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Chester County Intermediate Unit • 2018

ePORTFOLIO COMPARISON REPORT

A Review of K-12 Options to Meet Pennsylvania’s Career Readiness Benchmark

The Chester County Intermediate Unit

Chester County Intermediate Unit • 2018

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Quick Glance Graphic: Successful Electronic Portfolio Systems and How They Meet Our Schools’ Needs!

The Report: Introduction and Schoology

The Report: Canvas

The Report: Naviance

The Report: Go Ennounce and Smart Futures

The Report: Course Networking

The Report: Summary

Comparison Chart

Comparison Chart

An equal opportunity employer and educatorIES0818001

ContributorsDemetrius Roberts | STEM Services Coordinator

Kim Breuninger | Educational Technology CoordinatorGail Chambers | Course Developer

Ryne Anthony | Educational Innovations SpecialistAshley Ford | Instructional Media Specialist

Jennifer Shealy | Marketing & Admissions ManagerMolly Gerwig | Communications Specialist

Erin Britton | Graphic Designer

1Chester County Intermediate Unit • 2018

Our research revealed that each of the systems noted below offer a variety of distinct and useful features that might be a perfect fit for your school or district’s unique culture and needs. However, this chart/graphic provides a quick glance at the highly sought after features considered essential by most schools and which systems excel in these top cate-gories.

Successful Electronic Portfolio Systems and How They Meet Our Schools’ Needs!

Includes College and Career Learning Content

Naviance, GoEnnounceand Smart Future

Integrate Seamlessly into School

Schoology and Canvas

Customizable

CourseNetworking and Canvas

Accommodates All Students in Grades K-12

Naviance, Smart Futures and Schoology

Portfolio Sharability/Social Media

CourseNetworking and GoEnnounce

2 Chester County Intermediate Unit • 2018

Introduction

With the introduction of Pennsylvania’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Consolidated State Plan, the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) established a new school reporting system called the Future Ready PA Index, a comprehensive, public-facing school progress report that includes a wide range of evidence-based school accountability indicators. The Future Ready PA Index is divided into three categories: (a) State Assessment Measures, (b) On-Track Measures and (c) College and Career Measures. As part of the College and Career Measures, PDE will report Local Education Agencies’ (LEA) calculations of career readiness experiences at the building level, as well as for any group of 20 or more students, to recognize efforts to ensure that all students have access to career exploration and preparation activities that are standards-aligned and evidence-based. This accountability measure is called the Career Readiness Benchmark and is one of the five accountability measures that make up PDE College and Career Measures. Since the publication of this new approach, one focus of Pennsylvania LEAs has been to develop, pilot and test strategies, processes and systems to establish and sustain student career portfolios.

To better understand the choices and options that schools are considering, Chester County Intermediate Unit (CCIU) educational technology consultants performed informal research to determine what tools schools are successfully using to establish career portfolios for students. The team then used feedback from LEAs to select and review the six most popular ePortfolio tools that schools are using to establish Career Readiness Benchmark eportfolios. This report offers guidance to LEAs selecting ePortfolio systems, compares the features of each ePortfolio system, details the benefits and challenges of each ePortfolio system and recommends the selection of each ePortfolio system based on the LEAs’ academic and instructional goals. This report reviews the Schoology, Canvas, Naviance, GoEnnounce, Smart Futures and CourseNetworking online electronic portfolio systems.

1Career exploration and preparation activities must be aligned to Pennsylvania State Board of Education- promulgated regulations (22 Pa. Code Chapter 4) establishing the state Academic Standards for Career Education and Work (CEW standards). The CEW standards address four areas of knowledge: 1. Career Awareness and Preparation (Section 13.1); 2. Career Acquisition (Getting a Job) (Section 13.2); 3. Career Retention and Advancement (Section 13.3); and 4. Entrepreneurship (Section 13.4).

Overview: Schoology is a Learning Management System (LMS), for K-12 schools, higher education institutions and corporations that offer online learning to employees. Schoology is free for individual users, but the system uses a sliding pricing scale model based on the number of student user accounts for enterprise school systems. The Schoology system emulates popular social media platforms, such as Facebook, and is primarily designed to fit the needs of K-12 schools and districts. The system promotes communication between classroom teachers, course facilitators and online instructors with students and student support persons such as guidance counselors, parents and guardians.

