Helix Education Releases New LMS Functionality, Making Competency-Based Education More Powerful, Yet Efficient
Salt Lake City, UT (PRWEB) August 08, 2014 -- Helix Education, a world class provider of student life cycle technologies and services, has released several enhancements to Helix LMS, which is the only solution in higher education designed to deliver a single platform to serve competency-based, on-campus, online, or continuing education formats. The new functionality increases efficiencies around communication, grading and course development processes, enabling educators to focus more time on students and less time on behind-the-scenes details.
"Our team spends a significant amount of time out in the market talking to educators about the things they need to do their jobs better, which is the basis for our comprehensive roadmap of upgrades to Helix LMS," Steve Pappageorge, Chief Product Officer and Senior Vice President at Helix Education. "Our goal is for both students and instructors have a meaningful experience - they can't be bogged down by technology, but rather need to be able to concentrate fully on learning materials, activities and interaction. This latest release simplifies administrative tasks, allowing educators to be more available to mentor and motivate students."
In addition to various UI enhancements, which make online teaching and learning more seamless, Helix LMS now facilitates powerful new ways to customize student communication, repurpose content, and more. Advancements include the following:
• Automated Communication Functionality: the instructor to-do list now adapts to the student's pace, automatically letting faculty know exactly when to reach out to a student based on his or her completion goal. For example, a student who on track to finish a course quickly might receive a reminder from the instructor if not logged in for three days, and a student who is completing the course over a longer duration might receive a reminder after seven days.
• Enhanced Grading Options: uploaded documents (Word files, PowerPoint presentations or PDFs) are now shown in-line, and annotations can easily be added. This saves a tremendous amount of time and eases the grading process, while also helping students through an open dialog of feedback.
• Content Repurposing: multiple versions of rubrics can be maintained in the system, allowing faculty to link each one with a single assessment or across multiple assessments. This increased flexibility allows faculty to reuse the best and most appropriate rubrics without spending time recreating each one.
• Complete Preview Mode: instructional designers and faculty can view and navigate the course as a student, enabling them to more easily gauge the flow of content from a student's perspective.
More information on Helix LMS and Helix Education's CBE consulting, instructional design and content development services can be found on the company's website.
About Helix Education
For over 25 years, Helix Education’s innovative technology platforms and data-driven Marketing and Enterprise Services have helped higher education institutions find, enroll, retain and teach students. Its configurable SaaS-based CRM, Helix Retention, delivers a robust, scalable and highly flexible solution to enable retention strategies unique to each institution’s needs and their students. Additionally, Helix LMS, the company’s comprehensive and SaaS-based online learning platform, is the only solution in higher education designed to deliver a single platform to serve competency-based, on-campus, online, or continuing education formats. Helix LMS was recognized by EDUCAUSE’s Next Generation Learning Challenges Grant and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as a promising technology to support breakthrough learning models. With a deep bench of education industry innovators, Helix Education offers consulting, instructional design, program development, and more to support the different learning approaches currently being used and adopted by institutions. For more information, please visit http://www.HelixEducation.com.
Kristi Emerson, Datamark, http://www.datamark.com, 303-885-9896, [email protected]
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