We recently announced our new student interest tool, InterestID, which provides lesson recommendations to teachers based on their students’ favorite interests. We wanted to dig in a little deeper to give you a tutorial and some ideas for using the tool in your classroom.

Ideas for Using InterestID:

• A great time to use InterestID is at the start of the new school year, a new quarter/semester or when a new student joins your class to get to know them.
• Concerning when specifically students go into the tool to rate their interests, a few ideas are: at the beginning of the day when everyone’s getting settled, if they finish a task early, if they get computer lab time, or even as a fun homework assignment.
• You might also consider having your students express their interests in the book category right before starting a new class read aloud, literature groups, or other reading assignments.

Getting Started – Class Manager
To get started, you’ll first need to create a class. Click the Class Manager icon from within your My NextLesson dashboard.

Next, create your class:

1. Click the “Add a Class” button in the left bar.
2. Enter the information for your class including a name, school year, term, grades, and select a picture and click “save.”
3. Note the Join Code you are provided with. This is how your students join your class.

Add students to your class:
Students can begin liking their interests at any time. These ratings will be saved within their accounts. However, for you as a teacher to view student interests and get lesson recommendations, your students need to join your class.

1. Ask students to go to the Class Manager from their My NextLesson account.
2. Have them enter the join code for your class in the text box near the top left corner:

Student Voice – InterestID Browser

• By default, the InterestID browser has all categories selected and displays only unrated items. Students can select a category to find what they really like.
• Students can like or dislike different interests by clicking the thumbs up and thumbs down icon below the picture of each interest.
• Near the top of the page, students can search for specific interests in the search bar or select categories near the top of the page to see only interests in those categories.
• If an interest cannot be found, click the “Add an interest” button to add an interest. These added interests will help us decide which new lessons we should develop.
• On the left, you’ll see a “Narrow Results” toolbar. Here you can choose to view only your liked or disliked interests, interests already in the InterestID browser, interests you have added and can refine the interests shown through subcategories related to the category you’re in.
• When you rate an interest, those interests move from the Not Rated to My Likes/My Dislikes in the Narrow Results toolbar.
• When you add an interest, those interests move to your “My Added interests” in the Narrow Results toolbar.

See the Results – InterestID Report
In the InterestID Report, you can view your students’ interests as a class or by individual student, and find recommended lessons.

1. Navigate to the InterestID Report either by clicking “InterestID Report” in the Related apps dropdown in the top of the Class Management tool or by clicking the InterestID icon in your My NextLesson dashboard.
2. If you have multiple classes, select the class you’d like the view an interest report for in the green drop down menu at the top of the page.
3. Select whether you would like to view a report for All Students or an individual student in the purple drop down menu at the top of the page.

Viewing student interests:

• A high-level summary is included below the class/student selector drop downs. This shows you that class or student’s most popular interest categories. In addition, you’ll see the number of interests liked in each category and the percentage of interests that fall into that category. By default, only the top five are shown, but you can click “show all” to see the full list.
• Under Recommended Lessons, you can select a date range to view student interest information within a certain time period. This comes in handy if you have students rate interests at different points throughout the year to see change over time, or if you’ve assigned rating interests for homework and want to see what they liked.
• You’ll also see interest categories again under the Recommended Lessons. Here, you can click on an interest category to view the individual interests your students liked within that category. These are shown in order based on popularity.
• When you click on one of the individual interests, you are shown recommended lessons that feature that particular interest. If you are looking for a lesson for a particular grade level or subject area, you can use the filters on the right.
• Clicking on a lesson will open a new window with the description page for that lesson, which details an overview of the lesson, standards addressed, preview options and price.