At EdPlace, we want to give your child or students the best tools to learn whenever, and wherever, they want to. For this reason, they can choose to access their EdPlace student account via our website, iOS app or Android app - or, perhaps even, a combination of these options!
The great news is that every single one of our activities can be completed in either the web or app versions, and all the essential features (question types, teacher explanations, timings, automatic marking, etc.) will be maintained.
However, there will be small differences between working on the website or one of the apps which are important for you and your child or students to understand. These differences may lead to students finding it easier to work in one over the other, or they may find that they are more successful with certain types of activities in one of these mediums.
Read on to find out more about these differences, so that you can support your child or students to make the best choice for them based on their own learning preferences and the activity they will be working on.
Account differences
When students log in to their EdPlace account, the dashboard will vary slightly depending on how they access it. All the same information will be displayed but, because of the smaller screen size for the apps, the presentation will vary. For example, the app only shows 'Recommended activities' on the student homepage with their full To Do List only visible in the 'Activities' tab; whereas on the web, there is space to show a full version of their To Do List on the homepage.
We hope that these small differences will have very little effect on the overall student experience, but there are some things that students will only be able to do within the web-based account. They are:
- Request a reward (for more information on this, please click here);
- Set preferences for, and use, the accessibility toolbar (for more information on this, please click here);
- View previous scores in 'Browse' to make assigning work to themself easier (for more information on this, please click here);
- Access the 'Timeline' feature (for more information on this, please click here);
- Report an error in an activity (for more information on this, please click here).
So when they are planning to do one of these things or you need them to, the best bet is for them to log into their student account on the EdPlace website instead.
User experience differences
There are also some small, but important, differences in how students will answer questions. For example, if they are asked to 'Match' up correct answers on the web, this will use a drag-and-drop approach; whereas on the apps, they will click once and then 'Move here' buttons will appear for them to click for a second time on where they would like to place each option. These differences have to occur because of the varied screen sizes and based on whether the user is using a mouse pointer or a finger. Here's an example that shows the different presentations of the same question:
Website: Apps:
When a student completes an activity on the apps, their score will be shown 'out of' (e.g. 4/10) whereas it will be shown as a percentage on the web (e.g. 40%).
As we mentioned before, most of our accessibility features will not be available on our apps because they cannot operate on a small screen. Students can still return to the Introduction if they get stuck during an activity, but they cannot enable audio on the apps. For this reason, if these features help your child or student to learn and are important to them, we would recommend that they try to work on the website when they can.
There will also be some types of activities that will be easier to complete on a larger screen and you may prefer for them to try in more of a school set-up (i.e. sat at a desk with a pen and paper handy). We recommend that you and they consider the website as the preferred option for:
- Activities where students need to type extended answers (mostly in English);
- Revision activities (which use a timer and may require extended working out);
- Assessments (which use a timer and may require extended working out);
- Any activity which suggests that students need a pen, paper, calculator or other resources to complete successfully.
We hope that this information will enable you to support your child and students to choose the best learning option on EdPlace for the activity they are planning to work on and their own preferences - having options is the best way to ensure that every child can learn in the way which best fits their needs!
If you need any help with this or have any more questions or suggestions, please contact our friendly Customer Support Team at help@edplace.com.