Since ICS was founded in 2012, we’ve been a hub for educational competitions across the nation. We design, facilitate and manage competitions that are complex and rigorous while remaining accessible, engaging and promoting student agency.
We believe in the power of challenge-based learning and the opportunities it creates for students. Through our competitions, we bring together students, educators, coaches, schools and organizations that share our passion for learning through challenge and real-world application.
Over the years, we’ve helped thousands of students discover their potential including winning scholarships, securing internships and job opportunities, developing new skills and experiencing the excitement of educational competitions managed not only by ICS, but other key organizations in the educational competition industry.
Now, we’re building on that work.
A New Chapter for ICS
For the past several months, we’ve been working behind the scenes on something new: a brand-new ICS platform designed to make participating in and managing educational competitions easier. Who doesn’t love some friendly competition?
Importantly, it’s not just for ICS competitions! Our platform is designed to support the broader world of educational competitions. Whether the competition is managed by ICS, hosted on the platform, or entirely separate, both students and schools can earn recognition for their work in the competition with new Badges and Leaderboards.
We’ve also launched a completely revamped website, introducing new tools and features for our community.
If you’ve logged into your ICS dashboard recently, you may have noticed that things look a little different! That’s because we’ve added a few new components to ICS: Badges, Leaderboards, and organization accounts to help recognize student and school level achievements.
Bringing a New Level of Competition to ICS
You may know someone (or maybe it’s you!) who checks ESPN regularly to keep up with sports rankings. We watch athletes earn awards for reaching milestones, breaking records, and showing off their skills.
So we asked ourselves: What could that look like for educational competitions? Why should that experience be limited to athletics?
With our new Badges and Leaderboards, we’re bringing that same sense of progress, achievement and friendly competition to the challenge-based learning community.
Students can earn points through qualifying awards, work toward new badge levels and see how their achievements contribute to their overall ranking. Leaderboards will allow students and organizations to see where they stand across different categories.
The goal isn’t simply to create another ranking system. It’s to give students a way to see their progress, showcase the skills they’re developing and celebrate the work they’re putting into competition.
One Platform, More Possibilities
The new ICS platform brings the many tools our community needs into one place.
Students can find and join competitions, track their progress and view their rankings. Educators, coaches and program leaders can manage programs, invite teammates and organize submissions. Organizations can also share and promote their programs and connect with expert consultants.
Our new dashboard is designed to make it easier to keep everything organized and to have a streamlined experience, with additional features such as calendar integration and smart recommendations available to help users stay on top of their programs.
Whether you’re preparing for your next competition, coaching a team, managing a program or watching your students climb the rankings, the new platform provides a centralized educational arena.
We’ve spent the last several months thinking about what our community needs and how we can make educational competition more accessible, organized and engaging.
This platform is the result of that work and we’ve only just reached kickoff!
Coming Up: A Three-Part Series
We’ll take a closer look at what’s new at ICS through a three-part series.
This is Part 1 of our three-part series introducing the new ICS platform. In this first article, we’ve introduced the platform and the ideas behind some of the biggest changes coming to ICS.
In Part 2, we’ll take a closer look at ICS Badges, how students earn them, what they represent and how they recognize the skills students demonstrate through educational competition.
In Part 3, we’ll dive into the new ICS Leaderboards, the reasoning behind it, the importance of challenge based learning and gamification of learning.
Be sure to check back soon for the rest of the series. We’re excited to share what we’ve been building and, most importantly, to see how it helps our community.
Welcome to the new ICS. Let the games begin!