| News from ComFit Learning |
What's going on at ComFit Learning?
Newsworthy developments that might be of interest to you.
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Manatee Community College: Exit Test Success for ComFit Students
We've just received some encouraging (but not totally unexpected!) news from Elizabeth Smith, a development reading and writing instructor who heads the Communications Lab at at Manatee Community College in Venice, FL. Elizabeth reports that for the fourth consecutive year the students in her developmental writing class who were using the ComFit Online Learning Center as a skill-building resource finished up the spring semester with her campus's highest grammar scores on the Florida state exit exam.
"I've been doing the same thing for the past four years, and it's working very well," Elizabeth explains. "At the beginning of the semester, I have students go through a ComFit 'drill-down' assessment that identifies the specific areas they need to work on. Then each student, throughout the term, works on self-directed mini-lessons that are keyed to whatever weaknesses have been uncovered in the assessment. The students like the fact that they can focus on the specific concepts they haven't yet mastered. And the process frees me to focus on their writing skills in general."
September 9, 2008
IS 296: A ComFit Learing Partner-School Success Story
We're delighted to report that one of our partner schools—IS 296, in Brooklyn, New York—has a lot to crow about. It has just received official word from the New York City Board of Education that its Progress Report grade rose from an "F" in 2006-2007 to a "B" in 2007-08.
Annual Progress Reports are a key element in a New York City Board of Education initiative whose purpose is to measure the performance level of individual schools in three key areas:
(1) school environment; (2) student academic performance; and (3) student progress.It would be stretching things, of course, to suggest that ComFit Learing deserves all the credit for the one-year turnaround at IS 296: That said, however, Comfit Learning is explicitly mentioned in the school's highly favorable annual Quality Review Report as having enhanced the school's ability to (1) "motivate students to work toward identified schools;" and (2) "to provide individual progress data for further analysis."
Maria, moreover, credits the resources of the ComFit Online Learning Center for having contributed in a meaningful way to the school's strong performance in all five of the Quality Statement scoring categories: (1) Data Gathering; (2) Planning and Setting Goals; (3) Aligning Instructional Strategy to Goals; (4) Aligning Capacity Building to Goals; and (5) Monitoring and Revising. She also credits our resources and the support we've provided for helping the school achieve several of the benchmarks mentioned in the "What the school does well" section of the report, chief among them the following:
- Creating a vision of improved student achievement and high expectations
- Using a wide range of data to evaluate and assessm student progress on a continuous, ongoing basis
- Aligning professional development opportunities with school-wide goals as part of the school culture
- Creating a consistently positive learning environment in which students are actively engaged in learning and all school activities
August 07, 2008
Upgrades to our Learning Management Reports
We're in the midst of making some significant enhancements to the learning management tools on the ComFit Online Learning Center—and with one simple goal in mind: to provide teachers and administrators with the specific kind of quantifiable data that districts, government agencies and funding sources are now seeking. The newest upgrades include the following:- A group progress report that gives administrators with global admin privileges the ability to generate a customized, group-level report based on the specific data (date range, assessment scores, time on task, etc.) that needs to be captured. Among other things, this report can document how much academic progress students have achieved (based on assessment scores) over any given period.
- A learning needs analysis report that identifies group needs—that is, the number of students in the class who, based on assessment results, need work in specific concepts. The goal here is to enhance the ability of teachers and tutors to find the proper balance whole-class teaching and individual instruction
- An "at-a-glance" student-by-student progress report that summarizes key academic performance indicators
- A learning needs analysis report that identifies group needs—that is, the number of students in the class who, based on assessment results, need work in specific concepts. The goal here is to enhance the ability of teachers and tutors to find the proper balance whole-class teaching and individual instruction
Stay tuned for further enhancements.
Coming Soon: The Practice Test Center
Starting this fall, it will be far easier than it has ever been for teachers and tutors to have their students work on any of the more than 900 practice tests and quizzes that we have developed thus far (and are continuing to develop) on the ComFit Online Learning Center. The reason is a soon-to-be-released section of our Center that we're calling The Practice Test Center. The content on the Practice Test Center will give teachers the ability to guickly and easily match individual tests and quizzes to the needs of a group or an individual.A closer look. The quizzes and exercises have been divided into the three content areas we cover—language arts/writing, mathematics, and reading. Once you're searching in any of these areas, you'll be able to drill down to a specific category and choose options within each category. In the Reading/Vocabulary content area, for example, you'll be able to choose a reading level (bronze, silver, gold, of platinum) and then select "high-interest" quiz-related passages in specific subjects, such as sports, entertainment, social studies, and science/technology. And just as it has always been, concepts relating to any of the questions that students do not answer correctly in any practice test will be automatically transferred to each student's workout log.
Experiential Learning: Stepping Up the "Walk-Me-Through-Its"
The response to our "Walk-Me-Through-It" mini-lesson option has been so enthusiastic that we are now adding this powerful feature to more and more of the mathematics mini lessons (especially those that cover complicated concepts). We're also making this option available on many of the reading and language arts mini-lessons. The theoretical concept at the core of the "Walk-Me-Through-It" is experiential learning—best defined as "learning by doing." The idea, more specifically, is to interactively guide students through the logical, step-by-step thinking process they need to go through in order to solve a complicated math problem, draw meaning from what they're reading, or make solid decisions when they write.The "Multi-class" Single User ID Feature
In response to schools and academic support groups that want students organized into subject-specific groups but without the need to have group-specific user IDs and passwords for teachers or students, we now offer an option we call "Add-a-Class." What this feature means, in short, is two things: (1) students can move from class-to-class with a simple mouse click; (2) teachers or tutors focusing on a single subject can generate reports with data limited to that subject.
If you would like to talk to someone at ComFit Learning about the skill-building needs that are priorities for you or your organization, call us toll free at 1-866-266-3481, or click here to send an email.