Several years ago, community colleges in California faced a crisis. Across the system, courses were either oversubscribed or unavailable.

Pressure mounted to bring in online education companies to fix the problem. Instead, the state decided to invest in its existing faculty and funded the Online Education Initiative, or OEI. Taking a collaborative approach to online education, OEI developed a statewide Course Exchange that pooled resources, addressed faculty concerns and met student needs.

The impact o...

There is a marked change taking place in higher education. Faced with an array of challenges like over enrollment, under enrollment, and changing student demographics, colleges are turning to course exchanges to share resources.

Collaboration is a noble goal, but it doesn’t come easy. There’s more to course exchanges than simply throwing a few classes online. To succeed, students need to know how to find assignments, participate in discussion boards, and get feedback. Classes have to provide a reasona...

Do you teach a subject with a lot of skills that build on each other? If so, then some of your students may be struggling—not because they aren’t good at your subject, but because they just didn’t master one particular skill.

That missing skill prevented them from learning all the skills that came afterward. In this kind of situation, skill-based adaptive learning products can help.

Take a simple example. Imagine that you’re teaching students to add fractions with different denominators. First the stu...

This explainer video advises entrepreneurs to avoid hiring a superhero salesperson, and instead design the right organizational structure for sales, one with clearly defined roles, functions, and processes, a lean sales engine where each staff person specializes in what they do best.

Meet Laura, a successful entrepreneur. Like many business owners, she wears a lot of hats. She’s responsible for production, delivery, staffing, payroll, expenses, billing...And, of course, sales. She knows how critical i...

This animated marketing video introduces an educational card game teaching bird identification to children.

Oh, hello! That’s better! I have some friends I’d like you to meet

This is my friend the Bluejay. He has a crest on his head. Let me show you another bird with a crest

Here’s the Northern Cardinal. He has a crest too! He also has a mask. Want to play a game with me? Find another bird with a mask!

That’s right! It’s the Common Yellowthroat! Good job. Want to play again? The Common Yellowthroat has a...

Point Made Animation was selected by the Education Technology Industry Network (ETIN) of SIIA for the Ed Tech Innovation Showcase. ETIN will host the showcase on Tuesday, November 28th, at the 2018 Education Business Forum in New York.

The Ed Tech Innovation Showcase honors the important and relevant work that ed tech startups do within education and the role they play in driving technology and education innovation forward. Selected companies receive an opportunity to demonstrate their new, innov...

Adaptive Learning is actually not one thing, but takes several forms. Two common types, for example, are skills based and memory based. When you’re choosing courseware for your class, be sure it’s adaptive in the right way for your students.

Take, for example, memory: helping students remember facts and concepts. Some subjects, like Anatomy, require lots of memorization. But even subjects that focus on critical thinking need students to remember facts and concepts to make an argument.

As a student, yo...

Are your students ever surprised when they fail a test? Are you ever surprised that they didn’t seem to notice they’d been struggling with the homework? Or when they did notice but didn’t do anything about it?

Some students haven’t mastered the skills of noticing and understanding the patterns in their schoolwork. Or in knowing what to do if they get stuck.

And with more and more distractions these days, even conscientious students can miss that they’re missing something.

A tutor working with a struggli...

A retention early warning system. What is it?  And how can you use it to help your students learn the skills they need to succeed?

When a student is struggling, even the best educator can miss warning signs. A student can fall through the cracks in a large class. Or quickly flounder from personal pressure outside the classroom. Some of those students don’t have good study skills, or are too distracted to notice when they are starting to get into trouble.

Retention early warning systems are designed to...

What are learning analytics? How do you use them? And how do you evaluate which features you’ll need to help your students succeed?

If you teach, you should be able to make sense of learning analytics. And decide what’s useful to you. You just need to ask the right questions.

To understand analytics, let’s start with the simple report—useful summary information that can save you time. For example, a Learning Management System might have an easy-to-read chart showing which students participate in onlin...