Streamline Every Aspect of Your Professional Learning Program
Hello, everyone. We just got attendees rolling in right now, so wait a couple of minutes before we get this session started. So hold on tight. For those of you that are rolling in, we'll probably wait thirty seconds, and then we will get this webinar started with our friends over at KickUp. Alright. With that, we will get going.
I would like to thank everyone for joining our session today, with our friends over at KickUp. Welcome to learn a little bit more about the world of professional development and figuring out how you can streamline every aspect of your professional learning program. My name is Sidharth Oberoi. I am speaking to you from Instructure over here actually in London. I'm our head of partnerships and business development here in Instructure.
Been with the organization for about seven and a half years, lived in London for the last five and a half years, and I'm really excited for the session today where we're going to be learning a little bit more about the world of professional development and different mechanisms of how to elevate your professional learning programs at the different institutions that you work with. We've been working very closely with KickUp over the years to identify how we can really elevate the value that we're able to deliver to different institutions as faculty and administrators try to navigate a difficult journey associated with really upskilling and reskilling for different developments that happen in technology, in pedagogy, and a variety of different mechanisms. So I'm really excited to have our wonderful partners here to, lead this session and teach us a little bit more about the great things that they're doing in order to provide value to educators across the country. So with that, I'm gonna hand it over to the CEO of KickUp. Jeremy, over to you.
Great. Thanks so much, Sid. It's great to, be on with you, and thank you everybody for joining. As Sid mentioned, my name is Jeremy Rogoff. I'm the cofounder and CEO of KickUp, and I'll I'm also joined by my colleague, Colleen Washington, who is, one of our partnerships managers here at KickUp.
And I'll have her introduce herself in just a bit. We are both former educators. We are a team of former educators. We are so passionate about the work that we do to improve the educator experience and improve the quality of support that educators receive and really excited about the partnership that we have with Instructure. And I'm excited to tell you a little bit more about that work.
So before we get going into a a demo, I'll I'll frame what how we like to talk about, the problems that we address at kickoff for k twelve schools and districts. We've found that many of today's professional growth systems generally fall into two buckets. These tools are either pieced together in patchwork systems or part of a legacy platform, and both of these have their issues. Patchwork systems usually involve manual processes, like using spreadsheets, forms, and other products to import and export data. And this can be both time consuming and unreliable, and it can silo information.
It can take too long and make it just exponentially harder to get any insights from the data that's collected in our professional growth systems. And legacy platforms, these are the products that may have been great at one point, but they've stopped innovating. And so you're often dealing with antiquated software or customer support that could take days or weeks to answer simple questions, and it's nearly impossible just to get a real person or expert on the line. And these are all coupled with high hitting costs or, both time and money after the implementation, has started. And those are some of the problems that we found that are sometimes standing in the way of true educator professional growth.
So with that as background, that's why we built KickUp, which is an educator success platform. And it consists of three integrated products, KickUp Learning for professional learning management, KickUp Growth for performance evaluations of educators, and pick up foundations for coaching, mentorship, walks, and PLCs, all things non evaluative and educator support related. And while all three of these products can be purchased and used on their own, combining all three of them gives districts the power to really get the full view of the educator at the individual site and district level. Districts that work with us find that kickoff really delivers on three value adds, efficiency from the classroom to the central office, visibility into all of your professional growth activities, which Kahlie will show some of that today, and coherence to ensure that the time and money that you're spending to support teachers is driving your strategic priorities forward. At KickUp, we talk about how professional learning is really about making change either at the individual or system level, and KickUp helps you ensure that that change is happening in the classroom.
Like I mentioned, we have a great partnership with Instructure that we're excited to share a little bit more about. And there are three, I would say, big value adds to that partnership and our integration between our products. The first is educator independence. Our integration gives quick access to tailored professional learning opportunities so that educators can register for and attend professional development in just one click. Direct directly linking Canvas LMS courses and kick up learning.
There's no juggling multiple logins to access and engage in PD, and that gives educators more independence, which ultimately ultimately leads to more buy in and engagement in professional learning. The second value add is reporting efficiency. You don't have to have multiple places to report on professional learning attendance, completion, and credits. And with real time participation data that's automatically synced and organized between our two systems, you can spend less time on the details and more time focused on professional learning itself. And the last and I think most important is impact measurement.
You can cross cross reference the professional development data that's in Canvas or Pickup with other data from our products like walk throughs and performance evaluations to ultimately understand the connection between professional development and impact so you can better plan your next professional learning opportunities. So with that, I am really excited to hand it over to my colleague, Colle Washington, who will walk you through a demo of kickoff, and then we'll have one of our partners, in Beaverton be able to share more about their experience. Awesome. Good morning, everyone. I'm super excited to get in and share more about KickUp.
As Jeremy said, I'm Collie Washington. I manage our partners West of Texas, and I'm coming to you live from Los Angeles. Right now, I'm actually logged in as an administrator who has the highest level permissions, what we like to consider to be global permissions within Kikka. And I know as admin, one of the questions that we're always trying to answer is how do we build flexible PD catalogs for our educators? So you'll see here within kickoff, you have a variety of different ways to do that. I'll go ahead and click create event, and I'm immediately prompted with the opportunity to create either a live event or an asynchronous course that's gonna link directly to our Canvas integration, making it super seamless for you to search for any Canvas, module that you might have.
Go ahead and link it to the libraries for your educators, and you can also then determine what does completion look like and when registrants will be granted their credits for that PD. On the other side, you also have live events. So within a live event, you can also have collections. Actually, collections can have both live as well as asynchronous events, but making it super easy for you to build out a flexible PD catalog that includes anything from, conference style PD days to series that might build on top of each other. When we're thinking of that alignment or that coherence piece, you can tag any event within kickoff to your strategic priorities, content areas, making it really easy for your teachers to one search for events that are tied to their areas of growth or need, but then you also to pull those reports, in alignment to these tags.
