Piloting Edulastic at your school is simple, and a great way to explore how online assessments, Technology Enhanced Items, and immediate data insights can boost student performance at your district and across schools.
Start your Edulastic pilot off right. We’ve included a list of seven simple steps that will ensure that all passengers are ready to go for take off.
7 Steps to a Successful Pilot with Edulastic
1. Set Goals
First and foremost identify your goals. Here are a couple questions to consider:
- What is your number one goal?
- What are the top three indicators of success?
Some educational leaders are looking to improve scores on high-stakes testing such as SBAC, PARCC, ACT Aspire, or AIR, while others are keen on identifying points of student intervention, or saving time on compiling reports and data. Whatever your goals may be, it’s a good idea to write them down and have them readily available. That way, as you move forward, you’ll be able to make sure your actions and decisions align with your main focus.
3. Define the Scope
There’s a part A and part B to this one: A) Size and B) Timeline
A) Decide on a Size: How many teachers and students will be involved with the pilot? Do you plan to focus on an individual subject, an entire grade, or an entire school? To start, you’ll want to make sure you can manage the amount of teachers and students involved. Once you get to the end of the pilot, you can scale up from there.
B) Plan Your Timeline: Here is where you plan out what happens and when. Give yourself a specific amount of time to run your pilot and at the end, reflect on the outcomes. The timeline from start to finish should be digestible- small enough to take on and large enough to allow teachers to become comfortable with Edulastic. Generally 4 to 12 weeks should be sufficient to start.
Many schools will start with a pretest and end with the same test. This is a great method for assessing overall student progress over a designated instruction period.
2. Designate a Point Person
Designate an Edulastic point person who teachers and admins can turn to when questions arise. This person could be your assessment coach, technology director, curriculum specialist, or a teacher who is excited about using Edulastic throughout the school. In addition to being the local Edulastic expert, this person can serve as the liaison with Edulastic if more in-depth questions arise.
4. Inventory Your Resources
Take inventory of the tools you will use to deploy Edulastic and launch your pilot. For example, make sure you have enough laptop carts available if you are giving a common assessment to multiple classes at the same time.
Edulastic Support is extremely responsive and available to help if you do need any help! You can always send a quick email to: support [at] edulastic [dot] com.
5. Train Your Teachers
Set a plan to avoid confusion and keep everyone on the same page.
Schedule a time to train your teachers. An hour and a half should be enough time to deliver a comprehensive, hands-on overview. Check out the online Training Hub for resources, videos, and presentations you can use during this time.
We also offer free web-based training. Let our customer success team know if you want to set one up and how many people will be in attendance.
6. Test Before Take Off
Give yourself time to make sure the gears are in order. Have teachers practice opening and assigning district or school-wide assessments. A Broadway cast runs through the show before opening night to help iron out mistakes. Similarly, a practice test will help everyone address unforeseen issues before they become an issue, and of course, practice builds confidence!
7. Take off
Now is the time to take action. You’ll kick off the start of your pilot through an implementation meeting with Edulastic. At this point you’ll review the scope of the pilot and and then you’re good to go!
Interested to learn more?
Schedule a demo or learn about Council Bluffs Community Schools’ successful pilot which led to district-wide implementation.
