Health, Education & Government
›
K-12 Education
›
Student & Learning Systems
Learning Management Systems
Technology and operations decisions where district leadership, IT, and stakeholders must align.
Example organizations in this space:
Canvas (Instructure)
Schoology (PowerSchool)
Google Classroom
Blackboard
This interactive experience is the shipped product itself — the same application code customers run in production, mounted read-only in your browser over a real sample journey. Not a video, not a mockup: because the demo and the product are one codebase, it can never drift from the real thing.
Inside this journey
-
Pre-Sales
Qualify and diagnose the district's requirements and stakeholders before designing the solution.
-
Qualification
Confirm budget range, decision-makers, timeline, and high-level constraints before investing in full discovery.
Qualification Questions
Instructional fit and grade-band usability
- Which grade bands must the platform support effectively for your district?
- Which teacher-facing features are must-haves for your classrooms (select all that apply)?
Integration, rostering, and gradebook sync
- How do you currently handle rostering and which approach will the platform need to support?
- Do you require gradebook grade-passback to your SIS and at what cadence?
Accessibility, compliance, and measurable success
- Do active IEP or 504 workflows need to be tracked within assignment and accommodation workflows?
- Are there procurement, accessibility, or data-related compliance requirements that will affect scope or timing?
- What are the top 1–2 measurable success criteria for a pilot (e.g., teacher adoption rate, assignment frequency, parent engagement)?
Budget, decision-makers, and timeline
- Is there an allocated budget range for a district-wide LMS or a ballpark per-student/year target?
- Who will sign or approve this purchase and which roles should join a discovery meeting?
- What is your target window for a pilot or go-live?
-
District Discovery
Map stakeholders, current tools, rostering and grading workflows, accessibility needs, and measurable success criteria across the district.
Discovery Questions
Quick orientation: sum up your district
- In one sentence, how would you describe your district's current approach to digital instruction and platforms?
- Tell me about the mix of platforms teachers currently use across elementary, middle, and high schools
- How many distinct platforms are active district-wide today?
- Who typically decides which platform a school or teacher adopts, and how is that decision documented?
- Which three outcomes matter most to your curriculum and technology leaders when choosing a single system?
- What single failure in a new LMS pilot would make you stop the project immediately?
Where teachers and families feel the pinch
- Imagine teachers could remove one daily workflow, which would they remove first and why?
- Describe a recent incident when rostering or grade sync created real extra work for teachers or IT
- How often does lack of accommodation tracking force special education staff to use spreadsheets or manual notes?
- Which grade bands report the most usability complaints, and what recurring tasks cause those complaints?
- Point to a specific process that breaks during parent communications and describe the downstream consequences for families
- How long could you tolerate a pilot that fails to meet accessibility or IEP accommodation requirements before pausing or canceling it?
The other options on your table
- Assume your current mix of tools met all needs, what would have to be true about them today for you to keep them?
- List the alternatives you are actively evaluating, including the incumbent, market competitors, and any internal build efforts
- Identify the option with the strongest teacher support and explain why
- How convincing would your current approach need to be for you to keep it instead of switching to an external vendor?
- Has anyone on staff proposed a homegrown solution instead of buying, and if so, who would lead that effort?
- What single advantage would your incumbent solution need to demonstrate to make you cancel an evaluation now?
The real people who will make or break adoption
- Identify the teacher group whose early adoption would flip the rest of the district and explain why
- Walk me through how building-level coaches, department leads, and special education staff influence decisions in practice, with a recent example
- How many technology coaches or edtech specialists actively support teachers in a typical month?
- Name the roles that will need to approve curriculum alignment versus those that will approve SIS and data integrations
- Who is likely to be the primary champion and who is likely to be the most skeptical during pilot?
- Name the stakeholder objection that would block approval at the school board level
Data and systems that determine feasibility
- Suppose a connector outage wiped a week of grading data during pilot, would you continue, pause, or stop the initiative?
- Name the SIS, assessment platforms, and identity systems your district must connect during pilot and rollout
- Do you have API access, vendor contacts, and an agreed testing window for each system, or will permissions need to be requested?
