Education Technology
Business Wire | October 10, 2023
Watermark, a leading provider of software solutions for higher education, proudly unveils the Educational Impact Suite (EIS), a comprehensive and interconnected suite of tools that unifies organizational leadership, student success, and continuous improvement, serving as an institution's internal compass. Grounded in the ethos of Education Impact, the EIS will revolutionize operational strategies for leaders, administrators, and faculty to maximize engagement, impact, and institutional storytelling.
While technological advancements have historically moved slowly in higher education, recent years have seen an unprecedented boom in education technology, forging an inescapable tension between tradition and innovation. The challenges of pandemic learning exemplified this, thrusting educational institutions into uncharted territories as they scrambled to facilitate remote learning amidst a global crisis. The urgency to adapt often overshadows strategic foresight, leading to disjointed and fragmented solutions. EIS seeks to transform institutions' overarching challenges into opportunities to adapt and evolve.
“Higher education is at a pivotal juncture, where the fusion of tradition and innovation is essential,” said Erin Shy, CEO of Watermark. “The Educational Impact Suite is the bridge that connects data with process. That bridge simplifies internal operations to provide a clearer view for faculty, staff, and leaders. With this clarity, we're facilitating learning environments where insights drive action, ensuring that institutions' strategies are as impactful as they are intentional.”
Digital sprawl leads institutions to spend most of their time collecting data rather than understanding it. By connecting all of Watermark’s solutions together and establishing strong integrations with top LMS and SIS systems, the EIS breaks down data silos to help institutions uncover actionable insights. At launch, the EIS is focused on:
Comprehensive Integration & Efficiency: The EIS encompasses a range of tools, each honed to deliver distinct insights and optimize workflows. When harnessed collectively, institutions unlock exponential value, break down data silos, and bolster cross-functional coordination to amplify their impact.
Data-Driven Insights in Context: With EIS, analytics are not just numbers on a screen. They're carefully curated, placed in the context of daily workflows, and designed to highlight areas for improvement, thereby supporting institutional effectiveness and student success. This distinguishes EIS from all point solutions in the market.
Student-Centric Vision: From curriculum development to course performance assessment and faculty impact analysis, the student's experience remains at the forefront. EIS is built with the institution's influence on the student journey as its core focus.
"The confluence of insights and impact becomes the backbone of transformation,” said Alex Leader, Chief Impact Officer at Watermark. “When insights are not just gleaned but acted upon, they become the very footprints of impact. By meticulously curating and connecting data across an institution, the EIS will build connective tissue between Institutional Effectiveness and Student Success teams to drive support structures that are informed and holistic. This ensures that every initiative contributes to an institution's lasting impact on its students and empowers that legacy to be meaningfully communicated.”
For more information about the Watermark EIS, visit www.watermarkinsights.com/solutions.
About Watermark
Watermark gives higher education institutions the tools they need to easily track, manage, and examine their data. For over twenty years, colleges and universities have used Watermark solutions to complete assessment and accreditation requirements, capture and analyze student feedback, showcase faculty accomplishments, and improve student engagement. Watermark's Educational Impact Suite (EIS) puts data into context so faculty and staff can focus on what really matters: institutional and student success. Learn why Watermark is trusted by over 1,700 colleges and universities to support continuous improvement at www.watermarkinsights.com.
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Corporate Learning Systems
PR Newswire | September 21, 2023
D2L, a global learning technology company, today announced the formal launch of D2L for Business – a corporate learning solution designed to maximize return on investment (ROI) in learning and help empower employers to attract, retain, onboard, and upskill their workforce.
D2L for Business combines the benefits of an existing network of world-class education providers, skill development solutions, and expert consulting services along with D2L's world class Learning Experience Platform (LXP) and authoring tools, creating one integrated, easy-to-use corporate solution.
The 2023 World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report predicts that 44% of workers' skills will be disrupted in the following five years – rising significantly from 35% in 2016. And, according to D2L's 2023 White Paper, 80% of U.S. adults expressed some interest in pursuing additional skills training over the next 12 months.
"With recent rapid advancements in AI, the changing nature of jobs, and skills shortages, it's essential for employees to continue to upgrade their skillsets – and for businesses to offer the right learning to remain competitive in the talent market," said John Baker, CEO of D2L. "For over two decades, we've helped hundreds of organizations drive their business forward with the right learning for the skills they need. D2L for Business will help take our customers to the next level with a simple, seamless, and personalized mix of technology and services to help fuel a skilled workforce prepared to take on the future."
D2L for Business helps employers maximize organization-wide learning ROI and their workforce's satisfaction, retention, and internal mobility through:
Skills Mapping and Pathways: D2L for Business uses AI-driven algorithms and industry experts to help develop a comprehensive skills audit, map skills to careers, and identify custom learning pathways for desired careers and skill sets. This helps businesses create a skills pipeline aligned with business objectives, fill open roles, and close skills gaps.
Network of World-Class Education Partners: D2L for Business can help businesses streamline their learning administration through a curated provider network of industry-leading universities, colleges, and training organizations. Employers can easily deploy a centralized catalog of career-aligned programs and courses to talent at every level of the organization.
