The Comfit Learning Center 18 for Website

1 2013 Copyright ComFit Learning Prep


We at ComFit share with you a common objec=ve: to help your students be more successful in their academic lives and their personal lives.

We seek to accomplish this objec=ve by helping you address the most pressing problem in educa=on today: the skill gaps that are undermining your students’ academic progress and their chances for career success.

By making the resources of The ComFit Online Learning Center available to your students and your instruc=onal staff, we can create a win-‐win for everyone—for you, for us, but most of all for your students.


Let’s take a brief look at The ComFit Online Learning Center.

To begin with, The ComFit Online Learning Center is Internet-‐based, which means you don’t have to install or update soNware on local computers. It means that students can access ComFit from any computer or mobile device that has access to the Internet. And it also means that all work students do when they are logged on to ComFit is stored in the Cloud—and can easily be checked and monitored by instructors and tutors.

Second, our content is focused on the three core academic disciplines: mathema=cs, reading, and wri=ng. We cover a wide range of levels in these disciplines, but we pay par=cular aQen=on to the fundamentals, to insure that students have a solid founda=on in each subject area.

Third, we make it easy for you to tailor your instruc=on to the individual learning needs of your students, regardless of how diverse those needs may be.

And finally, our content is versa=le. It can be used in a variety of ways: as a supplemental resource for developmental classes; a primary resource for college-‐readiness programs; or as a test-‐prep resource for standardized tests, such as ACCUPLACER, COMPASS, ACT, or SAT.


The content we offer is extensive. Your students have at their finger=ps our expanding library of more than 1,300 self-‐paced mini-‐lessons. Those lessons have been designed to cover virtually every skill gap your students might have. With its more than 85,000 assessment and prac=ce test ques=ons your students will have exactly what they need to gain mastery of the lessons they work on.

Our objec=ve here is two-‐fold: first, to uncover the specific skill gaps for each student; and, second, to provide instruc=onal content specifically designed to help those students shore up those skill gaps.

And, the ComFit Online Learning Center has a proven track record. It is used successfully in more than 100 academic support and higher-‐ed remedial programs throughout the country.


ComFit’s approach to accelera=ng academic progress is built around three components:

1-‐An assessment process that, more than simply measuring grade-‐level proficiency, “drills-‐down” and uncovers the specific skill gaps that each individual student needs to shore up.

2-‐An approach to skill-‐building that replaces conven=onal “present-‐and-‐test” instruc=onal methods with an approach that places great emphasis on the assimila=on aspect of learning: the steps the students need to take to gain true mastery over what they need to learn.

3-‐Teacher-‐friendly, ac=onable repor=ng tools that enable you to easily see what each student (and your class as a whole) is working on, to monitor the progress they are making, and to quickly uncover any problems that require your interven=on.

What these three components will mean to you, in short, is this: you will now have a way to quickly iden=fy the learning needs of your students; address those needs through an individualized skill-‐building process; and be constantly informed on how your students are performing.

So the two ques=ons you might be asking are:

How much more effec=ve could you be in mee=ng the individual learning needs of your students? How much =me and effort would you save as you achieve that goal?


What will this mean to you? You’ll be able to create a high performance learning environment using a proac=ve approach to remedia=on that will generate greater student mo=va=on. With ComFit you will make more efficient use of your resources, have a streamlined administra=ve process, but most of all you will be able to measure the improvement you will see from your students.

Next, we will provide a tour of the facili=es of the ComFit Online Learning Center, and hope you will see how it offers you far more than the superficial array of sample ques=ons and explana=ons found on most academic support websites. Instead, we offer a complete end-‐to-‐end system that has everything you need to make a true impact on your students’ success.


Once your site license has been set up, and your instructors and tutors have been trained, your students can register themselves and choose their own Userids and passwords. This process takes only a minute or two.


The student can then log into the Comfit web site.


To start your students off, you would direct them to the Assessment Center where their skill gaps will be iden=fied.


