DnA: Illuminate Data & Assessment Reviews

Illuminate is very easy to use with friendly modern Ui

It can be difficult to manage and look for the data you need by clicking through various pages until you find what you need. It was hard to find rosters

It helps solving with grading integration with google. It was easier to grade all at once.

That it will provide both a table of gene expression values as well as graph WT and mutant genotypes by expression level. Also important is that the software will normalize data- otherwise none of the data would be significant if we hadn't accounted for the normalization, i.e. in case transcription happened to occur more times within one sample than in another and we had to normalize such that all the samples have the same number of "reads."

Absolutely nothing- the raw data is a little bit difficult to understand as it outputs as just lines of data but that isn't an issue at all since the only raw data we care about are tables of gene expression values.

Rna and DNA sequencing is crucial for experiments where we are looking for specific genes bound by specific transcription factors. In my own lab, where we are looking for the differences between wild type and mutant genotypes of Arabidopsis plants, we are looking to determine which genes a specific ARF transcription factor binds to. We couldn't possibly do this without transcriptional data and sequencing. We would need a) the index of all fragments sequenced by this machine and their locations- this allows us to determine which chromosome and which location within the chromosome our gene is in; b) the table of each gene and its expression level that this software provides. Different expression levels between WT and mutant genotypes are what we are looking for- this would indicate that the absence of this transcription factor protein is what is causing the different transcriptional abundances of genes of interest. We literally would never be able to find which genes are targeted by our transcription factors without Illuminate and entire experiments would be impossible- and that doesn't just apply to our lab. Many, many labs are studying Arabidopsis and transcriptional pathways that absolutely rely on technology like Illuminate and RNA-Seq.

Bubble sheet customization, overview page, matrix report, response frequency report

Custom reporting is exceedingly difficult and limited. They have a BI tool, JasperSoft, too. It is terrible. Everyone uses Tableau to get custom reports with Illuminate. This wouldn’t be a problem if Illuminate had good school and district level reporting, but those reports (although there are many options) don’t give us data that’s comparative at a granular enough level all in one easy to use page.

Interim assessments need data turned around to teachers in 48 hours, and our previous solutions required us to creat all reports we wanted in Excel. Now most teacher-facing reports are automatically in Illuminate.

The ability to collect and analyze data.

I wish there were better data visualization tools included.

The ability to improve instruction.

There are numerous reports for data that can be pulled. You can look at student assessment scores on a whole group, selected group, individual, or special population basis based on the type of report you run. Assessments from various points through out the year can be pulled simultaneously for comparison.

The reports are difficult to navigate because there are so many to choose from and the titles of them are no necessarily descriptive. It would be easier to navigate if a brief description of each report was given beside its title instead of having to click on the report title and taken to a whole other tab in the browser to see it defined.

Keeping up with student data in an effort to compare growth and achievement has been solved using Illuminate. The scanning of assessments is simplified for teachers to use.

I like that the program can store many assessments and their answers in order to make grading much more efficient and quick for me!

I dislike having to upload the assessments manually in order to have this process occur.

I’m able to put more focus in planning and using data to direct the lessons in my classroom.

It's ease of use. I was ready to put up my defenses and prepare for several challenges, but that did not happen. The implementation went very well and it is so easy to use. The best part is uploading data. There are templates for state data and it's easy for you to import custom data. As long as you can save it using an Excel spreadsheet, you are good to go.

Like any software, there is always cleanup to make sure your data is transferring over, but it's not that bad and it gives you many tips on where to find the problem and how to fix it. It's easy to see what the data errors. Everything loads on one page, quickly.

Moving all of our assessment data to one location so our staff does not have to login to several systems to retrieve the information. With this tool, they do not have to figure out the analysis, it is done for them.

Illuminate has an easy-to-use interface. Creating assessments is a breeze (there seems to have been a recent face-lift for these options; doing so is now much easier than it was in 2018). Capturing data is also very easy, and users have multiple ways to capture and cross-reference several types of data.

I currently use Illuminate to create assessments but am hesitant to use the platform to administer the assessments because the software does not currently offer a way to lock access to other programs, such as the internet. Student use of the internet to cheat during an assessment is a concern, so assessments created in Illuminate are typically administered via paper. This limits my ability to use Illuminate to assessment creation and data gathering only. It would be great if I could administer and have assessments immediately graded via Illuminate.

Illuminate is a rich tool that allows the user to capture data to inform instruction. In addition to being able to create assessments and capture assessment data, Illuminate can also be used to generate parent letters to communicate student progress.

As a teacher, assessment data is used to inform instruction. Illuminate allows me to capture and cross-reference data for use in instruction, which contributes to better instructional and learning outcomes.

Illuminate has a ton of resources and questions available for testing. The tests are fairly easy to set up and administer to students online. The questions are all aligned to GA state standards. It's easy to make sure the students are being tested on what they would have learned.

Because there are so many question options, it's often difficult to narrow down question choices.

It allows teachers to test students with grade level type questions.

ease of singular location for all data-driven processes

slightly tough interface for a totally new user

Fantastic program if you need one place to make and deliver assessments, help students find resources on one place for their targeted learning, and the ability for teachers themselves to analyze all data sources for their own instructive purposes. Ease of use is a little tough for first-time users but using the tutorial/guide could easily solve this potential issue.

Provides the opportunity to create and administer standards-based assessments , obtain immediate results and group students in a flexible way, with unique Response to Intervention (RtI) protocol