Exact Path Summer 2020 Enhancements

Hello! My name is Cassie Rochholz and I am the Director of Product Management here at Edmentum and it is my joy to provide you a closer look into what we have been busy preparing for, just in time for the 2020-2021 school year.

The Exact Path summer and fall releases support our ongoing mission with this program: to meet students where they are and make learning personal. Whether learning takes place at home or in a physical classroom, students deserve individualized remediation, reinforcement, and enrichment that meets their unique learning needs. This aim is continually elevated with features and enhancements carefully crafted based on the needs of YOU—our educator partners. Updates are focused in three primary areas: efficiency, access, and differentiation.

Watch our complete recorded release video or continue on to get a glimpse of individual enhancements and watch short videos for each one.

Single Sign-On

The Edmentum Integrations team has been feverously working behind the scenes to make the lives of educators easier. Now available, Courseware and Exact Path feature enhanced single sign-on (SSO) capabilities. Students, teachers, and administrators can use their school-issued Gmail or Office 365 accounts to log in, enabling a higher level of integration between classroom software applications. SSO provides an increased level of student data security and streamlines classroom technology use—ultimately reducing down-time and maximizing time for instruction.

Shorter Diagnostic Administration

Our research team is always working to stay up to date on the latest methods in psychometrics. You may already know that the Exact Path diagnostic test uses an algorithm to determine which questions to administer students, and the algorithm estimates student ability after each question the student responds to. Once that ability estimate reaches a targeted level of precision, the test stops.

Now available, we've implemented a behind-the-scenes change to the way the diagnostic algorithm works that uses the most modern methods in educational measurement. The test will look the same to students, but the great news is that the test will be shorter by up to 15%. The exact amount varies based on the unique testing experience of the student. Through extensive research with existing and simulated data that compares the new algorithm to the current algorithm, we have ensured that the scale score is still valid and reliable and that it maintains its same level of precision. We know how precious classroom time is, so this change allows you to get student diagnostic testing completed even faster.

Recommended Reviewing Alert

Now available, the Recommended Reviewing Alert for Exact Path’s diagnostic assessment is designed to ensure all students receive an accurate learning path that allows them to succeed. This simple alert notifies educators inside Exact Path when a student may have not provided effortful responses to test questions and presents a series of options to help you take action immediately.

This feature allows you to spot students who responded to questions unusually fast (<5 seconds per question) that may have potentially invalid results. Our research team established the criteria for flagging tests as unusually fast based on analyzing millions of student responses to diagnostic test questions. Once a test is flagged, educators can review the test and take action to get learning back on track.

Introducing New Characters

Throughout this back-to-school season, we're introducing brand new content to the learning path for 3rd-5th grade students featuring a new character set. Here at Edmentum, we take great care to ensuring that not only our content is aligned specifically to the domain and skills that are most valuable inside the classroom, but that our students are completely immersed in their learning journey and begin to see themselves in the characters that we have brought to life throughout the Exact Path content. And what better way to support learning goals than to introduce new characters. These new characters not only help students stay engaged through their time using Exact Path, but they address three core ideals:

• Fatigue: Students who may need remediation on a skill require a different visual experience.
• Age Appropriateness: Characters use an aspirational design rather than on-grade so that can see themselves growing and at a higher level.
• Representation: Design characters consider the diversity of our learner group. External experts around bias and sensitivity testing combined with real student feedback from close to 300 kids helped mold these characters and truly bring them to life and their own eyes.

The importance here is our students are seeing themselves reflected in the world around them. This is life-changing for some, and even lifesaving!

Improved Teacher Challenges

We have updated our time-on-task Challenges this summer to mirror precisely what students achieve so educators can feel confident they’ve created a motivational challenge that will also drive academic progress. Instead of time-on-task Challenges rounding up to the nearest minute, they will be precisely timed to reflect learning path usage and 100% aligned with the Learning Path Progress Report available to educators. With this release, any additional accrued time-on-task or Trophies earned within the Challenge window will be counted and displayed on screen, allowing educators to celebrate students that go above and beyond.

Learner & Parent Reporting

When students complete diagnostics and work in their learning paths, it’s only logical that they also want to dig into the data and to celebrate their own success! While we have always offered our slick and intuitive detailed reporting for all educators (from admin down to the classroom teacher) it was imperative that this summer, we shared that same incredible level of insight with students and parents.

Now available, teachers have the ability to share and provide access to the Student Summary Reports directly through the learner interface. This will also help parents to understand their child's learning trajectory by accessing Exact Path diagnostic results and learning path details directly from the learner's account.

On behalf of my fellow Edmentors, it has been our pleasure to walk you through our summer release (with a small peek at some fall items too). At Edmentum, we build everything with you in mind and in a way to drive continuous academic progress everywhere learning occurs because every student needs a chance to not only reach their potential but achieve success beyond what they ever thought imaginable.

Log into your account today to start exploring the new features—happy learning!