Digital learning is fantastic for a lot of reasons. (Hello, personalization, learning from anywhere, and gamification!) But hiccups–like forgotten passwords and problems finding apps–eat away at the time teachers and students have for all that awesomeness. As a teacher, you are often left wondering if students are actually accessing apps, how much time they spend on their independent learning, and if anyone is struggling and needs help.
Enter ClassLink’s My Classes feature. My Classes helps you tackle these challenges with analytics that measure student engagement with apps, a place to post messages, and one place for students to access all their teacher-assigned digital resources for a class. Magical!
Note: If you can’t access My Classes or Analytics, contact your school or district. These features are available for schools using Roster Server, and administrators must provide access.
1. Personalize Apps and Resources for Your Classes
From My Classes, you can personalize the apps (both free and paid-for apps) available to each of your individual classes. You can also easily add—and then later remove—shortcut links to lesson plans, related websites, or specific files for students to use for projects or lessons. The process is so easy that you can add, remove, or change these links daily, depending on your lesson plans.
That means you and the students in each of your classes have one easy-to-find space to access all of the right digital resources. Students can focus on learning with everything they need for a specific class, lesson, or project easily accessible in one place.
2. Understand Which Apps Students Are Using and for How Long
With students using devices at school and home, it’s tough to know how long they engage with online resources. Within My Classes, you can see detailed usage analytics that help you understand which apps students log in to and for how long.
You can even view a particular app’s usage stats drilled down to individual students, and Heatmaps will quickly show you the total number of hours and minutes students spend using groups of apps daily.
Let’s say you’re tracking students’ progress with a reading program where they’re being urged to read for 15 minutes daily. A quick look at the analytics in My Classes can tell you who’s on track and who needs support.
Kimberly Gunn, Coordinator of Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment, and LCAP at Travis Unified School District, says these analytics are crucial information for teachers in her district.
“We want to know what students are doing,” explains Gunn. With ClassLink, we can measure engagement and see how many students are actually accessing the curriculum and which curriculum they’re accessing. All of that information is available and visible to our teachers.”
3. Catch Problems Early
Easy access to analytics can also help you quickly address issues before students fall behind. That’s what happens at Travis USD, explains Gunn.
“Teachers being able to see who’s in the app and who’s not is crucial,” she explains. “If I’ve got somebody who’s logging in, but they’re only on for 10 seconds, well, what’s wrong? We use it as a diagnostic.”
At Travis, teachers then reach out to the student to determine the exact problem. Often, it’s a technical issue where an app needs Flash to run or something along those lines.
However, without access to that data, Gunn says the teacher might never catch the problem - if it’s something students work on at home or outside of class. She says parents and students may not report technical issues. Instead, they get frustrated and move on to something else, especially if they aren’t sure who to contact for an answer.
“Those analytics give us the ability to reach out preemptively instead of waiting for them to get frustrated,” she explains.
4. Help Students Stay Informed
Communication is often another challenge with so much digital learning happening. Students are sifting through dozens of e-mail messages, and many are missed or forgotten. Teachers can post announcements to specific classes through My Classes to keep communication on track. From assignments to notes highlighting new resources, students immediately see notices when they enter a class through My Classes.
Ready to use My Classes to make digital learning more magical for teachers and students? Reach out to us at helpdesk@classlink.com or contact your Ed Success or Engagement team member.