The document outlines itslearning's product roadmap for 2011-2012. Key focus areas include improving learning and teaching processes by visualizing them better, enhancing courses, and tracking attendance, behavior, and assessment. Specific enhancements proposed are improving student profiles, formative assessment tools, the gradebook, criteria-based assessment, the parent portal, reporting modules, and attendance/behavior tracking. The roadmap also covers improving digital content and apps, the calendar, planner, and integrating with mobile devices through a personal API. A new interface design is proposed along with integration toolkits for third parties.
2. How do we decide the direction?
• 400 ideas per week from our
users
• Dialogue with customers
• Built on proven practice
• National guidelines in the
UK, US, Sweden, Norway,
Denmark, Germany, France
and Netherlands
3. Focus areas 2011-2012
Learning processes
Visualise learning
REPORT PLAN
Visualise teaching
Reporting
REFLECT LEARNING ENGAGE
Course enhancements
Attendance/behaviour/ ASSESS TEACH
assessment
Digital content and apps
10. Course enhancements
• Target groups, sequencing and registration
• Course “project workspaces”
• Assignment Model answer
• Assignment history
• Course copy & metadata
• News attachments & access control
11. Registrations
• Organize registrations (i.e. field trips, sports day, oral
exams, choice assignments, …)
• Automatically manage available seats
• Easily send messages - i.e. reminders - to students
• Unlock resources and elements based on choices made
12. Visualise learning
Parent portal 2.0
New content block: ‘new since
last time’
New tool: Deadline planner
New tool: Reporting module
Planner 2.0
Calendar 2.0
14. Planner 2.0
• Integrated with time schedule
• Access control
• Templates
• Batch editing & usability
enhancements
• New content blocks &
aggregated views
• Archiving
• Better support for printing the
planner
15. Parent portal
Dashboard for each child
Available information is selected on
organisation level
Launched in 2010
In a survey among 5800 teachers:
44% said they would like to
communicate with parents more, but
don’t have a communication channel
71% said they felt a parent portal can
improve the parent-teacher
communication
16.
17. What’s new in the parent portal?
Parent-teacher meetings
New content blocks:
Progression
News
Detailed information
Attendance
Behaviour
Assessment
18. New tool: Reporting module
Reporting for all stakeholders
Drill down and support for data
analysis
Standard reports
Custom reports
19.
20. Attendance, Behaviour & Assessment
New roles
(attendance teams)
Improved follow up &
reporting
Template letters
improvements
21. Digital content and apps
Improved SCORM playing and uploading
Tests in the library
Easier and improved file uploading
Improvements to video uploading and playing
Apps:
Easier to find apps and extensions
Many new apps
New app types: “module extension” and personal Rest API
25. Test Mode browser
Students cannot:
• Open other websites
• Open other
applications
• Communicate with
others
• Access files on their
computer, internet or
other places in
itslearning
26. Personal API and Mobile Devices
• Support smart phones • Personal API
and mobile devices
through web app: - Access to personal data
through API
- Messages
- Users can grant / revoke
- Task list access to their own data
- Course List
- News
- Calendar
28. New interface
• Improved top menu
• Collapsable top- and
tree menu
• Drag and drop in folders
• Adapts to different
screen resolutions
• Cleaner and more
intuitive interface
30. Integration Toolkits
• Industry standard enterprise interface for 3rd party vendors to use.
IMS-ES • Partner documentation on all IMS-ES services.
Toolkit • Extensions for parent/child relationships
• Export of Assessment, Attendance and Behaviour.
Export • Flexible XML export formats, with control at the county level.
Toolkit • Set-up export tasks, or run one-off exports.
• Fully documented, itslearning SSO system.
SSO • itslearning as both an Identity and Service Provider.
Toolkit • Local teams can develop modules for specific SSO systems and
add to itslearning outside release cycle.
• Well documented API that allows data import from 3rd parties.
Migration • Initial use by Infostance and Teletop migration, but generic and
API available for other migrations.
• Bring the power and flexibility of the IMS-E import to local control.
IMS-E • Interface for country service teams to implement.
Toolkit
Background: Much of proven practice is described by Professor John Hattie at University of Auckland, New Zealand. He has done a large study on 800 meta-analyses of education research in the US, the UK and Australia covering more than 50,000 studies, and has used this to summarise proven practice in the field of education. Hattie’s analysis has resulted in a table of 138 different approaches to raise achievement in schools – and his main conclusion is that both teaching and learning must be visible for all stakeholders in order to have an effect. The illustration shows the front cover of his book “Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement”.As a summary of our roadmap, here is a list of measures (or factor inputs) that contribute to an increased learning outcome.The list is put together based on different sources, and the conclusion is clear: What teachers and learners do matters.
itslearning is a learning platform and the purpose of our product is tosupport our customers’ educational practice.The development is inspired by proven practice, feedback from our users and our product principles. We have decided to focus on features that will improve the teaching and learning processes – and make a difference for students and teachers.The wheel is a simplified model, but it identifies important issues in the learning process. It can be viewed from both a macro and micro perspective. For example: Planning and measuring accomplishment of teaching in a semester and planning and measuring accomplishment in a single assignment.The teaching and learning processes and workflows in schools also include stakeholders other than teachers and students – such as parents, headteachers and other educational leaders. All stakeholders share a common goal: the success of the student!A major driver behind the development is user experience. The learning platform’s full potential can only be reached when all stakeholders experience the benefits of the platform, clearly see that it makes a difference in their daily work, and work together to solve any important problems and challenges.
