District Onboarding Guide

Introduction

This document was created to assist your district in the successful implementation of Embarc by explaining the structure and terminology used in the system. The following are discussed: goals regarding depth of curriculum, rollout philosophies, and user roles - all designed to ensure success.

Goals / Expectations

Every district has its own desires and beliefs regarding curriculum initiatives. Focusing on the questions below, the goal of this section is to clearly define your district expectations prior to embarking on the Embarc project. 

• What are the goals for Embarc?        

• What are the expectations for implementation?

Depth of Curriculum

Your district defines what content you desire in your curriculum.  Below you will find some examples of optional fields to customize your curriculum. Your district will define these fields during the Configuration Meeting. Please note – if your district utilizes a curriculum template, these fields will be used to mirror your template.

Departments and Courses

Although not highlighted above, curriculum organization begins at the department level. Courses are housed in departments, and standards are available within those departments to assign to courses. Within each department, the largest organization curriculum piece is the course. Courses are made of units and can be further divided into topics.

Units

Units communicate the flow of a course and those with a defined duration will result in a valid pacing calendar and/or scope and sequence. Units marked as ongoing in the Embarc system do not impact the pacing calendar/scope and sequence.

The units below have defined durations and; therefore, provide a solid guide to both students and staff regarding the content and pacing of the course.  Unit durations can be expressed in terms of days, weeks, months, periods or hours.

Topics

Topics are required in Embarc to incorporate learning targets and activities. A district can use topics in two ways.

1. For units that will not be broken out further, simply replicate the title and duration of the unit. In the example below, the Welcome unit/topic are identical.

2. For units that will be are broken out into smaller chunks, learning targets, or standards, create separate topics. For example, if a teacher wanted to cover two standards within a unit, she/he may break that unit into 2 separate topics. In the example below, the Introduction to Medical Terminology unit is divided into 2 topics; Word Analysis and Directional Terms.

Learning Targets

Learning Targets are necessary for accurate analytics. Districts can develop their learning targets using 3 different options. Each are valuable depending upon where the specific course is in the curriculum writing/revision process. Below are the options for creating learning targets in Embarc:

• Option 1: Learning Target by Standard

  • Learning Target by Standard is the best option for you if you have not yet written learning targets for the course standards. In this option, curriculum authors select a standard and then write the learning target.

• Option 2: Learning Target from Standard

  • Learning Target from Standard is the best option for you if you want to simply align your course to standards and/or to quickly create learning targets for a course. With this option the exact Standard language is copied into a Learning Target- and can be edited if necessary.

• Option 3: New Learning Target

  • New Learning Target is the best option for you if you have already created learning targets. In this option, curriculum authors write a Learning Target and then align it to a Standard. 

*Assistance with learning targets creation may be available (purchase from a content partner - Common Core, SMCAA, etc. or using EMBARC contracted services.)

Activities

Activities are student learning experiences that capture instructional content and best practices in the curriculum. These do not change year to year, unless necessary. They are captured within the curriculum feature at the topic level of Embarc, as they are aligned with learning targets. If your district plans to utilize the lesson planning feature, activities are the main component of a lesson plan (and make it simple!).

•  The purpose is to incorporate the details of what a teacher does, students do, learning targets, standards, and links to instructional content

• Teachers can select these in their lesson plans as the “meat” of instruction

Rollout Strategy and Timelines

Your district’s personalized rollout strategy and timelines are discussed and recorded in the EMBARC Implementation Guide. Below you will find some typical rollout strategies and timelines.

Rollout Strategy

Typically, we see one of three strategies employed:

• District-wide, all departments, all grades – while this is the most aggressive strategy, it is where everyone eventually wants to be.  In choosing this strategy you may need to be sure that you have adequate support resources (for example, professional development) in place for your staff.

• Department by department – this is a somewhat slower implementation, but it does allow a district to focus support resources on departments of greatest need first.  Often in this approach districts will address a targeted set of core and noncore departments each year, often based on resource adoption cycles or standard set releases.

• Grade by grade – this is not a suggested rollout approach as effective curriculum initiatives should be K-12 focused to ensure a complete articulation of the standards.

Timelines

Please understand that the timelines discussed here are just a guideline, many factors such as staff experience, staff work time, and standard set releases all impact these timelines. We have seen districts integrate their curriculum in one year, but it can take several years for a complete K-12 articulation.  Below are some examples of implementation timelines:

• Single-year implementation, all departments, all grades – To accomplish this scenario, a district either has existing curriculum that they are entering into Embarc or is documenting what is already done rather than developing curriculum. 

• Multi-year implementation, all departments, all grades – We would suggest two years, as the longer the initial integration process, teams could lose their momentum.

• Departmental implementation – Integrating 1 – 2 departments per year may result in a slower implementation

Embarc Implementation Guide

The Embarc Implementation Guide is beneficial to determine the timeline for utilizing the components of the software.  While Phase 1 is required, the subsequent phases are optional and can be implemented at any time.  Phase 1 has a series of steps beginning with the Kick-off meeting, a Configuration Meeting, and a Course Design Meeting prior to the Train the Teacher session. 

Roles

The following terminology is used to refer to Embarc users.  All user levels can be changed by the System Administrator at any time in the Users tab in Administrative Functions.  

Educator

Read-only user, cannot edit curriculum. This user has the ability to view other district’s curriculum, edit lesson plans, edit activities, run reports, and view pending curriculum. *Not recommended for Embarc training sessions.

Curriculum Author

This user’s rights are Educator rights, plus the ability to edit courses within defined departments and grade levels and optionally copy curriculum from other districts.

Departmental Curriculum Coordinator

This level of user can create departmental level curriculum within Embarc. Typically, districts have individuals assigned to this role by department. This user’s rights are Curriculum Author rights plus the ability to edit “locked” fields and optionally the ability to change course statuses.

Curriculum Director

This level of user can create district-level curriculum within Embarc. This user’s rights are Departmental Curriculum Coordinator rights, plus the ability to edit courses for all departments and grade levels, perform user maintenance, and maintain standards.

System Administrator(s)

This user has full access to all components of the system, including the ability to modify district options, curriculum templates, and perform “power deletes”. In most districts we recommend 2 – 3 System Administrators.

Curriculum Publishing Status

Embarc offers several course status options to choose from. These options can be changed on the course details page, and impact the visibility on your district’s Embarc site as described below: