[Release Round Up] Heading Back to School with Courseware, Study Island, and Exact Path Updates

Whew! At Edmentum, I think we can all safely say, this has been one of our busiest summers yet. And, as you gear up for the start of a new year, we simply can’t wait any longer to make sure all of you are dialed in on the exciting enhancements and new functionality that we have unveiled.

While we’ve been sharing the updates with you all summer and adding information to the Edmentum What’s New page, now, we’d like to take a step back. Here, we’ll highlight the most impactful investments made to Courseware, Study Island, and Exact Path this summer that are sure to set you on the right track for the 2017-18 school year.

Courseware

Edmentum’s online curriculum program, Courseware, introduced exciting new features this summer designed to enhance the way educators utilize data, support students, and communicate results with various stakeholders. These enhancements are driven by your feedback about how you use the program and how to make it even better! Here’s a snapshot of the updates.

1. Time Management Tools: Pacing and Performance

To help you and your students make the most of your time, we’ve added progress and pacing data, designed to give you and your students guidance on progress toward course completion. Educators will be able to quickly and easily answer questions like:

• How are students pacing against course goals?
• Which students are working behind pace?
• What is the students' overall and current course grades?
• How many activities have students completed or are left?

2. Algebra and Science Content Built to NGSS

As a continuation of our commitment to high quality content, we released a brand new Algebra I course; Science courses built to NGSS standards; state-specific courses; and new CTE and electives courses. Students will interact with content that takes them from foundational knowledge through application to real-world scenarios. This is achieved through close alignment to state standards, an emphasis on higher-order thinking, and embedded opportunities for assessment to demonstrate a deeper understanding of the content.

3. Improved Reporting

Edmentum unleashes the power of student data by enabling educators to take immediate action. This summer, we launched a series of new or updated reports designed to help streamline daily management of online learning, make accountability reporting even easier, and save you time. These powerful new enhancements will give you even more insight into how students are performing without having to manually sift through data so that more time can be spent working with individual students:

• New! Contact Hours Report is designed to capture hours spent working inside a class setting or remotely.
• New! Course Audit Report gives administrators a consolidated measure of Courseware performance across an entire district.
• Updated! Detailed Score Report with Flex Assignments will provide educators requiring district-wide accountability of programs to have visibility into program success.

Study Island

Edmentum’s K-12 practice and preparation program, Study Island, is better than ever! With enhancements that focus on reimagining our scoring model, improving your favorite practice tools, and unveiling a brand new student dashboard, we’re designing the future of Study Island based entirely on your feedback.

1. Scoring Updates

Driven by your classroom needs, we’ve enhanced our scoring model to look beyond cumulative scoring. Now, students are motivated by their best score and number of attempts on fixed 10-question practice sessions. So, what does this mean for you this school year? When students struggle on a topic, they won’t be digging themselves out of a hole all school year trying to raise their average score. Rather, each 10-question session is viewed separately, and a fresh shot at practice will have them earning that Blue Ribbon in no time.

2. Practice Tool Enhancements

There’s so many ways to practice in Study Island, outside of the traditional online practice sessions. Two rising stars in the Study Island world are Group Sessions and Built Tests. To improve your educator experience, we’ve tied these two features closer together. Now, you can launch any Built Test within a Group Session, allowing you to turn a past assessment into a collaborative review session in just a few clicks. Additionally, tweaks to your Group Session view add a collapsible tracking panel and more room for the question to display for a more friendly experience.

3. New Student Dashboard

The name of the game when it comes to supporting students is personalization! The new and improved student dashboard brings together Blue Ribbon tracking, suggested topics, In-progress practice, and assignments into a single view, making it even easier for your students to take action and guide their own learning journey.

Exact Path

Our K-8 individualized learning solution, Exact Path, launched to the market in January of this year, but it’s already seeing a series of exciting new features driven by customer feedback. Focusing on high-quality content, actionable reporting, and engagement for students and families, there’s a lot to see here.

1. High-Quality Content

This summer our commitment to high-quality content has never shined brighter. Starting in July, all learning paths were made 100% Flash free, and can now be used on any Internet-enabled device of your choosing. Beginning August 28, Exact Path was officially extended K-8 and now supports all elementary and middle school students with content that extends K-12. Additionally, other enhancements were made to help educators search for content outside of their students’ learning paths and access even more content options including worksheets, videos, and lesson ideas for targeted reteach and tiered intervention.

2. Actionable Reporting

As your reporting needs grow, we will be right there with you. This summer signaled some key additions to our data visualizations and customizable reports. Additional metrics are now available including national norms for our K-6 adaptive diagnostic assessments and new demographic reporting to help you dig into trends across your special populations. And, no matter how you choose to access your data, we can promise it won’t require a translator to quickly and easily make sense of.

3. Student & Family Engagement

We are pleased to announce some meaningful additions to help keep students engaged and help parents stay connected to what their students are doing at school. For learners, the introduction of mastery trophies and teacher challenges not only motivates students to work harder, but reinforces the idea of goal setting. For learners of all abilities, they are able to track their progress, see what’s up next, and reflect on their successes. For parents, it was important they were armed with tools to reinforce the home to school connection. For that reason, Exact Path now includes parent letters in English and Spanish that encourage family members to get involved and cheer their students on!

Stay up to date with all of the latest news on all of Edmentum’s online programs—check out our What’s New page!