Students & Guardians
Students & Guardians
The Student and Guardian Portal are largely identical in Empower. This ensures that parents and students have the same visibility. Additionally, students are typically the ones best positioned to help their parents navigate.
Here are some tutorials addressed to Guardians and Students. If you right-click and copy the URL, these can be sent as YouTube links to stakeholders and will be a good introduction to their portals.
Here are some tutorials addressed to Guardians and Students. If you right-click and copy the URL, these can be sent as YouTube links to stakeholders and will be a good introduction to their portals.
For information on troubleshooting data or accounts including unlocking or helping with passwords, please see our Data Management article.
Student Portal Basics Video
This is a good one to give to students.
Student & Guardian Portal Video (General Overview)
Para Padres (Guardian Portal Video in Spanish)
Student Activity Video
Student & Guardian Portal Annotated (Home Page)
1) Plus Delta
Empower has built into its software a “Plus/Delta” feedback button. This gives every user a simple way to communicate to the site administrator about their needs or feedback.
This feedback goes to someone local, not to the Empower team. However, if needed, the local administrator can elevate the need to Empower's helpdesk.
2) Date
Sometimes affectionately called Empower's "time machine." By setting this date back, you can view the data as it stood on that date.
Remember not to talk to your past self while you're back there!
3) Quick Access ID
Every activity, quiz, and playlist in Empower has a quick access ID assigned to it. By typing that number here, the user will be taken directly to that item.
4) Messaging
Learning is social - so is Empower. Woven throughout (see items 4, 13 and 19 on this list) Empower is the ability to message others in your learning community.
This icon is the main feed which will list all messages for this user.
You can also do more than simply message, you can create polls and save messages.
Some safety features are built-in to these tools. For example, guardians can only message their own learners and visa versa. Even if they are involved in a group chat, a student will not see a message from any guardians except their own.
Additionally, it is good to know that nothing on this social network is private. Admins can search and see all messages. Admins can also turn other dials such as restricting roles and specific users and broadcasting messages.
5) Class/Group
The main body of this portal is organized by Classes/Groups. These groups can be expanded and collapsed to view more or less information by pressing the + button.
6) Create an Activity
Students have an opportunity to really own their learning by creating evidences from whole cloth. When they do, we flip the script and the student assigns the activity to a teacher who will then be notified and score it so that the evidence appears in the learning portfolio thereafter.
7) Target Browser
All stakeholders have the ability in the Target Browser to view the full scope and sequence of standards. Students and Parents will see the student's scores overlaid on top of the standard tiles.
8) Search
Students can search for content that has been shared such as Playlists, Activities, and Quizzes; or find a group that is covering content they may need or want to participate in.
9) Class Log
Without opening the entire class section of the page, users can see if there is any new information they should dig into more deeply. Notifications here could include new scores and messages in this class.
10) X of X at or above proficient (the "grey bar")
When the section is not expanded, this metric informs the user how many standards from this class the student has achieved proficiency on. Click on the grey bar to see overall scores for all standards in that class!
11) Pace
This is the official pace that will potentially appear on a printed or online progress report. For more information on Pace, see #17 of this list. If this box does not match the pace labeled here as #17, that is because the teacher has manually adjusted it.
12) Next Up, etc...
This section orders the activities and quizzes that are coming. Empower will present the tiles in order based on due dates and status. Teachers or users can also pin tiles to this section. See #21 in this list.
1) NextUp
This section will display Activities and Quizzes in playlists which are yet to be completed. it will display only one item per playlist so suppose you have 3 playlist in your class/group, each playlist will have one 'Next UP' item for a total of 3 activities/quizzes. Teachers or users can also pin tiles to this section. See #21 in this list.
2) Class Activities
Activities/quizzes which are not in playlists will appear in this section.
3) Missing Activities
All missing activities display here, regardless of if it is from a playlist or it is assigned directly to the class/group.
13) Class Messaging
Learning is social - so is Empower. Woven throughout (see items 4, 13 and 19 on this list) Empower is the ability to message others in your learning community.
