[Program Enhancements] Exact Path New Releases for Summer 2018

On Monday, July 16, 2018, students and teachers everywhere will breathe a sigh of relief as they turn on their computers, log in to Exact Path, and with a wide grin, realize that their voices have been heard.

Hi! My name is Shannon Urban, and I am the senior product manager for Edmentum Exact Path. Over the past year, our product, support, services, and experience design teams have been hitting the sidewalk (or the road) to visit as many of our educators as possible, as well as reading through every response sent in through our surveys and conducting virtual feedback sessions. Why? It’s simple. Our programs are built by educators for educators. So, learning what works and what can be improved is vital to our primary goal to provide solutions for our educators and help students achieve academic and personal growth. 

I am so excited to be able to share many of the changes and enhancements we’ve made in Exact Path based on your feedback. I’m confident that this summer’s release will make it even easier for educators to take full advantage of the rich features and functionality of Exact Path. Let’s take a look at what’s new for summer 2018!

Simplified, Smoother, and Streamlined

This set of feature enhancements supports the unique experience each level of user has when using Exact Path. Sometimes small, but always mighty, these adjustments and improvements will deliver an impactful punch to your current implementation.

Learners

To ensure smooth and easy navigation through the lessons for students of all ages, we’ve simplified the student interface for students in grades K–5.

Our K–2 students will now be able to launch right into their lessons from the new auto-launch buttons for each subject right on their homepage! If they choose to start their lessons from the Learning Path page, they’ll no longer need guidance from the teacher on where to start because that guidance is built in, now only showing one lesson at a time and highlighting the current activity they are working on. Not only will this allow our youngest students to work independently, but it will also allow them to track their progress toward their Progress Check with a fun and engaging gameboard!

Our grades 3–5 students also have a simplified interface, as well as the highlighted guidance showing them the next suggested activity. However, because these students are older, we are also continuing to allow them choice by displaying multiple lessons on their Learning Path. No worries, though—whichever lesson they choose, the highlighted guidance will follow them, helping them to keep on track to complete the lesson components. We’ve also made it easier for students to see which lessons are completed so that they’ll always be moving forward.

Teachers

In line with our goal of helping educators manage their classrooms with Exact Path, we’re releasing enhancements to simplify those routine tasks. Teachers are now able to unlock mastery quizzes, copy and edit Challenges, and batch print Student Summary Reports making these day-to-day interactions with Exact Path quicker and easier. We also now support the export of Learning Path reports to CSV files, and for clarity, all MetaMetrics Lexile® measures data has been moved to its own page called “Other Metrics.” 

An exciting new feature is the ability to autogenerate a Learning Path. With a click of a button, which is conveniently placed next to each student who doesn’t have a Learning Path yet, teachers can instantly generate a Learning Path based on the student’s grade for any student without a diagnostic! This is perfect for those young kindergarteners who need a bit more time before taking the diagnostic but want to get started on Exact Path or for that new student who arrived outside of the testing window and will be able to quickly and easily participate in Exact Path alongside the rest of the class.

Administrators

Administrators will now see a brand-new Administrator Dashboard when they log in to Exact Path. Here, they can see at-a-glance data snapshots to help gauge the health of their implementation. They can see the upcoming test windows and drill into the current testing window to identify completion rates for the diagnostics. Administrators can also review average weekly Learning Path usage for their schools, grades, and subjects using Exact Path.

We also heard from our educators that there needs to be an easier way to schedule diagnostics—and we’ve delivered! Administrators can now auto-schedule diagnostics within each test window for every enrolled student and for every subject simply by checking the box and saving!

Assessment Optimization 

While we all want to ensure that students are assessed and placed accurately, we heard the feedback and understand the need for expediency as well. With this summer’s release, the Exact Path diagnostic has been optimized to reduce testing time without sacrificing the quality of the results. 

After completion of the diagnostic, we are also expanding the placement of students for better personalization. Those students who place into high school skills will now be able to be placed into any grade in high school (9–12). We’ve also done some additional work to ensure that all students will be placed on a Learning Path that provides appropriate content.

Research is a critical component of all that we do at Edmentum. One area that our psychometricians continue to research is our Lexile® measure conversions. This summer, we’ve refined our conversions so that we provide even more precise Lexile measures, as well as introduce Lexile ranges.

Robust Curriculum Additions

Our curriculum teams also partnered with educators to create an instructional approach that better fits the needs of students using Exact Path. From those reviews, we are excited to introduce more than 200 new elementary activities that will increase the number of skills that have three-part lessons (lesson, practice, and quiz), providing educators and students with more support. We’re also replacing more than 40 middle school English lessons with shorter, more focused lessons that have relatable images, a variety of technology-enhanced items, limited open-ended writing and reading assignments, less text on screen, and age- and developmentally appropriate passages. 

An additional 50-plus brand-new teacher Lesson Ideas have also been added to Exact Path skills. These resources are available from Content Search,  Knowledge Map, and Current Learning Activities areas, and they include differentiated activities for all learners.

Renaissance Star and Exact Path Integration

Part of ensuring our educators’ success is understanding your specific needs and continuing to meet those needs as much as possible. So, for those leveraging Renaissance Star Early Literacy®, Star Reading®, or Star Math® assessments, we will be releasing a brand-new Renaissance integration that will automatically drive the creation of individualized Learning Paths in Exact Path, without manual uploads or data entry. 

Interested in learning more about these enhancements and finding out when you can expect to see these changes in your Exact Path account? Keep an eye on our Edmentum What’s New page for the latest updates!

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