Extensive research on the efficacy of our programs has shown that, with just 60 minutes of use per week, My Math Academy and My Reading Academy can help children make significant gains in early math and literacy skills and improve their confidence as learners. And because increased program usage correlates with greater learning gains, our programs include built-in Usage Dashboards that allow Administrators, Teachers, and Caregivers to track usage for Schools, Classes, and individual Students.
This guide focuses on answering questions that users may have about the reporting on these Dashboards and how to resolve simple issues that some may encounter.
- How Is Usage Tracked in My Math Academy and My Reading Academy?
- How Soon Is Usage Data Available?
- Can I See Usage Data from the Previous School Year?
- What Counts and Is Reported as Usage for Students?
- What Is Not Counted on Usage Reports?
- How Can I Ensure that My Students Meet Their Usage Goals?
- Why You Could See Large Unexpected Differences in Reported Usage
- Dashboard Loading Issues
- How to Report Problems with Usage Data
- Learn More about Usage Reports
How Is Usage Tracked in My Math Academy and My Reading Academy?
Our systems are set up to automatically track the amount of time students spend actively playing the learning activities within our My Math Academy and My Reading Academy programs. There’s nothing you need to do to “start the clock,” except to make sure your students complete their Placement Tests (usage is not tracked before that).
After that, encourage your students to actively engage as soon as they can and to stay active throughout the time you have allotted for each session with these programs. At the end of that time, if a student is in an activity that they can quickly finish, encourage them to do so. Shortly after they finish, each student’s learning time should be reflected on the Usage Dashboards within the Educator Center. If you have had the Usage Dashboard open for a while, you will need to refresh it to see the latest data. You can simply reload/refresh the page with your browser, or click the small link just above the three tabs near the top of the page. It says, "Click to get the latest."
You should expect to see some minor differences in the data for some students. If you see a large discrepancy or no usage data for a child, these are the most likely reasons.
Also, keep in mind that if your students have at-home access to these programs, their home use will be reflected on the Usage Dashboards and count towards meeting your weekly goals.
How Soon Is Usage Data Available?
Usage Data on your Dashboards updates throughout the day (if you refresh your browser), but it is not quite real-time data. There is some variability as to how soon after your students have finished using our programs in the classroom before you will be able to see their time reported on our Usage Dashboards. There is typically a delay of just a few minutes. Usage at home will not show up until the next day.
Keep in mind, if you are just opening up the Usage Dashboard, what it shows you will be the very latest data that has been processed. But if you have had the Dashboard open for any amount of time and go back to look for new data, you will need to refresh the page to see the latest available data (typically within a few minutes). New data may be ready, but you won’t see it if you’re looking at Dashboard data that you loaded in your browser twenty minutes or an hour ago.
Above the dashboard tabs, it says "Click to get the latest." Clicking that link will refresh the Usage dashboard with any new data. Or you can simply reload your browser window.
Also keep in mind that the default view for the Usage dashboard is for This Week (see the blue tab above). This current weekly usage data is captured and displayed Monday through Sunday. Students with at-home usage over the weekend will have that displayed along with the previous school days that week. The week resets on Sunday night, so you will never see any usage listed on that tab first thing Monday morning or until your students begin to use the programs for the new week. For the By Week tab, the date listed is the Monday for that week.
Can I See Student Usage Data from the Previous School Year?
In most cases, you will not see data from the previous school year. Teachers and Admins are able to see ongoing usage data throughout the school year and typically any summer school after that.
However, once your top-level Administrator sets a date for your new Academic Term, all Dashboard and Placement data will reset on that date. Students will take new Placement Tests when they first start using our programs in the new school term and new Progress and Usage data will be generated.
If you have started working in the new school term, but your Admin’s new Academic Term date has not yet passed, you should still be able to see student usage data from the previous school year (but probably not for long).
What Counts and Is Reported as Usage for Students?
After a student logs in, chooses an activity, and starts engaging with the learning activities within the program, all those minutes until they stop working should be captured and reported. This is true for use within the classroom or at home.