This icon is the class feed in which users associated with this class can have general, class-wide discussions.
Some safety features are built-in to these tools. For example, guardians can only message their own learners and visa versa. Even if they are involved in a group chat, a student will not see a message from any guardians except their own.
Additionally, it is good to know that nothing on this social network is private. Admins can search and see all messages.
WATCH A VIDEO about how to do that as well as turn other dials such as restricting roles and specific users and broadcasting messages.
14) Code of Cooperation
Not all schools use a metric like this, but if you do, the language can be changed to your preference. This score is set manually by the teacher in the Progress Report Comments Tool.
15) Last Viewed
The last activity or quiz that was opened by the user will be displayed here for easy access.
16) Status
Each tile shows the student's status. Statuses include Finished/Proficient, In Progress, Below MAS/Redo, Late/Missing, and Turned In.
17) Course Pace
These bars show the student's target growth vs actual growth to date. It is a simple calculation based on the number of standards being covered and the time the class exists. In the example pictured, there are 5 standards being covered, so the meter goes from 0.0 to 5.0.
Evidence scores do not count toward a student's pace, only overall (standard/summative) scores do. Each increment in the overall score moves the needle here.
18) Grad Pace
This meter is similar to the above, but it measures the student's proficiency in all standards in the content area against the needed proficiencies for graduation and the expected graduation date. For a much more detailed look at this data, users may want to go to the My Learning Path tab (#27 on this list).
19) Activity Messaging
Learning is social - so is Empower. Woven throughout (see items 4, 13 and 19 on this list) Empower is the ability to message others in your learning community.
This icon is the class feed in which users associated with this class can have general, class-wide discussions.
20) Upload Evidence
With this button students can quickly upload evidence to the activity such as videos, files, Google docs, etc.
21) Pin
Teachers or students can use the pin icon to give the tile primacy in the Next Up section. Pinned tiles will appear as the first tiles in the Next Up section. The main function of this is as a reminder for later or to call attention to the tile.
22) Playlist Browser
Expand this section to navigate the playlists assigned to this class/group. On the left are the different playlists and to the right, the selected playlist and its hierarchy can be seen and interacted with.
23) Need Help?
Tons of great resources here for all users.
24) Notepad
Here, learners can take notes in Empower and organize them by class/group.
25) Expand/Collapse Class/Group
When the class section is collapsed, this will appear as a "+"
When the section is expanded, it is shown as a "-"
Click to toggle.
26) User Profile
Users can edit their profiles here.
It is also possible to load student user images en masse and disable the students' ability to change their user image.
To do this, put a request in to the helpdesk and share there a folder containing student images. Each image must be titled with the student ID number matching the student ID in Empower.
27) My Learning Path
We cover this tab and all its constituent parts just below. Keep reading!
Student & Guardian Portal Annotated (My Learning Path)
1) Plus Delta
Empower has built into its software a “Plus/Delta” feedback button. This gives every user a simple way to communicate to the site administrator about their needs or feedback.
This feedback goes to someone local, not to the Empower team. However, if needed, the local administrator can elevate the need to Empower's helpdesk.
2) Graduation Pathway
If a district offers multiple pathways to graduation or curates different options for students with different career goals, Empower can adjust this page to display progress along those.
Learn more about setting up multiple Graduation Pathways in consultation with your Empower Representative.
3) Legend/Filter
This Legend refers to the color of the tiles shown below on the My Learning Path tab and the students' achievement in each.
4) Course Tile
Each tile represents a course. Courses in Empower are sets of standards which districts designate.
5) Course Progress
The bar represents the standards in this course and the student's progress through them. Mouse over it to see a bit more detail, and click on it to drill into the information.
Green: Proficient in the standard
Yellow: Some progress, but no proficient score yet.
Grey: No summative score yet in that standard.
6) Credits
The numerator here is the number of credits the student has received in this content area.
The denominator is the number of credits needed in the content area to graduate.
7) Learning Options
Click on the + to browse the course catalog from the school. Students may discover they have partial credit in certain courses in which they are not presently enrolled and may choose to select that course to be displayed on their interface so they can easily monitor progress.
