Online learning tasks have increased in schools by 41% over the last 5 days, as teachers look to innovative ways to deliver content outside the classroom.
The new data from school management system Compass Education, which is used across more than 1,800 schools in Australia, follows revelations that nearly half of Australian schoolchildren stayed home yesterday.
"Over the past week, we have seen a substantial increase in the use of the Compass platform from non-school locations,” Compass CEO John de la Motte told The Educator.
“This increased usage has aligned with national student absence trends which have seen nearly half of students not attending school as of yesterday”.
de la Motte said that while the roll-call module is one of Compass Education's most popular features, there has been a massive surge in the use of the company’s online learning tasks, used for resource sharing and assessment in schools, as teachers prepare for increase online delivery of classwork and curriculum.
“We have also seen a substantial rise in parent and student communications by email, SMS and through the Compass mobile app as schools continue to ensure their school communities are kept up to date,” he said.
“While most schools have already enabled parent communication and the portal within Compass, we have received some questions from schools wishing to enable this functionality”.
To help schools manage the new complex environment they have found themselves in, Compass has made parent portal and Compass mobile apps are available to all Compass schools at no additional cost.
"New schools wishing to implement Compass will be able to sign up for a three-month licence at no cost. We have also removed our implementation and training fees, during this time, to allow schools to get online faster,” de la Motte said.
“Existing Compass schools, without online learning modules, can email our support team and we will enable these for you, on the spot, free for three months”.