Plato Courseware Year in Review: Enhancing Educator Experiences

At Edmentum, we understand that building relationships in any learning environment is critical. We also know it’s just as important for both students and teachers to have an effective and efficient experience no matter what type of technology or tools are infused into the classroom. That’s why we focus on how we can consistently support all facets of learning by improving both the learner and educator experience within our solutions.

Previously, we took a look at updates to Plato Courseware from the learner’s point of view. Now, we want to highlight the new tools and features that support relationship building from the educator’s point of view.

Collaboration Tool

The Collaboration Space transforms the way teachers and students interact in a virtual environment. Educators using Plato Courseware and well as Edmentum Assessments can facilitate real time group and individual discussion and collaboration activities streamlined within the program.

Flex Assignments  

The Flex Assignments feature is a quick intervention tool that enables educators to intervene with one learner or a group of students. This feature helps educators utilize individual and group data that is meaningful and actionable. Time is often scarce for educators, and Flex Assignments offers the ability to intervene quickly with high-quality, meaningful, rigorous material that is organized and searchable by each standard. This feature is embedded in class courseware, so educators don’t need to create a separate course or do extensive customization to make use of it.

Course Customization

Any course in Edmentum’s Courseware may be customized. There are many features that may be customized within each course, including hiding graded discussions and the use of pretests or posttests. Educators may also create unique announcements or choose the number of attempts a learner may take at a Mastery Test, so that intervention can occur when needed. Educators can choose what students view in their course curriculum and when they are able to access it. Educators may also start with an Edmentum course and then make it their own by adding, deleting, reordering, or changing course content as needed. Finally, educators can build their own courses by selecting from Edmentum’s extensive library of resources, lessons, modules, and tutorials.

Teacher Graded Activities

Teacher Graded Activities is a tool to facilitate effective communication between students and instructors within Plato Courseware. Students can submit work for review prior to finalization, giving educators the opportunity to read questions or comments from learners on their work in progress and provide feedback while changes can still be made. This allows educators to communicate directly with students within their actual graded activity and makes a record of all comments back and forth available.

State Specific Courses

Edmentum works closely with each state’s department of education and nationally recognized independent organizations to meet state standards and expectations from a content, technological, and accessibility standpoint. What does this mean for educators? This means that Edmentum has been vetted and approved by the respective state departments of education to offer first time credit or credit recovery courses. As a result, educators save time and already scarce resources by being able to rest assured that Plato Courseware curriculum is up-to-date and aligns to state mandates. Check out our State and Agency Approvals to learn more about your state’s specific standards.

Be sure to check back for the final installment of this series as we shift focus to explore the importance of Edmentum partnerships with leading organizations including WebbAlign and Quality Matters. Interested in learning more about Edmentum’s engaging and rigorous online courses? Watch this short video to find out how Oregon High School in Wisconsin is using Edmentum solutions to personalize learning for all students!