Overview of Live Text
Live Text is an electronic portfolio system that is accessible through the internet. It is a file cabinet system, with data mining capabilities. Students are able to design portfolios to show their teaching abilities, and the College of Education is able to assess data to prove that students are able to do what they are supposed to do to become teachers.
An electronic portfolio system had to be adopted because of the new requirements set forth by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Educators (NCATE). Accreditation requirements changed in 2002 where having certain objectives for specific courses was not enough, and proof that students meet those objectives had to be established by the university. Arkansas State University is using electronic portfolios so that students are able to place the needed evidence into a portfolio system and it can be formally assessed used as proof that students are learning what they are supposed to be learning in the Professional Education Program at Arkansas State University.
If the Teacher Education Program did not use an electronic portfolio system where data could be tabulated to show that students were able to do what they were supposed to, we would need 1: many file cabinets to keep all the data, and 2: a system to be able to quantify the numbers of students who could and could not perform the needed requirements for certification.
Teacher Education's Purpose for Live Text
Teacher Education now requires an electronic portfolio system in order to prove that students are learning what is expected in their classes. In order to continue accreditation with national and state agencies, Arkansas State is required to not only have objectives in coursework that meet required criteria, we are required to prove that our students are learning the given objectives. If the university fails to show that their students are meeting the requirements, we can no longer recommend students for teacher licensure. For this reason, Arkansas State, like many other teacher education programs in other universities, must have an electronic portfolio system in place.
History of Live Text
Founded in 1997, College LiveText is a leading developer of standards-led, online educational services tailored to the particular needs and challenges of the education profession. From portfolios to assessments and accreditation reporting, our services provide hundreds of colleges with powerful, yet easy-to-use, tools that support needs of college deans, department chairs, assessment coordinators, accreditation officers, faculty and their students. This integrated solution saves time and the associated costs of developing, collecting and measuring program and student performance data.
The founders of LiveText developed their first online tool sets for professors in the early days of the world wide web. While they were undergraduates in the renowned Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois in 1995-1996, they worked with professors under a grant from the Sloan Foundation to develop and deliver the first generation of web-based classes. Recognizing that creation and maintenance of courses was too reliant on expensive consulting, programming, and computer science resources, the founders started LiveText Inc. upon graduation to develop, spread, and enhance to a suite of easy-to-use tools that a typical educator could routinely use for web-based education.
Nearly all of LiveText's competitors, founded in the same time frame, elected to focus on an across the board solution distance learning platform for universities. LiveText chose a different path, one exclusively focused on understanding and designing solutions that meet the unique needs, capabilities, resources, and constraints of the K-12 education professional -- a work environment that, at the time, sorely lacked hardware, networking, technology skills, and time/funds for training among other challenges. Since 1998, LiveText has amassed rich experience and knowledge in the K-12 market and is now looking forward to sharing our experience with educators in the College of Education.
College LiveText edu solutions is a suite of web-based tools that allow colleges and universities to develop, manage, and assess program and student achievements. From portfolios and coursework to assessments and accreditation data-reporting, our services assist hundreds of universities in meeting these demands.
As national and state accreditation agencies intensify the complexity of accreditation LiveText offers simple solutions to complex problems.
