[Feature Focus] Improving the Teacher Experience in Study Island

The votes are in, and we know that teachers love Study Island! That said, we also know that the way you use the product in your classroom today has evolved since Study Island’s inception 17 years ago. For that reason, we too work to continuously improve how the program supports you and your students.

On July 17, we released some exciting new enhancements based entirely on YOUR feedback that are focused in three key areas—student engagement, saving educators time, and high-quality practice. Just last week, Candice Bedwell, a senior user experience designer here at Edmentum, took us through the new student dashboard. This week, we’re diving into how Study Island is evolving to meet your needs as an educator.

Using Built Tests Within Group Sessions

We know that two of the most popular features in Study Island, Group Sessions and Built Tests, are used in classrooms on a daily basis. Thanks to that regular use, we’ve heard about lots of innovative use cases and received plenty of feedback that has led to meaningful tweaks and improvements carefully constructed to save you time.

See what’s new in Study Island! Join us for a live webinar for a firsthand look at updated features and program enhancements!

Starting with Built Tests, the flexibility of this feature to customize standards-aligned assessments and practice led to even more requests regarding how it could be leveraged (and we listened). Now, you can access your Built Test library via a Group Session for collaborative, whole-class practice.

Want to review a test your students just completed? Now you can with just a few clicks. Or, are you interested in selecting the precise items your students work on in a Group Session? Start with a Built Test carefully designed by you. With these enhancements, Group Sessions just became an even more valuable classroom tool.

Group Session Improvements

No need to buy a set of classroom clickers—Study Island has them built in! Using the Group Sessions feature, teachers are already proving that they can keep students engaged and monitor progress toward standards mastery. And now we’ve made the experience even better!

The next time you launch a Group Session for your students, you can expect to see a few changes. For starters, instead of being able to monitor which students have answered and which have not via a panel at the bottom of the screen, we’ve now created even more room for the question to appear by moving this information to a collapsible side panel.

Additionally, we received feedback that teachers needed a quicker way to see progress throughout the session. A new, anonymous correct-vs.-incorrect tally is now available on screen at all times to help teachers keep tabs on performance without revealing any private student information. And, of course, for a level deeper, a Group Session Results button continues to provide a detailed student-by-student account of correct and incorrect answers.

Standards Alignment

The Topic Tree is the central hub where all Study Island content lives. It’s how you access content for each subject and grade level and your go-to spot for finding just the resources you need to support daily practice and classroom assessment. That’s a LOT of information! Updates we’re releasing this summer focus on cleaning up the Topic Tree to make it easier for you to find just what you’re looking for (and ensure that it’s always standards aligned).

You’ll notice that standards are now front and center. Next to each topic, the specific standards that are covered are listed out by name, with the addition of the ability for you to click and dig in. Additionally, listed next to the standards information, teachers will find reinforcement of the passing goal that is required to earn a Blue Ribbon, as well as the number of questions that a student will experience each time the topic is assigned.

Want to learn more about all the other great enhancements coming to Study Island? Register for one of our upcoming live webinars, or download this What’s New Guide!