What happens in the classroom doesn’t always stay in the classroom. At least that’s what active learning platform Echo360 hopes. The Reston, Va.-based company captures real-time data about how students are engaging in class--taking notes, answering questions or reviewing course content, for example. Today Echo360 announced it will share those insights with Infrastructure’s Canvas learning management system.
The two companies entered into a partnership that they say will give colleges and universities a more robust picture of student learning. They’re offering an integrated dashboard to colleges and universities that use both vendors.
“It’s the marriage of engagement data with gradebook data sitting in the LMS,” says Echo360 CEO Fred Singer, adding that the integration will allow faculty and advisors to correlate class-specific activities with assessments and performance. The combined data could lead to more effective interventions, improving student retention and outcomes, he says.
The partnership paints a picture of the evolving LMS landscape--a market that’s expected to approach $8 billion in 2018. In Singer’s words, the LMS is “going to bleed into the classroom”--and vice-versa.
Roughly 1,000 institutions have adopted Canvas as their LMS and more than 500 use Echo360. Last week, the two companies held a briefing with 200 schools that use their technology and say that 12 will be early adopters of the integrated dashboard.
One such institution is the University of Kentucky, which has been using Echo360’s Lecture Capture tool for four to five years and is halfway through its Canvas implementation.
Vince Kellen, senior vice provost for analytics and technologies at UK, says that about 10 faculty, who teach about 1,000 students, will pilot the joint solution this year in gateway courses. He sees it “as way to analyze student behavior and predict difficulty inside and outside classroom.” The University of Michigan will also test out the integrated dashboards.
