User values and considerations
User value
Enlighten gives feedback to all students during writing time enabling teachers to focus their attention on students who need more support.
“For me to get to 10 kids within 30 minutes and give them real feedback that's targeted to exactly what they would be doing, I would only probably be able to hit on some kids, but we felt like this program…would help support them getting feedback instead of just sitting and waiting for us.”
— Teacher, 4th Grade ELA
The live dashboard turns individual feedback into class-wide teaching points—teachers use trends to surface mini-lessons.
“Enlighten does a really great job of giving me a general idea—in the moment—of what everyone, the majority of the kids, need to work on. Based on what the dashboard is showing me, I'll show call something to show them because the dashboard also gives group trends, which is really great. It highlights teachable moments.”
— Teacher, 4th Grade ELA
Multiple submissions and visible score progression motivate revision—teachers describe students re-engaging with their writing because they can see growth in real time.
“Enlighten does a really great job of also being able to submit more than once so then getting feedback more than once and they can actually go back and see their old submissions.…They can see the progression after adding a little bit more each time...they're like, 'Oh my gosh, I grew five points. Oh my gosh, I grew, like, 10 points.' I think seeing that instant gratification for them means a lot.”
— Teacher, 4th Grade ELA
User considerations
Feedback vocabulary is often too advanced for below-grade-level and multilingual students—it works best for already-strong readers; teachers report translating or rephrasing the feedback for others.
“Based on the language or vocabulary in the feedback, some of the kids aren't able to read or understand the things that it's saying….The vocabulary words, if it were a bit more student-friendly or match[ed] individual students' reading levels, they would be able to internalize the feedback.”
— Teacher, 4th Grade ELA
Active teacher monitoring shapes how well it works.
“I'm always circulating….I'll pause them during intervals and then I will circulate and go to the kids who I know need more support and ask if they understand the feedback...I'll break it down. I'll also go back to the feedback and make adjustments because I know what they can do, and I know what they're producing, and I know what they mean, and sometimes Enlighten doesn't account for the nuances.”
— Teacher, 4th Grade ELA
Source-text keyword copying can register as strong responses—students copying source-text keywords can score high without producing real responses; the tool does not reliably catch this pattern.
“When kids just cop[ied] and pasted from the text, Enlighten was giving them a lot of points for it because they were using the words that were in the text… but technically it wasn't in their own words.”
— Teacher, 4th Grade ELA