A California school district is using a revolutionary writing improvement technology in a revolutionary new way – teaching teachers instead of grading students – an approach that may score the district coveted recognition from the IMS Global Learning Consortium Learning Impact Awards for creative applications of education technology.

According to the IMS, the award sponsors, the prestigious recognitions are intended to, “recognize outstanding, innovative applications of educational technology to address the most significant challenges facing education.”

And what the Newport-Mesa Unified School District is doing with Turnitin Revision Assistant applies. Even though Revision Assistant was designed to provide real-time feedback on student writing, which it does, the Newport-Mesa district is also using it help teachers score writing assignments more consistently across the district grading rubric.

Based on the district’s award submission materials, the results appear impressive. “The benchmark scoring process became much more efficient in time and cost,” the paper reported. And, it continued, when “applied in training,” Revision Assistant, “greatly increased confidence that teachers were using and understanding their rubrics.”

“We’ve been delighted to help Newport-Mesa pioneer new applications for our technology,” said Sean Tupa, education program director at Turnitin. “And it’s been very exciting to see how our systems are being creatively used to improve the work of both teachers and students. It’s a trend that we hope will continue and expand.”

Learnosity is also an award finalist in a different category for their assessment APIs – Application Programming Interfaces. According to their award documents, Learnosity, “enables any organization to quickly and easily incorporate interactive question types along with authoring, reporting and analytical capabilities into any digital product, whether new or existing.”

“Obviously it’d be a massive honour for us to win it,” Learnosity CEO Gavin Cooney said of the IMS award in a company press release announcing their selection.

Newport-Mesa/Revision Assistant and Learnosity are two of 38 organizations and projects in 13 education categories to be designated as finalists for the IMS Global Learning Consortium Learning Impact Awards. The 38 are:

• CTU Mobile by Colorado Technical University
• Hawkes Learning Partners with the University of Louisville on an Emporium Approach to Intervention Courses in Algebra
• InQuizitive use at State College of Florida
• Connect2 Open Learning Platform for Higher Education–International
• [email protected] at Republic Poly
• IBM’s Open Badging Program
• Development and Verification of an e-Learning System that Augments Interest and Inner Motives
• Learnosity Assessment APIs
• org–A New Learning Ecosystem and Portal for Personalized Competency-Based Education
• Follett Discover Suite of Products to Support Academic Success
• Building an Ecosystem Using IMS Standards
• OpenSALT
• The IMDA Singapore PlayMaker Programme: Unleashing Creative Confidence in Children through Play and Maker-Centred Learning
• FLVS Playbook
• Robots for Early Childhood Education
• Texas Gateway CMDS
• KANTAN (Easy) cloud-based e-learning authoring and delivery service
• M2B System for Data-Driven Education and Learning-Learning Analytics Center
• Texas OnCourse CBE Micro-credential System
• Behavioral Analytics Driving Student Outcomes
• Nebula: A New Design For Canvas Discussion Boards
• Info-communications Media Development Authority (IMDA) Lab on Wheels
• LIVE (Learning Immersion in a Virtual Environment) Effectively Reaches Global Audience and Measures Engagement
• Bluepulse 2 – Integrated
• HISD’s Analytics for Education (A4E) Dashboards and PowerUser Reporting Environment (PWR)
• Pilot on [email protected] – Promote Inquiry-based Learning with Real-World Data
• Transforming learning at scale: How Saint Leo University unified its learning ecosystem for better results
• LMS Dynamic LTI Handler
• LMS LTI Integration with Adobe Connect Virtual Classroom Platform
• Scope by Purdue: A lesson in using the Caliper Specification
• Integrated Learning Analytics for Video using LTI and Caliper
• Penn State Digital Badging Platform
• Nudging Student Success with UMBC’s Check My Activity (CMA) LMS Feedback Tool
• College for America at SNHU: Degree Programs that Work for Working Adults
• Universal Design Online Content Inspection Tool (UDOIT)
• Norming student essays using Turnitin Revision Assistant to inform instruction at Newport-Mesa USD
• PowerUp: Taking Technology Integration to the Next Level in K-12
• Access Manager

All finalists have been invited to present their materials and outcomes during the  2017 Learning Impact Leadership Institute in Denver, Colorado, May 16-19 and public voting on the projects is open until May 17. Winners will be announced May 18.

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