[Program Enhancements] Study Island New Releases for Summer 2018

Hello, Islanders!

It’s that time of year again when you start thinking about being back in the classroom and educating your wonderful students using Study Island! Or, maybe you are still on vacation—in which case, I’m a bit jealous, but you deserve it.

When you do head back to school and log in to Study Island, you will notice a few changes. As a lot of you know, last summer, we released a number of features that positively impacted the experience of students using Study Island. This summer, we focused on you, the teacher, and ways that we could improve your experience using Study Island with your students.

Each step of the way, we kept two things in mind. First, simplicity. We asked ourselves: how can we make the Study Island experience easier for teachers? Study Island is something you should be able to pick up and start using right away, without a lot of training and fuss. We have reimagined the teacher page, highlighting essential points of data and shortcuts to the most frequently used features like Group Sessions. We have also added several short videos to the Help Center. Each video (with many more soon on the way) will cover a number of common activities that teachers complete in Study Island every day.

The second thing that dominated our thinking this summer was control. We want you to have control over how Study Island functions for you in your classroom. One of the main ways we accomplished this was giving teachers the ability to set the number of questions a student needs to answer per session, as well as total flexibility when setting the passing percentage for earning a Blue Ribbon. These changes can be made on both a schoolwide and individual basis.

Coupled with those enhancements is the ability for teachers to set start and end dates for all assignment types. You can now create your assignments ahead of time. Your students will be able to access an assignment only during the assignment window you set. Because of the emphasis on the assignment window, teachers can now assign previously completed topics, and to students, any task (previously completed or not) will look like a fresh, new assignment they need to work on and complete.

To show an even greater level of commitment to user control, we have also given Study Island administrators the ability to give individuals specific controls, like adding individual students or scheduling benchmarks. Or, if necessary, administrators can create additional administrator-level users for your Study Island account!

These are just a few of the new enhancements coming to Study Island that are focused on providing a delightful experience to our teachers. Please check out the What’s New section of our webpage or attend one of our upcoming webinars to learn more.

And, because we care about students as well, we do have four new games coming for them!

Have a great summer, and I can’t wait to see you on the Island!