- Point to the team that owns API credentials and provide a typical response time for integration requests
- Would you accept manual roster uploads during pilot if nightly roster sync is not possible, or would that stop the project?
Pilot design that proves what matters
- Describe the one pilot outcome that would convince your academic leaders to proceed without further delay
- Estimate the number of schools, teachers, and students you consider a credible pilot size
- Select up to three metrics district leadership will use to judge pilot success
- List the roles that need to own data collection and analysis during the pilot
- Provide the acceptance gates the pilot must pass to greenlight full rollout and the signer for each gate
- Given a pilot that improves teacher workflow but not assessment alignment, would you proceed, pause, or request a second pilot?
Costs, timeline, and approval gates that actually matter
- Tell me the non-negotiable timeline drivers that would force you to select and implement a solution this quarter
- Please specify the budget lines that will fund initial licensing, training, integrations, and ongoing support
- How much contingency budget do you typically reserve for unexpected integration work as a percentage of project cost?
- Provide the roles that must approve commercial and legal terms and the typical review cycle for each
- If final board approval cannot happen until next fiscal year, would you pause the project, phase it, or proceed with partial rollout?
Readiness facts that decide whether we can move
- Call out the one operational constraint that would prevent the project from moving forward in the next 90 days
- For each required integration, indicate whether APIs are available, who owns access, and the current test environment status
- Do you have staff with experience handling SFTP, API token rotation, and data mapping, or will you need vendor-led assistance?
- How clean and accessible are your student records for import on a scale from 1 to 5, and who owns data quality?
- If regulatory or legal review could take longer than your pilot window, would you accept contract redlines, delay start, or cancel the project?
Next steps and decision triggers
- What is your target decision date for moving from pilot to full adoption, and who owns that decision
- Which deliverable from a seller would accelerate your internal approval the most, and why
- Who should we schedule for a technical scoping call and a curriculum alignment review if we move forward this month?
- What would have to change in the next two weeks to move your timeline up by a month?
- Finally, what is the single metric or fact that, if demonstrated in pilot, would make you recommend district-wide adoption to the board?
-
-
Solution Experience
Walk through how the platform delivers targeted outcomes — teacher usability across grade bands, standards alignment, SIS sync, parent portal, and accommodations — using the district's scenarios and pilot plan.
Solution Experience
- Solution Experience: Targeted Outcome Walkthrough
- Confirm the current state and its cost
- You confirm the stated current state and its operational cost as accurate and complete.
- Provision a demo tenant preloaded with the provided sample roster, standards mapping, and three pilot teacher accounts to run the scripted scenarios.
- You confirm the demonstrated workflows eliminate the manual rework and inconsistency you described for elementary, high school, and special education scenarios.
- Confirm pilot success criteria
- Deliver a draft SIS field mapping and gradebook rule set aligned to the district's policies for review before the technical proof.
- Proof: elementary teacher workflow with your scenario
- Provide a representative pilot roster and three teacher scenarios: one elementary teacher, one high school AP teacher with rubric needs, and one special education case with accommodations.
- You agree on pilot acceptance criteria, owners, and the evidence required to move from pilot to rollout.
- Confirm pilot schools, target dates, and the committee who will sign off on acceptance evidence.
- Proof: high school AP workflow and rubric grading
- You provide the artifacts needed to build a pilot tenant so the next technical proof can be executed.
- Proof: accommodations and special education flow
- Proof: SIS sync and grade passback using a pilot roster
- Validate pilot design and next gates
- Forced validation, Is this what you meant?
- Solution Experience: Targeted Outcome Walkthrough
- Solution Experience Deck
- Solution Brief
- meeting
- slides
- document
-
Implementation Scope
Define modules, integrations (SIS, standards), training by grade band, pilot design, roles, and measurable acceptance criteria.
Scope Configuration
- Integrate SIS rostering
- Sync gradebook with SIS
- Import QTI and Common Cartridge content
- Import and map state standards
- Configure gradebook with district grading policies
- Set up resource libraries by grade and subject
- Activate assignment creation and standards tagging
- Deploy student submission and feedback workflows
- Configure differentiated assignment delivery
- Enable accommodation tracking for IEPs
- Activate parent and guardian portal
- Provision district admin adoption and usage dashboards
- Activate discussion and collaboration tools
- Deliver teacher training by grade band
- Enable embedded help and teacher community forum
Scope Questions
Integrate SIS rostering
- Do you have API access from your student information system (SIS) to support automated rostering or will you rely on scheduled extracts?