These are also gonna be completely customizable, so they will definitely mimic the needs of your school district. Last thing I wanna call out here is the, dynamic visibility and permissions that you can have within KickUp. You can go ahead and share links directly with educators for specific events, or you can make a event only visible to a select group of educators. Also, the ability to grant, the ability to manage any sort of attendance needs that you might have as well as the ability to edit an event. I'm gonna pause right here, and then I'm gonna show you exactly what it looks like for a fully built out event.
As a facilitator, once I've created my event with all of its needs, I'll see here on one page the overview of the event, all of the tags that I have aligned to that event. I'm gonna be able to see how many people are registering for that event, any sort of seats that are remaining, and if there's anyone on my wait list. Every event is gonna have this unique code that's gonna allow educator independence so that your educators can go ahead and confirm their attendance and not have to, you not have to manage or juggle sign in sheets or extra forms to make sure that everyone is getting granted their attendance. As that's coming in, you'll see that populating here. You'll have the ability to edit or manage any of their attendance needs here.
And if you wanna go ahead and add attendees, you have that capability as well. As feedback begins to come in for the event, it's gonna come in in real time. And as a facilitator, you can go ahead and respond accordingly. As a teacher, though, I'm gonna be able to have, the ability to search for all of those events that we spent so much time creating. I can also immediately confirm my attendance on my home page using that code that I get at the end of my events.
I can see any recent events that I've attended. I can go ahead and fill out any feedback that I might not I might have forgotten, as well as see any of my recent self paced courses that I have coming up. I'm gonna go ahead and click into browse events so I can show you a little bit about what that library looks like. So as when I can browse events, I have a few different ways to search for those events. I can use the word and search in the search bar.
I have the ability to look by self paced courses or series. I'll see the status of those events. I can also leverage the calendar feature. Once I click into the event, I can see if I've registered or not, and then I also can add it to my calendar there. In effort to build that educator independence, also within one click, I also can see my log.
So not only do I have immediate access to my own log, I can see the any sort of, certificates that are aligned to those logs as well as any hours I might have that I got with each event that I went to. I can then also print out my transcript or download a CSV file for it. Within the kickoff platform, I can also, request any sort of out of district events. And as the administrator, I can go ahead and do any communication around that within the platform, making it really easy for educators to come into one place and manage all of their PD needs. I spoke a little bit earlier about confirming attendance, and I do wanna show you what that looks like in real time.
So as the facilitator provides that unique attendance code, I can go ahead and click this floating button that I'll see in my home page and confirm my attendance for the event that I just went to. Once I do that, I'm gonna immediately be prompted to go ahead and add my feedback, which will bring me to my, you know, one of my favorite parts of kickoff, which is the ability to really tailor your PD to the needs of your educators. So as your teachers are going ahead and filling out their PD feedback form, these forms will be, completely customizable. But there is always space for them to go ahead and request their learning and next steps. So if I'm a kindergarten teacher who really would love to have some additional support after the PD, I can go ahead and request that there.
As that PD feedback form is being filled out, in real time, your facilitators are receiving that PD on the back end. At an administrator's level, I am also able to look at that PD feedback across the board. So I can go ahead and look at PD feedback that's coming in for all of our PD opportunities from both live as well as asynchronous courses. I can go ahead and really drill in and see, you know, how are our PDs really how do our teachers feel about being able to apply their content? I can also group this information. It might be really helpful for me to understand across PD facilitators.
You know, maybe I want to couple Emma Gerard alongside Annalise and think about ways that they can level up their PD. I can also filter this data. So it might be really important for me to understand how my different educators are responding to the PD. Maybe I wanna know how my early childhood teachers feel about the PD that's being provided. Are they asking for specific follow-up supports tailored to their own specific needs? This way, I can look at PD feedback and really respond in a targeted manner to all of my educators across the district.
Very flexible in that way. The last thing I wanna show you or kind of jump into is actually what attendance reporting looks like in KickUp. As a educator or as a administrator, I have ton of different ways within KickUp to look at PD attendance across the board. One way might be opportunities. It might be really important for me to see the status of the opportunities that are being offered within the district for a given time range.
We also recently released tracks, which is a really quick way for you to go ahead and look at the status of completion for, a given track within the district. So think your mandatory trainings, think your new teacher programs. I can go ahead and see a summary table, what events have been completed, which ones are in progress, and I can also track that by staff members. So say I wanna understand the progress that an individual staff member is making on a track. I can see within that track the different PD offerings that are mandatory and who has completed those.
I can also include blocks that maybe have, multiple events, but we only need to attend, a select few within that event. But you have a really quick and seamless way for you to see the progress that's being made in that track. And if you wanted to go ahead and differentiate by school site, it's really easy for you to go ahead and clone that track and share it with the stakeholders that are needed. I know that was, quite a bit, and I'd be happy to dive in further with you about all of the, individual attributes of kickoff, but I think it'd be really great for us to go ahead and hear from our partners at Beaverton who we've been working for with for over two years to really build efficiencies in their PD. So now we're gonna actually get to hear from Steve Simpson, who I personally have had the pleasure of getting to work with.
He leads kick up over at Beaverton Unified School District, where they have had over thirteen hundred PD opportunities this year, thirty thousand registrants, and have confirmed a total of eighty four thousand hours of professional development. So, Steve, I'm so excited for us to go ahead and jump in and learn a little bit more from you. Good morning. Good morning. So I would love to kind of hear from you.
What were you all doing before kickoff, and what problems did you see KickUp being able to solve for you all? We had an in house PD product that we had in use for about seven years. It reached end of life, and so we looked out, across the landscape for a a a PD platform. And we hadn't been in involved in that market space for a long time and, didn't know a lot about it. So we turned to our kind of enterprise partners and looked at their solutions, reached out to some other districts, and we had heard about pickup from a district in California. And so we we looked at it.
