Revel from Pearson supports students with note taking, assessments, and other classroom tasks, and integrates with commonly used LMS.
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Renaissance Star Assessments
Score 9.1 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…
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
