Illuminate Education offers their student assessment management platform, Illuminate Data & Assessment (or Illuminate DnA), providing a means of tracking student standardized testing, test data analysis, and other features.
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Revel
Score 4.9 out of 10
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Revel from Pearson supports students with note taking, assessments, and other classroom tasks, and integrates with commonly used LMS.
I think it is well suited for K-12 schools, especially for tracking student growth over time. The ability to easily upload state assessment results and produce pre-built reports provides teachers actionable data. The online assessment system is more appropriate for secondary (grades 6-12) students in our district due to the types of assessments our elementary (K-5) students complete. I have some experience with other systems and think that the illuminate software offers more flexibility in the types of data that can be stored.
Pearson Revel is probably best suited for distance learning of large sections where there is little time for discussion and grading assignments manually is prohibitive. I would prefer not to use it with small classes and traditional classes.
Tech support seemed good but our main issue was never resolved. We received attention and someone was working on our issue, but they could never figure out why our student count was off for 1 grade level even though they said our data looked great.
The customized reports were powerful, but there was so much to learn for the average administrative user, like a principal, to get the detailed data they need. You would have to have a dedicated person to create customized reports.
At some point, our representative just stopped calling and there was no further contact. Then our rep left the company and the new rep only sent one email notifying us of the change. That was almost a year ago.
Unfortunately, there are some videos that do not play, or situations where the video does not match the question content. These are bugs that should be attended to by Pearson, but although I have reported them (along with students), they have not been remedied.
Instructors who would prefer to use only the digital text do not have the option to purchase the text without the platform.
Because the text and software are integrated, there are no "page numbers" as in other digital texts which makes it hard to reference a particular section in a lecture, assignment, or presentation.
Illuminate DnA is a very usable system. A few items to learn and set up can be a bit time-consuming. However, once set up it is easy to use and powerful for a school that staff can master quickly. It has more features then we actually use but I hope we will over time.
Our issue was never resolved so that we could use the software to produce accurate reports. Their tech department looked into the issue several times and could never figure out why our student was off and then they just closed the case. They confirmed we were performing the correct steps to load the data and they confirmed our data looked accurate. Great, but again why was our student count off?
Illuminate DnA offers more flexibility and additional features that our previous Data Director system offered. We were looking for a system that offered an online assessment portal and the ability to create elementary standard-based report cards when we selected the illuminate DnA software. We were impressed with the ability to easily create custom reports and liked the comprehensive student profile page.
In my opinion, McGraw-Hill Connect is by far much better than Pearson Revel. It has more functionality. I think the McGraw-Hill SmartBook is better than the Pearson Revel (which is merely a reading app). The SmartBook allows instructors customization and it helps students to master the materials better than just a reading app. In my experience, McGraw-Hill provides exception customer support. They always reply to my questions in a timely manner. I have used both Pearson Revel and McGraw-Hill Connect and I will have to say that I will not be going back to use Pearson Revel.
NEGATIVE: The platform is less expensive than a printed text, but students can use OER's for free. This is especially important at the community college level where students tend to have less financial resources for education.
NEGATIVE: After the course completes, the student has nothing to use as a reference. They cannot go back and view the content, nor can they print any of the content.
NEGATIVE: The student pays for the learning platform and content which includes a large number of activities and resources. While this seems to be a positive thing, students (and instructors) can get overwhelmed with the number of activities and resources available. Some students won't use any of the resources at all.
