Curriculum Associates enable just-in-time learning with seamless integrations

Curriculum Associates is a K–12 education technology company based in Massachusetts, United States. Educators are at the core of everything they do. Their goal is to empower educators with tools, resources, and research so they can help every learner grow beyond their potential. For more than 50 years, Curriculum Associates have worked to provide evidence-based educational solutions that put insights into educators’ hands, helping them tailor instruction to each learner’s needs, and provide access to industry-leading customer support and cutting-edge teams who provide just-in-time support with sustained, professional learning.

Curriculum Associates has one mission: to make the classroom a better place for teachers and students. Curriculum Associates is continually innovating and improving solutions that give educators sustained, professional learning to deliver engaging instruction so every student has the chance to succeed.

The Challenge

To develop a versatile open-source software that would integrate into multiple systems

Curriculum Associates’ flagship product i-Ready is a digital solution where students and educators access English language arts and mathematics programs, assessments, and additional connected tools for instruction.

Historically, professional learning sessions for educators only occurred through in-person training, conducted a few times a year. The focus of the sessions is the use of successful implementation of i-Ready providing best practices and strategies to deliver impactful student learning. While the training was successful, it didn’t scale well and left gaps in learning. After onboarding, teachers need real-time support as they implement the curriculum and work with students.

Curriculum Associates needed a platform that would provide educators with on-demand, self-paced, modular learning to support onboarding and beyond., The platform needed to be versatile for integration into multiple systems, flexible in terms of offering bite-sized learning, scalable to adapt to changing needs, and provide clear visibility of tracking and reporting. Totara was the perfect fit.

Robust and flexible integration

Developing their own software and courses, Curriculum Associates wanted a solution that was highly versatile and flexible, one that could integrate with i-Ready now have the ability to scale and add other integrations for the future such as Zoom and salesforce. This would ensure teachers had one user experience and could go from reviewing precise assessment data and connecting instruction students to their own professional learning. This required connecting multiple systems, SSO integration and data sharing from i-Ready during authentication that is then leveraged to serve up relevant content to educators (e.g. grade level, state, products used). They would also need to deep link to courses from i-Ready, as well as from support resources and even emails directly sent to educators.

Scalable, flexible, and personalised

Educators’ needs are ever-evolving and their busy schedules don’t allow for long, extended periods of learning time, so the platform needed to be able to provide dynamic learning features such as bite-size learning to complement educators learning needs.

Supporting the educators of 11 million students is no small feat, educators’ needs vary widely. For example, a kindergarten teacher will use different resources and strategies with their kindergarteners than a sixth-grade teacher would with their middle schoolers. This means the need to personalise the content and course components based on educators’ needs was vital in offering a good and impactful learning experience.

Tracking reporting and visibility

Curriculum Associates needed a robust tracking and reporting tool to highlight and detail learning from school performance to individual educators’ performance, and overall school performance. This would allow Curriculum Associates to gain clear visibility of the full learning cycle and be able to adapt, improve and create solutions that have an impact.

Totara Kineo Edition was the solution that would enable Curriculum Associates to create a platform that empowers educators to take control of their own professional learning through a fully integrated, versatile experience platform.

The Solution

A scalable, flexible, and personalized professional learning experience for educators

The Totara solution offers unprecedented flexibility, visibility, and adaptability to give Curriculum associates total control over their full learning eco system. Interactive courses have been developed in response to needs communicated via educators, including role-specific courses and deep dives into product-specific courses.

Audience-based visibility means that educators can browse learning content that is most relevant to them, making their experience highly tailored and personalised. Integration with i-Ready also allows educators to align their learning and professional development with student data outcomes and results. I-Ready gives educators insight into what each individual student needs and where their gaps are and then gain the knowledge and skills to better support their learning through their own professional development.

Seamless tracking, reporting, and visibility

SSO integration from i-Ready allows educators to easily transition to Online Educator Learning and have full visibility of learning all in one place, creating a seamless user experience. Totara’s robust APIs mean even more tools and platforms to connect, such as Zoom, teams, and more, resulting in a fully integrated ecosystem that can scale and grow according to educators’ needs and learning trends.

Totara’s robust reporting dashboard gives schools and district leaders full visibility of how their courses are performing and how educators are applying what they learn, making way for continuous development and more engaging content.

Enhancing skills through innovative and interactive learning

The new platform allows for dynamic and engaging learning such as interactive content, quizzes, videos and in-practice learning, feedback tools as well as downloadable content that supports classroom instruction. Users are able to immediately gain access to learning through the course catalog on the home page, and the use of SCORM tracking means educators can start and pause a course at any time to accommodate busy schedules or disruptions.

The Results

Empowering confident and skilled schools, educators, and students

The Totara integration with i-Ready was launched in 2020 and has exceeded expectations on all fronts helping the teachers of over 11 million students across the US.

• Over 50K course completions have been recorded.
• Because of the success of Totaras platform and development of educators, i-Ready has garnered unequivocal loyalty with a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 50 – 10 % higher than pre-Totara integration.
• Using i-Ready and Totara, full visibility of all learning is accessible in one place. Educators can see the learning status of their students. School and district administrators can see the learning and progress of their educators and the school as a whole.
• By tracking usage, completion rates, and educator engagement, Curriculum Associates is also able to assess how schools are using the programs and can adapt according to changing trends and needs. It also builds a full picture of what each school needs to support educator learning, helping them offer a holistic approach to learning.
• With such advanced reporting, Curriculum Associates uses these insights to address educators’ needs and build a more supportive and personalized professional learning environment – one that serves to better educate future generations. Field teams are able to use the reporting to recommend specific courses to individual schools and districts, connecting face to face development with continue learning. Educators also find it very helpful due to the large amount in the course catalog, it allows field teams to narrow in on a particular implementation’s needs further.
• Curriculum Associates have expanded their course formats to Rise, Storyline, and recorded videos for a more engaging journey and higher impact.
• The uptake since launch has been extraordinary and as a result, several thousand new users join every month to begin their journey to professional development.
• Previously, the few courses that were offered online were on a separate support website, buried amongst other content, and educators had to take the initiative to find the course they needed. Since the launch, their e-learning is more accessible to their entire educator user base as it is integrated with their flagship product and offers always-on learning that suits their busy schedules.
• The move to Totara allowed Curriculum Associates to better align to WCAG standards making their learning a more inclusive and accessible experience for all users.