This content was written prior to the renaming of Watermark products in July 2021, and refers to an old product name. To learn more about the new names for Watermark products, read our press release here.
With this move, Watermark accelerates work toward a comprehensive educational intelligence system and becomes the market leader in outcomes assessment, course evaluation, and faculty activity reporting solutions.
NEW YORK, NY—July 18, 2018 – Today Watermark announced that EvaluationKIT, the leading provider of enterprise online course evaluation and survey software for educational institutions, has joined the Watermark family. EvaluationKIT had been recognized this past June by SIIA as an Education Technology CODiE Award Winner for the 2018 Best Higher Education Enterprise Solution. With this addition, Watermark becomes the market leader in outcomes assessment, course evaluation, and faculty activity reporting solutions to help colleges and universities streamline core institutional processes while capturing and using better data to drive improvements at all levels of the institution.
Founded by Kevin Hoffman and Matt Rahdar in 2007, EvaluationKIT has been driven by a mission to empower institutions with robust and easy-to-use technology to support course evaluation and institutional survey needs. A two-time SIIA CODiE Award winner and integrated with all leading higher education learning management systems, EvaluationKIT provides a complete online solution for administrators to create and distribute surveys across the entire campus and automate information-rich reporting for faculty. Today, millions of users, including students, instructors, department chairs, IT and LMS administrators, deans, and provosts at over 400 educational institutions around the world are using EvaluationKIT to generate actionable insights and improve teaching and learning.
“For more than 20 years, Kevin has been working to support and improve student feedback processes in education. He is recognized as one of the leading authorities in online course evaluation, from his early work in this area launching the first large-scale adoptions in U.S. higher education to building EvaluationKIT as the leader in this product category. I greatly respect the contributions Kevin and his group continue to make in this space,” said Kevin Michielsen, CEO of Watermark.
“That kind of experience aligns well with our mission to help institutions engage in meaningful feedback practices in order to gather, organize, and use data to improve student and institutional outcomes. In combining our experience with that of EvaluationKIT, we’re working hard to bring together a more comprehensive set of solutions that better support the higher ed community,” said Michielsen.
Kevin Hoffman, EvaluationKIT’s CEO and Co-founder, commented, “We are excited to be joining the Watermark family and plan to continue our mission to provide the leading software solution for institutions to collect and report on student feedback for course evaluation and institutional survey needs. At the same time, we recognize the value of merging this process with other streams of institutional data to provide even more powerful insights and efficiencies for institutions. This is what is truly thrilling about becoming a part of Watermark and the vision for an integrated educational intelligence system that empowers administrators, faculty, and students with better-connected data to make evidence-based decisions and drive improvements.”
In 2017, the three largest providers of ePortfolio and assessment management solutions for higher education –Taskstream, Tk20, and LiveText – joined forces to become what is now Watermark. Last month, Digital Measures, the leading provider of web-based faculty activity reporting software, joined Watermark. Now with EvaluationKIT, the leading provider of course evaluation and institutional survey software, Watermark can better serve higher education institutions with an expanded set of solutions.
Watermark has over 75 years of combined experience serving higher education and more than 1,600 unique partner institutions worldwide. This increase in size, resources, and expertise allows Watermark to provide institutions with more extensive data and meaningful insights to drive improvements at all levels.
“Like Watermark, EvaluationKIT is focused on helping their partner institutions optimize outcomes and effect positive changes through the use of feedback and data,” said Nari Ansari, Principal at TCV – Watermark’s chief majority investor. “Together, Watermark will work toward a comprehensive, integrated educational intelligence system that provides a more holistic view of learning and institutional quality to enable continuous improvement initiatives at colleges and universities.”
About Watermark
Watermark’s mission is to put better data into the hands of administrators, faculty, and learners everywhere in order to empower them to connect information and gain insights into learning which will drive meaningful improvements. Through its innovative educational intelligence platform, Watermark supports institutions in developing an intentional approach to learning and development based on data they can trust. For more information, visit www.watermarkinsights.com.
About EvaluationKIT
EvaluationKIT is the leading provider of enterprise online course evaluation and survey software to over 400 educational institutions. Easy to implement and straightforward to manage, EvaluationKIT includes a variety of features proven to drive response rates, with turnkey integrations for learning management systems and a robust suite of reporting functionality. For more information, visit www.EvaluationKIT.com.
