Here at Beanstack, we’re committed to motivating students to form healthy reading habits and giving educators tools to ensure accuracy and accountability in students’ reading logs. We think critically about upholding reading integrity and decreasing instances of fraudulent logging while maintaining the fun and joy of reading. We ask questions, assess reading data, and implement our learning by developing impactful reading integrity features that don’t compromise students’ reading independence.
The Data Behind Fraudulent Logging
When analyzing data from school Beanstack sites during the school year, we discovered that 0.8% of all student readers across the platform created a fraudulent log, which we defined as exceeding the school’s customizable logging limit in a single day. Every school’s warning level and limit vary widely, with some reading less than an hour daily. This means that many true reading logs, where realistic amounts of reading were added, were captured in our conservative analysis.
Fraudulent logging occurred at 33% of Beanstack school sites. Out of those schools, more than half had fewer than 5 cases of fraudulent logging, entered by less than 3 students during the whole school year. Most of these students add fraudulent logs during a single day.
Inflated or dishonest independent reading can happen no matter how students record their reading. Paper reading logs, online quizzes on platforms like Accelerated Reader, and even basic verification questions can be gamed. Technology solutions can never fully replace teachers, librarians, and other school staff members’ critical role in interacting with students and encouraging the values of honesty and accountability in self-reported assignments—but we can provide tools that empower educators by increasing transparency, easing their workload, and reducing the opportunities for fraudulent logging.
How Beanstack Keeps Readers Accountable
Our built-in reading integrity tools increase schools’ confidence in their results without diminishing reading independence, a crucial building block for creating lifelong readers. Knowing that each community is different, we offer multiple levels of verification and validation to suit every school’s unique needs.
Easy to Review Flagged Entries
Our unique system helps identify potential fraudulent logging by analyzing factors like unusually short titles, logs exceeding school limits, and titles excessively long or containing gibberish without a valid ISBN. Although less than 1% of Beanstack users have flagged entries, educators and admins can rest assured that reviewing them won’t consume their valuable time.
Once they take a closer look, administrators can remove a flag, edit a log, or delete it entirely. These actions can be completed in bulk if necessary. We know that talking to your students is the best way to combat fraudulent logging. Our simple yet effective system provides clear, actionable insights, allowing you to focus your energy on students rather than combing through data.
Reading Log Verification and Freezing
Our Verification and Freezing feature is designed to help manage student participation while maintaining reading integrity. With Verification, admins can confirm that a student's reading activity is honest, allowing enthusiastic readers to exceed school-imposed logging limits. When verified, a blue checkmark appears next to the student's name in Beanstack, providing a great way to celebrate your most active readers.
The Freezing feature temporarily restricts access to Beanstack for 10 days, addressing dishonest logging by preventing students from logging during this period. A message informs the student of the freeze and the inability to log their reading, and admins can unfreeze the account anytime.
Interestingly, data shows that more Beanstack admins are verifying readers than freezing them, using these tools to encourage and celebrate super readers rather than penalize dishonest readers
Customizable Reading Log Limits
Every school site can set its own custom logging warning levels and limits directly within the admin dashboard. When students input reading that surpasses their site’s logging warning level, they see a message asking them to check a box promising that it’s true and accurate before saving. That entry is then flagged for their teachers and administrators to review, both on the admin view of their log and within a flagged entries report that can be viewed on-demand or scheduled regularly for busy educators. Flagged entries, just like any entry, can be edited at any time by students, parents, teachers, or school administrators.
Schools can also prevent readers from logging more than a set amount of reading with a logging limit. When students try to save a reading session that surpasses that limit, they’re informed that they can’t log this amount of reading and must edit their entered reading to be below the limit to save.
Enhance Reading Engagement with Accurate Logging
Beanstack also provides additional methods to enhance reading engagement while ensuring accurate logging. Book Reviews encourage students to think critically about their reading material. By setting a minimum character count for reviews, and upon approval, students can share their insights with peers. Short-answer activities further support independent reading. Open-text submissions allow students to reflect, adding more depth to their assignments. Reading Validation Challenges offer an enjoyable way to assess students' reading comprehension. Simple fill-in-the-blank questions can verify their progress while keeping them interested.
Let’s Connect
Our team is always working to make Beanstack better for its users, including digging into hard questions, openly sharing our data, and giving progress updates on our solutions. We’re continuously evaluating reading integrity challenges and implementing innovative solutions to better support students, teachers, school districts, and entire communities.
We’d love to hear from you about your experience using Beanstack to instill honest reading habits and your ideas for future product development. Reach out to us at schoolsuccess@zoobean.com. Not a Beanstack partner, but interested in our reading motivation and integrity solutions? Get in touch today!