Best Curriculum Management Software
Curriculum management software handles the development and implementation of curriculum for educational institutions. Both K–12 and higher education institutions use curriculum management solutions to deal with all tasks related to brainstorming, developing, integrating, and launching curriculum.
These solutions alleviate issues that accompany disparate curriculum development, and ensure there is a centralized repository of institution-approved documents to guide the process and help build comprehensive curricula. Curriculum management software includes task management, role assigning, approval, course catalog creation, mapping, version control, reporting, and analysis features to give educators a full complement of tools with which to develop, execute, and analyze curricula.
Curriculum management software often integrates with student management systems and learning management systems (LMS).
To qualify for inclusion in the Curriculum Management category, a product must:
Best Curriculum Management Software At A Glance
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- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
ThinkUp! curriculum (Grades 1-8) is a dynamic curriculum built upon a foundation of critical thinking. It was designed to develop students who can process and evaluate information at deeper levels, m
- Teacher
- Instructional Coach
- Primary/Secondary Education
- Education Management
- 47% Small-Business
- 41% Mid-Market
15,291 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Generate Lesson Plans & Other Educational Materials in Seconds Streamline your planning and prep with AI generated templates for lesson plans, writing prompts, educational handouts, student report
- 50% Small-Business
- 31% Enterprise
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Workday Student is an end-to-end student and faculty lifecycle information system that is designed to work seamlessly with Workday Financial Management, Workday Human Capital Management, Workday Payro
- Higher Education
- Education Management
- 46% Enterprise
- 43% Mid-Market
52,226 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
MasteryConnect provides formative assessment and competency-based learning solutions to educators around the world. The web-based mobile platform, which includes Socrative, was designed to help teache
- Teacher
- Education Management
- Primary/Secondary Education
- 54% Mid-Market
- 25% Enterprise
12,193 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Our goal is the same as yours: get the right information in front of the right people at the right time. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. Welcome to a better SIS and ERP experience.
- Teacher
- Special Education Teacher
- Education Management
- Primary/Secondary Education
- 54% Mid-Market
- 34% Enterprise
3,312 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Top Hat helps thousands of college and university instructors create their perfect course—one that engages students and builds comprehension inside and outside the classroom.
- Higher Education
- Education Management
- 43% Enterprise
- 30% Mid-Market
11,551 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
PlanbookEdu.com is an online lesson planner that makes it easy for teachers of all grade levels to create, share and print their lesson plans.
- Education Management
- Primary/Secondary Education
- 44% Mid-Market
- 33% Small-Business
896 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
The Kiddom Education Platform connects curriculum, instruction, and assessment in one place with integrated tools for communication. With Kiddom, schools and districts stay prepared for teaching and l
- Teacher
- Education Management
- Primary/Secondary Education
- 50% Small-Business
- 25% Mid-Market
2,288 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
LearnZillion is an education curriculum and software company with a mission to empower teachers to provide the education that every student deserves. It provides the materials, tools, and support that
- Education Management
- Primary/Secondary Education
- 55% Mid-Market
- 25% Enterprise
7,623 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Forethought is a curriculum and activity editor designed to make the process of creating and updating resources fast and easy.
- Primary/Secondary Education
- 62% Enterprise
- 31% Mid-Market
2,032 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Kuali is a suite of administrative systems and automated tools for higher education institutions.
- Higher Education
- 60% Enterprise
- 40% Mid-Market
1,341 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
OnCourse Lesson Planner improves the effectiveness of every lesson designed in your district. Save time for teachers and improve transparency for administrators and parents.
- Education Management
- 60% Mid-Market
- 20% Enterprise
3,665 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Classter is a comprehensive Student Information, School, and Learning Management System designed to streamline the administrative and educational processes within educational institutions. This all-in
- Education Management
- Higher Education
- 54% Small-Business
- 46% Mid-Market
38 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Solutions for education and business that serve facility-wide functions across multiple departments.
- 45% Mid-Market
- 45% Small-Business
46 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
With CourseLeaf Curriculum (CIM), reinvent the way you edit, track and approve new and existing courses and programs across campus. CIM, pronounced 'kim,' takes your curriculum management process onli
- 75% Mid-Market
- 25% Small-Business
199 Twitter followers
Learn More About Curriculum Management Software
What is Curriculum Management Software?
Curriculum management software handles the development and implementation of curriculum mapping for educational institutions. K–12 and higher education institutions use curriculum management systems to fulfill all student learning and engagement tasks.
These solutions alleviate issues accompanying disparate curriculum development, ensure a centralized repository of institution-approved documents to guide the process, and help build comprehensive curriculum plans and modules. Curriculum management software includes task management, role assigning, and course catalog creation. Many of these solutions also have mapping, version control, reporting, and analysis features, complementing educators with tools to develop, execute, and analyze curricula.