Benefits: There are many benefits to selecting the Schoology LMS to host student career portfolios. As part of the Schoology LMS, users can create a digital portfolio of assignments that have been submitted and graded as part of one of their courses. To meet the Career Readiness Measure, some schools have begun to establish student career portfolios through the Schoology LMS. The Schoology LMS is a fully developed system that allows schools to seamlessly connect student coursework to each career portfolio. Schoology has a high level of data reporting and user account management. The Schoology system is device agnostic and meets COPPA Compliance considerations. Schoology also added the ability for students to create a link to share their ePortfolios with individuals outside of the school. This feature provides opportunities for students to use their ePortfolios to gain employment or entry into post-high school educational opportunities. Schoology offers a next-gen application program interface (API) and Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) integrations, enabling users to quickly pull external resources, like Google Drive, into Schoology to use, or users can push documents from Schoology to other tools, like TurnItIn. Schoology portfolios can host a variety of media files and documents. Through customized user

THE REPORT

Schoology www.schoology.com


accounts, an array of educators and school administrators have access to student portfolios, including student support persons. School-districts can implement Schoology as a district-wide LMS platform; this may be significant for sharing student portfolios as they matriculate through each grade and school within a school district.

Challenges: Schools that do not use Schoology as an LMS and are primarily seeking a platform for student career portfolios may find Schoology overwhelming. The benefits of Schoology’s LTI integration could be a challenge for schools and districts that do not have a dedicated Information Technology (IT) team to implement and maintain the LMS. The benefits of Schoology as an ePortfolio may be dependent on the schools use of Schoology as a fully integrated LMS.

Recommendations: For schools that already use the Schoology LMS, using the student portfolio feature is a quick and easy way to establish a system to meet the demands of the PA Future Ready Index, Career Readiness Measure. For schools that use other LMSs, it could be a significant challenge to incorporate the use of Schoology solely as a school or district-wide student portfolio system. For schools that want to establish an innovative approach to helping students create ePortfolios, Schoology is ahead of the curve.

We recommend the Schoology portfolio system for schools and districts that already implement Schoology and are looking to establish an easy way to create ePortfolios. We also urge schools and districts that choose Schoology as the hosting platform for student career portfolios to consider developing a plan for collaboration between teachers and school counselors, district wide.

Overview: Like Schoology, Canvas is also an LMS designed for K-12 schools, higher education institutions and corporations. Unlike Schoology, Canvas is not intended to look like popular social media platforms and has enough significant features to be commonly used in higher education. The growing use of Canvas among higher education institutions often attracts high schools because they believe that implementing Canvas in grades 9-12 best prepares students for post-high school education. Pricing for Canvas is not transparent, but statewide pricing through Pennsylvania Intermediate Units is currently available. Canvas’ growth in usage is a result of the company’s ability to offer users a professional and academic LMS platform that is intuitive and easy to use. Canvas has a variety of API and LTI integration abilities that help teachers and students leverage cloud storage and sharing from Dropbox, Google, Microsoft and other similar tools. Like many other LMSs, Canvas has also developed an electronic portfolio system for students. In Canvas, students can build an unlimited number of ePortfolios to collect and document their educational projects, assignments, learning experiences and other work products.

Benefits: In addition to the significant personalization that Canvas ePortfolios offers student users, Canvas ePortfolios have a variety of other benefits. Canvas ePortfolios also allow for a significant level of student ownership. Portfolios are connected to each user and not a specific course or courses, which enables students to create multiple cross-curricular portfolios. The system also provides for a variety of file types to be uploaded and readable through the system. Students can add to their portfolio by choosing from submitted Canvas work, HTML/embedded code, uploaded files and images or added rich text content. Canvas ePortfolios also allow users to comment and provide feedback on portfolios when given the portfolio link, making the portfolios manageable as a student assessment. In Canvas, ePortfolios can be set to allow private or public access, allowing users to keep ePortfolios private or share them with other students, instructors, future employers and any non-Canvas users. Canvas also allows users to export ePortfolios to a zip file. Canvas ePortfolios remain active as long as the user is in the institution’s SIS and maintains a school login.

Challenges: While Canvas is gaining popularity for overall ease of use at the higher education level, the LMS is generally more dynamic than other systems designed for K-12 education. While written tutorials are available and Canvas guides are provided on Youtube, the Canvas ePortfolios are not intuitive and may require some basic knowledge of HTML coding to customize the functionality of the ePortfolio. Although Canvas’ flexible and customizable ePortfolio system is beneficial, designing and using multiple portfolios, maintaining section and

THE REPORT

Canvas www.canvaslms.com


page features can be very difficult to maintain. As a result, it may be difficult for elementary students to use the Canvas portfolio; this may be a significant challenge because the Career Readiness Measure requires LEAs to maintain a K-12 career portfolio. LEAs that use different platforms or systems for student portfolios for various grade bands might find it problematic to track student portfolios as they move through each grade level.