Communication & Social Tools
Messaging
Learning is social - so is Empower. Woven throughout Empower is the ability to message others in your learning community.
WATCH A VIDEO about how to use these tools. You can also do more than simply message, you can CREATE POLLS and SAVE MESSAGES.
Some safety features are built-in to these tools. For example, guardians can only message their own learners and visa versa. Even if they are involved in a group chat, a student will not see a message from any guardians except their own.
Additionally, it is good to know that nothing on this social network is private. Admins can search and see all messages. WATCH A VIDEO about how to do that as well as turn other dials such as restricting roles and specific users and broadcasting messages.
Safety and Controls
Some safety features are built-in to these tools. For example, guardians can only message their own learners and visa versa. Even if they are involved in a group chat, a student will not see a message from any guardians except their own.
Additionally, it is good to know that nothing on this social network is private. Admins can search and see all messages.
Admins can also turn other dials such as restricting roles and specific users and broadcasting messages.
Additionally, it is good to know that nothing on this social network is private. Admins can search and see all messages.
Admins can also turn other dials such as restricting roles and specific users and broadcasting messages.
Email Push Notifications
Empower is able to send emails each week to parents and guardians. These emails can contain information regarding their students work. This is most commonly used to help report missing work, but it is possible to also include information about any work that has been scored in the past week. Which type of email notice would be most useful for your situation?
Empower has developed the ability to create and send emails to parents automatically. Once a week, email digests can be sent home to help parents stay in the loop regarding missing work or work that did not meet the teacher's expectations.
1. Draft the Push Email
If a weekly digest is going to be sent home, create a ticket through the Empower helpdesk that contains the body of the missing work email. Make sure you include the date and time you want the email to be sent home. If you want to use the template that Empower Learning suggests, please let them know in the help desk ticket. Below are examples of the default text.
2. Open a Ticket
When you open a ticket for this, the techs will require some additional information from you. The technical information that is required is:
a) UserName : (we recommend something like "noreply-empower@your domain.com")
b) Password :
c) Host :
d) Port No :
e) Enable SSL : Yes or No
b) Password :
c) Host :
d) Port No :
e) Enable SSL : Yes or No
They will also work with you through that ticket to make sure the wording in the email is as correct.
3. Test the Email
Setting up a test family, connected to your own email address is a good way to assign work, mark it as missing, and then see how the emails appear to parents.
This video shows how to create a family
4. Go Live
Once you have made sure the emails are ready for prime time, let us know on your original Parent Email helpdesk ticket that you are ready to go live.
Setting up the My Learning Tab
Fill out this spreadsheet and turn it in to the helpdesk.
Here is a link to a quick instructional video on how to fill out the spread sheet ...
Conferencing with Empower
How to pull up a Learner's Home Page, Progress Report, or Class Log through the Class Roster
1. After getting logged into Empower 3.0, left-click on the Reporting Tab (A), select the class/group (B), and then left-click on “Class/Group Roster” (C).
2. From the roster view, left-click on the student that you wish to look at and then left-click on home page, progress report, or class log for what you would like to view and show to the parent during the conference.
How to read the online Progress Report
*Your Online Progress Report may look slightly different as different districts use different features, language and metrics. This is simply an example.
Printing Progress Reports
Here's a simple way to get a printout of the online progress report.
Not all Printable Progress Reports may be available on your site. Site Administrators can request different reports be made available via our helpdesk.
Managing Accounts & Access
For a more in-depth discussion on user data and troubleshooting, please refer to our User Data article.
Before inviting company over, make sure you own furniture and the house is clean. In the same way, before you hand out access to Empower, you want to make sure the data that users will expect is in there. This may potentially included Courses, Classes, Emails and Standards. See above to learn how to check for most of those. Once you feel good about things, you will probably want to invite Teachers, Students and Guardians. That order is recommended.
Students and Guardians won't have much to see until Teachers have been in for a bit creating and gathering evidence. Additionally, Students are often the ones best suited to teach their parents how to use the system. This video shows a few ideas about distributing accounts.
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