1
William Hiser
ETEC 551
May 10, 2014
GradPoint
Online Credit Recovery Program
Website Evaluation
Goals and Objectives
GradPoint is the most intuitive, and comprehensive digital learning solution for
grades 6-12 available today. With GradPoint, you engage learners with proven, mediarich lessons and motivate students when they need it most. They have a more effective
and enriching learning experience with proved courses from Pearson, a K-12 textbook
publisher, delivered on a platform that helps do more with infrastructure. They offer
over 120 middle and high school courses including core, electives, AP, and honors.
GradPoint offers rigorous, engaging curriculum form trusted industry leaders with
award-winning, intuitive platform designed specifically to meet needs of K-12. They
offer superior services and support from a team of functional and technical experts to
ensure success as well as multiple learning paths to personalize learning for each
student.
GradPoint is an online credit recovery program for students in grades 9 -12 that
are having difficulty completing/passing coursework in the traditional high school
classroom. Although courses are based on the California State Standards and
California Common Core Standards, each course is created by a team of educators
specifically for GradPoint. This credit/course recovery program creates a blended and
virtual learning experience that is designed to prevent/reduce the high school dropout
rate. Because these classes can be held on the high school campus, it can be an
2
alternative solution for district funding of continuation/alternative schooling as well as
summer school facilities, which can be costly. GradPoint can also be a source of
remediation or response to intervention for students struggling in their core subject
classes. With an option to listen to or read in large print, the lessons (instructions and
questions) are designed to accommodate special education and English learner student
needs. These courses can be beneficial to students on home healthcare. They also
offer courses for adult education, GED and ACT/SAT preparation.
GradPoint platform upgrades and new course releases occur one a year in May,
with anticipated and announced downtime usually occurs over a weekend. Platform
fixes and content updates occur as needed. These can occur hourly, daily, weekly,
monthly, etc. There is no downtime fixes, and they are typically not announced.
A comparable program is Odesseyware.com, which offers similar courses which
can be completed in the same amount of time. I am familiar with this program as well
as GradPoint, because we offer both programs to students on our campus. This
program is more user friendly for the instructor than GradPoint, offering easier access to
courses and students. Instructors are able to see where students are struggling and
provide specific help where needed. It is, however, not as user friendly, as GradPoint,
for EL and special education students because it does not offer audio, limited text, or as
many detailed graphics as GradPoint. Neither program offer online coaching as an
option. Both programs allow instructors to alter courses to fix the needs of their
students. Because GradPoint’s course were created with the intent that students will be
completing both semesters of the course, it takes a great deal more alterations for
students only needing one semester of the class.
3
Content - Instructor
Each school/school district has their own URL for so that administrators/teachers can
personalize each course for their students needs. This also insures safety and security
for there students. Once you are at the home page for your GradPoint website,
everyone is required to enter an individualized username and password. There are
three page-options for instructors: Home page, Courses, and Administration Settings.
Home Page
The home page for the instructor is shone above. It is divided into four sections:
1. All Courses – this section advises the instructor about updates and changes to
student courses.
2. Summary – gives the instructor access to all students enrolled in the schools
GradPoint program by clicking on the large number, which indicates the total
number of students enrolled. Once on this page, the instructor can see a
summary of each student’s progress. It also gives you a legend of student
4
indicators and reports designed to help assess student progress.
3. Courses – gives the instructor access to student lists by course and a summary
of only the students enrolled in this particular class. There are three colored dots
next to the name of the course. These dots will be either green (students on
pace), yellow (student pace slowing), or red (student activity has stopped)
4. Critical – gives the instructor a list of students whose performance or pace is
below the acceptable limit as well as direct assess to those students.
Other tabs on the home screen include:
1. Calendar – displays a traditional calendar with opportunity to post events on
student’s homes screens on scheduled days & times.
2. Teach a Course – give the instructor three options: create a new course, import a
course from GradPoint or another system, or copy a course, which can be
modified to accommodate your students
3. Communicate – gives the instructor the option to send emails and
announcements (sent by course) to one or more students.
4. Reports – options are: critical alerts, enrollment, license usage, student activity
details, student activity summary, and student-usage by day.
5. Resources – options are: course information, materials and answer keys,
projects and offline assignments, retired courses, (state) standards,
syllabi/outlines, technical support, training options and resources, and using an
ipad.
6. Tools – course management – copy courses & view retired courses.
7. Instructor information – personal information, transcripts (of completed courses),
5
and proxy (substitute instructors)
8. logout
Courses
The Courses screen is shown above. This page gives the instructor the opportunity to
participate in the courses exactly as the students see them.
6
Administration/Settings
The Administration/Settings page shown above gives the instructor the ability to do
the following:

Create: create a new course, import course from another site, or edit an existing
course.

Users: create a new user, import users from another site, or edit an existing user.

Analytics: analyzes class/instructor success rate by looking at the class as a
whole.
In the instructors account, there are very few graphics and no audio clips. The only
graphics are the colored symbols that indicate student progress. There are, however,
many charts, in the form or reports, which assist the instruction in assessing each
student’s progress. Because student information is repeated on several screens, the
amount of information can be overwhelming at first. Once you are familiar with
navigation of the screens, the information can be helpful in assisting the student in their
successful completion of the course. The instructor’s account offers training modules
that help familiarize and inform.
There are many online courses available to districts, schools, and students. With
regards to instructor options and functions, this program is not one of the better
programs. Graphics, font, backgrounds are basic and unappealing. The instructor’s
content is accurate, reliable, and complete. It does, however, excel with regards to
graphics, instructions, pacing for the student courses.
7
8
Student Content
The student home screen is divided into three sections: Due Soon, My Courses, and
Announcements.

Due Soon is a list of assignments in chronological order based on the date the
assignment was due. Students are not allowed to move on to the next
assignment until they have completed the current assignment (or assignment
with the oldest due date).

My courses - is a list of classes the student needs to complete. Again, they are
listed in chronological order. Depending on how the instructor set up the class,
student may be able to work on more than one class at a time.

Announcements - is a list of messages sent to the student(s) by the instructor,
administrator, or GradPoint.
9
10
Once the student opens the assignment at the top of the list, they begin their lesson
with an introduction. All pages have less than one hundred words on them, which
works well for ELL and Special Education (SE) Students. Most screens have pictures
or graphics that re-enforce the learning objective. This also is important to the learning
or ELL and SE students.
http://youtu.be/lNF0M4XP52Y
GradPoint Audio.mp4
11
Each unit has at least one video that discusses information in the unit. The visual
aspects of the lesson are very appealing to the students. They are easy to see, read,
and understand. All text in the lesson has an audio option. If students click on the
speaker, they are able to listen to the words read to them (great for ELL and SE).
The courses are segmented into units. Each unit has a pretest, instructional lesson,
and a post test. Students are encouraged to take notes during the instructions lesson to
help them with the post-test. They cannot move on to the next unit until they
successfully complete the unit they are currently learning.