Oxford Community Schools

Even before COVID-19, Oxford Community Schools faced the unique challenge of connecting thousands of in-person, virtual, and hybrid students with the resources they needed each day. Having ClassLink in place transformed Oxford’s approach to digital learning, ultimately improving access, saving time, and opening up a new world of digital learning for students.

Challenge

Made up of over 7,000 students across five elementary schools, a middle school, a high school, and one of the oldest virtual academies in Michigan, Oxford Community Schools needed to modernize their approach to digital learning to meet students' needs. Every day, educators spent countless hours of instructional time helping students log in to various applications, websites, and resources they needed to learn, robbing them of crucial time spent learning.

“At the end of the day, [students] have multiple bookmarks with multiple different log-in codes,” shares Oxford Virtual Academy Mentor Teacher Austin Brantley, “that creates difficulties for families with multiple students."

Solution

Using ClassLink for single sign-on, Oxford quickly noticed a difference in the time students spent logging in as well as the time tech teams spent on identity management as they set up student and teacher access to existing applications and resources.

Making ClassLink's LaunchPad the central place to access digital resources “allowed for a common interface with our students no matter if they were a traditional student, [or] a virtual student,” former superintendent Tim Throne said. “Everybody’s going to the same spot, and then they can jump off and go wherever they need to.”

Results

Teachers noticed an immediate improvement in the once time-consuming process of logging into each resource they needed access to individually.

Shawn Crosby, a teacher at Leonard Elementary, says, “Now, we use ClassLink basically for every website we go on that involves signing in. They get their devices, they turn them on, ClassLink pops up, and it signs them right in. They don’t have to go anywhere else. It’s made the classroom run a lot smoother.”

Empowering both face-to-face and virtual students with the ability to log in to each resource they need as soon as they need it has also built students’ confidence and ability to navigate technology successfully, Crosby says. “They know exactly what to do and where to go. I don’t have to help them find those sites or log on. It gives them more confidence, and then they’re more engaged in what we’re doing.”