What Types of Curriculum Management Software Exist?
Closed-source curriculum management system
A closed-source curriculum management system is maintained by the vendor. Some of these solutions feature student licensing, which can be expensive due to the user fee per student. Vendors host closed-source versions of these systems on their servers and are responsible for managing and maintaining the platform. They also offer the benefit of strong external support in terms of tech support, should any technical challenges arise. The downside to a closed-source curriculum management solution is the limited integrations and customization.
Open-source curriculum management system
An open-source curriculum management system is freely distributed and can be maintained and customized by the user. Compared to closed-source solutions, these open-source solutions allow for greater accessibility and control. Educators can personalize the platform to suit their specific needs, with plugins and new functionalities able to be added immediately. Schools must have the proper infrastructure to run and support their open-source curriculum solution, particularly having an IT team familiar with the platform. Some open-source curriculum management systems offer specialized pricing for particular school types.
What are the Common Features of Curriculum Management Software?
The most common features of curriculum management software products include the following:
Curriculum mapping: Curriculum management systems typically allow users to plan an entire course. This will enable teachers to see the curriculum at different levels, from an individual lesson to the unit sequence for a whole year. Curriculums can be organized by class or subject.
Lesson plan templates: For creating individual lessons, many tools offer templates that guide an educator through important data points to include in each lesson plan. These fields could include the lesson's subject, relevant standards, the unit it belongs to, the date it will take place, and assessments. Depending on the author's needs, these templates may be customized with different fields.
File attachments: Users can add attachments to lessons or units so that those essential files are accessible in future years and for other viewers. A teacher might attach a PDF reading passage, a presentation file with lecture slides, or an image of a painting for students to analyze.
Curriculum sharing: To facilitate cross-teacher collaboration, curriculum management software tools allow users to share their plans with others, including teachers and administrators. This sharing is often accomplished through a web portal, meaning people can access the plans from anywhere.
Integrations: For products that serve higher education institutions, integrations with other products are key to providing access to the digital curriculums that professors create using curriculum management software. Curriculum platforms commonly integrate with learning management systems (LMS), which instructors use to distribute content to students. They may also integrate with student information systems and grade books to ensure a single source of truth when it comes to curriculum data.
What are the Benefits of Curriculum Management Software?
Curriculum organization: Teachers may use different content collaboration platforms for storing their lessons and materials, making it harder for instructors to share plans with each other. The naming and organization of those files may not be standardized or may have changed over time, which could make it challenging to find the right document. Curriculum management tools allow educators to organize their materials by topic or calendar date so teachers can quickly find the unit or lesson plan they need. Many tools also come with lesson plan drafting functions, so educators can fill out standardized fields and attach materials to the appropriate lessons, which helps keep the plans organized.
Realign plans to learning standards: K-12 teachers often incorporate learning standards into their curriculums when planning courses. State and national education officials create benchmarks to standardize the content and skills students learn at different schools. Many curriculum management tools come pre-loaded with standards from a variety of jurisdictions, giving teachers an accessible menu of standards to attach to various lessons. These standard libraries can save teachers significant time by having the information they need in one place, meaning they don’t need to locate and copy standards from a website.
Who Uses Curriculum Management Software?
Teachers and professors: The most likely users of curriculum management software are those writing the curriculum. These are typically teachers at the K-12 level and professors at the college level. Instructors use these tools to design their curriculum, plan individual lessons, add materials, and share their work with other educators.
Curriculum coordinators: School administrators responsible for overseeing curriculum development across an institution use curriculum software to get a higher-level view of educators’ course plans. A curriculum coordinator can use these tools to monitor the curriculums created or modified by individual teachers or teams. Having plans from multiple teachers available allows curriculum coordinators to spot redundancies or opportunities for collaboration.
Department chairs: Faculty who lead an academic department use curriculum management software similar to curriculum coordinators: to guide the development of the various curriculums that faculty in their department are creating. Access to up-to-date plans from multiple teachers streamlines the process of ensuring the curriculums meet the department’s standards.
Administrative evaluators: Supervisors often evaluate teachers and professors on their ability to plan effective instruction. An administrator responsible for evaluating educator performance might use curriculum management software to view an instructor’s plans as part of their professional review.
Software Related to Curriculum Management Software
Related software solutions that can be used together with curriculum management software include:
Student information systems (SIS): Student information systems (SIS) or student management systems track all student data. Teachers, students, parents, and educational institutes use these solutions. Through SIS integration of curriculum management systems, students, parents, and educators can access all relevant information to the school.
