[Study Island Updates] Time-on-Task Tracking, Built Test Enhancements, and NWEA Reports

As I am sure you have noticed, we made some exciting updates to Study Island this summer. These upgrades were primarily focused on supporting the student’s ability to drive their own learning by providing them with an engaging and encouraging environment for practice. For the remainder of the year, we will be shifting our focus to releasing features that will help teachers and admins easily access data and provide more control and flexibility when using Study Island in their classrooms. With the upcoming release on November 6th, we wanted to make updates that would be impactful for educators, without being disruptive to the daily workflow.  This will be the common theme of all the remaining releases we have coming this school year; impactful and beneficial, while not negatively impacting a student’s or teacher’s experience in Study Island.

Let’s dive into a few areas where you can expect to see enhancements next month. And, for the latest information on any of the below items, be sure to check the “What’s New” section within your account!

Built Test Enhancements

School and district use of Built Tests in Study Island has continued to grow over the years. Time and time again we hear how teachers love the ability to select the specific questions their students will see using this custom assessment and assignment creation tool. This summer, we strengthened the Built Tests feature by allowing it to be used in conjunction with Group Sessions. This fall, we want to continue supporting the usage of Built Test by allowing teachers to create a copy of and edit existing Built Tests. This feature, coming November 6th, will allow teachers to easily make minor adjustments to assessments they have already created.

But, that is not all! Coming December 11th, teachers will also be able to select questions from multiple grade levels and multiple subjects. Many more details are coming, but just imagine the control educators can have over classroom assessments with the ability to select questions from multiple grade levels, multiple subjects, or even combine custom questions with the existing Study Island questions bank.

See the latest updates for yourself! Register for our live webinar and see Study Island's new features in action!

Time-on-Task Goal Setting & Progress Monitoring

This summer, we were very excited to release new research on the effectiveness of Study Island. With this study, we, and more importantly our users, can finally answer a long-standing question: “How long should my students be using Study Island?” This study, validated by Marzano Research Group, confirms that when used 30 minutes each week, per subject, Study Island produces significant achievement outcomes for students. With the ability to answer this question, we felt it was of upmost importance to provide teachers and administrators easier visibility into how much students are practicing in Study Island.

We have several feature enhancements coming November 6^th to meet that objective. The first is the ability for administrators to set a practice goal for all students using Study Island. For teachers, the visibility to the school goal is seen in Sensei, where we are also updating the individual student cards to reflect the time spent practicing for each student over the current and previous week. Educators can use this information to build in-class incentives, share progress with students, and celebrate active practice. In addition to this data being included in the Study Island teacher dashboard, we recognized the need to include these metrics in exportable reports as well. So, we will also launch new Weekly Time Spent reports that allow administrators and teachers to track time spent practicing in Study Island by an individual student, a class, or an entire grade level. For district administrators, a report will be available that offers similar visibility into practice time at the whole-school level.

NWEA Reporting Additions

First up are two brand new reports to support our customers using Study Island and NWEA. Customers who upload their NWEA scores into Study Island have long enjoyed the ease of automatically generated learning paths for their students in math and reading (and now Science too, as of this summer). As we’ve continued to partner closely with these customers, we’ve uncovered needs for additional reporting that gives visibility into both student placement and progress. In less than a month, we will offer a NWEA Class Placement Report, which will provide teachers with visibility into where each of their students are placed in Study Island. We will also release a NWEA Class Progress Report, which allows teachers, at a class level, to see their students’ progress on their NWEA learning path in Study Island, including the number of Blue Ribbons earned. Both reports will offer teachers whole class visibility, a request frequently heard in our conversations with customers.

We were thrilled with the feedback we received on updates made to Study Island this summer, and hope that these next feature enhancements coming on November 6th similarly meet educators’ needs. As always, our goal is to enhance, not interrupt, you overall experience in Study Island. Be sure to keep an eye on the “What’s New” section in your Study Island account for more information about what enhancements are on their way, and join us for a sneak peek webinar on November 1st to get a firsthand look at the updates you can expect to see!