Category: Innovation Apps

Why We No Longer Offer Students the Option to List an Email Address

There are certain questions that seem perfectly ordinary in educational software until one stops to ask why they are being asked at all.

An email address is a good example.

For years, asking for an email address during account creation has been standard practice nearly everywhere online. It is familiar. It gives a student something recognizable to type into a login box. It can also be useful when a school has approved Google sign-in or another email-based workflow.

But most of my own students do not need email to use Innovation Assessments. They enter a classroom number and a short PIN. That takes them where they need to go. If the platform can identify the right student, enroll that student in the right course, save the work, and return the teacher’s feedback without collecting another piece of personal information, why collect it?

Well, get this: now we do not.

Student registration now begins with the minimum

The public student registration page has been reframed as Obtain Student PIN or Password. It asks for the student’s first and last name—or, in an Alias-Only course, the permitted first name and a system-created alias. It does not ask the student for an email address, and it does not offer the student an opportunity to connect a personal Google account.

Behind the scenes, the software creates a unique internal username so that the account can function normally. That internal value may look a little like an email address because it occupies the same long-established database field, but it is not the student’s real email address and does not receive mail.

This means a student can still:

– receive a classroom PIN;

– enter a course;

– complete and save work;

– receive scores and feedback; and

– participate in live classroom activities.

None of that requires us to know the student’s email address.

Schools remain in control when email really is useful

There are schools that authorize student email and Google sign-in, and there are circumstances in which those tools genuinely help. Innovation Assessments has not removed that choice.

Instead, the choice now belongs to the teacher or school. A teacher may deliberately enter an approved school email address while adding or editing a student. The page displays a reminder to confirm that the school permits the information to be stored. A student cannot independently attach a Google account and quietly expand the information connected with the record.

That distinction matters to me. The software should not make a privacy decision on behalf of a school merely because collecting more information is convenient.

A cleanup tool for existing rosters

The My Students page now includes a tool to sanitize existing student email addresses. When a teacher chooses to use it, the system replaces real addresses with unique internal `@myschool.com` identifiers while preserving the student account, enrollments, submissions, scores, and feedback.

The tool requires classroom PIN login to be enabled first, because students need a working way to return after their email-based login has been removed. It also avoids changing accounts shared with another teacher, where one person’s cleanup decision could otherwise disrupt another class.

This is intentionally not an automatic sweep. A teacher sees a warning before proceeding because students who previously signed in by email or Google will need to use the classroom number and PIN afterward.

Alias-Only courses go a step further

Some schools permit only a first name and an alias to appear in an outside instructional system. Innovation Assessments now supports that model at the course level. An Alias-Only course creates a privacy-safe surname and a non-identifying account reference, while the teacher keeps the real-name connection in the school’s own authorized records.

This is not the right arrangement for every classroom. It is available for the schools that need it, without forcing the same restriction upon everyone else.

Privacy is often a series of small decisions

There is no single button that makes educational technology private. Privacy comes from asking practical questions over and over:

Do we need this information? Who is permitted to enter it? Who can see it? How long should it remain? Can the same educational purpose be accomplished with less?

Removing the student email box may look like a small change. Technically, it was not quite as small as it looked! The registration, login, Google identity, PIN, roster, and account-cleanup workflows all had to agree with one another. Pedagogically, however, the idea is beautifully simple: collect what the class needs and do not casually collect what it does not.

That is the direction in which I want Innovation Assessments to continue growing.

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*Transparency note: This article was generated with AI assistance from a review of the current Innovation Assessments source code and was reviewed for publication by Innovation Assessments.*

Copy a Complete Module from One Course to Another

One of the peculiarities of teaching is that two sections of the same course are almost never exactly the same.

This is especially apparent to me now that I teach both synchronous and asynchronous versions of AP French. The courses cover much of the same material, but they cannot always use the same lessons in the same way. An activity that works well during a live Zoom meeting may need different directions, additional scaffolding, or an entirely different follow-up task when students complete it independently.

The reasonable solution is to maintain separate courses. The unreasonable part was having to rebuild all the shared material one assignment at a time.

Innovation Assessments now includes a Copy Module to Course feature designed to solve this problem.

More Than Copying a List of Links

A module in Innovation Assessments may contain a complicated collection of learning materials. It might include a reading activity, a test, a writing assignment, a PowerPoint, a PDF, a spoken response, a conversation, and a vocabulary exercise. Some of these tasks have their own question records, rubrics, uploaded media, or supporting data.

