SUCCESS STORY

North Central Illinois Finishing Trades Institute

“Every good instructor wants to have more engaged students and improve learning and delivery. Incorporating technology during your class gives you real-time results.”
Steve Lefaver
Director of Training
NCIFTI
Customer
About
The North Central Illinois Finishing Trades Institute (NCIFTI) empowers craftspersons through education and skills training to prepare them for continuous employment in the unionized finishing trades. It provides a well-rounded program of apprenticeship and refresher for persons desiring to be painters and decorators as a subordinate organization under the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades.
MARKET
Education
Echosystem Solution
EchoExam and PointSolutions

Driving Universal Participation in the Classroom

Instructors typically rely on students asking questions to monitor their engagement in class, but quiet learners may hesitate to share their opinions or reach out for help. To drive engagement during class, NCIFTI instructors encourage student participation using PointSolutions technology. NCIFTI also builds fair exams using EchoExam and administers them during class meetings, giving instructors real-time feedback on which concepts are understood and any topics that might need to be reviewed again.

Instructors typically rely on students asking questions to monitor their engagement in class, but quiet learners may hesitate to share their opinions or reach out for help. To drive engagement during class, NCIFTI instructors encourage student participation using PointSolutions technology. NCIFTI also builds fair exams using EchoExam and administers them during class meetings, giving instructors real-time feedback on which concepts are understood and any topics that might need to be reviewed again.

Echo360's e3 Formula in Action

Polling software frequently limits how an audience interacts with questions. PointSolutions allows NCIFTI students to use clickers, web browsers, and even mobile devices to interact on their terms.

Equity

NCIFTI instructors rely on EchoExam to automatically generate up to 26 versions of a test, promoting equity for all test-takers while minimizing the temptation to cheat. Similarly, NCIFTI instructors use PointSolutions to keep track of their students’ performance throughout the course. Students needing assistance can be identified and helped before they fall too far behind.

Engagement

Different people learn at different rates, and NCIFTI instructors use PointSolutions to track student engagement in real time. If the entire class understands a concept, the instructor knows they can move on to something else. If polls indicate widespread confusion, instructors know that they need to spend more time on the subject. PointSolutions also adds interactivity to live class meetings to make participating in lessons more fun.

Evidence

NCIFTI instructors use PointSolutions to collect data on all students. Quiet learners may assume that they are the only ones struggling with a particular concept, but class-wide polls often reveal that many of their peers could use assistance as well.

3 Key Takeaways

Real-Time Data is Huge

PointSolutions allows NCIFTI instructors to monitor individual and class performance over time, letting instructors know that students need help before it’s too late to get them back on track. Instructors can also get real-time engagement scores to let them know when the group is ready for the next topic.

Data Visualization Tools

Data is only as good as the story it tells, and EchoExam includes built-in tracking tools to make information easier to digest. PointSolutions also simplifies following learner performance with data visualization tools that illustrate key trends.

Accessibility is King

Ease of use is essential for any organization looking for widespread adoption of new technology, and both EchoExam and PointSolutions are designed with end users in mind. Whether it’s an NCIFTI instructor easily creating exams using EchoExam’s question bank or a student using PointSolutions to answer live poll questions with the device of their choice, the entire experience is seamless.
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How to Create a Corporate Training Video to Make eLearning Easier on EchoVideo

Videos are not a new development in the corporate training industry. In fact, training video has been used since employers realized they have a strong incentive to help employees learn. Videos combine visuals and audio, engaging multiple senses to promote learning. They save time and money because a business doesn’t need to hire an instructor every time they want to hold a training seminar. Videos give employees more control over the training process, inspiring them to put forth their best efforts. All of these reasons why video is so effective have been known for years. 

 

The bigger question isn’t what makes video so effective but why creating a corporate training video has stagnated. Once upon a time, instructors would record live lectures on a camcorder and play the resulting VHS tape for a group of employees. DVDs and cloud storage have replaced VHS tapes, but many companies are still creating training videos by recording content to play back later with minimal quality control or editing options. They aren’t thinking of the unique needs of their learners, shy away from innovation, and assume that it’s somebody else’s responsibility to make training worthwhile for their team.