- Specify the SIS data fields that must map into the platform for each import (for example student ID, legal name, grade, homeroom, section ID, enrollment status).
- Estimate the scope: how many schools and total active student records are included in the initial roster load?
- What acceptance criteria will confirm the roster sync as complete (for example matching active student count within 1%, no orphaned active enrollments, and class section parity)?
- When are your preferred SIS data windows for imports and are there nightly or weekend blackout periods to avoid?
Sync gradebook with SIS
- List the gradebook elements that must flow to the SIS (for example final term grade, assignment-level scores, rubric scores, teacher comments).
- Describe how district flags such as late/excused or custom grade labels should be represented in the SIS and provide an example grading scale used in your district (for example 0-100 or A-F).
- Select the required grade sync cadence for your district.
- Define acceptable grade sync accuracy (for example 99% of assignment-grade mappings match the SIS within 24 hours) and name the role that will sign off on final grade sync acceptance.
- Identify the district owner for grade reconciliation and the escalation contact for grade discrepancies.
Import QTI and Common Cartridge content
- Select the types of content packages you plan to import during the initial phase.
- Estimate the number of assessment items or course packages you expect to migrate for the pilot.
- Are there extended metadata or custom item types in your QTI packages that require mapping (for example embedded rubrics, accommodation tags, or multimedia manifests)?
- Choose the file delivery method you will use for content imports.
- Who will validate content fidelity after import (for example curriculum lead validating item scoring, media assets, and rubric alignment) and how do you document item-level mapping issues?
Import and map state standards
- Specify the standards taxonomy version you use (state name and year) and whether you require crosswalks to Common Core or other frameworks.
- Select the tagging granularity you require for assignments.
- Will you provide a canonical standards export (CSV/XML/IMS) or do you need assistance generating a standards file from your curriculum documents?
- Identify the role that will own canonical standards mapping for each subject (for example curriculum coordinator or assessment director).
- Provide the acceptance evidence that will confirm standards mapping is correct (for example a sample of 50 pilot assignments with correct standard tags reviewed and signed off by the curriculum team).
Configure gradebook with district grading policies
- Describe the grading scale(s) and rounding rules your district uses for elementary and secondary (for example 0-100 with two-decimal precision or A-F with plus/minus).
- List the weighted category structures used by teachers and whether these vary by subject or grade band (for example Homework 20%, Assessments 50%, Participation 30%).
- Do you require custom gradebook behaviors such as extra credit handling, reassessment windows, or grade forgiveness policies?
- Choose how incomplete or missing student work should be represented in parent-facing reports and in exports to the SIS.
- Identify the district approver for gradebook policy decisions (role).
Set up resource libraries by grade and subject
- Choose the grade bands that require distinct resource libraries.
- Estimate the number of teacher-facing and student-facing resources per grade band to import initially.
- Are additional metadata tags required beyond standards tagging (for example reading level, accessibility alt text, language, publisher)?
- Specify the storage location and delivery method for large media assets (for example host in platform, district cloud bucket, or external CDN).
- Name the role responsible for curating initial content sets and approving library organization.
Activate assignment creation and standards tagging
- Choose the teacher roles who should be able to create assignments and tag standards.
- Would you like assignment templates by grade band (for example K-2 exit tickets, elementary literacy centers, high school lab reports)?
- Indicate how standard tags should display to teachers in the assignment editor (ID only, short description, full standard text on hover).
- Provide the reports you expect from tagged assignments (for example standards coverage dashboard, student mastery reports).
- Are there assignment types that must automatically apply accommodations tags for students with IEPs?
Deploy student submission and feedback workflows
- Select the submission types that must be supported in the pilot.
- Indicate whether rubrics will be imported from Common Cartridge or built using the platform's rubric editor.
- List the operational metrics you will monitor during the pilot to judge submission workflow health (for example average submission time, percent on-time submissions, rubric scoring completion rate).
