Most assessment stops at right or wrong. This case study, written in conjunction with Imagine Learning, explains how integrating our Diagnostic Engine into Imagine IM's Knowledge Checks gives teachers insights into the specific misconception behind each error a student makes, and accurate predictions about the misconceptions in the way of what students learn next.
What:
Based on Illustrative Math, Imagine IM is one of the richest, most high quality instructional programs on the market.
We've integrated our Diagnostic Engine within Imagine Learning's Imagine IM program to provide Imagine IM Knowledge Checks: short, adaptive quizzes that identify the prerequisite misconceptions and skill gaps connected to students' upcoming learning. These insights allow teachers to anticipate where students will struggle and adjust future lessons or incorporate intervention and personalization strategies to help.
Teachers make instructional decisions every day based on what students know, what they misunderstand, and what they need next. But most assessment stops at whether an answer is correct or incorrect, leaving the underlying misconception hidden.
Knowledge Checks close that gap. They help teachers see why students are struggling, and connect that insight to timely instructional support. Reducing the time between taking an assessment and being able to act on it with a relevant intervention serves both students and teachers. Teachers save time and deepen their insight into student thinking, enabling more rigorous and relevant learning for students.
Conventional assessment can tell a teacher who got a question wrong, but often not why, or what that misconception may mean for the learning that comes next.
Imagine Learning was looking for ways to bring assessment into instruction to drive planning and intervention and to support teachers in achieving better outcomes for students. Making assessment data more actionable presented an opportunity to enable more powerful instruction and intervention strategies. Rather than asking teachers to integrate another tool, Imagine Learning wanted to incorporate insights from the instruction that was already happening in classrooms.
By integrating Eedi's Diagnostic Engine into Imagine IM, we effectively embedded the assessment inside the primary tool of instruction and inside the core curriculum. This saves teachers a lot of time and removes the need to move between tools when moving between instruction and assessment.
It also saves teachers time by making responses to the existing questions more insightful. Teachers are getting more data. They're also getting more insights on each student's specific weaknesses and knowledge gaps in real time, when they need them.
The result is a coherent instructional workflow rather than a bolt-on: diagnose the misconception, understand its instructional implications, and take targeted action.
Eedi's Diagnostic Engine combines diagnostic questions, misconception information, and predictive models to provide insights that complement Imagine Learning's Curriculum-Informed AI™ approach within Imagine IM.
The diagnostic questions. Each diagnostic question contains misconception labels as well as student and teacher facing explanations for when a student gets something wrong. The questions use carefully constructed distractors, designed so that each incorrect option distinguishes between different misconceptions a student might hold. Just by answering the question, teachers get an insight into what happened with a student, where their knowledge gap exists and why, not just whether they got the question right or wrong.
Insights around predictions. Eedi's Diagnostic Engine offers insights based on the questions students have been asked, but also based on questions students haven't seen yet.
Both of these save teachers time and provide better insights into student thinking and knowledge gaps.
Offering better insights into student learning is the core value Eedi is delivering to Imagine IM, while creating a more rigorous, engaging and personalized learning experience is Imagine Learning's own expertise.
Imagine Learning knows their students, their teachers and their products. They also know that by providing deeper insights, they save more time for teachers and ensure their students have a much more engaging learning experience.
Together, Eedi and Imagine Learning are empowering teachers to do their best work and to achieve better student outcomes.
The diagnostic methodology behind Knowledge Checks draws on more than a decade of Eedi research and development into identifying mathematical misconceptions while Imagine Learning’s ClassMate tools combine learning science, pedagogy, knowledge modeling and machine learning to power differentiated teaching strategies for individual, small group, and whole class instruction.
This approach is supported by published research and independent efficacy evidence. A randomized controlled trial of Eedi's diagnostic-learning platform, involving 2,901 students across 20 UK schools, found statistically significant gains in mathematics achievement. That study evaluated Eedi's own platform rather than Imagine IM Knowledge Checks, so it stands as independent evidence for the misconception-centered diagnostic methodology that informs this experience.
Imagine Learning integrated our Diagnostic Engine so that teachers can quickly, easily, and invisibly assign diagnostic questions to students, as part of a short section quiz. Students see questions relevant to the topic their teacher is currently teaching. At the end of that quiz we return results to those questions and predictions about the misconceptions students are likely to hold going into the next topic. This can help teachers anticipate where students may encounter difficulty and which prerequisite misconceptions may require attention as they move into the next topic, allowing teachers to plan support accordingly.
From there, teachers can use ClassMate's curriculum-informed tools to find aligned resources, create additional practice, consider differentiation strategies, or plan instructional support, while decisions about instruction, intervention, grouping, and pacing remain with the teacher.
Safeguarding and student privacy are foundational to the experience. Student information is not used to train external AI models, and the experience is designed to comply with FERPA, COPPA and applicable state student privacy requirements. Authentication occurs through existing Imagine Learning accounts, and regular third-party audits verify Imagine Learning's security practices. AI features can be enabled or disabled according to local policies and priorities.
Imagine Learning is a member of the EDSAFE AI Industry Council, reflecting its commitment to responsible AI and the protection of student information.
The principle running through the design is that AI extends what teachers can see, rather than replacing their judgment. Knowledge Checks make student thinking more visible. What happens next stays with the educator.
The mapping work we've done between our diagnostic questions and Imagine Learning's curriculum is making sure that the questions posed to students are the relevant questions. We know the curriculum and the topics they're studying. We know the questions we're asking are relevant to that topic and that the questions we're predicting are also relevant. Getting this mapping right involved close coordination between Imagine Learning and Eedi.
A true instructional partnership. Between our instructional experts and Imagine Learning's instructional experts, we understand the appropriate content and misconceptions that are aligned to the IM product. We share instructional expertise that, combined with Imagine Learning, yields great results. This is not a generic product, it's tailored and aligned through partnership.
The design was also validated with educators. Seventeen members of Imagine Learning's K-12 Math Research Advisory Board reviewed the experience and consistently saw Knowledge Checks as a formative tool that could help them identify misconceptions, determine whether reteaching was necessary, adjust pacing, create meaningful student groups and target intervention. Asked how they would want students supported after a Knowledge Check, eleven of the seventeen preferred support focused on resolving the underlying misconception, compared with six who preferred returning students directly to the questions they missed. Educators cited deeper conceptual development, stronger understanding and greater potential for lasting learning.
That is teachers independently endorsing the principle the Diagnostic Engine is built on.
Eedi and Imagine Learning began working together in earnest in January of 2026. From there, both teams built quickly together, and Imagine IM Knowledge Checks shipped for back to school 2026, launching on August 3.
That pace was possible because the two organizations were aligned on the vision from the outset and each brought deep expertise - Imagine Learning in curriculum and instruction, Eedi in diagnostics and misconception research. It's a signal of how fast both organizations can move when the goal is impact for learners.
Since launching at the start of the 2026-27 school year, we see that educators are now entering the Knowledge Check workflow and progressing from discovery into setup and assignment-related actions. These promising early indicators signal that teachers are building the diagnostic experience into their instructional practice.
Imagine Learning will continue to measure adoption and engagement as implementation expands through the school year, and as partners we will work closely on the feedback from teachers and students.
Districts are looking for ways to empower teachers and improve learning outcomes. Knowledge Checks bring specialized diagnostic insight into the Imagine IM instructional experience, helping educators better understand prerequisite misconceptions and make more informed decisions about what students may need next.
Watch this Imagine Learning video to see how Eedi's Diagnostic Engine powers Imagine IM Knowledge Checks, giving teachers insights into the specific misconceptions their students hold.