 

 

Blended Learning Paths

Every student has unique educational needs and EchoEngage gives instructors the tools they need to personalize their learning experiences. Teachers can give self-paced assignments to an entire class or a smaller group of students who need a refresher. Students can complete these assignments whenever and wherever they wish, giving them more control over the educational process. Naturally, students will attend scheduled class meetings as well to recreate the traditional classroom experience. Any great K-12 learning management system should deliver comparable flexibility.

 

Audience Participation

K-12 teachers know that audience participation drives educational outcomes, and a great K12 learning management system needs to facilitate that. With EchoEngage, teachers can incorporate real-time polling into lessons and allow students to respond with their choice of devices. Gamification elements appeal to a student’s competitive side, and a built-in virtual classroom supports breakout rooms for collaborative work. Students can even ask for help anonymously if they don’t understand something. Teachers frequently report more engagement using these tools than they did in their physical classrooms.

 

Fair Assessments

While grades aren’t the end goal of education, a great K12 learning management system has to help students pursue success. To that end, EchoExam allows instructors to easily create assessments with 14 different types of questions including bi-modal items and dynamic content that allows teachers to adjust the difficulty as needed. Teachers can also scramble question orders automatically to protect the integrity of exams. Most importantly, EchoExam makes it easy for teachers to review scores for individuals and the class and intervene as necessary. In short, you’ll always have the evidence you need to help students succeed. 

 

Unparalleled Accessibility

Don’t you hate that feeling where you know the information you’re looking for is there somewhere but you can’t seem to find it? K-12 students encounter that problem every day, but EchoVideo offers an innovative solution. Using Automatic Speech Recognition technology, captions can be added to any video to promote accessibility. Better yet, captions are added to a searchable index so students can quickly find whatever they need to review. A great K-12 learning management system should empower students in ways that cannot happen in a traditional classroom. 

 

Efficient Course Creation

Classroom instructors are busy people and a great K-12 learning management system should streamline as much of their workload as possible. EchoAuthor allows teachers to create courses with an intuitive interface offering dozens of block types and interactive templates. Individual course elements can also be saved outside of the course, allowing instructors to quickly add them to other courses where they would be relevant. Once courses are finished, they can be shared by embedding on an iFrame or downloading in xAPI or SCORM formats. That kind of flexibility is precisely what teachers need. 

 

Pursue student success with the Echosystem

We’re confident that the Echosystem experience framework is the best K12 learning management system on the market, but you don’t have to take our word for it. Instead, request more info today to see what it could do for you!

 

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Best-In-Class Learning Management Solution

Question Types

With over 14 different question types, you can match the assessment to the material at hand. Use traditional test question types such as true/false, multiple-choice, multiple response, numeric response, matching, completion, short answer and essay to review, re-teach and reinforce learning.

Reporting & Analytics

Ensuring that learners understand the information presented and how it can impact their success is key. Assess, track and analyze learner performance. Get results immediately and view valuable reports at the individual level, or for the class or group as a whole. Provide results in real-time, or at a later time as preferred.

Dynamic Bimodal Versioning

With dynamic content, generate multiple iterations of exam questions to test the same concept. Use bimodal to toggle between multiple-choice and short answer question types, immediately changing the item difficulty level.

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I Want More Engaging Interactive Lectures in My Classroom

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Create, capture, manage, store and search video with the most powerful platform anywhere.
From in-person to virtual to flipped classrooms, we have the tools to engage your learners.
Creating effective and engaging materials for your learners has never been easier -or more impactful.
Create multi-modal assessments and generate analytics within seconds.

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Video Management

Unleashing the end-to-end learning potential of video, from creation to administration.  

Engagement Outcomes

Designing and delivering effective engagement tools that produce results. 

Reporting & Analytics

Providing empirical evidence of engagement, progress, and opportunity areas through easy-to-use dashboards. 

LMS Integration

Integrating seamlessly with the most widely used Learning Management Systems in education and business. 

Accessibility

Committing to meeting or exceeding standards that ensure learning equity. 

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Enabling inspiration and access to students, wherever they are.

Echo360 delivers an innovative model for engaged learning in the post-Covid age.  We offer coherent and compelling learner-centered experiences regardless of place and time, so all learners have the opportunities to learn.