integrations allowing you to centralize your workflow through Asana.

Educators will find Asana highly conducive to managing group work or class work with these tools, and as Asana is built to accommodate ongoing work, it is well suited for use in the classroom. 

One of the features that make Asana so valuable for group work and class work is the flexibility of this product.

Asana allows users to manage tasks at a very detailed level.

This includes the assignment of individuals to specific tasks, the breakdown of larger tasks into subtasks and steps, and the assignment of due dates to tasks and subtasks.

Users can follow specific tasks, assign tags to tasks, and communicate in an integrated chat that allows @ mentions to clarify communications. 

Asana has users organize projects into boards.

Each board contains specific tasks, which can be arranged into swim lanes or columns according to your organizational needs.

Project boards can be templated, allowing you to easily build a ‘model’ class and convert it to your specific teaching needs. 

6. Zoho Creator

For education administrators, Zoho has released Creator.

The creator is a basic platform that is highly customizable and easily expandable to meet the needs of a given educational institution.

School systems and university systems have developed Zoho Creator into apps for needs as diverse as staff management, attendance, scheduling, accounting, and communication. 

Zoho Creator is aimed at educational institutions whose administrative software is currently spread across multiple applications or multiple systems.

Creator wants to take all of those disparate data points and needs and integrate them into one comprehensive system for your entire institution. 

Teachers will also find much use in Creator.

Homework can be assigned, graded, and managed through the software.

Student grades and performance can be tracked and managed.

Students can also be given accounts that can be used to make schedules, get assignment reminders, see grades, and communicate with faculty.

Access can be granted to parents to keep them in the loop as essential players in the education of primary students. 

Other Honorable Mentions

Project management software is incredibly useful across many contexts, but there are other tools that educators may wish to consider alongside project management tools.

Two of the most popular tools today are Slack and Google Workspace. 

A new and innovative way to communicate among groups, Slack breaks communications down into channels.

Users can direct messages among themselves or contribute to group threads on a channel; voice and video meetings can be initiated from the channel, and groups can share documents. Slack’s API allows it to be integrated with other software, like Prezi. 

Google Workspace is not technically a project management tool, but it is one of the most widely used and beloved collaboration tools available today.

Best of all, users of services such as Gmail already have access to many of Workspace’s basic tools, like Drive, Docs, and Calendar.

These cloud-based tools facilitate teamwork and sharing by making it simple for students or teachers to collaborate on or distribute documents.

Workspace is differentiated from Google’s free products by enhanced security and storage and improved access to large-scale videoconferencing and other tools. 

Project Management Software in your School

The current state of technology in many schools and educational institutions could be improved.

Project management software is one of the best ways for an educational institution or an educator to harness technology’s power and use it in a value-added way in their classrooms.

Rather than aimlessly searching for files, losing PowerPoints, getting lost in email threads, and managing multiple disconnected software systems, educators and institutions using project management software can coordinate all of the multiple tasks and needs of teachers and students from one master program. 

If this seems a stretch, consider the power that these programs can bring to help keep you organized. Converting from a folio or spreadsheet to an application such as Trello or Asana will bring your teaching and organizing to the next level and help you stay on top of your work.