Copying only the visible module would not be enough. The titles might appear in the new course, but the assignments could still point back to the originals—or worse, open without the files and questions they require.

Copy Module therefore makes what I would call a “deep copy.” It duplicates the module, its assignments, and the supporting content necessary for those assignments to function independently.

The system currently supports the major Innovation Assessments task types, including:

  • Tests and Études.
  • Writing assignments.
  • Convo and Presto speaking activities.
  • WordStudy, Grammar, Cloze, sorting, ordering, and other study tasks.
  • PDFs, media, and PowerPoint presentations.
  • Forums, chats, and Viva Voce activities.
  • SlideCraft and Ventura activities.
  • Combo assessments.
  • Video Lessons.

The list is fairly comprehensive because the practical value of copying a module declines rapidly if the teacher must stop afterward and rebuild half of it.

An Independent Copy

The word independent is important here.

There are two possible ways to copy course material. One is to place a new link in the destination course that points to the original assignment. This saves storage and seems efficient. It also creates a trap.

Suppose a teacher copies a test into another course and then changes two questions to better suit the new class. If both courses are using the same underlying test, the questions change in the original course too. This is exactly the kind of mistake that may not be discovered until students are taking the assessment.

I know this because I made similar mistakes in an earlier version of my own software!

Copy Module takes the safer approach. Question records, private rubrics, supporting lists, task configuration, and locally stored files are duplicated when necessary. The copied assignments receive their own records and can be edited without changing the source module.

Stock rubrics may remain shared because they are intended to be common resources. Teacher-created private rubrics are duplicated so that the copied version can evolve independently.

What Happens to Uploaded Files?

Uploaded files require special attention. A copied Étude might depend on a PDF. A Media activity could contain an image or audio recording. A PowerPoint lesson obviously requires its presentation file. A Video Lesson requires the recorded video.

The copy process identifies locally stored files used by the module and creates protected copies for the destination. References in the new assignments are then changed to point to those copied files.

For PowerPoint activities, disposable slide-image caches are not needlessly duplicated. The source presentation is copied and the destination can generate its own slide information. This keeps the copy independent without reproducing temporary files that the system can recreate.

The result should look ordinary to the teacher: open the new module, test its assignments, and make whatever changes the destination course requires.

Student Records Are Never Copied

The purpose of this feature is to copy instructional content, not student history.

Student responses, scores, admissions, proctor logs, and other student records remain with the original course. The destination receives clean assignments ready for a different group of students.

This distinction is especially important when copying a module that has already been used. A teacher may want next year’s version of the lessons, but certainly does not want last year’s submissions attached to them.

All copied assignments also begin hidden. This gives the teacher an opportunity to inspect the module, adjust directions, remove unnecessary items, and test links before making anything available to students.

How It Works

The teacher opens the module menu in the source course and selects Copy to Course.

The copy page displays a manifest showing the assignments that will be included. Internal supporting items also appear when they are required by a more complicated activity.

The teacher then:

  1. Selects a destination course.
  2. Enters a title for the copied module.
  3. Selects Create Independent Copy.

The source course is excluded from the destination list. This prevents a teacher from accidentally duplicating a module into the same course.

If a module with the same name already exists in the destination, the two modules remain separate. The system does not merge them and does not overwrite the existing one. Teachers may choose a different title during copying or rename the module afterward.

When the process is complete, the teacher arrives in the destination course and receives confirmation showing how many independent elements were created.

Synchronous and Asynchronous Courses

My immediate reason for wanting this feature was the need to produce an asynchronous version of a synchronous course.

The two versions may begin with much of the same curriculum. Both need the same vocabulary, cultural readings, listening exercises, and assessments. But the synchronous version can depend on live discussion and teacher explanation. The asynchronous version needs more written guidance, recorded instruction, and perhaps additional checks for understanding.

Copy Module lets me begin with the curriculum I have already built and then modify the copied version. I am not forced to choose between maintaining one unsuitable course for both groups and rebuilding an entire second course from scratch.

The same method could be useful for:

  • Honors and standard versions of a course.
  • Modified and standard curricula.
  • Different class periods that have begun to diverge.
  • Summer-school versions of full-year courses.
  • Reusing a unit in the next academic year.
  • Adapting a course for another school or schedule.
  • Creating a demonstration course without disturbing the original.

Copying Is Not the Same as Synchronizing

Once copied, the modules are independent. A later change to the source is not automatically sent to the destination, and a change in the destination does not return to the source.

This is intentional.

