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.
N/A
WileyPLUS
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
WileyPLUS is a learning and assesment platform which can be added to many popular LMS, from Wiley.
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.
It's a good platform that has some very good content. We use Canvas as our learning management platform. It is nice to be able to integrate some of the pre-build WileyPLUS course modules into our Canvas course. Other publishers are good too and they sync with Canvas, but I find Wiley's Canvas modules easy to use and customize.
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.
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?
24-7 support is available by phone, chat, or email. They also hold annual events which I have been blessed to attend twice. The staff is excellent. They are knowledgeable and genuinely care about you and your students. There are online forums for instructors to collaborate, learn, and have fun. Instructors receive gift cards for their participation too!
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.
WileyPLUS is far better than one competing product I have used and noticeably better than a second competing product I have tested. I prefer not to name the other products. It is much easier to operate from an instructor perspective. Given the low level of questions it generates from students, I am certain it is easy for students to pick up and the level of Wiley support given to me and to students is great.
Decreased, significantly, my grading time. No more manual grading of work. It is more of a review that allows me to target specific areas and specific students.
Students now have resources to help them learn the content when they are away from class.
Students get immediate feedback (depending on instructor settings) on problem areas and the ability to learn from their mistakes without having to wait for the instructor.
