Advancing Educational Insight, Attainment, and Planning

Summary: In 2023, Texas transformed its educational landscape by introducing technology-enhanced items (TEIs) and online assessments, moving away from traditional methods to focus on critical thinking and advanced knowledge demonstrations. Region 10 launched TEKSbank Classroom (TbC), creating 20,000 high-quality TEIs through ExamSpark, a content management platform integrating learning management systems. TbC equips educators with actionable data from formative assessments, helping them identify learning gaps and tailor instruction.

Learning Impact: This initiative has provided early exposure to Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), enhancing student preparedness and learning outcomes for millions of Texas students. TEKSbank Classroom can identify learning gaps and anticipate students' challenges, allowing educators to tailor their instruction proactively, so teaching is not a one-size-fits-all solution. By integrating TbC with existing LMS, the platform facilitates a more dynamic and responsive educational experience. This aligns with key principles outlined in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which emphasizes the importance of high-quality, standards-aligned educational content and personalized learning experiences that cater to each student’s unique needs.

Summary: The Hunter School of the Performing Arts (HSPA) provides a comprehensive curriculum focusing on the performing arts. As part of its four-year Strategic Improvement Plan, HSPA aims to implement a tech-enabled solution for Mastery Learning throughout the school. Edalex, in collaboration with its integration partner Learning Vault, developed a learner dashboard embedded in Canvas. This dashboard tracks student progress toward mastery, reduces administrative workload related to reporting, and enhances visibility into the learning journey for all stakeholders within the learning community.

Learning Impact: Learners are given access to an engaging, evidence-based environment that acknowledges their personal achievements while offering guidance for advancing to the next level of mastery. Students can take charge of their recognition: with portable, shareable provisional evidence records highlighting their learning progress and verifiable, permanent digital credentials. They receive and maintain control over acknowledgments for curricular, co-curricular, and cross-curricular (both hard and soft skills) achievements, along with their commitment to school values, which enhances learner agency. Parents and caregivers receive thorough, dynamic insights into their child's learning development anytime and from anywhere.

Summary: MyInnerGenius helped IBM address its hiring and employment readiness challenges by matching people to ideal careers using its unique competency-based innovation. IBM faced issues such as low enrollment numbers, high dropout rates, and unsuccessful apprenticeships; thus, it aimed to help individuals identify the right career trajectories before embarking on their journeys. MyInnerGenius was selected to support two major global initiatives: the IBM Apprenticeship Program and IBM SkillsBuild.

Learning Impact: MyInnerGenius enables comprehensive assessments and improved evaluation of a student's learning and core competencies within a program. Open Badges are issued to signal employability and foster trust with employers while allowing learners to carry their credentials wherever they go. For IBM, this approach has led to 100% placement of pre-screened apprentices using MyInnerGenius, significantly reducing dropout rates and creating a surplus of talent. Additionally, over 200,000 assessments have been conducted using MyInnerGenius, with an 85% lead conversion rate. This ultimately guides users toward their ideal careers and personalized training. The tool builds confidence and has the potential to change lives for millions of individuals who do not yet realize their full potential.

Summary: The DCC creates technology to enhance the issuance, management, verification, and sharing of academic achievements. Their open-source software allows institutions to issue trusted digital credentials based on standards like W3C Verifiable Credentials and Open Badges 3.0. The credential issuing system includes customizable microservices and an easy-to-use dashboard. Institutions can design credential templates and batch-issue credentials via CSV uploads. Learners can store their credentials in the DCC Learner Credential Wallet and share them through links or LinkedIn. Employers and academic institutions can verify these credentials using the DCC VerifierPlus application.

Learning Impact: DCC software enables the issuance of digitally signed, tamper-evident credentials for individual courses, certificate programs, or specific skills and competencies. The issuing system comprises various components or “microservices” that can be utilized individually or combined to create a solution tailored to the institution’s needs. Credentials issued using DCC technology can be imported into any digital wallet and utilized by any web application that supports verifiable credentials.

Summary: Navigatr is transforming skill recognition and career development throughout the UK. Since launching the country's first digital badge in 2012, the platform has recognized a wide range of skills through digital badges, providing alternative pathways to education and employment. By partnering with cities and utilizing AI, Navigatr helps connect individuals with job opportunities while assisting educators and employers in validating skills. Key features of Navigatr include a badge search engine, job feeds, and detailed analytics for program evaluation. Additionally, its leadership program supports cities and organizations in developing effective badging strategies, contributing to skill recognition and workforce development.