- Select the default policy for handling late submissions and resubmissions in the teacher workflow.
- Who will serve as the pilot teacher lead responsible for collecting workflow feedback and issues?
Configure differentiated assignment delivery
- Which student attributes should drive differentiated delivery in the pilot (for example IEP accommodation flags, English language learner status, intervention group).
- Select how differentiation rules will be defined and applied.
- Estimate the percentage of students per class who will receive individualized assignments during the pilot.
- Indicate whether differentiated assignments should appear as separate gradebook columns or be aggregated into existing columns.
- Identify the role that will own rule changes and content variants for differentiation.
Enable accommodation tracking for IEPs
- Select the accommodation types that must be tracked in assignment workflows.
- State whether digital copies of IEPs are available to reference in the platform or if accommodations live in a separate system.
- Outline how accommodation enforcement should operate for assessments (for example auto-apply extended windows, block multimedia questions for alt-format needs).
- Are there specific compliance artifacts required for audits (for example IEP logs, change history, guardian consent records)?
- Who will be the compliance owner for IEP accommodation tracking and periodic reviews?
Activate parent and guardian portal
- Choose how guardians will be linked to student accounts: roster-linked, invitation-based, or a hybrid model.
- Select which family-facing items should be visible in the portal.
- Are there privacy rules that restrict guardian visibility for specific student populations (for example foster care, student age thresholds)?
- Indicate the languages that must be supported for portal content and notifications.
- How will you measure guardian adoption during pilot (for example percent of guardians logging in weekly or percent with linked accounts)?
Provision district admin adoption and usage dashboards
- Which key performance indicators should be prioritized for district dashboards (for example teacher adoption rate, assignments per week, standards coverage)?
- Select the access tiers required for dashboards.
- Indicate the desired data refresh cadence for dashboard metrics.
- Do you require exportable reports for board presentations and what formats are needed (for example PDF and CSV)?
- Name the district admin responsible for dashboard configuration and data validation.
-
Mutual Commit
Finalize commercial and legal terms, responsibilities, pilot acceptance gates, and materials required for district approval.
Agreement Modules
- Order Form / Subscription Agreement
- Master Services Agreement (MSA)
- Statement of Work (SOW)
- Service Level Agreement (SLA)
- Data Processing & Security Addendum
- Pilot Acceptance Criteria
- Pilot Acceptance Certificate
- District Approval Packet
- Change Order Agreement
- Termination & Exit Plan
-
Deployment
Lock readiness facts and configuration values before execution begins.
-
Pre-Deployment Readiness
Capture concrete readiness facts — SIS access windows, data extracts, pilot school roster, training owners, and target dates — before execution begins.
Pre-Deployment Questions
Environment and site access
- Which SIS environments will be used for rostering and grade sync (select all that apply)?
- Is API/technical access to the chosen SIS environment approved and scheduled? If yes, provide the target access date so we can book integration work.
- Are there scheduled blackout or maintenance windows for the SIS or district network that will block integrations (so we can avoid cutover during those times)?
Data and configuration
- What is the agreed source of truth for enrollment and rosters?
- Will the required data extracts be available on the deployment start date (enrollment, course sections, staff assignments, existing grades)? If not, state the earliest date extracts will be available.
- Has the field-mapping approach for student IDs, section codes, and gradebook transfer been decided and who owns it (buyer, seller, or shared)?
People and ownership
- Provide the primary named owners (name and role) for: SIS integration, data extracts owner, pilot coordinator, and training lead (these owners will receive deployment task assignments).
- Will the district provide dedicated training owners per grade band for onboarding (elementary, middle, high)?
Timing and constraints
- Confirm the pilot start date and the final production go-live target date (these dates lock training schedules and data cutover windows).
- Are there board approval, purchasing, or legal milestones that must be met before deployment can begin? Select the current state.
-
Configuration Details
Lock integration credentials, field mappings, standards taxonomy, gradebook rules, accessibility settings, and training schedules the deployment team will use.