Recommendations: Canvas is a flexible solution for LEAs seeking a portfolio system that looks very professional and academic. LEAs that choose Canvas’ ePortfolio tool as a mechanism to meet the demands of the Career Readiness Measure should probably already have a broader technology initiative that includes the use of Canvas as an LMS. Canvas is a sophisticated tool that would likely be too overwhelming to use just for student portfolios district wide. For schools that already use Canvas, the system offers opportunities for students to create authentic, electronic portfolios that can be used to apply for jobs or post-high school educational institutions which makes the platform beneficial for grades 9-12 students. Canvas allows for schools to be innovative in their approach to portfolios, but schools selecting this option will need to develop a plan for establishing and transferring career portfolios for students in grade bands that are not using Canvas.

Overview: Naviance is an all-encompassing K-12 platform helping students identify their strengths, explore careers, create academic plans and find educational and career opportunities that fit their skills and passions. Naviance’s main features include: (a) College and Career readiness, (b) Match and Fit, (c) Student Success and (d) Advising. Hobsons, Naviance’s parent company, provides solutions and applications from kindergarten all the way through graduate school. Naviance prices are not publicly available and may vary based on the number of student user accounts. The Naviance platform also has a student career ePortfolio tool. Naviance’s ePortfolio tool can be easily accessed within their Planner tool. Students can be assigned tasks that can be tagged to standards (such as the PA CEW Standards); goal and program completion ensures standards are met.

Benefits: Naviance is a unique tool specifically designed for career planning. It is an all-in-one package that connects students portfolios, college awareness information and career attainment information. Within the portfolio, educators can tag tasks and embed surveys, while students can customize the structure of their portfolios and import a variety of large file types and sizes (10 megabytes per file upload). Naviance ePortfolios also have a variety of additional features including a journal and “about me” function. The portfolios can be downloaded (into zip format or other) and also feature a range of analytics for accessing tasks, goals and program completion. Since Naviance is meant for students in grades K-12, it grows with students and parents as part of career awareness learning. Naviance is responsive, fits on all screen sizes and ratios and is device agnostic.

Challenges: Naviance is an all-in-one solution, which is beneficial, but all-in-one products come with problems as well. Naviance does not seamlessly integrate into learning management systems. So, connecting course assignments at any grade level into Naviance could be a challenge that requires a custom or manual solution. Although Naviance ePortfolios can be exported and shared with others, the format may not have the users’ desired look. Limited customization of the portfolios may cause students portfolios to appear unauthentic.

Recommendations: Many schools have chosen to use Naviance as part of their Comprehensive K-12 School Counseling (339) Plan. The platform is ideal for providing school counselors with a tool to guide them in collecting college and career data from students. For schools that already have Naviance, selecting this platform to host student career portfolios is an excellent choice, provided that a system for teachers and counselors to work together to help students grow their portfolios is in place or will be established. If your school plans to promote the collection of student career experiences above and beyond the minimal amount, Naviance could be somewhat challenging because teachers may not have direct access to student portfolios and may be unfamiliar with using the platform. We recommend that schools choosing Naviance create a system or process that allows data to be easily added to student portfolios through another technology vehicle such as Google Apps for education or Microsoft Office 365.

THE REPORT

Naviance www.naviance.com


Overview: GoEnnounce is a school-based, social, learner profile for students to track, share and leverage their accomplishments and find educational and career opportunities. GoEnnounce is a social media based, personalized learning network solution for students. The platform has a learner profile tool for students to safely display and track their academic and extracurricular achievements from year to year. Like most online platforms, GoEnnounce pricing is not readily available, and pricing varies by the number of student and teacher account licenses purchased. The platform features an all-inclusive digital citizenship education solution that provides college and career preparation curriculum and online classes for students, professional development for teachers and content videos for parents. The platform’s content educates students, educators and parents about safe social media use and the importance of building a student’s positive digital footprint for college and career readiness.

Benefits: GoEnnounce has a variety of benefits that make this platform a viable solution for hosting student career portfolios. GoEnnounce student ePortfolios can follow the student and are shareable to internal and external individuals. School administrators and teachers have access to an internal dashboard for reporting. The platform also has high-level data control, enabling easy export of data and uploading of unique content. Students can also create alternate URLs and select portfolio content to showcase their experiences. For example, a student could select writing samples from their portfolio and then create a custom URL that shows external viewers their chosen portfolio items; this feature could be important for college, scholarship and job applications. GoEnnounce also has LTI and API integration capabilities for integrating with technology solutions such as: Google Classroom, Microsoft, Clever, Classlink, Facebook and PowerSchool.