This is how we plan the new skill mapping tool.
We will improve the current grade book with some of the good grade book features from ScolastanceWeaim to create more customizationoptions, makingthe grade book flexibleenough to be used for the French marketSpecific grade functionality and grade management required in the French marketwill be madecustom for the French market
Clear learning intentions and clear success criteria are identified as two of the most important ways to enhance learning outcome. To make learning visible, we want to help teachers and students answer two simple questions:- Where am I?- Where am I heading?When these questions are answered, teachers and students have to figure out: “How do I get there?”In order to enhance criteria-based assessment in itslearning, we plan to improve the learning objective repository in order to make it easier to measure learning in regards to the objectives. Assessment rubrics may be a tool in this process. What are assessment rubrics? A rubric is an assessment tool used to measure students' work. It is a scoring guide that seeks to evaluate a student's performance based on the sum of a full range of criteria rather than a single numerical score. A rubric is a working guide for students and teachers, usually handed out before the assignment begins in order to get students to think about the criteria on which their work will be judged.The rubrics can be used at different levels, for example at course level or on individual elements, such as assignments.
This is how we picture the rubric assessment solution.
Making teaching visible is also vital for a good result. Visual teaching occurs when learning is the explicit goal. If the teaching is visible for the students, they are more confident as to where they should be heading, and also know how to get there.User feedback has made us realise that the lesson planner can be made easier to use, so that’s one of the tasks this year.School hours will be added to the calendar. Why school hours in the calendar? The learning platform is not an office application. It is a school application and must relate to the school context.Last year we did quite a lot with the parent portal, and this year we’ll add more features. Most schools wants to involve the parents in the learning process, but parents need to know what the teaching is all about in order to be a helpful partner in the learning process. Our planned enhancements in the parent portal will empower parents to become important and supportive resources in the learning process.Homework and workload overview: Wedon’t have any design, butwe have identifiedsomeimportantissuesthatwewant to focus on.New tool: Reporting (see next slide).
According to a recent survey by itslearning, 71% of teachers feel that a secure internet ‘parent portal’, where parents could see details about their child's schooling, would improve school-to-parent communication.The survey, conducted by itslearning in March 2011, asked 5805 teachers from six different countries how they involve parents in education – and what could be done to improve parental engagement in school. Unsurprisingly, 75% of teachers rated parental engagement as either ‘important’ or ‘very important’ for the success of a child’s education.However, 44% said they would like to communicate with parents more, citing a lack of time or lack of communication channel as the reason that they didn’t involve parents more.
Introduction of a new report generator will help several stakeholders to gather information about the teaching and learning.We’ll work on reporting for all stakeholders, including school management. At the moment, we are in early planning stages and we cannot say anything more specific about it.We’ll also focus on better support for analysing data from reports.As many countries need reports that conform to national standards, we’ll make sure these standards are supported.Finally, custom reports may be made as part of the itslearning pedagogical service.
This example shows how a report may look. Here we see an advanced attendance analyser, with advanced sorting possibilities and different views.
A large part of a teacher’s workload is connected to assessment. In addition, teachers are the source of information about the students’ attendance, behaviour and attitudes. We realise that collecting this data takes up much of a teacher’s time, and so it is important for us to help teachers be efficient. Time saved in collecting and sharing data can be used on teaching and following up the students.How formalised this communication is varies, but most schools register this information and communicate it to students and teachers – either as an ongoing process or at the end of each semester.Most schools also need to store assessment data in other systems. We’ll add more export possibilities next year, including the ability to export attendance, behaviour and final assessments to different MISs.
Learning packagesplay a central role in schools, and handling learning packages is an important part of the learning platform.Schools use both self-made and external learning packages – and SCORM compliant packages are used a lot. SCORM is by now a rather old standard with obvious limitations. Development seems to be moving towards cloud-based resources and tools, and our APIs will be extended to handle this.Self-made material is getting increasingly popular, and we want to improve the sharing possibilities. The first step is to make the test tool available in the library, which means tests can be reused easier than ever before.
How does it work?The Test Mode Browser ‘locks-down’ the student’s computer while he takes a test. He can only see and work on the test during this time – and is unable to search the internet, open other files and programs or communicate with friends through a chat program. The student has to remain in test mode until he finishes the test and submits it for marking.