We compared it to the the enterprise systems that were kind of tied to some of our other products that were already in use, they were unnecessarily complicated and difficult to get get off the ground. And what we were really looking for was something that we could get going with. We didn't wanna train people about a product that we were going to use to train other things. So we wanted something that would be ready to go right off the bat and and required minimal, startup costs. Love that.
Thank you. So were there anything, like, in particular that you were looking for within that PD management search? I know that you're you're relatively techie guys. So were there any, like, particular things you were looking at? Well, we wanted something that was when teachers logged into it, they could they could use it without much training, that it looked clean and modern. And, they could get what they needed, without having us tell them where to find it. And when you log in to KickUp and you see all those the the kind of the the modern interface, that's really what we were looking for, and and KickUp kinda stood out from the field.
Awesome. I guess, you know, especially now that you guys have been with us for a while, what have staff and admin said about KickUp? Well, the the the funny thing is is they haven't said much, which is excellent. Right? They they don't It just kinda has, been become part of the professional learning landscape. And so a lot of people just say, like, well, it's in kick up, and people are like, okay. And it it hasn't been, it hasn't been a big lift, which anytime you you move from something that has been in use for seven plus years to a new system, you expect some some pain and some costs, and we just didn't see that with pickup.
No. I mean, amazing. You all have hosted so many events. I would love to hear, kind of how you've leveraged the Canvas and KickUp integration. So, obviously, KickUp has managed our in person events really, really well, but, we have a sub shortage in our district.
So creating events and getting entire teams to places sometimes just isn't possible. So we needed the kind of the asynchronous element, and and that's one of the areas that stood out with, KickUp. Be tech particularly because we're a Canvas district, and we've had Canvas in use for six or seven years at that point. And our our staff knows it, pretty well. So, we were looking for that self paced course element.
In particular, our nurses wanted something for the medication training. So, those some of those have to take place in person, but a lot of them don't. And so there's these year yearly renewals that teachers can go, and KickUp was a kind of a natural place. And we built those courses in Canvas, and it has just kinda run, you know, really efficiently behind behind the scenes. This year, we had a large the state of Oregon had a large equity push, And so every staff member in the district engaged in these equity modules.
Not everyone could attend every event in person, so a a lot of those sessions were put into the self paced side of of kick up with some events or with some information in Canvas. And so people who missed were able to to to get the information, and we got proof of the information, through the, Canvas integration. And so we had a lot of self paced, events this year run through Canvas, and it's, what I liked about the Canvas integration is that it Canvas gives you a a variety of ways to grant credit. It can be really low level, like I've seen the module. It can be medium level, like I've completed this quiz, or it can be like I've completed all the modules in the system.
So once you know how to set that up in Canvas, the the the pass back and the communication, it works really, really well. Awesome. So, what benefits do you think that you've seen or your nurses have seen in terms of using Hiccup plus Canvas? Well, it just gives us options. If we didn't have the self paced option for our equity modules, a lot of people would not have gotten the the training that that the district had had wanted everyone to see. And it it just kinda took our stress level down because we had the element of self paced courses.
It it means it meant that we didn't have to plan multiple in person events and account for all the people that weren't going to be there. So it was just a a great stress reliever. No. I really appreciate that, and I appreciate you sharing that. I know that I've been able to intimately see how efficient you all as a district run and how you've been able to leverage, KickUp and Canvas together to host over thirty thousand events.
So, like, that is amazing. And if you all are watching and you love to learn more, we would love to hear from you. And I know my team is gonna drop a survey in the chat, but we would love to also open it up to q and a, to the audience to hear from Steve or I about how this might work. I have a question for you, Steve, because I know that we did get to do our partnership review yesterday. Some thing that I've been thinking about is, the time prior to using kick up, how are you all confirming all of the hours that people were receiving for their PD? So we had something built in SharePoint that that basically tracked events, and we had some self paced course options inside there, but it was all built within the system itself.
It didn't connect to Canvas or anything like that. It was a little clunky. It was, you know, built in SharePoint two thousand thirteen, and it it it worked reasonably well, but it reached end of life and we couldn't update it anymore. So that's when we need to decided to to go out and look for something totally new. And what we really wanted was something that didn't that we didn't have to conform to, that if it that if we had needs that we look we were looking for a company that seemed that appeared nimble enough to adjust to our needs and listen to our feedback.
And it seemed like the legacy companies were were you kinda this is what we've got. This is what you're gonna use. And, if you have feedback, we might hear it in a few years, but we knew that KickUp would be a a partner willing to listen to our needs and and make changes. And we've seen that even in the two years that we've, been a partnership that some of the things that we needed that I'm sure other districts have needed as well, you've addressed, and you have regular updates to it, to your product. And I think that we were looking for something that could change with our practices, not necessarily have our practices change to match the product.
Yeah. No. I you know, we really value feedback, and we value the candid feedback in iterating. I know personally, Beaverton has been integral in our development of series and track some of the functionality that I was able to show today. One question that we did get, Steve, that might be interesting is what went into setting it up in the first year, and what were some of the things that you and the team considered? Well, setup was actually quite easy.
We had actually been transitioning, and I'm not gonna speak for IT here, but we are transitioning from one active directory system to another. And, basically, they just flipped the switch and everyone was there. So, that was really, really seamless. And we didn't have a lot of considerations. I think the the the the biggest thing was getting our tags.
What are the departments? What are the the district initiatives, the district priorities that we want represented in those tags? That actually was probably the biggest lift was, you know, we had some tags in our previous PD system, and we realized that we aren't using these tags anymore. And so it's a kind of a a dynamic process as we change focus. And we actually have some tags that we put in two years ago that, KickUp has identified that we haven't even used. So those are kinds of the things that for next year, we'll also consider, you know, how to clean those up. You don't want too many tags.