Assessments in each subject area, math, reading, and wri=ng, are divided into four levels. Although these levels are aligned to grade-‐level standards, we don’t think giving them grade-‐level names is the best way to start students off.

11 2013 Copyright Comfit Learning Prep

Now they are ready to take the assessment test.

Before beginning any assessment, your students should be reminded that the purpose here is not to “grade” anyone. It is to set up an individualized development plan directly keyed to their unique learning needs.

Most assessments contain between 30 and 35 ques=ons and will take about 30 minutes to complete.

If the student isn’t sure of an answer, they should leave it blank. A lucky “guess” won’t benefit the student.


Once they complete the assessment they click on submit and their answers are scored immediately.

They will see for each ques=on a color code; green for a correct answer and red if the answer is incorrect.

If the student got the answer correct ComFit puts a liQle message at the boQom of the page that says “You’re right!”

Now here is the important part. Each answer to a mul=ple-‐choice ques=on is linked to a specific concept, regardless of whether the answer is correct or incorrect. Every concept has a mini-‐lesson associated with it that explains the concept with examples and exercises

If the student answers the ques=on incorrectly, the mini-‐lesson connected to the correct answer is automa=cally entered into to the student’s Workout Center, the place where the student works on the concepts he or she needs to shore up. The concept connected to the incorrect choice is also entered into the Workout Center. In other words, we’re oNen able to iden=fy two skill gaps in a single ques=on. If a ques=on is leN blank, it is counted as an incorrect answer.

So that is how we build the skill-‐building program specifically for that student. We have iden=fied all the concepts that the student needs to shore up and they can begin to work on them immediately.


One more thing—for every incorrect answer, students can click on the link at the end of the ques=on and an explana=on of the concept will be displayed. This is valuable especially for those students who want to understand immediately why they got that ques=on wrong and learn more about it.


Besides showing the answers to the assessment test, at the boQom, ComFit shows all the concepts the student needs to work on. In other words, ComFit produces an individualized Improvement plan. The plan can be printed and the student can give it to you or take it home.


As valuable as the improvement plan is, what is even more important is every concept that the student needs to work on in is put into their Workout Center. This is the heart of The ComFit Learning Center. It is where students go to shore-‐up the skill gaps that ComFit has iden=fied. It shows all the Mini-‐Lessons that the student needs to work on.

The Workout Center has two columns. The leN-‐hand column lists mini-‐lessons that have yet to be worked on.

The right-‐hand column lists mini-‐lessons that have been worked on, and also indicates the date taken and scores achieved on the Test Your Knowledge exercises in each mini-‐lesson. We will get to that in a moment.

Your students will be going to go back to their Workout Center and work on each lesson un=l they have mastered all the lessons. You, as their teacher can see their progress, and intervene quickly when they need help.


When the student clicks on a concept or mini-‐lesson, the page for that mini-‐lesson appears.

If the student is working on more than one subject, they would have a Workout Center for each subject.

As the instructor, you can also assign mini-‐lessons that you feel the student would benefit from studying. To do that you would choose them from ComFit’s large library of mini-‐lessons and assign them to the student.


Once you have assessed all your students, you can immediately produce a Group Leaning Needs Reports. This is critical because with this report you can see how many students in the group need to work on the same mini-lessons. It allows you to organize your group better and you know where you will get the greatest payback. In other words, it shows you the mini-lessons to which you should devote the bulk of your time.

2013 Copyright ComFit Learning Prep

Regardless of the subject area covered, each mini-‐lesson is built around the same learning model and is structured the same way.

The content in the mini-‐lesson is divided into two sec=ons: (1) Presenta=on; and (2) Assimila=on.

The Presenta=on sec=on of the mini-‐lesson focuses on the informa=on the student needs to receive in order to understand the concept being covered in the mini lesson.

The Assimila=on component consists of exercises the student works on to master the concept.


There are several parts to a mini lesson.

Every mini-‐lesson starts with an Overview: a one-‐ or-‐two sentence summary of the key points covered in the mini-‐lesson.