Automatic synchronization would reintroduce the same danger the independent-copy method was designed to avoid. A teacher should be able to shorten an asynchronous test, change the directions on a modified assignment, or replace a document without wondering which other courses will be changed.

The tradeoff is that improvements made later in one course may need to be repeated manually elsewhere. For my purposes, this is preferable to invisible connections among assignments that appear to be separate.

Less Rebuilding, More Adapting

Teachers invest a tremendous amount of time developing good course materials. Reusing that work should not mean either starting over or creating fragile links among several courses.

Copy Module is meant to occupy the sensible middle ground. It saves the organization and content of an existing module, carries along the files and supporting records it needs, excludes all student history, and then gives the teacher a clean version to adapt.

The computer performs the repetitive work. The teacher remains responsible for the important part: deciding how the lesson should change for the students who will receive it.

Authorship note: This feature announcement was generated by artificial intelligence using samples of David Jones’s blog writing as a stylistic guide. It was reviewed for consistency with the current Innovation Assessments Copy Module feature.

Student privacy by design: how Innovation Assessments supports schools’ FERPA responsibilities

Student work deserves more than a generic promise of privacy. It deserves concrete controls: who can see a record, why they can see it, how long it remains available, and what happens when a school needs to review, export, correct, or remove it.

That is the approach we take at Innovation Assessments. Our platform is designed to support schools as they meet their responsibilities under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and other applicable student-privacy requirements.

An important distinction comes first: FERPA applies to educational agencies and institutions that receive applicable U.S. Department of Education funding. There is no U.S. Department of Education “FERPA certification” for an education-technology product, and adopting any single tool does not make a school automatically compliant. Schools remain responsible for their notices, policies, permissions, contracts, and decisions about legitimate educational interest. Our responsibility is to provide careful product controls, transparent practices, and contractual commitments that help them do that work.

Access follows the classroom relationship

Innovation Assessments organizes access around authenticated users, educational roles, courses, and active enrollment.

Students can access assigned activities only when they are actively enrolled and the relevant course and task are available. Teachers control visibility, admissions and readmissions, and secure-assessment settings. Teacher views constrain classroom information by course ownership and the relevant student or activity. When a teacher authorizes another staff member, access is explicit and revocable; invitations expire and their secret tokens are stored in hashed form.

These safeguards reflect a central FERPA expectation: education records should be available only to people with a legitimate educational interest. The school defines that interest; our platform supplies technical boundaries that help put it into practice.

Educators remain in control

Teachers decide when a course or activity is visible, who is enrolled, which staff members are authorized, and how an assessment is configured. Across the platform, educators can review student work, scores, participation records, and—in secure activities—relevant proctoring context.

Export and deletion tools help schools respond to their own record-management obligations. Because parent and eligible-student requests are handled through the educational institution, we work with the school rather than bypassing its established identity-verification and records procedures.

We keep data for defined periods—not simply forever

Keeping information indefinitely creates unnecessary privacy risk. Innovation Assessments defines limited retention windows for major categories of classroom data. Many student submissions, scores, discussions, chats, notifications, and audio/video responses are scheduled for removal after nine months of inactivity. Proctoring, audit, secure-browser, and teacher AI-usage logs use a shorter six-month window.

Retention can also be affected by a school’s valid preservation request or legal obligation. We continue to review our deletion coverage as the platform evolves, including related attachments and downstream service providers.

Security is layered

No single control protects a student record. Our application uses layers that include authenticated sessions, role and ownership checks, active-enrollment checks, prepared database operations, output encoding, anti-forgery protection on sensitive administrative actions, expiring invitation tokens, per-attempt secure-assessment tokens, and teacher two-factor approval.

We also maintain audit and proctoring records for defined periods so authorized educators can understand relevant activity. Those records are treated as sensitive educational context—not as automatic proof of misconduct. Human review matters, particularly because browser and focus events can have innocent explanations, including accessibility tools and ordinary device behavior.

FERPA does not prescribe one technical security checklist. The U.S. Department of Education nevertheless encourages schools and their providers to take appropriate steps to safeguard student records, and we treat that as an ongoing engineering responsibility.

AI has a defined educational purpose and requires educator judgment

Innovation Assessments offers optional AI-assisted features for tasks such as instructional-content generation, response summaries, language analysis, scoring assistance, and analysis of assessment activity. These features are invoked for a defined educational purpose; they are not a license to use student work for unrelated purposes.