Less is more. So the the the fewer the tags, the the more impact I think they can have. Awesome. I appreciate that. Two more questions.
So one, what gave you all the confidence to be the first in your state to leverage the kickoff Canvas partnership? I think we well, we did a reference check. We checked in with some other districts that have been using it, and some districts that were both smaller than us and bigger than us. And we're at about forty thousand staff and students. So we knew that if there were districts that were larger than us that had successfully deployed it, and they kinda just shrugged their souls like, yeah. It works.
There's nothing nothing really you know? We we didn't have any problems get it getting it started. We were like, okay. That's what we needed because we had a a bunch of other things coming on board two years ago. And we wanted we didn't we didn't have a lot of folks to, make sure this worked, and it hasn't taken a lot of folks to make sure this worked. It's just it's basically me, and I I I do a lot of things in this district.
Kickup is really low on my the amount of hours that I need to put into it every week, and that's been great. Awesome. Thank you. And then from Derek, did Steve did your district use Canvas catalog at all? If so, what is the comparison to KickUp? We do not use Canvas catalog, and I can't speak, I can't speak to it because I don't I'm not really familiar with it. Keep the questions rolling in.
And another thing, I don't know if, one of the one of the things that really helped us make decision is if you've ever been on KickUp and you see their little help modal in the bottom right corner, when you click it, their their help, section is the best out of the industry that we found. So a lot of our teachers were able to get their answers, answers to things right away. Even our event creators or or our event the people that are submitting events for approval, they had a lot Their information was right there, so so we didn't have to intervene when it came time to, get events created or credit granted. And we really like the way that there's multiple ways to grant credit for each event. It can be the the the code.
There is a sign in sheet that you can print, or the just the event coordinator can just, go through and grant credit to people they know were there. So that that was flexible, and that's really what we wanted to have. Yeah. I know. That's and it's clear that you guys are definitely utilizing that.
I've one thing that always stands out whenever I talk to you guys is just how efficient the practices are. We're such a large district for you all to be able to host and grant the credits and teachers having access. So it's always heartwarming to hear that it is a well oiled machine over there. And then, another question is, in terms of feedback data and attendance data, is it how are you all doing that? Are you kind of managing that or your facilitators doing that? The individual facilitators are the ones looking at their their feedback data. That is something that I think we need to do a better job as a as an organization is taking a look at the feedback data as Kelly demonstrated in that that demo.
It's all there by facilitator, by event, by strategic initiative, or by by category. And that's not not something that's in my particular workflow as as a as an organization, but our individual event creators look at that, and they use that to to drive their practice. I would love to have a more consistent district wide approach, going forward, because the data is there. Awesome. And I think that, Jeremy is gonna jump in a little bit to talk a bit more about catalog.
Yeah. Derek, you asked a great question about, the differences between kickoff and, Canvas catalog and, what makes sense for a district to utilize KickUp versus catalog. What we've found and and also, in talking with our partners at Instructure is that, Kickup is really optimized for educator professional development, all of its forms, asynchronous, synchronous, conference, professional development. And as a result of that, it gives you a lot of functionality that catalog does not. So for example, we have really advanced permissions, really advanced ways to be able to share data and reporting, some of our latest features around tracks that Kalle showed in order to be able to understand all of the required professional development that teachers need to be able to complete.
Those are things that catalog isn't able to support. And from what we understand about catalog, it's more of something that, was really optimized around another use case more in higher education that can certainly, play a role in teacher professional development. But for districts that are looking for a more fully featured product that is really optimized for teacher professional learning, they they choose KickUp Learning. So hope that helps, and we're also happy to share, you know, more specifics if you have questions about specific functionality that may or may not exist in the two products. Thank you for that, Jeremy.
Another question we got were out of district events. Yes. So KickUp does support any sort of communication in terms of out of district events. And I know, Steve, this is something that you are leveraging a bit more this year. Correct? Yeah.
So any, you know, we have a lot of substitutes and a lot of, folks where their, PD hours are required for licensure. And they go out and they attend classes and other events that we aren't we don't do as a district at the ESD or something like that, they put it into kick up, and we we can keep track of those records. And one of the things that this is something probably few don't talk about. We have a sub shortage. So we try and make it as attractive as possible in our district to to keep and maintain subs.
And the fact that we track PD hours for our subs so they can use it for their licensure, I think, is a really an attractive element that I think a lot of other districts that we are competing for with subs in our metro area, they don't do. So that's we can we can be a little more competitive when it comes to those limited sub, limited sub folks. And I think, Cali, you didn't you didn't mention this, but one of the great things besides tracks is the fact that you can group events together in collections. So I if we have a a we're we have an ELA adoption coming online, we can say, you know, third grade, we want these four events. You you know, that that is for the ELA adoption.
A teacher only needs to click to register for one, and they are automatically registered in all four events, not having to go through and search for those four events. They just look for the collection. And that's been really another element of efficiency that KickUp does really well. Yeah. That series functionality definitely, is something that makes it really easy and I'm sure attractive for not just yourselves, but all of your educators.
And I've Steve, I can't thank you enough for jumping on with us today. It's a pleasure getting to work with you, and I know that we've learned so much from each other. With that said, I'm gonna go ahead and please, you all, if you can, fill out the survey that we are putting into the chat as well as on the screen right now. And I'm gonna go ahead, and pass it over to Sid to wrap us up. Lovely.
Thank you so much, Callie, Steve, and Jeremy for joining us today. Really appreciate you all taking your time to discuss the value that KickUp has been able to deliver to, obviously, Beaverton as well as a whole host of different institutions across the US. As Kelly has kinda mentioned, we would love to get your feedback on on kickoff and garner your interest associated with whether or not this is of interest to your institution and district at large. But really appreciate everyone that was able to join and participate, in this webinar today. We look forward to engaging with you in the future. Hope everyone has a lovely rest of your day, and we'll be in touch. Cheers.
