Innovation in Action

Innovation in Faria Products

At Faria, our product strategy aligns directly with our mission to make education better and serve the future of education. Our strategic goals focus on providing transformative experiences for learners and educators, powered by data analytics and AI.

Solving Real Problems

Across our product family, we are committed to solving real problems for the users of our products. That might be helping an admissions team bring the right students into the school, using historical data to help them make better decisions. It could be giving teachers ideas for improving the learning outcomes for their students, by comparing past results with current plans. Maybe it’s letting parents follow their child’s progress on the bus ride home from school, with real-time tracking. For extra-curricular activities, the improvement might be more fairness in the process for registration, through sophisticated signup options tailored to the school’s goals. With each of our products, we use the power of our technology to help schools serve their students more effectively.

AI as a Tool, Not a Feature

We’re investing heavily in AI as a tool for making ourselves better, in addition to helping everyone who uses our products. AI isn’t a purpose or goal on its own and AI is not a feature by itself. It’s a tool – probably the most powerful new technology tool of this century. We are committed to bringing the promise of this tool into the classroom, into the admissions process, and into curriculum planning. We’ll also combine AI with rich data showing what happens in the school, to provide insights to school leadership that help them shape their future priorities.

Innovation in Action

Our commitment to innovation is already taking shape across our products. From this fall, we will be rolling out AI-enhanced features across our product suite including:

• ManageBac+ is expanding its AI capabilities. Building on the AI tools already in ManageBac+, such as the AI Grade Descriptor, we’re introducing our AI Assistant. In its first release, AI Assistant will help you navigate the platform and make the most of your data. Located in a new right-hand side panel, it allows you to quickly ask questions about the information displayed on your screen, whether that’s a summary of your day, or deeper insights from our new Academic Analytics. And as it’s context and role aware, you’ll get insights that are relevant to you and your task.
• OpenApply AI Analyst transforms how schools explore, compare, and act on admissions data. Using a privacy-first, AI-powered interface, teams can ask questions in plain English to filter, group, and break down conversion funnel data by fields such as gender, grade, campus, nationality, and language, without navigating complex filters or spreadsheets. AI Analyst equips schools with a fast, intuitive, and secure way to turn complex admissions data into actionable insights. Teams can make smarter, data-driven decisions with confidence, boosting enrollment, improving student recruitment strategy, and safeguarding applicant privacy.
• Atlas AI in Assessments and Checklists will build on the helpful AI writing support you know from Units and Lessons to the Assessments and Checklists sections. Planning assessments and checklists can be time-consuming. This AI boost will give you a smart starting point, so you can work faster and focus more on fine-tuning than starting from scratch. With just a click, you’ll be able to generate thoughtful, relevant content tailored to your unit, all based on what you’ve already written. Coming this winter.
• Faria SpotLight, our new Analytics Solution, illuminates the “why” behind student performance. Faria SpotLight transforms fragmented school data into actionable intelligence by seamlessly connecting admissions, extracurricular data, and academic results across the Faria ecosystem. Unlike generic analytics tools, SpotLight will draw on the rich, integrated data from ManageBac+, OpenApply, and SchoolsBuddy to surface correlations that matter to educators and leadership teams. Its AI Analyst will enable natural language queries to generate reports, summaries and data exploration making the data easily accessible. Coming this fall.
• To support schools in a world shaped by AI, we will be introducing whole-school, strategic, ethical and responsible support. We’ll be offering both AI Professional Development and a fully-articulated AI Curriculum, so schools become AI-Informed, AI-Safe and AI-Empowered.

Developing our Integrations Ecosystem

One of our strategic goals is to provide an integrated suite of offerings to help schools operate more effectively. Our focus is primarily with information about students and learning, covering the students’ entire journey through a school.

Historically, Faria has offered individual point products, with limited integration among them. We’ve taken significant steps to improve this. Our strategy for integrations is to build a healthy ecosystem that empowers schools to tap into local expertise and IT teams, while also investing in powerful turnkey solutions with our strategic partners such as our Google Classroom Integration with Edlink. Read more about our integration work in Adam Morris’ blog.

Give us Your Feedback
And to keep our technology human-centred, we’ve launched Product Roadmap Boards, giving schools a voice in our roadmap with the ability to share feedback, request new features, and shape the tools they use every day. You can find our Roadmap boards here:

• ManageBac+ Product Roadmap Board
• OpenApply Product Roadmap Board
• Atlas Product Roadmap Board
• SchoolsBuddy Product Roadmap Board

Our relentless pursuit of better powers our development of the innovative features we’re delivering across our product family. Over the coming months you’ll see updates from our suite of products, coupled with the launch of our newest offering: Faria SpotLight.

Darly Orts
Chief Product and Technology Officer
Faria Education Group