# DnA Reviews **Vendor:** Renaissance Learning **Category:** [Assessment Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/assessment) **Average Rating:** 3.9/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 16 ## About DnA DnA is a K–12 standards-based assessment creation and administration platform providing instant scoring, formative feedback, and interactive reporting. Districts can use DnA’s high-quality, standards-based assessment content to build assessments tightly aligned to their scope and sequence—or choose to customize DnA’s prebuilt assessments—for information-rich data on student learning. Prebuilt reports give instant visibility into standards mastery, and custom reporting offers a holistic view of performance across assessments. DnA also offers built-in distractor rationales to guide in-the-moment feedback, content authoring, and live proctoring, forming a complete solution to accelerate standards mastery. ## DnA Reviews ### 1. Works Well… Need Practice to Navigate **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sarah D. | Teacher, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 20, 2022 **What do you like best about DnA?** There are numerous reports for data that can be pulled. You can look at student assessment scores on a whole group, selected group, individual, or special population basis based on the type of report you run. Assessments from various points through out the year can be pulled simultaneously for comparison. **What do you dislike about DnA?** The reports are difficult to navigate because there are so many to choose from and the titles of them are no necessarily descriptive. It would be easier to navigate if a brief description of each report was given beside its title instead of having to click on the report title and taken to a whole other tab in the browser to see it defined. **What problems is DnA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Keeping up with student data in an effort to compare growth and achievement has been solved using Illuminate. The scanning of assessments is simplified for teachers to use. ### 2. Amazing platform and very modern **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ivan S. | Inclusion Specialist Teacher, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 28, 2021 **What do you like best about DnA?** Illuminate is very easy to use with friendly modern Ui **What do you dislike about DnA?** It can be difficult to manage and look for the data you need by clicking through various pages until you find what you need. It was hard to find rosters **What problems is DnA solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps solving with grading integration with google. It was easier to grade all at once. ### 3. One-stop-shop for creating and accessing assessments and data **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 26, 2019 **What do you like best about DnA?** Illuminate has an easy-to-use interface. Creating assessments is a breeze (there seems to have been a recent face-lift for these options; doing so is now much easier than it was in 2018). Capturing data is also very easy, and users have multiple ways to capture and cross-reference several types of data. **What do you dislike about DnA?** I currently use Illuminate to create assessments but am hesitant to use the platform to administer the assessments because the software does not currently offer a way to lock access to other programs, such as the internet. Student use of the internet to cheat during an assessment is a concern, so assessments created in Illuminate are typically administered via paper. This limits my ability to use Illuminate to assessment creation and data gathering only. It would be great if I could administer and have assessments immediately graded via Illuminate. **Recommendations to others considering DnA:** Illuminate is a rich tool that allows the user to capture data to inform instruction. In addition to being able to create assessments and capture assessment data, Illuminate can also be used to generate parent letters to communicate student progress. **What problems is DnA solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a teacher, assessment data is used to inform instruction. Illuminate allows me to capture and cross-reference data for use in instruction, which contributes to better instructional and learning outcomes. ### 4. Confusing, glitchy, not user friendly **Rating:** 0.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2019 **What do you like best about DnA?** I like the pie charts that are automatically created but that’s about it. **What do you dislike about DnA?** Where to begin? It’s nearly impossible to search for data, the parts of a spreadsheet don’t align, it often glitches and doesn’t save...this software makes data input a miserable experience **What problems is DnA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am able to see what my students work on. ### 5. Plesantly surprised **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Terica B. | Data Services Coordinator, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 29, 2018 **What do you like best about DnA?** It's ease of use. I was ready to put up my defenses and prepare for several challenges, but that did not happen. The implementation went very well and it is so easy to use. The best part is uploading data. There are templates for state data and it's easy for you to import custom data. As long as you can save it using an Excel spreadsheet, you are good to go. **What do you dislike about DnA?** Like any software, there is always cleanup to make sure your data is transferring over, but it's not that bad and it gives you many tips on where to find the problem and how to fix it. It's easy to see what the data errors. Everything loads on one page, quickly. **What problems is DnA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Moving all of our assessment data to one location so our staff does not have to login to several systems to retrieve the information. With this tool, they do not have to figure out the analysis, it is done for them. ### 6. Requires a lot o training **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michelle Z. | Reading Specialist, Education Management, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 04, 2019 **What do you like best about DnA?** It has the potential to run great reports and tobuild assessments. **What do you dislike about DnA?** It does not allow sufficient drill-down like on eof the products that it recently acquired, eduCLIMBER. Getting things customized requires votes after innovations requests are customized and there is no guaranty that they will happen. Filtering sometimes messes up the reports. **Recommendations to others considering DnA:** EduCLIMBER is the most important data tool that they make. If you want to design your own CFAs and have Mastery Manager, the DNA portion might be an expensive redundancy. **What problems is DnA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Offering the ability to create common formative assessments across classrooms and schools. It warehouses our data. ### 7. Illuminate review **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 24, 2019 **What do you like best about DnA?** Good system for giving assessments and data collection **What do you dislike about DnA?** Not a user-friendly software for creating assessments **What problems is DnA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Great way to create and administer assessments across many schools ### 8. Versatile and efficient! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kassandra L. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 12, 2018 **What do you like best about DnA?