So you should never expect that all the minutes from the moment you tell students to start working on their math or reading programs to the time they start their next classroom assignment will be counted. There will be time spent moving to their computers or finding their tablets that isn't tracked. Some brief or not-so-brief chatting with friends that isn't tracked. Some random teacher questions. Some time to log in, choose an activity, and load the game. And finally, if a child gets distracted after logging in and doesn’t start engaging with the activities right away, some minutes will be “lost” and not counted or reported.
It’s important to let your students know it is not about knowing the right answers (wrong answers show that the student is actively engaged and will let the program know this is an area the student needs to work on more). Nor is it about how many activities you can complete. A student who is actively struggling and taking longer to complete activities will be credited with as much time as an advanced student who sailed through twice as many activities. As long as the student stays engaged, that activity will count and the time will be reported. However, a student who is easily distracted or unmotivated and is not engaging with the program will have a diminished activity level reflected in the usage data. For example, if a student is practicing reading with a read-to-me book, and the program has finished reading the page, and the student never clicks through to load the next page, the time it took for the program to read the page to the student would be counted, but not any time after that if the student never moved forward. It’s the digital equivalent of a student just putting his book down when he should be reading.
What Is Not Counted on Usage Dashboards
- Time on the Login page (or in Clever or ClassLink)
- Any usage of less than 1 minute
- In My Math Academy, if there is no activity for 5 minutes, we stop counting the time until the activity resumes.
- In My Reading Academy, if there is no activity for 5 minutes, we stop counting the time until the activity resumes.
Why isn't everything counted? We’re trying to accurately reflect actual, active learning time so you can see how that correlates with students’ academic progress. This is something that people encounter in the offline world all the time:
For example, if your doctor told you you had to walk for at least 20 minutes a day, you really shouldn’t count the time it took to put on your sneakers, fill up your water bottle, or pick out some music. If you stopped to chat with the neighbor, tied your shoes twice, and decided to sit on a bench and talk on the phone for a few minutes, you really shouldn't count any of that either. But if some of your 20 minutes were simply slower walking than others, they still count.
How Can I Ensure that My Students Meet Their Usage Goals?
All classrooms are unique — based on student age, how many students you have, how many devices you have and how they’re shared, how students log in, and many other factors — and will therefore have varying challenges to working efficiently and meeting usage goals. But these tips have been very helpful for other teachers:
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Budget more time: The only one-size-fits-all answer is this one: you will need to budget some extra time to program usage to guarantee the usage time you are trying to meet. The first four bullets above for what doesn't count would typically take only a few minutes (assuming no glitches or student delays), and there may be a couple of minutes before that for students to transition. So, if you really want to hit 15 minutes of tracked learning time, you may need to allot 20 minutes to these activities. This may be a trial-and-error process initially to figure out how long it takes your students to get into their productive learning sessions and what percentage of inefficiency to expect. The good news is you can expect them to get better at it over time.
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Give your class a head-start: Some teachers have been successful by front-loading more time for program usage earlier in the week. That way, if any issues subtract from actual, reported learning time, you may have enough padding that it’s not an issue that keeps you from your class goal.
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Look for roadblocks: It’s hard to know what will be the most likely roadblocks to efficient program usage from classroom to classroom, but teachers are encouraged to be attentive to the transitions to see if they can identify and remove stumbling blocks for their students and find ways to best set them up for success.
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Monitor in-classroom usage, and encourage engagement: At least until students are used to the workflow and your classroom usage reports are consistently positive, teachers are encouraged to give regular little “pep talks” to students so they know it’s important to get to work quickly, stay focused and active (even if they don’t know the right answers), and know what their goals are. We encourage you to walk around and monitor focus and engagement, congratulate the class on their efforts each day, and celebrate success when the class meets their weekly goals.
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Encourage students to finish the activity they are on: When you let students know that time is up for this classroom activity, you should also let them know that they should finish any activity that they’re in the middle of, if that’s possible given time constraints in the classroom.
