Adoption of OneRoster by Districts and Suppliers Significantly Streamlines the Rostering Process to Provide Students Efficient and Secure Access to Digital Tools and Content
Lake Mary, Florida – 3 August 2016 – 1EdTech Consortium (1EdTech/1EdTech), the world leader in EdTech interoperability and innovation today announced the first wave of organizations that have achieved conformance certification for OneRosterTM, the educational content, tool, platform and application rostering standard that saves time and money for K-12 districts nationwide. The rapid adoption of OneRoster is driven by districts wanting to leverage OneRoster at the start of the 2016 Fall term to enable a secure and uniform way to handle the complex provisioning of digital applications with class rosters.
A common barrier districts experience in transitioning to digital is the costly and time-consuming process to extract custom CSV data files from the district’s Student Information System (SIS) or other systems to roster students into a myriad of digital applications. To solve this problem, OneRoster was developed to provide districts a standard format to securely exchange student, teacher, and course data, thus streamlining the rostering for digital applications.
Increasingly, OneRoster conformance certification is being required by districts. To address this growing market demand, 1EdTech launched a series of boot-camps and readiness sessions earlier this year to provide its member organizations with implementation support to fast-track adoption and conformance certification in advance of the Fall 2016 term. Results have been impressive, with the following 1EdTech member organizations achieving conformance certification: Accelerate Learning, Fast Bridge Learning, Haiku Learning, Identity Automation, Imagine Learning, McGraw-Hill Education, Pacific Metrics, Schoology, SunGard K-12 and William H. Sadlier. Earlier adopters included ClassLink, Infinite Campus, and Performance Matters. A directory of 1EdTech conformance certifications is maintained at www.imscert.org.
“It is very clear the Fall term will be exceeding our expectations in terms of OneRoster adoption,” said Mark Leuba, Vice President of Product Management for 1EdTech. “OneRoster is a well-defined and valuable specification that any school district can adopt by requiring their vendors to obtain OneRoster conformance certification; this step alone will greatly accelerate a district’s transition to digital.”
“The Houston Independent School District is committed to ensuring that all our students are college and career-ready. This means that all our students, and their teachers, must be savvy digital citizens who know how to navigate and use technology to reflect, learn, create and communicate. A district our size is under tremendous pressure to provide daily updates and ease of user access to digital learning tools,” said Lenny Schad, Chief Technology Innovation Officer for Houston ISD. “Our IT department handles thousands of students’ course and school changes each day. OneRoster simplifies and standardizes the process of teacher and student daily data transfers and updates. OneRoster is managed centrally by IT, eliminating the need for costly customizations and significantly reduces the amount of data entry teachers do to access learning resources, so teachers and students can focus on teaching and learning. Not only does OneRoster save time, it saves districts thousands of staff work hours by standardizing the process of transferring and updating data.”
One of the best features of OneRoster is that districts have the flexibility to decide whether to implement OneRoster’s simple CSV exchange method or the REST API web service, or both, depending on their needs. Additional details can be found at https://www.imsglobal.org/activity/onerosterlis.
Ed-Tech Suppliers Statements of Support for OneRoster
“McGraw-Hill Education has a deep commitment to interoperability in ed tech and to helping schools more seamlessly integrate their digital learning ecosystems,” said Stephen Laster, Chief Digital Officer at McGraw-Hill Education. “Thanks to 1EdTech’s leadership, the industry is coming together to support OneRoster, and that will enable the successful contributions from ed tech to teaching and learning.”
“Pearson is proud to support 1EdTech and is committed to open standards as the best path for achieving interoperability across the education industry,” said Michael Chai, Senior Vice President of Learning Services Technology at Pearson. “In particular, the OneRoster standard has tremendous interest across the community and we intend to put all our support towards shared success with all our customers.”
“For too long, schools have struggled with sending class rosters to the digital content providers that our modern classrooms rely on. About a year ago 1EdTech stepped in with OneRoster and for the first time the industry has a viable and open data standard to solve this challenge. Using the OneRoster standard, we’ve created an easy to use and free software product that helps automate the whole process for schools around the country. The educational leaders we serve and the whole team here at ClassLink are glad to be part of this important initiative,” said Berj Akian, CEO of ClassLink, an 1EdTech Contributing Member.
