Product Releases
BrainPOP Launches New Reports that Offer Insights Into Classroom Usage
BrainPOP has always been there for the teachable moments. We are committed to making sure our schools and districts have what they need to facilitate meaningful, memorable instruction, no matter what subject they teach. With the launch of our new reports, we’re taking it a step further: meaningful, memorable, and measurable.
Say hello to our new school and district reports, designed specifically for administrators and available in the “Reports” tab of your Admin Dashboard.
School and district reports give you direct visibility into usage data:
- Track top topics to see where students build background knowledge and vocabulary.
- Identify popular movies and auto-graded formative assessments (Pause Points, Quizzes, Challenges).
- Filter usage data by product, user, and custom date ranges.
- Identify the most active teachers in your classrooms by the number of logins and assignments.
These new reports provide valuable insight into how BrainPOP is used in the classroom, allowing administrators to make more informed decisions that benefit both teachers and students. They also provide insight into how usage can guide learning and instruction.
Thea Hogarth, associate director of user research at BrainPOP, ensured her team took that idea to heart while working on the research and product design behind our report launch.
“So many administrators are looking for ways to identify high-quality instruction and build momentum, which starts with an understanding of usage patterns and the ability to identify their rockstar users,” she said. “We hope these reports can help build feedback loops that scale and celebrate successful usage by providing meaningful insights that connect data inputs to learning outcomes.”
Leveraging Reports to Help Teachers Drive Student Success
Administrators can help teachers make the most of BrainPOP by taking a closer look at how they’re already using it. Insight into usage and login data also makes it easier to foster a culture of data-driven decision-making across classroom communities, reinforcing the thoughtful use of BrainPOP to build background knowledge across academic subjects.
Map usage to curriculum trends
The popularity of topics within a time-bound range helps you see how BrainPOP aligns with the time of year and the curriculum used in the classroom. By identifying the top topics, activities, and assignments used across classrooms, you can glean insights into where to allocate instructional support and make suggestions across the curriculum.
Prioritize building essential literacy skills for all
Auto-graded activities provide authentic opportunities for students to apply essential literacy skills, such as drawing evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research. With these insights, teachers can assess students’ progress toward grade-level standards across core academic subjects.
Expand teacher capacity and development
Seeing your “top teachers” (by usage) also helps extend adoption into other classrooms across your school and district by tapping teachers to share their ideas and strategies with their peers. In addition, BrainPOP professional learning services support impactful instruction by offering strategies and training opportunities that help teachers make their usage data actionable.
Our new reports underscore the importance of usage patterns and how they impact both learning outcomes and teacher capacity…to support a multi-subject approach to literacy.
How BrainPOP Usage Leads to District Success
Seeing how often teachers use BrainPOP to build background knowledge (which is essential to build literacy skills) also offers a clearer picture of how usage impacts learning and expands teacher capacity across the curriculum.
Dr. Kevin M. Washburn, director of library programs at District of Columbia Public Schools, has seen the impact of BrainPOP usage firsthand. He attributes much of the district’s literacy success to BrainPOP, which accounted for 35 percent of total student engagement across all digital products, surpassing other rostering platforms:
“During a year of significant learning losses for many school districts, DCPS stood out with limited reduction in reading scores as compared to similar urban school districts. BrainPOP played a pivotal role in supporting our academic recovery and as a key tool for our online digital learning platform.”
And other districts agree. BrainPOP has a presence in over two-thirds of school districts nationwide and was the fourth most widely used supplemental edtech platform in LearnPlatform’s Fall 2022 survey. In addition, according to a recent RAND Corp analysis featured in Education Week, BrainPOP is the second most leveraged edtech solution among social studies teachers.
BrainPOP usage among social studies teachers is an important data point in ongoing discussions about bridging students’ literacy skill gaps. The RAND analysis highlighted the connection between increased instructional time in social studies and improved literacy “because social studies can help develop students’ background knowledge, which is critical for reading comprehension.”
These insights back up the work of experts like Natalie Wexler on the power of a multi-subject approach to literacy: “The best way to build that knowledge… is to immerse children in social studies, science, and the arts—the very subjects that have been marginalized to make more time for comprehension skill practice.”
The BrainPOP Approach: Usage Reflects Content Knowledge Building
Our new reports underscore the importance of usage patterns and how they impact both learning outcomes and teacher capacity. By harnessing these insights, administrators can support a multi-subject approach to literacy that benefits students and teachers.
Teaching literacy skills within the context of all subjects is key to helping students comprehend and engage with complex material. When students learn with BrainPOP, they simultaneously build background knowledge—a language comprehension skill essential for literacy—and demonstrate understanding in math, science, social studies, ELA, and beyond.
As a result, you can trust that BrainPOP classrooms build high-impact, transferable literacy skills without compromising content knowledge.
A Peek at More Data-Driven Insights Coming Soon
The needs of our classrooms continue to be the driving force behind all product enhancements, and we’re excited to share a sneak peek of what else we’ve been working on for you.
BrainPOP will launch even more reporting functionality on the platform later this year, providing actionable insights that empower educators across grade levels. Here’s a preview of what you can expect:
Growth and proficiency in essential literacy skills
Enhanced reporting and insights on student progress toward essential literacy skills will help administrators understand how students use BrainPOP to build background knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension across all academic subjects.
Enhanced dashboard for teachers
We’re co-designing a new teacher dashboard with a working group of K–8 teachers from across the country to help solve some of their biggest challenges. Student and class-level data will help teachers understand how BrainPOP drives learning gains across the curriculum. This enables them to further differentiate instruction and enhance student learning at all levels.
For over 20 years, BrainPOP has been a trusted content provider in classrooms. We’re excited to continue evolving as a platform that demonstrates outcomes—helping educators teach and measure the knowledge and skills students need to succeed.
Michelle Strom is associate director, product marketing at BrainPOP. She holds a master’s degree in educational psychology and is a former classroom teacher.