Some workflows can redact student names before analysis, and we are working to make data minimization consistent across AI-enabled features. When an AI feature assists with scoring or review, its output is an aid to the educator—not a substitute for professional judgment. Our privacy documentation identifies relevant service providers, and our agreements and configurations are intended to restrict data use to providing the requested service.

Schools should evaluate optional AI features under their own policies and applicable state and local requirements. We welcome that review and aim to provide the information administrators need to make an informed choice.

Privacy is a continuing practice

Student privacy is not a badge awarded once. It is a continuing discipline spanning product design, contracts, retention, access review, incident response, staff training, and honest communication.

We regularly review our code and practices through that lens. We also give schools a clear path to ask questions about data handling, request relevant privacy documentation, and coordinate record access or deletion.

For details, please review our Privacy Policy (https://innovationassessments.com/innov-privacy-policy.html) and contact us through our published support channel. School and district administrators may also request our data-processing terms and current subprocessor information.

For authoritative information about FERPA, visit the U.S. Department of Education’s Student Privacy Policy Office (https://studentprivacy.ed.gov/ferpa) and its guidance on data security for K–12 and higher education (https://studentprivacy.ed.gov/data-security-k-12-and-higher-education).

*This article describes product design and company practices. It is not legal advice, does not create a certification or warranty, and does not replace a school’s own FERPA analysis.*

A Walk-Through of AI Chat at Innovation

Classroom AI Conversations with Guardrails, Structure, and Teacher Confidence

One of the questions teachers ask most often about classroom AI is not “Can it chat?” but “Can I trust it enough to use it with students?” That is exactly the problem our AI Chat app was built to solve.

The goal of AI Chat is not to hand students an open-ended chatbot and hope for the best. The goal is to give teachers a way to use AI conversation as an instructional tool inside a structured classroom environment, with clear prompts, strong boundaries, and teacher-facing oversight.

The teacher begins by designing the experience. Instead of sending students into a blank AI space, the teacher sets the context for the chat lesson. That can include the topic, the role the AI should play, the style of interaction, and the kind of responses students should practice. In other words, the teacher is not losing control of the lesson. The teacher is shaping it. The AI becomes part of the instructional design, not a replacement for it.

That design layer matters because it changes the tone of classroom AI use completely. A good AI classroom tool should not start with “Ask anything.” It should start with “Here is the conversation space, the purpose, the boundaries, and the learning goal.” AI Chat does that by grounding the experience in teacher-authored prompts and lesson framing.

Safety and guardrails are where confidence really begins. In a classroom setting, teachers need to know that the AI interaction is not just interesting but manageable. AI Chat is built with that in mind. The interaction is task-based, teacher-directed, and contained inside the app’s lesson structure. That means students are not wandering through a general consumer AI environment. They are participating in a bounded academic conversation designed for class use.

Students do not need “more AI.” They need a clear task, a safe place to respond, and a sense of what the conversation is supposed to accomplish.

Another confidence point is that AI Chat is not just about what students see. It is also about what teachers can supervise. Classroom AI becomes much more usable when teachers know there is visibility into the work. A safe AI lesson is not only about preventing bad outcomes; it is also about preserving teacher awareness. If a tool gives structure without visibility, teachers still hesitate. AI Chat is designed to keep the instructional frame intact so the AI supports the lesson rather than taking it over.

The prompt layer is especially important here. Teachers can shape the AI to behave more like a tutor, conversation partner, role-play partner, or guided practice engine depending on the activity. That means a teacher can create targeted uses for AI instead of generic ones. In one lesson, the AI might support language practice. In another, it might guide historical role-play. In another, it might help students think through an argument or reflect on a reading. The key point is that the teacher defines the academic purpose first.

That structure also helps address one of the biggest concerns around classroom AI: unpredictability. Teachers are much more likely to use AI confidently when they know the task is framed, the expectations are clear, and the AI’s role is intentionally constrained. AI Chat supports that by centering the prompt design and lesson purpose rather than offering unrestricted exploration as the default.

There is also a practical classroom benefit to this kind of design: it reduces the intimidation factor for both students and teachers. Students do not need “more AI.” They need a clear task, a safe place to respond, and a sense of what the conversation is supposed to accomplish. Many teachers feel the same way. AI Chat makes classroom use feel more like a guided lesson and less like opening the door to an unknown system.

This approach promotes confidence without pretending AI needs no supervision. It respects the reality that teachers want innovation, but they also want boundaries. They want students to interact with AI, but not in a way that feels chaotic, untraceable, or disconnected from the lesson. AI Chat works because it treats safety, prompt design, and teacher control as core features, not optional extras.

