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Do the Curriculum Engine courses align to my state’s standards?
All courses and content in the Curriculum Engine are built for and aligned to specific state standards. These include NC, CCSS, GA, FL and TX. When creating new courses or modules on the platform, they are built from learning objects that are also aligned to specific standards and skills.
How does the Curriculum Engine add student and teacher rosters?
The Curriculum Engine can be synced to your Student Information System (SIS) via Clever, providing single sign-on.
The Curriculum Engine also supports OneRoster V1, the importing of data via csv file upload using the OneRoster specifications. Support for the OneRoster REST API is planned for the 2020-21 school year.
If your district does not use Clever or OneRoster, we can import student and teacher rosters via csv file.
How are licenses assigned and monitored?
Licenses are created and assigned by Walch Education. One year and multi-year licenses are available. Licenses are normally based on the approximate number of students using Curriculum Engine, but we can also license by district, building or teacher.
Each student assigned to a class will use one license. Students can be assigned to multiple classes but only one license count will be redeemed. If a student is no longer in any classes, the license is restored.
Note that each student covered by the license can be assigned unlimited resources, from core curriculum to test prep and resources foe remediation or acceleration. And courses can be customized for groups of students or individuals under their licenses
Can the Curriculum Engine be used as a standalone Learning Management Systems (LMS)?
The Curriculum Engine is a fully functional standalone LMS, and is used that way by over 10,000 students and their teachers. Via the Curriculum Engine, Districts have access to a variety of curated, aligned online resources and digital worksheets and assessments. With the Curriculum Engine districts have the ability to edit and enhance existing courses and develop new ones (ranging from online homework and tailored test prep to summer programs) as appropriate, with no additional cost for licensed students.
Does the Curriculum Engine support assistive technologies?
The Curriculum Engine is tested and certified with JAWS and NVDA readers for text to speech.
Walch is committed to meeting the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Level AA for all student-facing resources on the Curriculum Engine. We work with our technology partners such as Learnosity and Desmos to ensure that students with a variety of disabilities such as vision and hearing impairment can access online materials.
How secure is the Curriculum Engine?
Our practices and policies are compliant with FERPA, COPPA, SOPIPA and GDPR. Among other things, user information is only utilized to provide educational services to students, their parents, their teachers, and administrators, and no user information is sold or rented to third parties. Users, including students and their parents, can request access to and review their information whenever they want. More information can be provided as needed.
How long does it take to get up and running on the Curriculum Engine?
We understand that each district has their own priorities and needs. We use an initial onboarding discovery session to get an understanding of your challenges and goals and tailor the training process to meet your specific needs, focusing on those features that will be the most impactful for your district.
The time needed for training and onboarding will be determined by this session and can vary. Typically onboarding time can vary as little as three hours to multiple days of training depending on your needs.
Our training sessions include interactive and hands-on components to provide an opportunity for the teachers to get comfortable with the platform before they incorporate it into their lessons. After the initial training process, we schedule follow-up Q&A session(s) to address any questions the teachers may have once they have started using the platform.
Ongoing and additional training can be scheduled as needed. This can be done either onsite or remotely and can take a train-the-trainer approach or be refresher trainings for teachers.
Below is an example of an onboarding timeline:
What types of roles are possible in the Curriculum Engine?
There are four user types that can be setup on the Curriculum Engine:
Each role has access to specific features and functionality on the platform. For example, students only have access to their digital course materials, assignments and reports specific to their performance.
District Supervisors have access to various. administrative tools allowing them to manage the courses and learning object repository for the district
Can teachers create their own courses?
The Curriculum Engine allows teachers to create their own lessons, modules and courses. Materials that they create are only available to that teacher. However, teachers can share courses or learning objects that they create with the District Supervisor for approval. If approved, the material could be shared across the district. This is particularly useful for the purposes of collaboration, including sharing model courses, and the general dissemination of best practices
What types of reports are offered in the Curriculum Engine?
Teachers have access to a variety of reports in the Curriculum Engine including:
District Supervisors have access to additional reports specific to administering the platform including:
District supervisors and building administrators can view course usage data, student performance data and teacher’s class progress. They can view student performance down to the Learning Object level.
How does the Curriculum Engine interact with other Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Canvas?
You can use LTI connections to access the Curriculum Engine courses on platforms such as Canvas, Moodle, Schoology, and Itslearning. For details on how to set up the Curriculum Engine course for LTI see Accessing a Curriculum Engine course as an LTI tool in your LMS. Please review the help documentation from your specific LMS for instructions on how to complete the LTI setup. The exact steps will vary depending on which LMS you are using. We can help. And as we move forward we will be developing and releasing deeper integrations
Can I use the Curriculum Engine with Google Classroom?
Yes, you can use the Curriculum Engine with Google
Classroom. With our integration, you are able to share course resources and
student assignments from the Curriculum Engine to your Google Classroom.
Students can then access and launch these resources from Google Classroom
directly.
Does the Curriculum Engine support assistive technologies?
The Curriculum Engine can be used in limited capacity with JAWS and NVDA readers for text to speech. (REPLACES The Curriculum Engine is tested and certified with JAWS and NVDA readers for text to speech. )
How is the Curriculum Engine different from a Learning Management System (LMS)?
The Curriculum Engine comes prepopulated with courses and content and provides a variety of tools to help you tailor, personalize, extend and enhance. It does so in the context of your state standards and helps you maintain coherence and rigor. It facilitates sharing, collaboration and the dissemination of best practices instruction. In short, it is a virtual curriculum department on top of an LMS. It is missing some LMS functionality at the moment. For example, Graded interactive assignments and assessments are tracked on the platform but, unlike some LMSs, other activities such as print assignments are not.
Does the Curriculum Engine require whitelisting?
Depending on your district’s internet security setup, the Curriculum Engine URLs may need to be whitelisted. Please see Whitelisting the Curriculum Engine URLs for more information.
What types of training and services are offered for the CE?
Walch Education provides training on how to teach with our course materials as well as how to incorporate our digital resources in the classroom. Our training focuses on real-world classroom and “beyond the classroom” implementation and how best to meet the needs of all learners.
For a full list of the professional development and services that we offer, please see our Curriculum Engine Professional Services guide or reach out to us at services@https://www.https://staging.store.bwwalch.com/.
How much does the Curriculum Engine cost?
The Curriculum Engine is hosted at Amazon Web Services.
Can parents access the Curriculum Engine?
We do not provide parent logins, however- students may view their progress as they navigate through each course and will receive results in their gradebook.
Can teachers create their own interactive assessments?
Teachers and administrators have access to the Curriculum Engine’s item bank (over 10,000 aligned items in high school math) where they can create standard aligned online assessments and interactive tasks.
How do I access customer support and help documentation?
You can access the Curriculum Engine Knowledgebase (KB) by going to https://walch.freshdesk.com/. Our KB has help documentation by topic area and is fully searchable.
You can also log support tickets through the KB.
We make it easy for teachers to get the resources they need so they can focus on their students.
We will be in contact with you shortly.