I would like to thank everyone for joining our session today, with our friends over at KickUp. Welcome to learn a little bit more about the world of professional development and figuring out how you can streamline every aspect of your professional learning program. My name is Sidharth Oberoi. I am speaking to you from Instructure over here actually in London. I'm our head of partnerships and business development here in Instructure.
Been with the organization for about seven and a half years, lived in London for the last five and a half years, and I'm really excited for the session today where we're going to be learning a little bit more about the world of professional development and different mechanisms of how to elevate your professional learning programs at the different institutions that you work with. We've been working very closely with KickUp over the years to identify how we can really elevate the value that we're able to deliver to different institutions as faculty and administrators try to navigate a difficult journey associated with really upskilling and reskilling for different developments that happen in technology, in pedagogy, and a variety of different mechanisms. So I'm really excited to have our wonderful partners here to, lead this session and teach us a little bit more about the great things that they're doing in order to provide value to educators across the country. So with that, I'm gonna hand it over to the CEO of KickUp. Jeremy, over to you.
Great. Thanks so much, Sid. It's great to, be on with you, and thank you everybody for joining. As Sid mentioned, my name is Jeremy Rogoff. I'm the cofounder and CEO of KickUp, and I'll I'm also joined by my colleague, Colleen Washington, who is, one of our partnerships managers here at KickUp.
And I'll have her introduce herself in just a bit. We are both former educators. We are a team of former educators. We are so passionate about the work that we do to improve the educator experience and improve the quality of support that educators receive and really excited about the partnership that we have with Instructure. And I'm excited to tell you a little bit more about that work.
So before we get going into a a demo, I'll I'll frame what how we like to talk about, the problems that we address at kickoff for k twelve schools and districts. We've found that many of today's professional growth systems generally fall into two buckets. These tools are either pieced together in patchwork systems or part of a legacy platform, and both of these have their issues. Patchwork systems usually involve manual processes, like using spreadsheets, forms, and other products to import and export data. And this can be both time consuming and unreliable, and it can silo information.
It can take too long and make it just exponentially harder to get any insights from the data that's collected in our professional growth systems. And legacy platforms, these are the products that may have been great at one point, but they've stopped innovating. And so you're often dealing with antiquated software or customer support that could take days or weeks to answer simple questions, and it's nearly impossible just to get a real person or expert on the line. And these are all coupled with high hitting costs or, both time and money after the implementation, has started. And those are some of the problems that we found that are sometimes standing in the way of true educator professional growth.
So with that as background, that's why we built KickUp, which is an educator success platform. And it consists of three integrated products, KickUp Learning for professional learning management, KickUp Growth for performance evaluations of educators, and pick up foundations for coaching, mentorship, walks, and PLCs, all things non evaluative and educator support related. And while all three of these products can be purchased and used on their own, combining all three of them gives districts the power to really get the full view of the educator at the individual site and district level. Districts that work with us find that kickoff really delivers on three value adds, efficiency from the classroom to the central office, visibility into all of your professional growth activities, which Kahlie will show some of that today, and coherence to ensure that the time and money that you're spending to support teachers is driving your strategic priorities forward. At KickUp, we talk about how professional learning is really about making change either at the individual or system level, and KickUp helps you ensure that that change is happening in the classroom.
Like I mentioned, we have a great partnership with Instructure that we're excited to share a little bit more about. And there are three, I would say, big value adds to that partnership and our integration between our products. The first is educator independence. Our integration gives quick access to tailored professional learning opportunities so that educators can register for and attend professional development in just one click. Direct directly linking Canvas LMS courses and kick up learning.
There's no juggling multiple logins to access and engage in PD, and that gives educators more independence, which ultimately ultimately leads to more buy in and engagement in professional learning. The second value add is reporting efficiency. You don't have to have multiple places to report on professional learning attendance, completion, and credits. And with real time participation data that's automatically synced and organized between our two systems, you can spend less time on the details and more time focused on professional learning itself. And the last and I think most important is impact measurement.
You can cross cross reference the professional development data that's in Canvas or Pickup with other data from our products like walk throughs and performance evaluations to ultimately understand the connection between professional development and impact so you can better plan your next professional learning opportunities. So with that, I am really excited to hand it over to my colleague, Colle Washington, who will walk you through a demo of kickoff, and then we'll have one of our partners, in Beaverton be able to share more about their experience. Awesome. Good morning, everyone. I'm super excited to get in and share more about KickUp.
As Jeremy said, I'm Collie Washington. I manage our partners West of Texas, and I'm coming to you live from Los Angeles. Right now, I'm actually logged in as an administrator who has the highest level permissions, what we like to consider to be global permissions within Kikka. And I know as admin, one of the questions that we're always trying to answer is how do we build flexible PD catalogs for our educators? So you'll see here within kickoff, you have a variety of different ways to do that. I'll go ahead and click create event, and I'm immediately prompted with the opportunity to create either a live event or an asynchronous course that's gonna link directly to our Canvas integration, making it super seamless for you to search for any Canvas, module that you might have.
Go ahead and link it to the libraries for your educators, and you can also then determine what does completion look like and when registrants will be granted their credits for that PD. On the other side, you also have live events. So within a live event, you can also have collections. Actually, collections can have both live as well as asynchronous events, but making it super easy for you to build out a flexible PD catalog that includes anything from, conference style PD days to series that might build on top of each other. When we're thinking of that alignment or that coherence piece, you can tag any event within kickoff to your strategic priorities, content areas, making it really easy for your teachers to one search for events that are tied to their areas of growth or need, but then you also to pull those reports, in alignment to these tags.