In short, AI Chat is built to help teachers bring AI into the classroom with more confidence. It combines instructional prompting, structured interaction, and classroom-minded guardrails so teachers can use AI as part of a lesson without feeling like they are surrendering the lesson to the tool.

    Introducing SlideCraft: Collaborative Presentations Without the Formatting Distraction

    One of the most effective ways for students to master new content is to own it. When a student has to synthesize a topic, identify what matters, and teach it back to their peers, the learning sticks.

    However, in a typical classroom, “making a presentation” often turns into a week-long odyssey of font choices, transitions, and image cropping. The actual thinking—the synthesis—gets buried under the formatting.

    That’s why we built SlideCraft. It’s a new tool within Innovation Assessments designed for speed, accountability, and meaningful participation. It’s not a full-featured slide editor; it’s a structured workflow that turns a class’s collective research into a ready-to-present deck in minutes.

    The Problem with “Death by PowerPoint” (and Canva, and Slides…)

    In many EdTech tools, “engagement” is equated with gamification—points, music, and flashy animations. At Innovation, we believe real engagement is cognitive load. We want students focusing on the history, the science, or the literature, not the “rules of the game” or the aesthetic of a slide border.

    SlideCraft is built for a specific, powerful classroom pattern:

    1. The Hook: The teacher introduces a topic.
    2. The Task: Students are assigned specific subtopics or “jigsaw” pieces.
    3. The Build: Students research quickly and build exactly one slide.
    4. The Share: The class presents the completed, unified deck immediately.

    How It Works: Designed for the Live Classroom

    SlideCraft lives in two places: your prep time and your live instruction.

    Teacher Setup (The Prep) In configuration, you build the skeleton of the lesson. You can add up to five starter slides (intro, instructions, or framing) and then define the “prompts” students will receive. These prompts are reusable, meaning you can run the same activity with five different sections without rebuilding the wheel.

    The Live Session (The Action) When class starts, you launch the Live Host from your course playlist. Students join via a link from their login page and are automatically assigned one of your prompts.

    As they work, you can:

    • Monitor incoming drafts in real-time.
    • Set a countdown timer or stop the session manually.
    • Autosave everything: Because this is built for real-school Wi-Fi and interruptions, student work is preserved constantly as they type.

    What Students See: Focus over Frills

    The student interface is intentionally lean. There are no menus for “WordArt” or background gradients. Students see:

    • Their assigned title and specific instructions.
    • A field for concise bullet points.
    • An image upload (optional).
    • A Source URL field: This is critical. By making the source a required part of the “Craft,” we reinforce academic integrity from the first click.

    From “Building” to “Presenting” in One Click

    The moment you stop the build session, the host view transforms into a presentation stage.

    The finished deck is automatically assembled: your intro slides first, followed by the student-generated content. During the presentation, the teacher has access to a Presenter Timer and a Show Sources toggle. This allows you to pause the lesson and discuss source credibility or authority on the fly—turning a student slide into a teachable moment about information literacy.

    Accountability and Scoring

    SlideCraft isn’t just an “activity”—it’s an assessment. Once the presentation is over, the work doesn’t disappear. All student submissions are saved for review. Using the familiar Submissions and Score tools, you can:

    • Evaluate slides using your existing rubrics.
    • Score based on the quality of the bullets and the reliability of the sources.
    • Provide written feedback and release evaluations to students.

    A First Use Case: The French Revolution

    Imagine a lesson on the causes of the French Revolution.

    • Teacher Intro: 3 slides on the monarchy and the Three Estates.
    • The Build: Students are assigned prompts like The Bread Crisis, Enlightenment Ideas, The American Influence, and Louis XVI’s Debt.
    • The Result: Within 15 minutes, you have a 25-slide deck built by the class.

    You aren’t just lecturing; the students are providing the evidence.

    SlideCraft fills the gap between passive slide-viewing and time-consuming independent projects. It’s built for teachers who want their students to be active, collaborative, and accountable—without the “formatting fatigue.”

    If you’re ready to turn your next research burst into a live class product, SlideCraft is ready for you in the Innovation dashboard.

    The Growth Bonus: Rewarding Improvement While Maintaining Academic Standards

    Two students submit essays that both receive a score of 75.

    At first glance, their performance appears identical. But the stories behind those two scores may be very different. One student might have scored a 74 on the previous assignment—essentially maintaining the same level of work. Another might have improved dramatically from a 60.

