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 Star Assessments
Score 9.2 out of 10
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Star Assessments are a suite of assessments for reading, math, and early literacy, in both English and Spanish, boasting users among over 30,000 schools. Star Assessments helps educators to gain accurate insights into student learning, growth, and achievement—so they can help all learners reach their full potential. The full Star Assessment suite includes the computer-adaptive Star Reading (K–12), Star Math (K–12), and Star Early Literacy (pre-K–3) assessments; a formative assessment tool, Star…
Content is pretty good, and site is good as standalone tool, but it does not integrate will with any LMS. Grade pass back does not work with Google Classroom or Skyward (unsure about Power School or others) SSO works with Clever, but not Google, so students always have to go through Clever and cannot go directly from Google Classroom to an assignment, even if you posted to Google Classroom through the Connect portal. Problem sets are robust, but difficult to edit and assessments are designed to be web based. Formatting is poor when trying to print assessments that were created online.
Renaissance Star Assessments are great for students who already know English and know how to use a device, especially a tablet. The children can listen to the question, choose an answer, then move on to the next question. These assessments are less appropriate for students learning English as a second language. Since the questions are in English, and most students primarily speak another language, they do not understand the questions and get many of them wrong. As a result, they score low and it appears as if the child has not been learning when in fact the low score is due to a language barrier. I think there should also be some type of block to choosing an answer until after the question is presented because some children like to press answers before the question is finished and then try to move on. I think having the answers be unclickable before the question is finished would be a benefit for the children to pay more attention to the question.
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.
The graphs for each subject are not consistently the same. (ie. some graphs are by 5s and some are by 50s.) It's very confusing to read them.
The questions are not rigorous enough for state standards.
Different reports will show data that does not align. If 'state' is chosen, then all reports should show the same data. The Parent Report will show the child in 'green', but every sub-skill is in 'red'. That is super confusing for parents and teachers.
All reports should be based on the same score, but they are not. It is like comparing apples to oranges on the same child.
Star Assessments and Renaissance is the best educational products at this time. They are found worldwide, easy to use and informational for districts teachers and families. Information will follow a student if they change districts and give previous information to new districts and teachers
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.
It is very user friendly and intuitive. I have had minimal training on the system and was able to access many of the features. I was able to easily create student accounts and set up testing for our students. I was able to find appropriate reports that provide the right data for our team and our parents.
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.
I have been very happy with the support. By phone or email I have found the support very good and they get back to me quickly. This survey however is wa6 overdone, expecting me to come up with 50 words on each question. It becomes very repetitive and very laborious.
When presenters show us how to use the program they need to have a full class size of data. During training, there were only 5 or 6 sample students. Classes are more like 25 and that makes the training more realistic to have similar data to what we will use.
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.
Renaissance Star Math Assessment provided a proven data collection tool. This was also being used at the lower grades in our district, so it made sense to continue with its use to provide a more reliable and accurate picture of our students entering the middle school. The continuation of the data trail should continue to help their overall growth.
It has positively impacted student time to learn by reducing testing times and allowing more time for instruction
The reduced testing time also positively impacted our schools by freeing the computer labs and making the planning and creation of testing schedules easier. This has allowed more computer lab use for education and learning.
It has negatively impacted the time and effort required by support staff, administrators, and some teachers by requiring more time spent on looking up results or going to multiple spots and manually combining results because a larger group couldn't easily be made.
Another negative impact on our district is that it has also taxed those few educators with more technical ability and data knowledge moreso than other programs. The need to create/summarize/write programs to deal with full, raw data export files since the smaller, more specific reports and summaries are not downloadable into a format that can be manipulated easily (pdf only, not csv exports), and to constantly back up data exports and to have to search through them when the State wants results on past students etc.