These are also gonna be completely customizable, so they will definitely mimic the needs of your school district. Last thing I wanna call out here is the, dynamic visibility and permissions that you can have within KickUp. You can go ahead and share links directly with educators for specific events, or you can make a event only visible to a select group of educators. Also, the ability to grant, the ability to manage any sort of attendance needs that you might have as well as the ability to edit an event. I'm gonna pause right here, and then I'm gonna show you exactly what it looks like for a fully built out event.
As a facilitator, once I've created my event with all of its needs, I'll see here on one page the overview of the event, all of the tags that I have aligned to that event. I'm gonna be able to see how many people are registering for that event, any sort of seats that are remaining, and if there's anyone on my wait list. Every event is gonna have this unique code that's gonna allow educator independence so that your educators can go ahead and confirm their attendance and not have to, you not have to manage or juggle sign in sheets or extra forms to make sure that everyone is getting granted their attendance. As that's coming in, you'll see that populating here. You'll have the ability to edit or manage any of their attendance needs here.
And if you wanna go ahead and add attendees, you have that capability as well. As feedback begins to come in for the event, it's gonna come in in real time. And as a facilitator, you can go ahead and respond accordingly. As a teacher, though, I'm gonna be able to have, the ability to search for all of those events that we spent so much time creating. I can also immediately confirm my attendance on my home page using that code that I get at the end of my events.
I can see any recent events that I've attended. I can go ahead and fill out any feedback that I might not I might have forgotten, as well as see any of my recent self paced courses that I have coming up. I'm gonna go ahead and click into browse events so I can show you a little bit about what that library looks like. So as when I can browse events, I have a few different ways to search for those events. I can use the word and search in the search bar.
I have the ability to look by self paced courses or series. I'll see the status of those events. I can also leverage the calendar feature. Once I click into the event, I can see if I've registered or not, and then I also can add it to my calendar there. In effort to build that educator independence, also within one click, I also can see my log.
So not only do I have immediate access to my own log, I can see the any sort of, certificates that are aligned to those logs as well as any hours I might have that I got with each event that I went to. I can then also print out my transcript or download a CSV file for it. Within the kickoff platform, I can also, request any sort of out of district events. And as the administrator, I can go ahead and do any communication around that within the platform, making it really easy for educators to come into one place and manage all of their PD needs. I spoke a little bit earlier about confirming attendance, and I do wanna show you what that looks like in real time.
So as the facilitator provides that unique attendance code, I can go ahead and click this floating button that I'll see in my home page and confirm my attendance for the event that I just went to. Once I do that, I'm gonna immediately be prompted to go ahead and add my feedback, which will bring me to my, you know, one of my favorite parts of kickoff, which is the ability to really tailor your PD to the needs of your educators. So as your teachers are going ahead and filling out their PD feedback form, these forms will be, completely customizable. But there is always space for them to go ahead and request their learning and next steps. So if I'm a kindergarten teacher who really would love to have some additional support after the PD, I can go ahead and request that there.
As that PD feedback form is being filled out, in real time, your facilitators are receiving that PD on the back end. At an administrator's level, I am also able to look at that PD feedback across the board. So I can go ahead and look at PD feedback that's coming in for all of our PD opportunities from both live as well as asynchronous courses. I can go ahead and really drill in and see, you know, how are our PDs really how do our teachers feel about being able to apply their content? I can also group this information. It might be really helpful for me to understand across PD facilitators.
You know, maybe I want to couple Emma Gerard alongside Annalise and think about ways that they can level up their PD. I can also filter this data. So it might be really important for me to understand how my different educators are responding to the PD. Maybe I wanna know how my early childhood teachers feel about the PD that's being provided. Are they asking for specific follow-up supports tailored to their own specific needs? This way, I can look at PD feedback and really respond in a targeted manner to all of my educators across the district.
Very flexible in that way. The last thing I wanna show you or kind of jump into is actually what attendance reporting looks like in KickUp. As a educator or as a administrator, I have ton of different ways within KickUp to look at PD attendance across the board. One way might be opportunities. It might be really important for me to see the status of the opportunities that are being offered within the district for a given time range.
We also recently released tracks, which is a really quick way for you to go ahead and look at the status of completion for, a given track within the district. So think your mandatory trainings, think your new teacher programs. I can go ahead and see a summary table, what events have been completed, which ones are in progress, and I can also track that by staff members. So say I wanna understand the progress that an individual staff member is making on a track. I can see within that track the different PD offerings that are mandatory and who has completed those.
I can also include blocks that maybe have, multiple events, but we only need to attend, a select few within that event. But you have a really quick and seamless way for you to see the progress that's being made in that track. And if you wanted to go ahead and differentiate by school site, it's really easy for you to go ahead and clone that track and share it with the stakeholders that are needed. I know that was, quite a bit, and I'd be happy to dive in further with you about all of the, individual attributes of kickoff, but I think it'd be really great for us to go ahead and hear from our partners at Beaverton who we've been working for with for over two years to really build efficiencies in their PD. So now we're gonna actually get to hear from Steve Simpson, who I personally have had the pleasure of getting to work with.
He leads kick up over at Beaverton Unified School District, where they have had over thirteen hundred PD opportunities this year, thirty thousand registrants, and have confirmed a total of eighty four thousand hours of professional development. So, Steve, I'm so excited for us to go ahead and jump in and learn a little bit more from you. Good morning. Good morning. So I would love to kind of hear from you.
What were you all doing before kickoff, and what problems did you see KickUp being able to solve for you all? We had an in house PD product that we had in use for about seven years. It reached end of life, and so we looked out, across the landscape for a a a PD platform. And we hadn't been in involved in that market space for a long time and, didn't know a lot about it. So we turned to our kind of enterprise partners and looked at their solutions, reached out to some other districts, and we had heard about pickup from a district in California. And so we we looked at it.