    In both cases the essays themselves may be similar in quality. Yet one student clearly demonstrated substantial learning along the way.

    This raises an interesting question for teachers: should grades reflect only the current piece of work, or should they also recognize improvement over time?

    In many courses, particularly those that emphasize writing and analytical thinking, improvement is an important part of the learning process. Students revise strategies, incorporate feedback, and gradually strengthen their arguments and use of evidence.

    To recognize that progress without distorting the meaning of grades, some assignments may include what we call a growth bonus.

    The idea is simple: meaningful improvement deserves recognition—but the quality of the current work must still matter most.

    How the Growth Bonus Works

    The growth bonus uses a mathematical rule that compares the current score with a previous comparable assignment.

    Three values are involved:

    R – the raw score on the current assignment
    B – the score from a previous assignment
    T – a readiness target representing strong course-level work (often around 82)

    The adjusted score is calculated as:

    Adjusted = max(R, R + 0.8 × max(0, R − B) − 0.2 × max(0, T − R))

    In plain language, the formula does three things at the same time.

    First, it rewards improvement from the previous assignment. If a student improves by ten points, most of that improvement is reflected in the adjustment.

    Second, it moderates extremely large score jumps when the current essay is still below the level expected for the course. This keeps the adjustment from turning a developing essay into a top-tier score.

    Finally—and importantly—the formula guarantees that the adjusted score can never be lower than the original score.

    The growth bonus can help a score. It cannot hurt it.

    A Quick Example

    Suppose a student scored 61 on a previous essay and 72 on the current one.

    The improvement is:

    72 − 61 = 11

    Most of that improvement is rewarded:

    0.8 × 11 = 8.8

    Because the essay is still somewhat below the readiness target of 82, a small moderating adjustment is applied:

    0.2 × (82 − 72) = 2

    The adjusted score becomes:

    72 + 8.8 − 2 = 78.8

    The student’s improvement is recognized, but the final score still reflects the level of the current work.

    What Happens If the Score Declines?

    If the new score is lower than the previous one, the improvement term becomes zero. In theory the formula could produce a slightly lower number—but the rule

    max(R, …)

    ensures that the final score never drops below the original score.

    In practice, this simply means the raw score stands as it is.

    Why Not Just Use Standardization?

    This approach adjusts scores based on the statistical distribution of scores in the class.

    A simplified version of the formula looks like this:

    Standardized score = ((R − μ) / σ) × s + m

    Here:

    R is the raw score,
    μ is the class average,
    σ is the standard deviation,
    and the constants s and m determine the new spread and average of the scores.

    Standardization can be useful when a test turns out to be unusually difficult or unusually easy. However, it measures performance relative to the class rather than improvement over time.

    In some cases it can also produce surprisingly large adjustments. A raw score in the low seventies might become a ninety simply because the class average was low.

    The growth bonus approach focuses instead on learning progress—recognizing students who improve while still keeping grades tied closely to the quality of the work itself.

    Why the Readiness Target Matters

    The readiness target used in the formula—often around 82—represents the level of performance typically associated with strong work on AP-style writing rubrics.

    It is not a passing threshold or a minimum expectation. Instead, it serves as a reference point that helps keep score adjustments realistic.

    Students who are already writing at a strong level will see modest adjustments. Students who are improving rapidly will see more noticeable ones.

    The Larger Goal

    Ultimately, the purpose of the growth bonus is not to inflate grades. It is to encourage the kinds of behaviors that lead to real academic progress: revising writing strategies, strengthening arguments, integrating evidence more effectively, and improving clarity and precision of language.

    Grades should communicate meaningful information about learning. They should reflect both where a student stands today and how far that student has come.

    The growth bonus is one way of recognizing both.

