When converting a successful print program to an online educational resource, there are a lot of potential pitfalls.
Vocabulary Power Plus is our best-selling print program with more than 1 million copies sold since it was first introduced more than 15 years ago. We knew that moving into the EdTech space, we’d need to make some changes from the print program to allow for the differences between student behavior when working in print from working online, so we set some top-level goals for the program.
- Make the program available 100% online and accessible from any device
- Keep vocabulary instruction simple and effective so students wouldn’t get lost or feel bored
- Introduces students to the same list of over 300 vocabulary words per grade that the books covered
- Structured program that students can work on independently without a lot of required teacher supervision
To do so, we needed to find a partner to work with and we selected Buzz LMS from Agilyx because of the flexibility in design and functionality in creating assessment options for this and a literature program under development.
We then needed to adapt our book’s content to work best for online education. Knowing that students needed immediate feedback more quickly in order to remain engaged digitally, we rearranged our 15-word chapters in smaller 5 word units that let students go directly from learning the word and work through a structures approach to practicing the words they’ve learned in a series of increasingly challenging formative assessments. Our goal in developing these lessons was to give students increasingly rigorous activities that used words in a variety of different types of settings to lock in a real understanding of the words rather than just rote memorization. After completing the three units in a chapter, the students would have a more formal summative assessment.
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