We compared it to the the enterprise systems that were kind of tied to some of our other products that were already in use, they were unnecessarily complicated and difficult to get get off the ground. And what we were really looking for was something that we could get going with. We didn't wanna train people about a product that we were going to use to train other things. So we wanted something that would be ready to go right off the bat and and required minimal, startup costs. Love that.
Thank you. So were there anything, like, in particular that you were looking for within that PD management search? I know that you're you're relatively techie guys. So were there any, like, particular things you were looking at? Well, we wanted something that was when teachers logged into it, they could they could use it without much training, that it looked clean and modern. And, they could get what they needed, without having us tell them where to find it. And when you log in to KickUp and you see all those the the kind of the the modern interface, that's really what we were looking for, and and KickUp kinda stood out from the field.
Awesome. I guess, you know, especially now that you guys have been with us for a while, what have staff and admin said about KickUp? Well, the the the funny thing is is they haven't said much, which is excellent. Right? They they don't It just kinda has, been become part of the professional learning landscape. And so a lot of people just say, like, well, it's in kick up, and people are like, okay. And it it hasn't been, it hasn't been a big lift, which anytime you you move from something that has been in use for seven plus years to a new system, you expect some some pain and some costs, and we just didn't see that with pickup.
No. I mean, amazing. You all have hosted so many events. I would love to hear, kind of how you've leveraged the Canvas and KickUp integration. So, obviously, KickUp has managed our in person events really, really well, but, we have a sub shortage in our district.
So creating events and getting entire teams to places sometimes just isn't possible. So we needed the kind of the asynchronous element, and and that's one of the areas that stood out with, KickUp. Be tech particularly because we're a Canvas district, and we've had Canvas in use for six or seven years at that point. And our our staff knows it, pretty well. So, we were looking for that self paced course element.
In particular, our nurses wanted something for the medication training. So, those some of those have to take place in person, but a lot of them don't. And so there's these year yearly renewals that teachers can go, and KickUp was a kind of a natural place. And we built those courses in Canvas, and it has just kinda run, you know, really efficiently behind behind the scenes. This year, we had a large the state of Oregon had a large equity push, And so every staff member in the district engaged in these equity modules.
Not everyone could attend every event in person, so a a lot of those sessions were put into the self paced side of of kick up with some events or with some information in Canvas. And so people who missed were able to to to get the information, and we got proof of the information, through the, Canvas integration. And so we had a lot of self paced, events this year run through Canvas, and it's, what I liked about the Canvas integration is that it Canvas gives you a a variety of ways to grant credit. It can be really low level, like I've seen the module. It can be medium level, like I've completed this quiz, or it can be like I've completed all the modules in the system.
So once you know how to set that up in Canvas, the the the pass back and the communication, it works really, really well. Awesome. So, what benefits do you think that you've seen or your nurses have seen in terms of using Hiccup plus Canvas? Well, it just gives us options. If we didn't have the self paced option for our equity modules, a lot of people would not have gotten the the training that that the district had had wanted everyone to see. And it it just kinda took our stress level down because we had the element of self paced courses.
It it means it meant that we didn't have to plan multiple in person events and account for all the people that weren't going to be there. So it was just a a great stress reliever. No. I really appreciate that, and I appreciate you sharing that. I know that I've been able to intimately see how efficient you all as a district run and how you've been able to leverage, KickUp and Canvas together to host over thirty thousand events.
So, like, that is amazing. And if you all are watching and you love to learn more, we would love to hear from you. And I know my team is gonna drop a survey in the chat, but we would love to also open it up to q and a, to the audience to hear from Steve or I about how this might work. I have a question for you, Steve, because I know that we did get to do our partnership review yesterday. Some thing that I've been thinking about is, the time prior to using kick up, how are you all confirming all of the hours that people were receiving for their PD? So we had something built in SharePoint that that basically tracked events, and we had some self paced course options inside there, but it was all built within the system itself.
It didn't connect to Canvas or anything like that. It was a little clunky. It was, you know, built in SharePoint two thousand thirteen, and it it it worked reasonably well, but it reached end of life and we couldn't update it anymore. So that's when we need to decided to to go out and look for something totally new. And what we really wanted was something that didn't that we didn't have to conform to, that if it that if we had needs that we look we were looking for a company that seemed that appeared nimble enough to adjust to our needs and listen to our feedback.
And it seemed like the legacy companies were were you kinda this is what we've got. This is what you're gonna use. And, if you have feedback, we might hear it in a few years, but we knew that KickUp would be a a partner willing to listen to our needs and and make changes. And we've seen that even in the two years that we've, been a partnership that some of the things that we needed that I'm sure other districts have needed as well, you've addressed, and you have regular updates to it, to your product. And I think that we were looking for something that could change with our practices, not necessarily have our practices change to match the product.
Yeah. No. I you know, we really value feedback, and we value the candid feedback in iterating. I know personally, Beaverton has been integral in our development of series and track some of the functionality that I was able to show today. One question that we did get, Steve, that might be interesting is what went into setting it up in the first year, and what were some of the things that you and the team considered? Well, setup was actually quite easy.
We had actually been transitioning, and I'm not gonna speak for IT here, but we are transitioning from one active directory system to another. And, basically, they just flipped the switch and everyone was there. So, that was really, really seamless. And we didn't have a lot of considerations. I think the the the the biggest thing was getting our tags.
What are the departments? What are the the district initiatives, the district priorities that we want represented in those tags? That actually was probably the biggest lift was, you know, we had some tags in our previous PD system, and we realized that we aren't using these tags anymore. And so it's a kind of a a dynamic process as we change focus. And we actually have some tags that we put in two years ago that, KickUp has identified that we haven't even used. So those are kinds of the things that for next year, we'll also consider, you know, how to clean those up. You don't want too many tags.
Less is more. So the the the fewer the tags, the the more impact I think they can have. Awesome. I appreciate that. Two more questions.