According to Don Keeler, CTO, Accelerate Learning, “We greatly appreciate 1EdTech's OneRoster initiative. Unlike other solutions, OneRoster has an important economic impact on schools and companies alike. Accelerate Learning has always focused on providing exceptional value at a low cost, and OneRoster, like all of 1EdTech's solutions, plays a part in meeting this objective.”
“We created Clever in 2012 to address the complexity and lack of interoperability that stood in the way of technology adoption in schools,” said Ben Adida, Clever’s vice president of engineering. “We see 1EdTech’s important interoperability standards work furthering our joint goal of accelerating the positive impact that technology can have in the classroom. We’re excited to be one of the first adopters of OneRoster and to make it available to our more than 50,000 schools and 225 educational applications.”
“Today’s classroom has transformed into a unique and engaging digital ecosystem for teachers, students and faculty alike. As a result, many districts face increasing data complexity – the challenges of keeping information organized and shared both securely and efficiently in a scaled environment,” said James Litton, CEO of Identity Automation. "With 1EdTech’s OneRoster certification standards, certified organizations can exchange roster information for these learning tools, environments and portals without the hassle of reformatting and reorganizing for each supported vendor. We’re thrilled to be the first organization to obtain conformance certification as a provider and consumer for OneRoster, using either the CSV or the REST API exchange methods of the standard and are excited to be a champion of these fundamental guidelines."
“Infinite Campus is proud to have been an early adopter and the first student information system to achieve OneRoster conformance certification,” said Charlie Kratsch, Infinite Campus Founder and CEO. “1EdTech shares our vision for truly Transforming K12 Education® through technology. We’re honored to play a role in empowering districts as they transition to digital. 1EdTech’s innovative efforts perfectly complement our SIS-related goals of supporting student learning by ensuring districts streamline educational processes, promote stakeholder collaboration and personalize learning.”
“The OneRoster API will empower Schoology to more easily send data to and receive data from any SIS supporting the standard. Additionally, Schoology will be able to integrate with SIS’s much more quickly using the OneRoster API because it is a repeatable industry standard supported by several of our SIS partners. For our customers, a strong integration between the systems will save teachers time and will ensure the consistency of roster and grade data between their SIS and LMS,” said Jeremy Friedman, CEO of Schoology. “Supporting industry standards like OneRoster is vital to Schoology’s vision of being the most open and learning management system on the market.”
“We are happy to support and be part of the OneRoster Certification process. SunGard K-12’s mission aligns with theirs – advancing technology to improve educational participation, and thus, student achievement,” said Frank Lavelle, President and CEO, SunGard K-12.
According to James Waters, CTO and Co-Founder of Performance Matters, "Performance Matters has a rich history of working in an open and collaborative manner with our customers and partners; 1EdTech is the personification of those values. As an earlier adopter of OneRoster, we saw it as the perfect complement to the QTI and LTI standards."
“Supporting our customers’ digital learning ecosystems is a priority for Pacific Metrics,” stated Bob Guerin, President of Pacific Metrics Corp. “OneRoster certification reinforces our commitment to delivering innovative and high-quality assessment solutions. Our newest platform, Unity, can more easily interoperate with school information systems, learning management systems, and test registration systems. It’s a highly-efficient system that saves time for our customers and improves the quality and market value of our products. We’re excited to be among the first wave of EdTech organizations to achieve OneRoster certification.”
About 1EdTech Consortium (1EdTech)
1EdTech is a nonprofit organization that advances technology to affordably scale and improve educational participation and attainment. 1EdTech members are leading suppliers, institutions and government organizations that are enabling the future of education by collaborating on interoperability and adoption initiatives. 1EdTech sponsors the Learning Impact Leadership Institute, a global program focused on recognizing the impact of innovative technology on educational access, affordability, and quality while developing the people and ideas to help shape the future of educational technology.