Today I want to take some time to talk about our latest feature, which will be released very soon - Plan management.

For teachers who assign activities, there have been many improvements made to the assignment management system over the past few years - allowing teachers to schedule in advance, set due dates, view their assignments by week, and bulk edit their assignments.

Working closely with teachers across the globe, we honed in on a few additional features that represented incredible value for teachers and administrators:

• Copying assignments from one class to another
• Creating a sequence of assignments for your class, then sharing it with a colleague
• Reusing a sequence of assignments from last year
• Assigning a year’s worth of relevant activities with only a few clicks

All of this will be possible with the new interface - and more!

How it works

Copying from one class to another

The list of all activities you have assigned to a class - those that have been completed, those that are active now, and those scheduled for the future - can be saved as a “plan”. Once this plan has been saved, you can load it for another class.

This saves a lot of time that teachers currently spend assigning the same activities to multiple classes that they teach.

• Assign activities to one class
• Save the plan
• Switch to another class
• Load the plan

This can be done multiple times - for teachers who assign one week in advance, the plan can be copied every week, or even more frequently if that’s how you work.

After loading a plan, teachers can then make edits and personalise assignments without affecting the original. This can be done for both active assignments and scheduled assignments.

Sharing a plan

Standardising and synchronising assignments across multiple classes is a very important goal for many users, such as grade leaders, math coaches, and district administrators. We also acknowledge that many teachers most familiar with Matific want to help their colleagues, particularly those who are less comfortable with our interface (or with technology in general).

After saving any plan, you can generate a “share” link with a single click. When another teacher clicks this link, they will be prompted to load the plan you created into their own class. Once they accept, whatever you created will now be assigned to their class as well.

Re-using a plan from last year

Teachers can re-use plans from previous academic years - just save the plan at the end of the year, and load it for your new class at the start of the next.

Loading a preset plan

Matific has created a “preset” plan for every textbook and curriculum in our system, customised for every grade level. Rather than assigning a year’s worth of work yourself, you can select one of these presets and load it for your class. They will now have assigned work for every week.

You can then make whatever changes you like, and even save and share your custom version with others. This will help many teachers get started with assigned work in the fastest possible way.

What about the Planner?

The release of plan management will also see the removal of the “Planner” feature, as all the functionality of this older section of our platform has been incorporated into plan management. Rather than working in a separate section, you will use the same interface and functionality of “regular” activity assignment to build out your plan - or simply select a preset in a similar fashion as before.

For any class with the Planner feature active, your work will not be lost - existing work will automatically be converted into plans.

If you don’t log in to the teacher platform, you won’t notice any difference - the activities you selected in the old interface will continue to appear in the weeks you assigned them to without any disruption.
If you do log in, you will no longer have access to the dedicated “Planner” page. Instead you will see the activities you selected in the “Scheduled” section of Manage Activities - the key difference will be that you can now edit these assignments in advance!

We aim to ensure a smooth transition for everyone - please reach out to support if you encounter any difficulties.

Closing thoughts

This new feature is built on the principle of maximising the impact you can create with your limited time. We have eliminated many tedious tasks, and built a platform where you can easily share your work - with your other classes, or with your colleagues.

We are very excited to hear what you think of “Plan management” - please send us your feedback!