Facilitating Digital Transformation with an Assessment Authoring Platform

Explore Learning is a private tutoring provider, delivering online and in-person lessons for 4-14 year olds. They help students flourish through accessible education and support, and taught over 43,000 students in 2022 alone.

The Beginning

Explore Learning approached Talk Think Do in 2019 with the aim to develop an assessment authoring and management system that would allow them to expand their online learning portfolio.

Explore Learning needed to be able to rapidly upload assessment questions onto their online learning platform, while ensuring that these questions could be accessed and edited by a number of different users.

Their goal was to write and input approximately 60,000 questions over the course of just 9 months. As a tutoring service open to students with a range of different learning requirements, all of these assessment questions needed to be:

• Consistent: In terms of tone of voice and formatting
• Strategic: In line with assessment learning criteria and national curriculum requirements
• Accessible: With both verbal and written questions

Explore Learning needed a multi-user rapid content entry system, with integrated proofing, workflow and auditing.

The Solution

Following an initial application innovation discovery, Talk Think Do proposed a range of potential solutions. These included everything from off-the-shelf assessment authoring systems to a fully custom piece of software.

Explore Learning and Talk Think Do together concluded that the best way forward would be with Learnosity, an assessment engine designed to facilitate simplified authoring and rapid delivery.

Learnosity was particularly suited to Explore Learning’s needs because:

• It is compatible with a number of device types
• It has a range of customisable interactivity features
• It allows users to input content according to pre-built question types

Nonetheless, the Learnosity API would require significant customisation to meet Explore Learning’s unique requirements. As a Learnosity Services Partner, Talk Think Do was well-equipped to facilitate and action the delivery of this solution.

Talk Think Do followed an agile development and delivery process to customise and rapidly release this new assessment authoring system, using the Learnosity API as a starting point. The core development process included data structuring, UX, design, and architecting.

In line with Explore Learning’s specific requirements, Talk Think Do customised the authoring system to include:

• Audio prompts: To ensure the final assessment platform was accessible to students with a range of needs, Talk Think Do integrated audio transcription into the assessment authoring system. This involved gaining early access to a UK English AI voice through Microsoft Azure’s AI services and adding it to the platform. Talk Think Do then built a custom tool specifically designed to translate maths questions into their phonetic parts to enable audio prompts for all question types.
• Automated question pathways: Talk Think Do worked closely alongside the Explore Learning team to ensure all content pathways met both English and Scottish curriculum requirements, and were therefore available to a wide range of students.
• Integrated time-tracking: Explore Learning hired an extensive team of 40+ tutors and teachers to build and input assessment pathways. By integrating time-tracking into the assessment system, Talk Think Do allowed team members to report their hours and get accurately compensated for their work.

The Results

Explore Learning’s new assessment authoring system enabled a rapid content delivery process. Implementing cloud innovation significantly reduced writing, proofing and editing workloads, boosting operational efficiency and cutting project delivery times.

Learnosity’s simplified authoring and hyperscalability enabled content to be added quickly and at scale. Talk Think Do’s extensive customisations ensured that the final content entry system was intuitive, easy to use and provided a range of accessibility features. The solution could be used across different devices, and questions could be easily checked or edited by Explore Learning’s senior staff.

Thanks to the success of this authoring and management system, Explore Learning was able to digitise its whole assessment and support service in a short space of time. When the pandemic hit the UK in March 2020, they were in a strong position to deliver high-quality online learning to their students.

Talk Think Do continues to work alongside Explore Learning, and has since delivered:

• Ongoing management and bespoke application support for Explore Learning’s cloud systems
• Video and screen sharing technology, custom designed with accessibility at its core
• A customised adaptive logic engine for the delivery of assessment questions