Technology has been making the lives of students easier thanks to the digitization of content and better and more efficient learning tools and techniques. Now technology firms are also paying attention to teachers and their needs. CourseSmart is a digital course material publisher and platform and has developed an application that lets teachers monitor students usage of e-texbooks. The new analytics tool allows instructors to see students “reading progress, page views, the time they spent reading, and their highlighting and note-taking habits within the e-book.” The application also gives each student an overall score that shows how much and how well they have used the material in the e-textbook.
CourseSmart developed the program to give teachers the ability to see which students were completing their reading assignments. The idea was to identify students that were falling behind and get them more help so that they became more engaged with the classwork. The tool can also help administrators by giving them analytics on the materials they purchase for the school and to see how well their digital material is doing in class.
Executive Director of WICHE and Cooperative for Educational Technology (WCET) Ellen Wagner says that, “The higher education community is hungry for actionable data that links student engagement to their learning content. With the CourseSmart dashboard, professors will be better able to fine-tune lesson plans, critique student performance, and even tailor suggestions for specific students on how to study more effectively to help them stay on track and stay in school.”
Student privacy concerns have been addressed by giving the users the ability to turn off the feature. However, if enough students leave the tool in place the institution and the administration can get a good idea of progress. Villanova University, Rasmussen College, and Texas A&M University at San Antonio have been used as pilot program for the new tool and release to the general user base is scheduled for 2013.
Source: PSFK
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