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Encourage at-home use: If your district offers families codes to set up at-home use, be sure to encourage parents and children to take advantage of that opportunity. Regular (or even occasional) use at home can make it much easier to hit your weekly targets.
- Check the Dashboard: You won’t know if your class is on-track unless you check. And the sooner you see if the class (or any individual students) is off-track the better. While the data isn’t always available instantly, it is typically available on the Usage Dashboard just a few minutes after students log out (though it can take up to an hour). If you can, check it early and refresh the Dashboard (see the screenshot above) later if the data isn’t immediately available. Seeing a usage issue soon my make it easier for you to figure out the cause.
Why You Could See Large Unexpected Differences in Reported Usage
Aside from the occasional students who simply don’t do the work that’s right in front of them (which happens with all kinds of learning), these are the most likely issues to cause significant usage reporting problems based on our investigations of classroom issues:
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Student is logged in to another student’s account/profile: If students are sharing a device, the first student may not log out and the second student may simply start playing the learning games on the device. This will show up as no usage for the second and double the usage for the first. This can also happen if students are using QR codes or Clever badges and grab the wrong one (or can’t find theirs). This is a good thing to remind students to be aware of before each session: Make sure you log in as you, and not one of your friends, or it won’t count for you. Let them know they should come to you if they don’t have their own QR code or Clever badge. And remind everyone to log out of the program they are using when they are done rather than just stopping or closing the browser tab. That will help prevent the next user from logging in to the wrong account.
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Student is logged in to the wrong program: For many classrooms, there are two programs available (My Math Academy and My Reading Academy) and there are many reasons a student may end up using the wrong one and therefore show no usage when you check the Usage Dashboard data for the assigned program that day. Non-readers, especially early on, may not know which icon to click on for Math vs. Reading. (That’s an important early lesson.) They may not hear which one you said and just guess. A previous user may have been on the other program on a shared device and the next student kept using it. A student in a 1-to-1 classroom may have been previously using the Math program and never logged out, and the next day just picks up the device and uses what’s there instead of realizing to switch programs.
Not that your students would do this, but ... we did investigate one report of a student having no usage data and it turned out that he was logging in to My Math Academy but then going and playing some unrelated game instead of working on his learning activities.
- There’s a problem with the device: Some devices, especially older ones, are glitchier than others and encounter more technical errors. You may want to restart the device that the student was using, clear the cache, verify it is connecting to the classroom wi-fi network, and do any kind of regular troubleshooting that's worked for those devices in the past. This may be something to have your IT/Support staff help you with.
Dashboard Loading Issues
If you are browsing in the Educator Center and click to go to a Dashboard and see a blank white page or partially loaded page instead, we recommend that you click your browser's Reload or Refresh button once or twice more. This quick and easy step is often all you need to do to get your web browser to properly load the Dashboard. If Reloading/Refreshing the page doesn't work, you can move on to more technical troubleshooting steps.
How to Report Problems with Usage Data
In our experience, small discrepancies in usage from student to student are expected and result from inefficiencies and obstacles that prevent some students from getting to work quickly and being as productive as others. Larger issues, such as the Dashboard showing no usage for an individual student, are almost always the result of the student logging into another student’s account, using the wrong program, or using a defective device. But there are sometimes other technical issues on our end that may need to be investigated. If you’ve looked into the typical classroom issues we’ve addressed here and still feel like your data is corrupt in some way, we would be happy to research and troubleshoot the issue for you.
Before initiating a corrupt usage data inquiry, having the following information at hand is essential:
- The name or names of the students you are inquiring about.
- The game they were playing.
- The date and time that they were playing.
- How much time you think should be on the usage report.
You can use this form to submit your usage data inquiry.
Learn More about Usage Reports
If you need help finding, using, or understanding how our Usage Dashboards work, we suggest reviewing these articles:
- How do I find student usage?
- How do I print out usage reports?
- How do I find overall usage data for my class?
- How do I monitor usage across my organization?