Learning Impact: Since its launch, Navigatr has partnered with eight cities, created 1,434 badges, issued a total of 14,500 badges, and connected 262 community groups, employers, schools, and universities across 59 communities. The WorkSkills Kingston initiative issued over 377 quality badges in just three months, with 298 residents successfully claiming these badges. The program has a claim rate of 79% and has attracted 5,456 unique visits to the WorkSkills Kingston community page.

Summary: Clarity is a reporting and data lake solution designed to empower students, parents, and the school community with actionable data. It integrates academic, behavioral, and experience data from LMS, SIS, Survey, and Communications tools to provide a unified platform for analysis and action. With its advanced data visualization through web apps, mobile apps, and BI tools, Clarity utilizes early warning and algorithmic benchmarks to notify parents, teachers, students, and district leadership of actions they can take to improve course performance.

Learning Impact: Clarity has transformed how teachers, parents, and staff support students. Early reports indicate that teachers save 5 to 10 hours each week by utilizing actionable data and fostering communication and collaboration with students rather than spending time on data analysis. Schools use these tools daily to identify students showing early warning signs, with reports that consolidate information on grades, missing assignments, and attendance into a single color-coded sheet. The Idaho Digital Learning Alliance (IDLA) has witnessed an increase in pass rates and final grades, with an improvement of 2.27%. The most significant gains have been among students on the margins, particularly in our lowest quartile of learners, which has led to reduced overall variance through timely interventions.

Summary: Branching Minds is an organization that supports K-12 schools and districts in implementing Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS). Their comprehensive web-based platform enhances and streamlines best practices for MTSS by integrating data across academics, behavior, attendance, and social-emotional learning. This platform empowers educators with analytics to identify students' strengths and challenges, helping them recognize those who need additional support.

Learning Impact: Adopting Branching Minds helped advance personalized learning at the Orange County School District in North Carolina. With the platform's implementation and support from the Branching Minds consultation team, the district transformed its approach to targeting and implementing interventions. Using Branching Minds, educators identified specific areas where students required support, resulting in tailored intervention strategies that addressed each student's unique challenges. As a result of these changes, reading performance among elementary students markedly improved. DIBELS data revealed an increase in students scoring above benchmark and a decrease in those scoring well below benchmark throughout the 2022-2023 school year. Specifically, the percentage of students performing well below benchmark dropped from 30% to 16%, while the percentage of students performing above benchmark rose from 21% to 37%.

Summary: uHoo Analytics is a learning analytics tool designed for instructors across all teaching modalities. Faculty receive a weekly email called "Monday Measures," which includes three alerts related to student performance, course assignments, and quiz questions. These alerts are linked directly to Power BI dashboards for easy access. To support faculty users, the Digital Learning team offers a micro-credentialed training series titled "Faculty as Learning Scientists." This series prepares faculty to analyze uHoo data to identify challenges related to students and instruction, diagnose underlying causes, predict outcomes, and propose effective solutions.

Learning Impact: The uHoo Analytics platform, the Monday Measures email, and the Faculty as Learning Scientists training series empower faculty to enhance student success. In an ongoing faculty survey that started in Fall 2023, educators reported that the Monday Measures alert emails effectively highlighted important data points of concern, prompting them to check the dashboards more regularly. Additionally, faculty indicated an increased likelihood of engaging individually with the students identified by these alerts.

Summary: SchoolStatus is a comprehensive platform designed specifically for K-12 education, combining data analytics and communication tools. At its core is the Focused Student Support dashboard, which empowers educators and leaders by providing a complete view of student data. This enables timely interventions and fosters communication with students' families. The platform presents visual data and actionable insights, facilitating student support and family communication in their preferred home languages.

Learning Impact: The SchoolStatus dashboard is aligned with the Prince William County Schools' (PWCS) Strategic Plan, which aims to improve graduation rates and student performance in reading and math, reduce dropout rates among key student groups, and decrease chronic absenteeism. It utilizes data from the Student Information System, including an Early Warning System score that tracks academics, attendance, and discipline. This data is synthesized into an overall score that indicates the level of intervention a student may require, making it easier to identify those most in need of support. PWCS has set a goal of achieving a 95% on-time graduation rate for all students by the year 2025. As of 2023, the graduation rate stands at 91.7%. PWCS has also experienced double-digit declines in chronic absenteeism. The outcomes for the graduation rates will be announced in August 2024.