Mathematics
One of the unique features that sets the Eduss program head and shoulders above competing products is its ability to assess each and every student’s mathematical knowledge since their first day at school.

One of the common difficulties teachers face in teaching a new topic is an understanding of their class’s competency in the prerequisite skills for the “new” topic. A common example of this is teaching students for the first time how to add or subtract fractions with different denominators. Amongst others, this requires students to recall how to perform several related skills taught previously such as: what are multiples and how do you find them; how do you form equivalent fractions; how do you find the lowest common multiple of two or more numbers, etc.

The Eduss assessment module provides the teacher with the tool to readily gain (and remediate where necessary) this important information. The assessment module can be used in several different ways for individual students or students grouped according to their different needs. Flexibility within the settings allows assessments to be set for a variety of different scenarios. For example, to:

• evaluate or profile a student’s mathematical knowledge and skills in all topics for his/her entire school career up to their present grade level;
• evaluate or profile a student’s knowledge and skills for targeted topics (say their understanding of fraction operations) up to their current grade level;
• evaluate or profile a student’s knowledge and skills for one or more specific subtopic/s (say their understanding of converting fractions to percentages) up to their current grade level;
• evaluate or profile a student’s knowledge and skills beyond their current grade level.

The last type of assessment mentioned is important to identify learning gaps developed by gifted students. Most often these students work ahead in sections of math that they enjoy and avoid topics their not particularly interested in or don’t like. In doing so, they create their own learning gaps which also need to be identified and remediated.

Unlike assessment tools in competitor products, the Eduss assessment engine moves down through lower grade levels in the topic being assessed until it finds the student’s competency at the pass levels set by the teacher prior to administering the assessment. Figure 1 below shows a typical flow chart of how the Eduss assessment engine works down grade levels through a sub-topic until the student shows proficiency.

Figure 1 (Click image to enlarge)

Settings selections in the module allow the teacher to choose the pass score for the test, choose the grade level at which the assessment begins, and as mentioned before, the topics in the assessment.

The program tracks the student’s progress through the assessment. When s/he is finished, the program automatically sets a tutorial specifically designed to remediate the failed concepts identified in the assessment.

The tutorial provides the student with a comprehensive and thorough remediation program that contains the following elements:

• The tutorial begins at the lowest grade level/s passed in the assessment.
• Having identified the student’s level of proficiency in each topic assessed, the program then begins the tutorial at that level and then progressively guides the student from what s/he knows to what s/he previously didn’t know.
• Each exercise the student completes is immediately scored so the student can constantly review his/her progress.
• The tutorial includes more and additional exercise types than the assessment.
• The student is able to view as many worked examples of any exercise type s/he may be having difficulty with in the tutorial program.
• As further help if the student is having difficulty understanding a particular concept, s/he can view narrated teaching slides that explain the concept step-by-step (see Figure 3).
• The student’s progress is constantly tracked and recorded. Teachers can review individual student’s reports on the assessment, the tutorial, and a progress report that compares the student’s results in the assessment with his/her results in the remedial tutorial.
• Because the exercise database is so large, students sitting beside each other who may be doing the same assessment/tutorial can’t copy each other’s answers.

Figure 2 (Click to enlarge) Shows a typical flow chart of how the Eduss intervention tutorial engine designs a learning plan to progress the student’s proficiency from the lowest grade level s/he showed proficiency in the assessment back up to proficiency in content at the student’s current grade level.

Figure 3 (Click to enlarge) Typical inbuilt narrated animated instructional slides to tutor the student back up to grade level. Many slides include hyperlinks that allow the student to review important foundational concepts of the work they are doing in the tutorial. For example, shown above is one of the hyperlinks in the tutorial on adding fractions to review the foundational concept of finding common denominators.

You can see why the program has been called an “Integrated Multidimensional Teacher’s Assistant.” The assessment/tutorial feature alone is a powerful tool to help the teacher not only pin-point learning gaps, but automatically tutor the student back up to grade level and at the same time automatically score, collate, and record the necessary student data in several different reporting formats.

English
One of the unique features of the Eduss program is its ability to assess each and every student’s English grammar, punctuation, and comprehension skills that they have mastered since their first day at school.