The Building Blocks sec=on shows a list of mini-‐lessons the student needs to understand in order or to fully understand the concept being covered in this mini-‐lesson.


A Closer Look provides content that elaborates upon the Overview.


The Examples sec=on displays (oNen in table form) how the concept covered in the mini-‐lesson can be applied to solve specific types of problems.


In the Assimila=on Sec=on there two or three exercises depending on the concept being taught.

Put It in Wri;ng is a self-‐paced exercise whose purpose is to reinforce in the student’s mind the key points presented in the mini-‐lesson. The student is asked to write out answers, in their own words, to a series of ques=ons about these key points.


Once the answers are submiQed, the student can verify whether they have answered each ques=on correctly. When the correct answer appears, the student is urged to repeat to themselves both the ques=on and the answer. At any point the student can click on “Get help” to review the content for the concept they are working on.

Note. The Put It in Wri=ng feature isn’t “homework” in the normal sense of the term. The informa=on isn’t captured and stored for instructors to “check.”


On most lessons, Walk me Through It gives a student the opportunity to be guided through the steps necessary to solve a problem whose solu=on requires an understanding of the concept covered in the mini-‐lesson.

The steps the student goes through mirror the steps they would go through as if a teacher or tutor took them through the steps. The difference, however, is that the “prompts” are supplied by ComFit.

Each Walk me Through It begins with a problem, and, if possible, a problem that reflects a real-‐life situa=on.

The student is then guided through each step that needs to be taken to solve the problem.

Each step includes a “help me out” prompt, a text box that the student uses to input the answers, and a box that displays the suggested answer. The student can repeat the exercise as oNen as they want.


The Test Your Knowledge is the final step in the mini-‐lesson to see if the student has mastered the concept being presented. It brings a test to the screen that we refer to as a “workout”. It consists of three to five mul=ple-‐choice ques=ons. The number of ques=ons varies according to the difficulty of the concept.

Workout ques=ons have been carefully constructed to ensure that the understanding needed to answer the ques=on correctly is confined, as much as possible, to the concept being taught.

If the concept of a mini-‐lesson is, for example, “Determining the Mean of a Data Set” the only thing being measured in the workout is whether a student understands the process that needs to be followed to determine the mean. For this reason, the numbers the student needs to add up or divide in order to solve the problem are kept simple. We do this because the purpose of this exercise is not to measure the student’s ability to add or divide. It’s to determine whether they know the steps to calculate the mean of a data set.


The feedback the students get once they submit the answers to a workout is instantaneous. If the ques=on has been answered correctly, the student gets a “You’re right!”

If the ques=on has been incorrectly answered, the feedback takes two forms:

A learning key in the form of a ques=on is presented and the student is asked to review in their mind whether they have gone through the proper process. A toggle-‐type link to the mini-‐lesson itself is provided so the student can review the material.

Each Test Your Knowledge exercise comes from a bank of exercises so that when the student repeats the exercise different ques=ons are asked.


Each =me a Test your knowledge is performed by the student, an entry is placed in their Workout Center. This gives feedback so the student, and the instructor, can see the progress that is being made on understanding the concept.


In addi=on to what you have just seen, Comfit has addi=onal tools to Monitor student ac=vity in real =me, to Measure and document group progress, to Insert mini-‐lessons into students’ Workout Centers, to Create and manage groups, and to Issue wriQen assignments and give feedback to wriQen work.

30 2013 Copyright Comfit Learning Prep

So how will you benefit from The ComFit Online Learning Center?

First. It will significantly increase the effec=veness of your instruc=onal resources because they will be able to focus more instruc=onal =me on their students’ specific needs.

Second, it will provide a stronger incen=ve for students to perform because teachers will be able to provide focused aQen=on and students will be working only on their skill gaps, not on material they already know.

Third and most important, none of your students will fall through the cracks because ComFit will provide you with the specific informa=on you need so you can give each student in your program the focused aQen=on they deserve, and precisely when they need it.

Now let’s see what others are saying about The ComFit Online Learning Center.



The Comfit Learning Center 18 for Website

Documents