LearnSmart Achieve™ Adaptive Test Prep Common Core Achieve Online provides all the test-specific core content instruction your students need, but LearnSmart Achieve Adaptive Test Preparation takes it up a notch, helping your students study smarter, not longer.   Studies report that the average adult learner has a total of 100 hours to prepare for their high school equivalency exam, while the average high school student spends 6,480 hours in the classroom over the course of their four years in school. I don’t need to tell you our adult learners don’t have time to spend precious hours studying what they already know—that’s why we’ve created LearnSmart Achieve Adaptive Test Prep.

Student Experience Through a series of ongoing diagnostic questions, LearnSmart Achieve provides real-time data on areas of student strengths and weaknesses, allowing students to focus on areas where they still need work, and not waste time on content they’ve already mastered. It creates daily personalized learning plans that are continually modified throughout the test preparation process.  Students can choose a goal end date for when they would like to have content mastered, and how many days a week they want to spend studying. If an instructor has assigned content with a specific due date, that date will be populated as the student’s goal. From there, the student commits to a certain number of days to study each week and the system recommends how many minutes a day the student should spend studying to reach their goal.

Content is divided into easy-to-handle chapter modules Content is divided into easy-to-handle chapter modules. Each chapter module assesses student readiness and provides instruction as needed. Within each chapter module, LearnSmart Achieve uses a simple, guided process to assess students’ level of readiness and provide them with the learning activities they need to achieve success. The phases are Tune In, Focus, and Practice.

The program starts each module with the Tune In phase by asking students to complete a short set of diagnostic questions. Students are asked to both answer the question, AND rate their confidence level in their response. Based on the student’s responses, LearnSmart Achieve creates a personalized learning plan for the day.

Based on responses to the Tune In questions, LearnSmart Achieve identifies the specific areas where each student needs work, and provides mini-lessons to help them build their knowledge of the content. With each mini-lesson, students provide feedback to LearnSmart Achieve, indicating “I get it!” or “I don’t get it!” before they move on.

LearnSmart Achieve uses responses from the Focus phase of learning to generate the Practice phase. During Practice, students are presented with additional questions and mini lessons to see if they now understand the concepts addressed in the module. As they move through the practice questions, if they get an answer right, they move on to the next question. If they get a question wrong, they’ll work through another mini-lesson. Students work through this remedial loop until they show mastery of the content.

Once students have completed a certain portion of the content for the course, the Recharge option becomes available to them. Students who choose to recharge are presented with content from modules that they have already completed. The presentation of the content is similar to the Practice phase of learning: LearnSmart Achieve presents questions to gauge mastery and mini-lessons as student responses indicate a need for additional learning. Recharging regularly helps students retain information they’ve already learned, as they continue to seek to mastery of information in other chapter modules.

LearnSmart Achieve™ Adaptive Test Prep Practice Question Type by Test TASC™ 2014 GED® Test HiSET™ Questions are 100% multiple choice for Reading & Writing, Science, and Social Studies. Math questions are 80% multiple choice and 20% fill-in-the-blank. Questions are 50% multiple choice across all subject areas. The other 50% of questions are technology-enhanced: fill-in-the-blank, drop-down/cloze, drag-and-drop, and hot spot*. *This question type is not used in Reading & Writing. Questions are 100% multiple choice across all subject areas. Each version of LearnSmart Achieve Adaptive Test Prep aligns to the content and question types of the three high-school equivalency exams. A user who purchases the TASC version will only see that content in LearnSmart Achieve. Likewise for the GED and HiSET versions. Types of questions will differ among the three test prep programs, and among the four subject areas as well, depending on what each testing body has indicated the user experience will be for its exam.

Teacher Experience Instructors using LearnSmart Achieve see an uncluttered, easy-to-navigate dashboard. Student data is populated automatically by ConnectED. Assignments may be created in the dashboard using an easy-to-understand menu.

Reporting LearnSmart Achieve comes equipped with robust reporting tools for both teachers and students. Teachers have six reports available to them. Five are shown on the teacher dashboard: Section Averages by Topic, Student Progress by Unit, Student Progress by Topic, Metacognitive Skills, and Performance Summary. The sixth, Performance Details, is accessible for each individual student through the Performance Summary report. Teacher reports are intended to help the instructor identify the content areas that individual students or classes as a whole have trouble with, so that they may plan accordingly and make the most of their in-class instructional time.

Students have four reports and an additional tool, the Practice Quiz, available to them. Student reports and the Practice Quiz are intended to help the student identify his or her trouble areas and provide additional opportunities for focused practice.