Unlike the math assessment engine which begins its assessment at the student’s current grade level and works its way down, the English assessment engine begins its assessment at a lower grade level and works its way up. This is important, as the English assessment requires correctly spelled and punctuated answers. If an assessment were set on nouns, for example, the primary goal of the assessment would be to determine the student’s knowledge and use of nouns. Because correct spelling is required, the assessment needs to begin at a lower grade level, where both the required understanding of nouns is more elementary, and the words encountered in the assessment are also simpler.

The assessment module can be used in several different ways for individual students or students grouped according to their different needs. Flexibility within the settings allows assessments to be set for a variety of different scenarios. For example, to:

• evaluate or profile a student’s English grammar, punctuation, or comprehension knowledge and skills for his/her entire school career up to their present grade level;
• evaluate or profile a student’s knowledge and skills for targeted topics (say nouns and adjectives) up to their current grade level;

The Eduss assessment engine begins its assessment at a lower grade level and gradually moves up to higher grade levels in the topic/s being assessed until it finds the student’s competency at the pass levels set by the teacher prior to administering the assessment. Figure 4 below shows a typical flow chart of how the Eduss assessment engine works up grade levels through a sub-topic until the student shows proficiency.

Settings selections in the module allow the teacher to choose the pass score for the test, choose the grade level to which the assessment will progress up to, and as mentioned before, the topic/s in the assessment.

The program tracks the student’s progress through the assessment. When s/he is finished, the program automatically sets a tutorial specifically designed to move the student beyond the grade level of competency reached in the assessment to his/her current grade level.

Figure 4 (Click to enlarge)

The tutorial provides the student with a comprehensive and thorough remediation program that contains the following elements:

• The tutorial begins at the lowest grade level/s passed in the assessment.
• Having identified the student’s level of proficiency in each topic assessed, the program then begins the tutorial at that level and then progressively guides the student from what s/he knows to what s/he previously didn’t know.
• Each exercise the student completes is immediately scored so the student can constantly review his/her progress.
• If the student is having difficulty understanding a particular concept, s/he can view narrated teaching slides that explain the concept step-by-step (see Figure 5).

Figure 5 (Click to enlarge)

Phonics
There are several fundamental skills leading to reading. Among the more important of these are a well-developed phonological awareness and an ability to map letter-to-sound combinations. While the ability to map sound-to-letter is commonly regarded as the skill of spelling, it also plays an important part in developing reading or decoding skills.

The Eduss phonics program contains several discrete assessment items, specifically to assess a student’s phonological awareness and his/her ability to map letter (or letter combinations) to the sounds they produce. There are 12 different assessments available for these purposes, and in general, they progress from the simplest to the more complex. They assess the following:

• The short vowel sounds of a, e, i, o, u as medial sounds
• Care has been taken to restrict mapping these short vowel sounds to their representative letters only, remembering that often there are numerous graphemes that can code for these phonemes.
• Non-blended initial consonant sounds
• The sounds of b, c (hard & soft), d, f, g (hard & soft), h, j, k, and l are tested. These have been grouped simply on an alphabetically basis.
• The rules used to predict whether the hard or soft sounds of c and g work more than 99 and 90% of the time respectively and are therefore included.
• The long vowel sounds of a, e, i, o, u as medial sounds
• Care has been taken in this assessment to restrict mapping these long vowel sounds to their representative letters only, remembering that often there are numerous graphemes that can code for these phonemes.
• The sounds of m, n, p, r, s, t, v, q, w, x, y and z
• The short and long vowel sounds of oo
• The three r-controlled vowel sounds in car, four, her
• The diphthongs in boy, and how
• Consonant digraphs located in the initial position of a word
• The combined vowel sounds in hair, fear, wire, flower
• Final consonant sounds
• Final consonant digraph sounds
• Initial & final consonant blends and the unstressed sound of the endings al, el, il, ol, ul and le
• Identify minimal vowel pairs
• Identify letters spelling vowel sounds in different words
• Identify silent letters in different words
• Spell spoken words
• Identify number of syllables in given words
• Break given words into their syllables
• Identify syllabic and word stress
• Use prefixes to form antonyms

Like the other subject assessments, the student’s scores from doing the phonics assessment are tracked and recorded. This gives the teacher explicit information on what topics to target if student remediation is needed. Tutorial lessons are provided in all aspects of pre-reading: from basic phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary development, and comprehension. In other words the program covers content from the very basic topics of mapping sounds to letters right through to Greek and Latin word elements.