Customized Learning: D2L for Business can help businesses create and deliver their own customized digital learning experiences through D2L's LXP. This can enable organizations to rapidly scale and deploy learning that aligns with their strategic goals.
Learning Analytics: D2L for Business offers built-in insights to help maximize businesses' ROI with a birds-eye-view into learner progress and outcomes. Employers can gather integrated, organization-wide data about course completion rates and employee skill development, and then make data-informed decisions to help ensure future-readiness. "When it comes to revamping your learning and development program, it's important to have a plan in place that's going to take your business to the next level, and into the future," said Melissa Stein, Officer of Learning & Development at Tompkins Financial. "Tompkins specifically chose D2L as its corporate learning platform for its flexibility, ability to provide content in all areas of learning, and its two decades of trends-focused, forward-looking innovation."
D2L for Business can help empower companies to make their skilled teams a competitive advantage, future-proofing their organization to fuel growth. For more information on D2L for Business, please visit https://www.D2L.com/solutions/corporate/.
About D2L
D2L is transforming the way the world learns—helping learners of all ages achieve more than they dreamed possible. Working closely with clients all over the world, D2L is supporting millions of people learning online and in person. Our growing global workforce is dedicated to making the best learning products to leave the world better than they found it. Learn more about D2L for K-12, higher education and businesses at www.D2L.com.
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Education Technology
PR Newswire | October 19, 2023
D2L, a global learning technology company, today highlighted enhanced Brightspace product features — developed over the past six months — that can help global learners and educators simplify the learning experience by bringing learning solutions together in one place.
I'm thrilled to share that D2L continues to invest in its existing solutions and broaden its portfolio of products, partner solutions and services to assist educators, organizations, and learners in their readiness for the future, said Rajesh Talpade, Senior Vice President of Product Management at D2L. D2L's new and enhanced product features can make it easier than ever to offer effective learning in online and blended environments to help see that learners have the opportunity to succeed.
New D2L Solution for Businesses
Announced in September 2023, D2L introduced a new, all-in-one solution for businesses: D2L for Business. This integrated, easy-to-use corporate solution combines the benefits of an existing network of world-class education providers, skill development solutions, and expert consulting services as an learning experience platform (LXP).
Empowering Learners, Educators and Administrators
Brightspace functionalities and offerings that can provide customers with tools and resources to help enhance outcomes and save time. Brightspace now offers:
Even more Creator+ tools for educators, including: new accessible layouts, expanded types of interactive elements, and a fully accessible hotspot practice question type. This can help enable educators to continue building beautiful and instructionally sound content using familiar Brightspace workflows.
An AI-driven, first line of contexual help and support embedded within Brightspace Brightspace Virtual Assistant.
More datasets and improved data dashboards to help make it easier for educators and businesses to gain insights and understand metrics in their organizations.
Simplifying Workflows
Recent Brightspace updates continue to make workflows more intuitive, efficient, effective and consistent. This includes:
An improved Quiz experience that can offer support for high-stakes exams with strict time limits, support for synchronous quizzing windows, and other improvements.
A familiar and upgraded Discussion experience with workflows to help bring new functionality to educators.
New content authoring functionality to help make it easier to manage both the required and optional course materials. In addition, enhancements to the Media Library are now more user-friendly, with new time-saving indicators to track progress and surface common actions. And, new changes to course merging options that can empower educators and save administrative time.
New self-enrollment enhancements for Brightspace customers that offer professional development opportunities and allow educators to see that learners are enrolling in the right courses.
Uniting a Stronger Ecosystem
D2L has also enhanced its robust learning ecosystem by simplifying access to Brightspace and encouraging new interactions among educators, administrators, and learners. These updates, features and tools include:
An easier, course registration process through Course Merchant, a modern e-commerce experience, whose front-end course catalog and payment and enrollment system is now offered as a D2L product after more than nine years as a key integration partner.
Visualized Brightspace Analytics within Ellucian Experience, help advisors to quickly identify at-risk learners by aggregating Brightspace data with external data to holistically determine appropriate intervention.
Early access to D2L Link, which can connect Brightspace with the systems of record clients use every day. The integrations enabled through D2L Link can help minimize manual tasks and see that data is synchronized between systems.
D2L's new IntegrationHub, built on LTI 1.3. and launched as a new catalog site that lists partner solutions that are available for integrations with Brightpsace. The IntegrationHub makes it easy for Brightspace users to browse D2L's extensive list of integrated technologies and solutions, such as accessibility tools, student information systems, secure proctoring assessment platforms, and many other partner solutions.
For more information on the latest features and updates, please visit What's New at D2L.
About D2L
D2L is transforming the way the world learns—helping learners of all ages achieve more than they dreamed possible. Working closely with clients all over the world, D2L is supporting millions of people learning online and in person. Our growing global workforce is dedicated to making the best learning products to leave the world better than they found it. Learn more about D2L for K-12, higher education and businesses at www.D2L.com.
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