McGraw-Hill Connect is an e-learning platform offered by McGraw-Hill Education. Features include course and assignment creation, grading, learning aides, e-books, and student portals.
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Renaissance DnA
Score 9.0 out of 10
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A standards-based assessment creation and administration solution providing instant scoring, formative feedback, and interactive reporting.
For institutions and students who do not want to own books or engage in a majority of in-class only lecture material. Ideally it makes course material cheaper as digital assets, but some people still prefer the more tangible assets. Participants will like the product if they want a more online learning experience.
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.
Integration with Canvas is seamless and easy to use.
Assignment completion, for students, is straightforward and easy to use.
The SmartBook allows students to read as they are tested with questions and this helps them learn the material easily without having first trying to read, memorize a chapter and then answer questions.
The ebook is not a real ebook, it's really just a web page, or a series of webpages. It can only be accessed through MH Connect, therefore, when logging into the system. A real eBook would be able to be accessed as such-- on a Kindle or other e-Reader, or on a desktop eBook reader. The interface for this is also not very dynamic, just kind of obnoxious and Web 1.0.
Limited learning tools beyond simple exercises, at least from what I saw.
Terrible customer service. Long wait times with representatives who do not seem to understand their own product and cannot seem to answer very basic questions.
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.
There is quite a steep learning curve in effectively navigating the site and using the resources. MGH seems to discourage integration with other sites, by only allowing links to their site rather than full assignment integration with grade pass back. Resources for teachers and students is good, but presentation format is different than many other programs, forcing both to learn another system.
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.
Personally, I did not encounter McGraw-Hill support. However, I worked with colleagues who needed support and were able to receive in a timely manner. Overall, McGraw Hill Connect is user-friendly (at least from teacher interface) and easy to navigate, which minimizes the need to reach out for support. The help button is useful and provides plenty of immediate support.
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?
McGraw-Hill is the most user-friendly and teacher-friendly for students and teachers. McGraw-Hill provided the online portion of learning that helped teachers provide the resources to students that were needed. Additionally, even though McGraw-Hill is wordy in its descriptions in the workbooks it was the least "wordy" of the other options provided to teachers, such as, Go Math.
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.