So one, what gave you all the confidence to be the first in your state to leverage the kickoff Canvas partnership? I think we well, we did a reference check. We checked in with some other districts that have been using it, and some districts that were both smaller than us and bigger than us. And we're at about forty thousand staff and students. So we knew that if there were districts that were larger than us that had successfully deployed it, and they kinda just shrugged their souls like, yeah. It works.
There's nothing nothing really you know? We we didn't have any problems get it getting it started. We were like, okay. That's what we needed because we had a a bunch of other things coming on board two years ago. And we wanted we didn't we didn't have a lot of folks to, make sure this worked, and it hasn't taken a lot of folks to make sure this worked. It's just it's basically me, and I I I do a lot of things in this district.
Kickup is really low on my the amount of hours that I need to put into it every week, and that's been great. Awesome. Thank you. And then from Derek, did Steve did your district use Canvas catalog at all? If so, what is the comparison to KickUp? We do not use Canvas catalog, and I can't speak, I can't speak to it because I don't I'm not really familiar with it. Keep the questions rolling in.
And another thing, I don't know if, one of the one of the things that really helped us make decision is if you've ever been on KickUp and you see their little help modal in the bottom right corner, when you click it, their their help, section is the best out of the industry that we found. So a lot of our teachers were able to get their answers, answers to things right away. Even our event creators or or our event the people that are submitting events for approval, they had a lot Their information was right there, so so we didn't have to intervene when it came time to, get events created or credit granted. And we really like the way that there's multiple ways to grant credit for each event. It can be the the the code.
There is a sign in sheet that you can print, or the just the event coordinator can just, go through and grant credit to people they know were there. So that that was flexible, and that's really what we wanted to have. Yeah. I know. That's and it's clear that you guys are definitely utilizing that.
I've one thing that always stands out whenever I talk to you guys is just how efficient the practices are. We're such a large district for you all to be able to host and grant the credits and teachers having access. So it's always heartwarming to hear that it is a well oiled machine over there. And then, another question is, in terms of feedback data and attendance data, is it how are you all doing that? Are you kind of managing that or your facilitators doing that? The individual facilitators are the ones looking at their their feedback data. That is something that I think we need to do a better job as a as an organization is taking a look at the feedback data as Kelly demonstrated in that that demo.
It's all there by facilitator, by event, by strategic initiative, or by by category. And that's not not something that's in my particular workflow as as a as an organization, but our individual event creators look at that, and they use that to to drive their practice. I would love to have a more consistent district wide approach, going forward, because the data is there. Awesome. And I think that, Jeremy is gonna jump in a little bit to talk a bit more about catalog.
Yeah. Derek, you asked a great question about, the differences between kickoff and, Canvas catalog and, what makes sense for a district to utilize KickUp versus catalog. What we've found and and also, in talking with our partners at Instructure is that, Kickup is really optimized for educator professional development, all of its forms, asynchronous, synchronous, conference, professional development. And as a result of that, it gives you a lot of functionality that catalog does not. So for example, we have really advanced permissions, really advanced ways to be able to share data and reporting, some of our latest features around tracks that Kalle showed in order to be able to understand all of the required professional development that teachers need to be able to complete.
Those are things that catalog isn't able to support. And from what we understand about catalog, it's more of something that, was really optimized around another use case more in higher education that can certainly, play a role in teacher professional development. But for districts that are looking for a more fully featured product that is really optimized for teacher professional learning, they they choose KickUp Learning. So hope that helps, and we're also happy to share, you know, more specifics if you have questions about specific functionality that may or may not exist in the two products. Thank you for that, Jeremy.
Another question we got were out of district events. Yes. So KickUp does support any sort of communication in terms of out of district events. And I know, Steve, this is something that you are leveraging a bit more this year. Correct? Yeah.
So any, you know, we have a lot of substitutes and a lot of, folks where their, PD hours are required for licensure. And they go out and they attend classes and other events that we aren't we don't do as a district at the ESD or something like that, they put it into kick up, and we we can keep track of those records. And one of the things that this is something probably few don't talk about. We have a sub shortage. So we try and make it as attractive as possible in our district to to keep and maintain subs.
And the fact that we track PD hours for our subs so they can use it for their licensure, I think, is a really an attractive element that I think a lot of other districts that we are competing for with subs in our metro area, they don't do. So that's we can we can be a little more competitive when it comes to those limited sub, limited sub folks. And I think, Cali, you didn't you didn't mention this, but one of the great things besides tracks is the fact that you can group events together in collections. So I if we have a a we're we have an ELA adoption coming online, we can say, you know, third grade, we want these four events. You you know, that that is for the ELA adoption.
A teacher only needs to click to register for one, and they are automatically registered in all four events, not having to go through and search for those four events. They just look for the collection. And that's been really another element of efficiency that KickUp does really well. Yeah. That series functionality definitely, is something that makes it really easy and I'm sure attractive for not just yourselves, but all of your educators.
And I've Steve, I can't thank you enough for jumping on with us today. It's a pleasure getting to work with you, and I know that we've learned so much from each other. With that said, I'm gonna go ahead and please, you all, if you can, fill out the survey that we are putting into the chat as well as on the screen right now. And I'm gonna go ahead, and pass it over to Sid to wrap us up. Lovely.
Thank you so much, Callie, Steve, and Jeremy for joining us today. Really appreciate you all taking your time to discuss the value that KickUp has been able to deliver to, obviously, Beaverton as well as a whole host of different institutions across the US. As Kelly has kinda mentioned, we would love to get your feedback on on kickoff and garner your interest associated with whether or not this is of interest to your institution and district at large. But really appreciate everyone that was able to join and participate, in this webinar today. We look forward to engaging with you in the future. Hope everyone has a lovely rest of your day, and we'll be in touch. Cheers.