    Innovation Assessments LMS: Next-Gen Release

    • We’ve tightened core authentication: teachers and students can now connect Google Sign-In, making it easier to jump into any of the 12 apps (Étude, Test, Grammar, Writing, Word Study, Ordered List, Conversation, Chat, Forum, Media, Ventura, and the course hub) without managing multiple passwords.
    • Teachers get sharper control and visibility: My Students now links directly into a new Manage Enrolments matrix for one-click course assignments. Course pages display Canvas-style visibility badges so you can hide or reveal tasks instantly, and the student course view hides anything marked invisible. Submission dashboards in Étude, Test, Grammar, Conversation, Ordered List, and Writing now sort alphabetically and drop the developer-only raw JSON viewers, so grading workflows stay focused.
    • Live and asynchronous speaking tools are more authentic. Conversation tasks and upload workflows now coach students on cadence—natural rhythm, pauses, and intonation—plus we added an easy-to-copy student join link in Chat Monitor so hosts can share the live room with a single click. Chat’s monitor dashboard also highlights AI usage limits, host controls, and live transcripts for each room.
    • The LMS navigation feels smarter: “Login Preferences” is available to both teachers and students (with role-aware sidebars, help text, and instant Google linking), the teacher sidebar is scrollable and auto-hides developer tools unless you’re David Jones, and “Manage Rubrics” now supports copy-modify/delete operations with a single tap.
    • Media and forum workflows keep pace. Teachers can bulk-copy forums, toggle task visibility, and delete an entire forum plus its threads/posts with FK-safe cascading. The Create Task page has unified button styling, refreshed descriptions, and an updated “Coming Soon” panel (Survey, Audio Playlist, File on Server, Link to Webpage), making it easier to explain each element to staff.

    App-by-App Highlights

    • Étude/Test/Grammar/Writing: Alphabetized submission rosters, lightweight UIs, AI license tracking in Grammar/Writing, and Google linking across all auth flows. Live tests record into test_task_student_responses, and we expose the schema dynamically via the updated inspect_schema.php.
    • Conversation (Record & Upload): Cadence coaching cards, Chromebook recording guides in the sidebar, admission logging, and Safari upload workflows that mirror the in-browser recorder.
    • Chat: Google Sign-In ready, live monitor with copyable join link, AI partner/peer modes, host controls (start/close, pair, reshuffle), and cadence-free text boxes (spellcheck disabled in chat and writ) to keep speech and writing authentic.
    • Forum: Manage Rubrics now clones/deletes as needed; forum visibility obeys course toggles; forum submissions keep their evaluation links; deleting a forum removes all threads/posts/AI usage.
    • Course Hub: Manage Enrolments grid, Canvas-style visibility icons, module-level controls, and student course views that hide anything not marked visible.
    • Media/Ventura/Word Study/Ordered List: Unified CTA styling, better descriptions, topic-specific guidance, and easy access to each element’s evaluation links from the student side.

    Why It Matters

    This release cements Innovation Assessments as a coherent suite rather than 12 separate tools. Authentication, visibility, enrolment, cadence training, grading, and schema inspection all work the same way across apps. Teachers can share tasks, manage rubrics, and run live sessions with less friction; students get natural speaking guidance, Google sign-in, and cleaner course views. We’re pushing the beta to customers now—watch for teacher-to-teacher sharing options (one-time copy codes) coming soon.

    Trust, Accountability, and A.I. in Education

    Robert Capps authored an article appearing in the New York Times in June 2025 entitled A.I. Might Take Your Job. Here Are 22 New Ones It Could Give You. The article articulates some key ideas about the direction of A.I. in intellectual work that, in my view, have strong relevance to education.

    Mr. Capps believes that there are three areas where humans will continue to be necessary in an economy with A.I. presence: trust, integration, and taste.

    “As A.I. continues to become more influential in our jobs and organizations,” writes Mr. Capps, “we’re going to develop a lot of these trust issues. Solving them will require humans.” “The ‘trust issues’ he refers to stem from the fact that A.I. can generate large amounts of data, but that doesn’t make it inherently trustworthy.

    We will need humans to check the data and to check the ethics of what is being produced. Trust, he writes, is about accountability and who is taking responsibility for the work product that A.I. has been used to produce. “In a number of fields”, he writes, “from law to architecture, A.I. will be able to do much of the basic work customers need… but at some point, a human, perhaps even a certified one, needs to sign off on the work.”

    Mr. Capps’ purpose is to describe changes in the job market that are likely to occur in the “creative destruction” happening in the economy as A.I. technology is increasingly deployed. But further, the concept of trust and accountability articulates an important element of our approach to and philosophy of integrating A.I. into our teaching platform. Every one of our applications that incorporate A.I., and that is soon to be all of them, is designed such that A.I. work product is reviewed and monitored by the instructor before it is published in activities and assessments for students. There is, for example, no “Make me a test on positive and negative integers” button at Innovation. There is no “grade all my student’s papers please” button. All of the A.I. integrations are placed in the same user interface that would be used before there was A.I. A form is filled out, but the teacher needs to review and modify if necessary, or possibly even discard, the A.I. work product.

