Challenge

Founded in Florida in 2017, WorldEd School was established to provide an American-based education to an international student body. The predominant aim of the school is to make education more accessible for international students globally so that they can reach their full potential. WorldEd School also strives to provide students with learning opportunities that they may not receive within their country’s traditional education setting.

Juliana Frigerio, Principal and Co-Founder at WorldEd School, comments on the school’s goals: “I am an educator, and I’ve been working with international students since 2008. Alongside my partner, I founded WorldEd School in Florida. We had a dream and a goal to set up an international school that would remove some of the boundaries students faced across the globe.”

Upon its opening, student enrolments grew quickly. In 2018, Ms. Frigerio and her partner agreed that they needed a platform to support them with producing flexible and personalized learning opportunities to cater to their diverse student base and different levels of needs.

Ms. Frigerio commented that “the challenge we had was to offer and find a system that would be flexible. We wanted it to be engaging to our students, would adapt to the way they preferred to learn, and would help them develop an international mindset.”

The school started to explore a variety of programs as a solution to their challenge, with one that piqued their interest in particular.

Stephanie Schneider, Vice Principal and Guidance Counsellor at WorldEd School, explains how the school settled on implementing Edmentum Courseware:

“We needed to find a learning management system with coursework that was flexible and that allowed us to engage students creatively. We looked at several different methods of courseware, and Edmentum Courseware, far and away, blew us away. They offered us all of the different areas that we were interested in. We were happy knowing we were going to be a part of the Edmentum group of schools.”

Solution

WorldEd School officially partnered with Edmentum and started using their Courseware in 2019.

The school started using the program to develop the majority of their lessons which was a significant benefit for the staff and supported students studying toward a Dual Diploma. Ms. Schneider says that “with Courseware, we had the flexibility we needed. With this learning management information system, we could actually pick and choose different elements of the courses that we wanted. We could add and create our own elements of the curriculum. Many of our unit activities, in fact, all of them, are ones of our creation or ones that we have created in conjunction with Edmentum’s Courseware.”

Alongside this, staff at the school even developed their own honors English course for students to use and were able to input the whole course onto Courseware, efficiently supporting staff and student needs.

In addition to hosting courses, Courseware offered WorldEd School significant flexibility with managing the workload of students based across different continents. Courseware enabled staff to personalize students’ learning remotely, and students were able to work and develop independently at their own pace outside of a brick-and-mortar setting. Tutors could always view who was off or on pace and adjust learning in advance to keep students on track anywhere, anytime.

Camila Carollo, English 7th Grade Teacher at WorldEd School, uses Courseware as a tutor. Ms. Carollo found that the program could be easily implemented in her classroom and provided the dynamic learning environment that WorldEd School needed.

Ms. Carollo stated that “Courseware has amazing material which allows teachers to co-create and work in a very dynamic way during classes. When I am teaching my students, I really like the tools that Edmentum offers. The platform is very intuitive, students can talk with their teachers, and teachers can send feedback to students easily.”

When implementing Courseware, staff at WorldEd School initially had apprehensions about providing their students, who were located around the world, with a curriculum in English due to potential language barrier issues. However, WorldEd School found its students adapted to the English curriculum on Courseware exceptionally quickly. This was because of tools the content provided, such as the translate and dictionary tools that supported their students with understanding certain terms. Additionally, members of staff have also seen that as students progress through the program, particularly the English Language Arts program, they become progressively more confident with the curriculum and their learning journey on Courseware.

Result

With these benefits in mind, Courseware has been a major success for the staff and students at WorldEd School.

Ms. Carollo comments on how Edmentum Courseware has been a success for tutors as it offers valuable tools to help them keep track of what students are doing. Ms. Carollo says that “it’s important to see what students really understand and what they need to review. Courseware makes me feel really comfortable because having access to these tools as a tutor means I can guarantee the program’s effectiveness and quality. The Edmentum material and the tools exactly match WorldEd School’s policies and way of working.”

Commenting on the flexibility of the curriculum, Ms. Schneider commented that “being able to create and add to the curriculum has just been wonderful for us as we’ve been able to help students at a very high level. When students are working toward a dual degree, they are working really hard, and it’s very important that the curriculum has a high enough level of learning material so that all of the standards that we need are set and maintained. Courseware enables us to provide just that.”

In terms of the support that Edmentum provides, Ms. Frigerio has been exceptionally pleased with the level of service received from Edmentum: “the support is incredible. Our main support representative is almost a friend now. He’s always supportive and is always there for us. When we need to contact the support team, it’s amazing how fast they answer all our questions. We always receive the answer to our questions or support to any technical issue we have. Anytime, anywhere, I have the best quality support.”

An important part of WorldEd School is its relationship with students’ parents and parental engagement with the level of learning at the school. Courseware has been a great success in developing and strengthening these relationships. According to members of staff, the parents are highly enthusiastic about how much their children have improved academically. Parents are thrilled that they can see academic results quickly, with teachers, in turn, receiving a lot of positive feedback from them.

WorldEd School feels the future is “somewhat limitless.” Ms. Schneider says that:

“One of the things that we have not really touched on yet is the fact that one of our future goals is to expand the borders and promote global citizenship for our students. We are currently achieving this through international projects where we bring together students from different countries or continents. This goal requires a learning system that will grow with us, and that’s one of the best things about Edmentum. It has really supported our growth thus far, and it continues to support us.”

The school is looking forward to how it can further encourage its current students and develop its student population in the future. Ms. Schneider comments on how Edmentum’s flexibility will further support this: “as our students are working towards a Dual Diploma, and we are working towards growing our student population, Edmentum is supporting us. There is so much potential we have not even begun to address with the program, which is exciting. This is especially the case when you’re dealing with a modern K-12 education system in the time of a recent pandemic."

“We have learned so much this year, and the flexibility provided by Edmentum has helped this. I think it’s a wonderful partnership, and we look forward to seeing where it’s going in the future.”

Finally, Courseware continues to have a positive impact on the teaching and learning practice at WorldEd School. According to Ms. Frigerio, “Courseware has allowed us and will continue to allow us to be even closer to our students, to create new working methods, new assignments and new activities. This is something only a quality learning management system makes available to all its partner schools, so Edmentum, thank you so much.”

WorldEd School has viewed Edmentum as a critically important partner to support their student growth and development. Edmentum will continue to support the school with its future endeavors and work with them to ensure they have all they need to offer the quality learning experiences they provide to students globally every day.