Edgenuity Provides Rich Student, Teacher Experience

We recently had the opportunity to learn more about Edgenuity, an online content provider for middle and high school coursework. Edgenuity provides digital media rich content including videos, onscreen teachers, and interactive learning tools (i.e. digital Post-its!) so that students can learn, capture, chat, share and discover.

Edgenuity is a robust content platform that offers full credit-bearing courses based on state standards and has already developed custom courses in 30 different states to align to specific state standards. They also offer professional development and onsite coaching for teachers, including PD on best practices in blended learning environments.

Student user experience. Students can view courses and break down work in their assignment calendars and also can take notes while doing their coursework. Teachers can then see student notes to assess student understandings of material. The coursework also contains a “CloseReader,” a digitally enhanced reading tool. In our World History demo, we saw how a student might interact with a primary history resource (Woodrow Wilson’s speech about America’s involvement in World War One, for example) and take notes, use the glossary to look up words, and highlight text. Students can also learn more by watching videos or reading an explanation written by one of the expert teacher contributors. Edgenuity also has chat options so students can chat with each other or their teacher. The online discussion board is called “Collaboration Corner”- a spot for students to post questions and answers. And file this under “super cool to know”: the platform supports 17 different languages which translate on-screen text!

Teacher user experience. Teachers often start and end their day at the dashboard where they have access to all their students and can sort by any number of criteria. Alerts populate and let a teacher know if a student needs help or might need some extra review time with the teacher, and teachers can pull students into specific groupings for meeting times if extra support is warranted. Edgenuity software provides aggregate data provided to teachers for all students and provides percentage grading. Although not specifically a competency-based reporting system, teachers can turn platform percentages into mastery levels for a competency-based assessment if they desire. Teachers are able to run student reports based on standards they are focused on.

Other teacher highlights:

• Teachers can customize lessons by adding their own
• Teachers can customize project assignments and writing prompts
• Teachers can share courses they have created with other teachers

Finally, we love that Edgenuity offers coursework related to college and career. There are electives available to learn about career options, and test prep courses are also available. A student may be working on writing their resume or their college essay – and might even earn dual credit options through Edgenuity’s partnership with Sophia, an online course provider for college credit.

With professional development services, user friendly teacher and student experience, Edgenuity is a good partner to have in providing online standards-based coursework- a win/win for students and teachers.

This blog is part of the Learning Platforms Series brought to you by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For more, stay tuned in for the final published project, Getting Smart on Next-Gen Learning Platforms and check out additional posts in the series:

• Beyond the LMS: What Next-Gen Learning Platforms Should Do
• Impact at Scale: The Learning Platform Series
• Schoology: Instructional Operating System Empowers Learning