1EdTech Learning Impact Awards
2019 Medalist Profiles
View the project profiles for the eight medal winners in the 2019 Learning Impact Awards competition. See all 32 finalists.
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Boost at Indiana University
“I think smartphone nudges are definitely most effective. We have our phones on us all the time, as students especially, so to have those nudges on there to remind me to do the assignment are much more effective at reminding me to get my work done.”
—Rebecca Townsend, Student, Marketing, Indiana University Bloomington (Source: 2019 LIA video submission)
Learning Impact Trend: Evolution to Next Generation Digital Learning Environments
Boost is an Indiana University (IU) student support mobile app that reminds students when they have not submitted anything for an upcoming deadline, proactively intervening before a student misses an assignment. It integrates with the Canvas LMS to provide reminders, resources, and encouragement. Boost sends assignment reminders in a daily digest, which students can customize into a personalized feed. It also sends personalized encouragement when students submit their work on time, providing positive reinforcement directly linked to students’ learning activities.
Learning Impact: Boost’s personalized, proactive nudges improved student’s adherence to assignments by 3.6% above instructors’ announcements. IU’s Boost pilot involved about 500 instructors, 750 courses, and 2,000 students.
“We have teachers that perhaps a year ago felt slightly disconnected from their students. Now they feel more connected. Teachers are able to monitor what is going on throughout the day with all of their students. Students self-monitor and make the teachers aware when they need some assistance when they are struggling.”
—Dwayne Alton, Executive Director, Infrastructure Services, School District of Lee County (Source: 2019 LIA video submission)
Learning Impact Trend: Scaling Pedagogical Knowledge and Practice
SAFARI Montage assesses students’ engagement and performance with video, audio, and other digital content within a digital learning ecosystem. Smart objects are tagged with different metadata which the system collects real time via an 1EdTech Caliper Analytics event feed; and then uploads them into a database that appears immediately on teachers’ dashboards. Teachers refer to a single dashboard for engagement and performance information, instead of logging onto each vendors’ analytics system. Teachers use the digital learning analytics to help their students be accountable while allowing them to work independently and at their own pace; and can quickly assist or challenge students as needed.
Learning Impact: Access to students’ performance and engagement data keeps teachers informed while simplifying the instructional workflow. The solution yields higher student engagements levels in School District of Lee County’s courses.
My Learning Analytics—University of Michigan
“One of the key design principles is to provide the visualization as close as possible to where they are meaningful to a student.” [The goal] is to determine if students perceive that these visualizations have impacted their motivation, self-regulated learning, or overall course performance.”
—John Johnston, IT Program Manager, University of Michigan (Sources: 2019 LIA video and paper submissions)
Learning Impact Trend: Adaptive Learning and Online Homework
University of Michigan’s (UM) My Learning Analytics (MyLA) pilot explores the impact of providing students with visualizations and insights for self-regulated learning and course performance in relation to their peers. The pilot’s dashboard provided three views of the students’ own data showing files accessed, assignment activity, and grade distribution. It leveraged the Unizin Data Platform, which ingests data from the student information system, the Canvas learning management system, and 1EdTech Caliper event streams from 7 different learning tools.
Learning Impact: My Learning Analytics (MyLA) pilot findings include: 88% of student participants agreed it changed the way they plan their course activity; 86% agreed it changed their sense of control over their course performance. The MyLA pilot continues to expand at UM and other institutions including Indiana University, The University of Iowa, and The University of British Columbia.
Teach Every Child Connector (SII) at Broward—Public Consulting Group and Broward County 
Public Schools
“Prior to this project, student data, such as accommodations strategies and interventions, were isolated and
housed in disparate information systems. We designed a solution to ease the heavy burden of teachers. By utilizing the 1EdTech standards, we are able to take two professional grade systems and make them usable through one portal.”
—Daniel Gohl, Chief Academic Officer, Broward Country Public Schools (Source: 2019 LIA video submission)
Learning Impact Trend: Scaling Pedagogical Knowledge and Practice
Florida’s state standards apply to every student, but success depends on knowing each student’s specific accommodations. However, BCPS’s curriculum and instructional materials are housed in an LMS; student specific accommodation information is housed in multiple systems. The Teach Every Child Connector (TECC) integrates data from BCPS EDPlan Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) into its Canvas LMS via the 1EdTech LTI interface. Teachers can now see data for all students with special needs in their course at the bottom of every Canvas page used in lesson planning and instructional delivery.
Learning Impact: Providing single access to the LMS and the student accommodation information enables quicker research about each student’s specific accommodations, resulting in better prepared teachers and lessons, and saving BCPS as much as $2.4 million in teacher time.