Configuration Details
Environments & Endpoints
- Primary production instance subdomain (enter the subdomain the platform will use for your district; format: 'district-name' — DO NOT include 'https://' or trailing slashes)
SIS Integration
- SIS integration authentication method (select one)
- SIS integration non-secret identifier (enter the integration username or client_id; DO NOT paste any secret/token — the secret will be exchanged via your secrets manager)
Field Mappings & Roster
- Student identifier field in your SIS to map to the platform user ID (enter the exact field name as it appears in the SIS export)
- Roster sync direction (select one) — Default is 'SIS -> Platform'
Gradebook Rules & Standards
- Default district grading scale (select) — Default 'Percentage (0-100)'
- Standards taxonomy identifier to use (enter the exact taxonomy label or code prefix the district uses; e.g., 'CCSS', 'TX-TEKS', 'NGSS')
Accessibility, Accommodations & Training
- Enable accommodations tracking in assignment workflow? (this toggles assignment-level accommodations fields and IEP flags)
- Pilot training first session date (enter the first scheduled teacher training session date; format: YYYY-MM-DD)
-
Pilot & Rollout
Execute the pilot, staged rollout, teacher training, and district-wide enablement with clear owners, milestones, and escalation paths.
-
-
Success
Track adoption, training completion, pilot feedback, accessibility compliance, and open issues while prioritizing enhancements.
Success Reviews
- Go-live Health Check (weeks 1-4)
- First Measurement Review (weeks 4-10)
- Acceptance Gate Review (around day 90)
- Quarterly Success Review (ongoing quarterly)
Issues & Enhancements
- Publish a support trend brief with SLA performance and any recommended operational changes.
- Compile the acceptance gate evidence pack as defined in Implementation Scope.
- Restate acceptance criteria and numeric targets
- Each acceptance criterion recorded in Implementation Scope has a documented pass, conditional, or fail outcome.
- If any criteria are conditional or failed, remediation actions and firm resolution dates are established.
- Incumbent system decommissioning outcome is decided and the data-handling status is documented.
- Publish the acceptance decision record with attached evidence and timeline for any conditional remediation.
- Provide export confirming data migration completeness or archive file locations for the incumbent system.
- Open remediation tickets with clear resolution criteria and target dates for any conditional acceptance items.
- Adoption and training metrics review
- Confirm adoption and training metrics remain at or are progressing toward Implementation Scope targets, or document recovery plan if not.
- Ensure accessibility compliance issues are tracked with remediation dates and do not block classroom use.
- A prioritized list of enhancement and remediation items exists for the next quarter with deadlines.
- Produce the quarterly adoption dashboard extract showing weekly active teachers, training completion by grade band, and accessibility compliance status.
- Create the prioritized quarter plan listing enhancement tickets, expected outcomes, and target delivery windows.
- Re-confirm success criteria and owners
- Deployment records validated and no critical data gaps remain that block classroom activity.
- All critical blockers have documented remediation actions and target resolution dates.
- Owner list for each success criterion confirmed for follow-up meetings.
- Export and share sample rosters and grade sync logs for the pilot schools for verification.
- Publish the open-issue register with reproducible steps and provisional resolution dates.
- Circulate a short how-to note for teachers covering login, posting an assignment, and submitting work.
- Present first dataset against targets
- Clear understanding of current values for training completion rate by grade band and weekly active teacher usage and whether they meet the Implementation Scope targets.
- Named remediation tasks with completion dates to address the top 2 metric shortfalls.
- Agreement on the evidence package required for the acceptance gate.
- Deliver a dashboard extract showing training completion by grade band, weekly active teacher counts for the assignment workflow, and SIS sync error logs.
- Implement agreed quick fixes (for example, rostering corrections or targeted coaching) and report status in an interim 2-week update.
- Present outcome data against each criterion
- Accessibility compliance and accommodations audit
- Deployment and data migration validation
- Root-cause diagnosis for gaps
- Document pass or conditional status per criterion
- Early adoption signals and usage patterns
- Open issues and enhancement prioritization
- Agree corrective actions and timelines
- Blockers and open issues triage
- Confirm readiness timeline to acceptance gate
- Support trends and SLA review
- Incumbent decommissioning status
- Immediate remediation actions
- Capture formal acceptance decision and next steps
- Short recap and agreed next steps