USBE staff demonstrate Utah Compose writing tool for teachers
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Summary
Utah State Board of Education staff gave a live demonstration of Utah Compose for roughly 76 teachers, covering account setup, prompt creation, the scoring engine, peer review, reporting and support resources; the system provides immediate automated feedback and teacher-controlled settings for drafts, timers and peer review.
MARIE, the Utah State Board of Education staff contact for Utah Compose, demonstrated the Utah Compose formative-writing platform in a virtual training attended by about 76 teachers. She walked teachers through account registration, assigning and editing prompts, scoring and feedback features, peer review configuration, reports and support resources.
Marie said, “Utah Compose is a formative assessment tool to help you, help your students practice and improve their writing.” She showed how the platform gives students immediate, automated feedback on spelling and grammar and provides trait scores with linked lessons for targeted remediation.
Why it matters: Utah Compose is presented as both classroom practice and test preparation; Marie said it resembles the RISE writing assessment interface for grades 5 and 8 and therefore can be used to prepare students for that statewide exam.
The demonstration covered key operational details teachers will use when they adopt the tool. Teachers register using credentials that must match the state student-information records used for verification; once signed in they choose to sign in as teacher or student. Student usernames use the state student ID prefixed with three zeros; the initial password defaults to that same string and can be reset by students or by teachers from the admin interface.
On prompts and assignments, Marie showed that teachers can use prepackaged prompts, edit them, or add custom prompts. Prompts have settings for assignment scope (individual students or whole class), due dates, timers (default 60 minutes; adjustable from 0 to 90), permitted copy/paste, required graphic organizers for prewriting, draft limits (default 30; configurable to 1–99), and whether students must mark an essay as finalized. Peer review is enabled by default but can be disabled; teachers can create or randomize peer-review groups and edit the review questions and sentence starters.
The scoring engine provides inline grammar and spelling highlights and a six-trait bar-chart report with an overall score. Marie showed that the engine’s feedback links to lessons teachers can assign; teachers can also add their own three-star rubric scores and private comments that do not alter the automated score. Reports include class- and prompt-level views, monthly comparisons, usage metrics, draft counts and an exportable CSV for custom analysis.
Teachers can view student writing history, filter by student or prompt, view drafts and peer-review progress, and receive notifications for submitted drafts and student messages. The student interface shows assigned prompts first and, if a graphic organizer is required, prevents students from beginning the draft until they complete it; completed graphic organizers can be printed or filled out online and then saved to the writing screen.
Marie described a support center embedded in the platform with searchable help articles, scoring rubrics, lesson previews and sample essays. She identified herself as the first contact at USBE for account or access issues and said that Utah Compose also maintains a help desk for additional technical or content support. The platform is available year-round except for July and August.
Questions from teachers focused on classroom frequency and integration with instruction; Marie and an attending teacher (Maureen) agreed usage varies by teacher, from weekly writing practice to occasional test-prep sessions.
Ending note: Marie said USBE will follow up with a content specialist to provide additional standards-aligned training once the temporary vacancy in the assessment department is filled, and encouraged teachers to contact her or the Utah Compose help center with questions.
