AABP holds workshop to share best practices using e-learning reading program

The Achievement Academy Bridge Program (AABP) at American University of Sharjah (AUS) hosted a workshop to introduce the best practices of an e-learning online reading software, Achieve 3000, on November 19, 2016. The goal of the workshop was to provide a forum for teachers from higher education institutes and schools in the UAE to exchange best practices and approaches using the Achieve 3000 platform.

Achieve 3000 is a pioneer in online differentiated instruction that helps students deliver significant reading gains by providing them with engaging, nonfiction content that supports core curriculum, Response to Intervention, English language learning, special education, adult learning, workforce readiness and other instructional modelsThe online reading software will help measure students' improvement continuously and will encourage them to read more at their level. The program works by initially identifying the student's individual lexile level in a competitive aspect against their classmates and higher education institutions in the UAE, GCC and globally.

In April 2016, Ahmed Mohamed Al Siddig El Khidir, an AABP student, won an international Achieve 3000 award for being the student with the most points for the week worldwide.Sharifa Mousa Hassan Ali, Director of the Reading Project at the Ministry of Education, spoke at the event and stressed on the importance of reading across the UAE and the development of students' reading skills through various venues, most importantly, e-learning programs.

Scott Rousseu, AABP Senior Instructor, said, "The workshop did not only focus on students, but also on teachers learning good practices in e-learning. It was a great opportunity for teachers from all over UAE to share their practices using different e-learning platforms."

Tony Patterson, Chief Operations Officer, W-Click Education and Training, explained, "We give a lot of support for schools, training them how to use the product but schools want to see how it's implemented and how you get great success rates. AUS, for example, has had up to six times reading gains and so we have invited them to share the strategies they undertook, such as how to get parents involved, how to get students to read and engage and how to use the data."