Challenges: Like Naviance, GoEnnounce is an all-in-one product, which comes with many benefits but it can be a challenge to roll out an entirely new program if your school has already committed to other technology solutions. The platform is still new to many education markets; schools choosing GoEnnounce in Pennsylvania may find it challenging to network with other educators about how they are leveraging GoEnnounce to meet school and district goals. Not only is GoEnnounce newer, but it is still developing and trying to meet the needs of schools across the county; this could come with some opportunities to pilot, test or provide research for the company but it could also be a challenge for establishing complete K-12 integration. Additionally, GoEnnounce does not have a mobile application which limits the effectiveness of their API and LTI integrations. Also, customization of some of the social media features and controls is somewhat limited.

Recommendations: GoEnnounce is a promising platform that has some unique innovations which make the platform a viable career portfolio solution. Schools selecting GoEnnounce may be looking to grow with the company and provide feedback that helps to improve the product. Schools that choose this solution should have a plan for how teachers and school counselors will work together to establish student career portfolios. School counselors might best implement GoEnnounce with an additional process that allows student coursework to be added to their portfolios by the student themselves, classroom teachers or school counselors. At the secondary level students can and should be given more control over their portfolios. We recommend this solution for schools seeking a new approach and an opportunity to work directly with the technology provider to meet their specific needs.

Overview: Smart Futures is a Pittsburgh-based, non-profit software development organization in the field of education and workforce development. The Smart Futures platform is an all-in-one solution that provides LEAs and training organizations in Pennsylvania with innovative career resources that prepare students for college and career success. Smart Futures online educational solutions help students identify who they are, where they are going and how to get where they want to be in the future. Smart Futures is growing throughout Pennsylvania; their data

THE REPORT

GoEnnounce www.goennounce.com

Smart Futures www.smartfutures.org


suggests that they are currently working with 300 schools statewide. The Smart Futures platform is similar to Naviance and GoEnnounce, but has been designed for the Pennsylvania educational system. Like most career preparation solutions, the Smart Futures platform also includes a career portfolio. Students can archive projects, work samples and educational experiences from K-12 and beyond in their individualized career plan and portfolio.

Benefits: Smart Futures used Pennsylvania’s Academic Standards for Career Education and Work as a framework for the developing their software platform. SmartFutures.org uses badges to provide student-focused evidence of achievement. Activity completion leads to the award of “Future Ready Badges” across the four main academic standards for career education and work. “I” statements translate classroom assignments, courses and other education experiences into student-focused expressions of how they are empowered as a result of their knowledge. This feature is consistent with the resources and supports provided by PDE for meeting the Career Readiness Benchmark. A main focus of SmartFutures.org is skill improvement; badging and credentialing begins with math and reading and expands to include other 21st century skills critical to employers. Students can store their products and data in their Career Portfolio. Teachers and school counselors can monitor student progress and create class and grade level reports to satisfy college and career reporting requirements. The platform is customizable with color indicators (green, yellow, red) visually representing progress against minimum compliance levels as identified by the LEA.

Challenges: Similar to GoEnnounce, Smart Futures is very new. At this point, the solution has been designed with Pennsylvania college and career requirements in mind. However, since the PA ESSA plan and the Future Ready PA Index is very new as well, current data is not readily available and a host of changes are likely as the Future Ready PA Index is more clearly defined through implementation. Although the solution offers LTI and API integration features, it is unclear how schools are integrating and blending the use of other technology tools with Smart Futures technologies. LEAs choosing to use Smart Futures would be on the forefront of growing this solution and may have to build relationships with LEAs outside of their region to network and share best practices in implementing this solution.

Recommendations: Smart Futures college and career preparation platform is designed for Pennsylvania school accountability and is growing throughout the commonwealth. This solution is relatively new but could become the dominant college and career preparation tool in Pennsylvania with the right partnerships and improved design elements. If your school is looking to implement a solution tailored to the Future Ready PA Index and is willing to partner with the technology supplier to improve the product, Smart Futures may be the tool for you. We recommend this tool for schools that do not have a career platform or are looking to make a change to a new platform that will satisfy the demands of the Career Readiness (accountability) Measure.