    I realize that this design policy may place Innovation at a disadvantage in the marketplace, where competition between online educational platforms is intense. Instructors may be attracted to the one-button-does-it-all platform. But my conversations with educational professionals and with my students lead me to conclude that discerning subscribers will prefer Innovation precisely because teachers want to foster that trust by demonstrating that accountability through a platform whose very design and structure promotes them.

    Structured AI Chat at Innovation

    Innovation is proud to introduce its newest learning tool: structured AI chat.

    We created this feature to empower students to practice conversations and engage with course material outside of class time. Although originally designed for world language learners, our AI chat works beautifully across disciplines, making it a versatile resource for content-based courses as well.

    At Innovation, we believe technology should enhance learning in structured, meaningful ways. We call our applications “21st-century learning spaces“—they’re carefully designed to meet educational best practices and support student growth.

    Teachers have two powerful ways to use AI chat: hosted or hostless.

    The AI’s responses follow strict, teacher-defined parameters.

    Hosted Chat: This mirrors Innovation’s original synchronous chat app where teachers facilitated real-time conversations between students. The key difference? Now, students can be paired with AI personas instead of classmates.

    Hostless Chat: These are independent, self-paced chat assignments that students can complete on their own. But they’re not free-for-alls—the guardrails are still firmly in place:

    The chat transcript is automatically recorded.

    Students have a limited number of turns with the AI.

    When teachers set up a chat, they set the boundaries of the conversation by limiting its length and defining the AI persona’s role.

    Students are always responsible to start the conversation. When the chat starts, the assignment is clear and the AI’s interaction protocols are clearly stated.

    The AI persona will keep the student on track even if they attempt to distract it with irrelevant questions.

    Here, the student tried to distract by asking about sports and the AI brought the discussion back to task.

    Once completed, Innovation provides an app to evaluate the quality of the student’s interactions in the chat.

    This summer, I will add an AI grading assistant to help assess student work in a chat.

    While this was initially envisioned for language students, its use in teaching content became clear. In this example, we set up these parameters for the AI persona:

    By the way, teachers can optionally include “accessories” such as a PDF article or a video for students to review before discussion.

    Here is how our chat with the Ai started for a critical discussion of the causes of the French revolution.

    Our sample conversation went on like this:

    Ever true to the parameters set for it, the AI persists in challenging the student to think more deeply and clearly define their points.

    The AI chat feature at Innovation has great potential to enrich assignments and promote critical thinking in content courses and linguistic fluency in language classes. Try it out!

    AI Tokens

    Users may have noted the new AI Dashboard in their control panel at Innovation and the new pricing tiers that reference “AI tokens”. What are AI tokens and what can you do with them?

    Innovation is integrating AI into every one of its applications now. It is not only a place to teach and learn, it is now a place to create high quality resources to support teaching and learning!

    Subscribers to Innovation now have a certain allotment of tokens per month. A “token” is a fundamental unit of text that large language models (LLMs) use to process and generate language. It can be a word, a part of a word, or even a punctuation mark. When you interact with an AI model, your input (prompts) and the model’s output (responses) are broken down into tokens. The cost of using AI services is directly tied to the number of tokens processed. Generally, the more tokens used, the higher the cost. Because Innovation pays per token used via OpenAI, your monthly token allotment is designed to balance value and cost in a fair, transparent way.

    During development, I maintained a logging script to see how many tokens I used to complete the various tasks. Unsurprisingly, essay grading is our most token-intensive task, averaging around 1881 tokens per interaction.
    Vocabulary List Generation is the least token-intensive, consuming significantly fewer tokens.

    Of course, token usage varies widely. Some teachers provide detailed outlines when asking the AI to generate tests or discussion prompts based on video or reading material. Others might use the AI heavily for grading essays or enabling student chat discussions. Your usage will shape how far your tokens go.

    At the “pro” tier, you get 100,000 AI tokens / month. This resets every 30 days from the date you have a paid subscription. So what can you do with that? Well, based on my own usage (remember, I teach remotely part-time out of Innovation myself!) …

    So, what does 100,000 AI tokens actually look like in practice for a teacher? Well, based on my own usage, it’s quite a lot of creative power at your fingertips! For example, you could grade around 53 essays (that’s right, those token-intensive ones!), or generate over 130 sets of test questions for your classes. Need a quick conversation starter for a foreign language class or a debate prompt? You could generate almost 180 conversations. And if you’re building vocabulary, you’re in luck – you could create an incredible 877 vocabulary lists with that many tokens! It really opens up a world of possibilities for creating high-quality teaching and learning resources.