Academic Competency Management Tool (ACMT): Powering & Connecting State Standards—LearningMate Solutions, Inc. and South Carolina Department of Education
“By using ACMT, we are deeply embedding a technology solution into the entire [standards] process—rather than making it an after-thought. This gives us the power to link resources directly to the
standards themselves—instead of having them buried in static documents.”
—Molly Spearman, State Superintendent of Education, South Carolina Department of Education (Source: 2019 LIA video submission)
Learning Impact Trend: Scaling Pedagogical Knowledge and Practice
LearningMate’s ACMT is a digital state standard authoring and communications platform to help states write, publish, and communicate standards updates to school districts, curriculum providers, and teachers; and to ensure lesson plans and teaching material are synced to the most recent standard. At the state level, ACMT streamlines the entire standards authoring workflow from end-to-end among stakeholders. Districts use ACMT to connect directly with state education departments to receive an automatic notification when a standard is changed or updated. A local ACMT instance provides a district with a platform to digitally connect customized lessons plans and guides to specific standards so teachers have quick access to up-to-date curriculum examples.
Learning Impact: ACMT streamlined authoring and communications processes, enabling faster, more accurate state standards creation and districts’ subsequent standard adoption.
ComPAIR Peer Review at UBC—The University of British Columbia Centre for Teaching, Learning & Technology
“ComPAIR has allowed me to give my students much more reflective time, peer feedback time, and self-assessment time that I could possibly allocate.”
—Tiffany Potter, English Instructor, The University of British Columbia (Source: 2019 LIA video submission)
Learning Impact Trend: Scaling Pedagogical Knowledge and Practice
ComPAIR is an open source application that enables students to review sets of peer work for comparison-based review and feedback. The instructor enters a question into a box and students can submit their assignments in text, equations, videos, or photos. Student work is collected and distributed automatically online for anonymous peer review. Students click on the ComPAIR button and see two answers side-by-side; choose the more effective one; and enter anonymous feedback into a text box. ComPAIR integrates directly with an LMS via 1EdTech Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI).
Learning Impact: ComPAIR shows peer work in pairs. Students tap into their comparative judgement skills to identify others’ work strengths and weaknesses as well as offer constructive criticism. In 2018, The University of British Columbia used ComPAIR in 60+ courses, hosting 140 assignments, and impacting 5,400 students.
Expert-Based Collective Advising Mechanism (ECAM)—Advanced Innovation Center for Future Education of Beijing Normal University, Beijing Municipal Commission of Education
"ECAM increases the learning opportunities for students; makes teaching services dynamically reallocated as intellectual resources—enabling students in rural areas to access more learning resources." (Source: 2019 LIA video submission)
Learning Impact Trend: Educational Application, Content, and Media Infrastructure
China’s rural areas may lack adequate teachers and resources to tutor their students. Expert-based, Collective Advising Mechanism (ECAM) provides online one-on-one tutoring, live classes with advanced digital pen, and micro-lectures services to rural students by Beijing public middle school and high school teachers. ECAM’s AI-based, Smart Learning Partner (SLP) platform sorts all learning resources according to the Interdisciplinary Competency Based model, tracks each student’s learning process, predicts his mastery level, and recommends reading resources and tutors. It profiles each teacher’s expertise to match a student with an appropriate instructor. Digital pens facilitate note-taking and audio recording the session.
Learning Impact: ECAM’s almost 11,000 teachers in 17 Beijing school districts provided almost 67,000 hours of one-on-one online tutoring to 57,000 students in six rural school districts.
ALEKS Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces—McGraw-Hill and Arizona State University
“Regardless of course structure or format, ALEKS empowers instructors with the flexibility and control to create an environment that helps students achieve their unique goals.”
—Vanessa Sullivan: Manager, User Experience Research, McGraw-Hill (Source: 2019 LIA video submission)
Learning Impact Trend: Scaling Pedagogical Knowledge and Practice
Students’ wide range of prerequisite gap can stymie math and chemistry retention rates. Instructors spend reviewing old material or focusing on developing procedural and computational skills. ALEKS is a mastery-based learning platform for math and chemistry that identifies what students already know, what they don’t, and what they’re ready to learn next—creating a personalized and dynamic path to meet their unique goals. Student won’t waste time on topics they already understand or get frustrated by topics for which they aren’t ready. ALEKS ensures that students have the prerequisite knowledge to be successful as the topics continue to build.
Learning Impact: ALEKS increased pass rates, improved student retention, and accelerated learning for an ASU algebra class. Pass rates increased from 62% in Fall 2015 to 74% in 2017.
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