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.

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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.

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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, best practices, and resources in the curriculum. These are the experiences that do not change year to year, unless necessary or when revised. They are captured within the curriculum feature at the topic level of Embarc, as they can be aligned to 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 and resources

• 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 captured in the Kick-Off Meeting.

Rollout Strategy

While we will work with your district to customize a rollout strategy, below are some popular examples:

• District-wide, all departments, all grades

• Department by department

• Grade by grade

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

• Multi-year implementation, all departments, all grades

• Departmental implementation – Integrating 1 – 2 departments per year

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:

Please note: Published and Being Revised are the only options in which courses will be visible on the public site.