Overview: CourseNetworking (CN) offers an entirely innovative approach to college and career preparation. The platform is built on a social media framework and looks and feels very much like LinkedIn. CN was invented and developed in 2011 based on the emerging concept of course “networking” instead of course “management.” CourseNetworking offers a global, academic social-networking site with unique, next-generation technology solutions for learning and collaboration. CN is an Instructional Management System (IMS) certified LTI tool. The CN platform offers schools an LMS, Social Networking and ePortfolio platform. The CN platform was created for the college experience but is growing and developing for the K-12 market. CN is designed to provide authentic, digital social connections. The tool provides students with a safe social media platform to establish college and career skills for communicating with the world.

Benefits: CN offers each user a lifelong profile page to showcase achievements and associated social networks. Additionally, CN is an Instructional Management System (IMS) certified LTI tool, which can be integrated with all significant LMSs. This integration can be done by an institution LMS administrator for the entire school. Then, with one click, you can access your CN ePortfolio from your LMS. CN lets individual users own their ePortfolio; even after a student graduates or transfers to a new school, students can log on to CN to continue accessing and maintaining their CN ePortfolio (depending on the school

THE REPORT

CourseNetworking www.thecn.com


admin settings). Both course instructors and licensed institutions can easily award users with badges. The badges are displayed on users’ CN ePortfolio and can be shared through social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. CN is highly customizable and has a variety of admin settings that can fit the needs of elementary, middle and high school students and teachers.

Challenges: CN is a very innovative product, but that comes with some difficulties. Like most social media platforms, the more people that use the platform, the more significant the impact the tool has on the people using the platform. At this point, CN does not have a substantial presence in Pennsylvania. As a result, current users may not find this platform to be the best vehicle to communicate with employers or potential post-high school educational institutions. Although CN has been around since 2011, their platform is relatively new to K-12 education, resulting in limited examples of best practices for implementing the solution from an instructional and information technology perspective. The LMS platform on CN is also not commonly used in the K-12 arena, especially in Pennsylvania, so little is known about how schools are leveraging CN to meet their needs beyond functioning as a social media platform. CN does not come with rich college and career supports and resources for students when compared to GoEnnounce, Naviance and Smart Futures.

Recommendations: The concept of a social media platform for education that is designed to connect students, schools and employers is novel and worth exploring. The CN platform may be right for your school if you are willing to be on the cutting edge of college and career readiness accountability systems. Using cutting edge platforms can come with many benefits such as state and national recognition; however, the cutting edge could also become the bleeding edge in which time and money are not used efficiently. As a result, this solution might be high-risk, high reward. The template for using CN in Pennsylvania has not been developed, but the team at CN is very motivated to grow their product and make it fit for schools. We recommend this solution for schools that have a stable technology and career preparation initiatives and are seeking an innovative way to prepare students for showcasing their abilities to the world.

Summary

We know that expectations for college and career preparation are changing. The Pennsylvania ESSA plan outlines the implementation of a new school reporting system known as the Future Ready PA Index. This reporting system includes accountability measures that require schools to guide students in creating career plans and portfolios to better prepare for life after high school. As your school develops plans for meeting college and career accountability measures, the CCIU ultimately recommends that you focus on your school and district goals, consider current technology implementation plans, understand your community needs and think about the short and long-term future. After hours of debate, our team truly believes that each of the solutions reviewed in this report can adequately support your LEA in meeting the College and Career Measures.

THE REPORT


Student owned: account follows student with life long access

High level of data control

Ability to export data

Mass upload for account creation available

Private, public, domain & other access settings

Sharing through email, social media, link, etc

Certified learning achievements

Capable of hosting badges & micro-credentials

Granular control of Social Media access available

Device agnostic & browser based

Available App, Android & iOS (

Integration through LTI for LMS (

Copyright & COPPA Compliance considerations in place

Ability to export ePortfolio into usable file (

Single sign on capabilities

Data storage is accessible & the monitoring/recording process is clear

Privacy laws of country where data is stored are clear

Software allows for security that is compliant to district policies

Variety of functions available through LTI integration ( (

OWNERSHIP

NETWORKING

ACCESSIBILITY

ELECTRONIC PORTFOLIO COMPARISON

Course Networking

Course Networking

Course Networking

No (In Development

Yes


Ability to upload files & media

Ability to enter text & embed content

Ability to brand with logo & colors

Ability to report to PIMS

Variety of functions available through LTI integration ( (

FUNCTIONALITY

Websites

Course Networking

www.schoology.com

www.naviance.com

www.thecn.com

www.smartfutures.org

www.goennounce.com

www.canvaslms.com

Chester County Intermediate Unit • 2018The Chester County Intermediate Unit

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