Learning management systems (LMS): Learning management systems (LMS) allow schools to access course material from anywhere. Educators rely on LMS for curriculum and content management and for allowing students to take control of the learning process.
Education ERP systems: Education ERP systems are used by employees in the school district office to manage the resources of the school district as a whole, as well as by office staff at individual schools. Colleges and universities often have employees in multiple offices who use one or more aspects of an ERP system, including enrollment, accreditation, and academic advising. Adding an integrated ERP system to a curriculum management software solution provides a seamless way to manage both course catalog management and school resources in a single system.
Challenges with Curriculum Management Software
As an education software tool, curriculum management software faces two key challenges to potential buyers: curriculum learning standards and a lack of educational software integrations.
Incomplete learning standards: In the United States, educators are responsible for curriculum mapping that aligns with the learning outcomes created by school district authorities. Each state’s government determines its standard learning requirements, there are dozens of different sets of standards, and a given curriculum product may not come pre-loaded with all of them. Suppose standards alignment is a focus for a school considering purchasing curriculum management software. In that case, administrators should investigate whether the potential curriculum management system has the standards that their teachers need to avoid the inefficient practice of copying and pasting standards from government websites.
Lack of integrations: Some curriculum management products integrate with a range of learning management systems, student information systems, and other edtech products, giving administrators the flexibility to use the tools with systems they already have. These integrations streamline sharing lessons, assignments, and assessments directly with students, so teachers don’t have to enter student information or find another avenue for sharing manually. However, some curriculum platforms may have few integrations or may lack integrations with the software a school uses, making it important for buyers to research a curriculum product’s integrations before purchasing.
How to Buy Curriculum Management Software
Identifying the teacher's exact needs may prove difficult, and that's the starting point of determining which curriculum management software to purchase. Suppose the school requires a software solution that measures student success based on curriculum plans. In that case, they can visit G2 to see a comparative analysis of what other institutes in the school district have purchased.
Once it is determined which specific features and curriculum tools would best serve the buyer, a criteria checklist should be developed, preferably by the institution's learning objectives. The list serves as a guide to remind the buyer of non-negotiable items such as built-in assessment capabilities or program accreditation requirements. In addition, supplying the teacher or professor with a syllabi resource library would also serve as a bonus feature.
Compare Curriculum Management Software Products
Buyers have multiple options to compare curriculum management systems; the first thing to identify is essential "must-haves."
Create a long list
Long lists are created by eliminating the options that do not provide critical functionality. For instance, buyers looking for curriculum management software should consider something other than software exclusively for course data entry. A typical long list should include at most ten products unless many options are similar. In this case, additional details like curriculum design or professor approval workflows can be used to eliminate vendors.
Create a short list
From the long list of curriculum management vendors, it is helpful to narrow the list of vendors and come up with a shorter list of contenders, preferably no more than five. With this list, schools can produce a matrix to compare the features and pricing of the various solutions. For buyers in the United States, this may be an excellent time to look at their prospective state's curriculum requirements.
Conduct demos
Demos are an excellent opportunity for buyers to see how curriculum management systems work. Buyers should determine whether the platform is open-sourced or closed-source during the demo. Only the shortlisted vendors are invited to demonstrate their software solutions. Demos should be performed live, using the system, not through slide decks and screenshots. All vendors should follow a predetermined scenario that illustrates the teacher and student experience. A typical procedure for curriculum management is to display real-time curriculum approval, then go through the integration steps with learning management systems.
Selection of Curriculum Management Software
Choose a selection team
Before purchasing a curriculum management software solution, the buyer must draft a successful software selection team to work together throughout the buying process. For institutes with multiple instructors teaching courses, curriculum development is typically a collaborative process in which teachers contribute their ideas to the curriculum plans.
Including numerous instructors in the selection team will be beneficial as they'll identify product efficiencies best suited for the institute. A good starting point at more prominent universities or school districts serving urban areas is to aim for three to five people in senior roles such as provost, academic advisors, or board of education members. The software selection team may be smaller at private institutes, with few participants multitasking and taking on more responsibilities.
With the continued growth of digital educational tools, finding a well-organized, easy-to-access, and up-to-date digital course curriculum software can be challenging for instructors at schools, colleges, and universities. The selection team should compare the software demos' notes, facts, and figures.
Negotiation
As some curriculum management tools offer customized pricing based on the school district or school type, opening up a pricing conversation is imperative. For example, the software provider may be willing to give a discount to private or charter schools.
Final decision
The final decision should be based on the information gathered and the institution's needs. During the final decision-making process, it is imperative to do a test run of the program to test software competencies for the instructors. Conducting a test run with a small sample size of users will ensure all needs are met. If the tool is well received, the buyer can be assured that the selection was correct. If not, repeat the process until a confident decision can be made.