** What I like the most are the various types of searches, filters, and methods to evaluate and gather data. I work as a college adviser at a school and must keep different records and data for each student in my caseload, so the flexibility in the types of reports I can download is great. I also like the layout of the program with colorful tiles in the home page and side bar options, it looks well organized. **What do you dislike about DnA?** I am a beginner, and sometimes the searches or options for searches are not intuitive. Figuring it out on my own takes a long time and I usually need to ask a coworker or superviser how to find certain data, since there are very specific ways to go about certain searches. **Recommendations to others considering DnA:** I recommend this software, especially in schools. **What problems is DnA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have been able to find and download whole school rosters with specific student demographics of interest for the off site partner organization that I am a part of. The ability to download Excel sheets of the reports I need immediately and directly onto my computer has made my work more efficient, because I need to transfer data onto another database for the partnering organization that I work for. It has helped create other spreadsheets to keep track of student data and student progress for follow up meetings with them. Because of this, I have been able to compile that information faster. ### 9. Great Resource **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Judy S. | Customer Relations, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2019 **What do you like best about DnA?** Illuminate has a ton of resources and questions available for testing. The tests are fairly easy to set up and administer to students online. The questions are all aligned to GA state standards. It's easy to make sure the students are being tested on what they would have learned. **What do you dislike about DnA?** Because there are so many question options, it's often difficult to narrow down question choices. **What problems is DnA solving and how is that benefiting you?** It allows teachers to test students with grade level type questions. ### 10. damn i'm amazed by how far our knowledge has come **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Angeliki L. | make a comic without being a professional!, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 26, 2018 **What do you like best about DnA?** That it will provide both a table of gene expression values as well as graph WT and mutant genotypes by expression level. Also important is that the software will normalize data- otherwise none of the data would be significant if we hadn't accounted for the normalization, i.e. in case transcription happened to occur more times within one sample than in another and we had to normalize such that all the samples have the same number of "reads." **What do you dislike about DnA?** Absolutely nothing- the raw data is a little bit difficult to understand as it outputs as just lines of data but that isn't an issue at all since the only raw data we care about are tables of gene expression values. **What problems is DnA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Rna and DNA sequencing is crucial for experiments where we are looking for specific genes bound by specific transcription factors. In my own lab, where we are looking for the differences between wild type and mutant genotypes of Arabidopsis plants, we are looking to determine which genes a specific ARF transcription factor binds to. We couldn't possibly do this without transcriptional data and sequencing. We would need a) the index of all fragments sequenced by this machine and their locations- this allows us to determine which chromosome and which location within the chromosome our gene is in; b) the table of each gene and its expression level that this software provides. Different expression levels between WT and mutant genotypes are what we are looking for- this would indicate that the absence of this transcription factor protein is what is causing the different transcriptional abundances of genes of interest. We literally would never be able to find which genes are targeted by our transcription factors without Illuminate and entire experiments would be impossible- and that doesn't just apply to our lab. Many, many labs are studying Arabidopsis and transcriptional pathways that absolutely rely on technology like Illuminate and RNA-Seq. ### 11. Best-in-class student assessment and data solution **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Elissa K. | Chief of Staff, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 09, 2018 **What do you like best about DnA?** Bubble sheet customization, overview page, matrix report, response frequency report **What do you dislike about DnA?** Custom reporting is exceedingly difficult and limited. They have a BI tool, JasperSoft, too. It is terrible. Everyone uses Tableau to get custom reports with Illuminate. This wouldn’t be a problem if Illuminate had good school and district level reporting, but those reports (although there are many options) don’t give us data that’s comparative at a granular enough level all in one easy to use page. **What problems is DnA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Interim assessments need data turned around to teachers in 48 hours, and our previous solutions required us to creat all reports we wanted in Excel. Now most teacher-facing reports are automatically in Illuminate. ### 12. Illuminate Data & Assessment - Still a work in progress **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rebecca N. | Principal, Education Management, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 14, 2019 **What do you like best about DnA?** The reports and graphics for data on state testing is excellent. **What do you dislike about DnA?** Administering tests and trying to make an assessment that truly assesses student learning has been challenging. **What problems is DnA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Monitoring student achievement and using data to drive instruction. ### 13. Fills the gap for data-driven educational improvement **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in E-Learning | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 14, 2019 **What do you like best about DnA?** ease of singular location for all data-driven processes **What do you dislike about DnA?** slightly tough interface for a totally new user **Recommendations to others considering DnA:** Fantastic program if you need one place to make and deliver assessments, help students find resources on one place for their targeted learning, and the ability for teachers themselves to analyze all data sources for their own instructive purposes. Ease of use is a little tough for first-time users but using the tutorial/guide could easily solve this potential issue. **What problems is DnA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Provides the opportunity to create and administer standards-based assessments , obtain immediate results and group students in a flexible way, with unique Response to Intervention (RtI) protocol ### 14. Illuminate: Good tool, could be great **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Laurance J. S. | Manager of Personalized Learning and Dean of Instruction, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 11, 2018 **What do you like best about DnA?** Question database is extensive. Online assessment platform is easy to use for students.Quick codes cuts down on setup process and student logins. Good customer service and support. Provides quick data and numerous reports are built in along with the abikity to customize. SIS feature holds very detailed information. Built in gradebook system is great tool as it pulls assessment datat directly into it. **What do you dislike about DnA?** UX/UI needs work. Cannot make front end changes in the portal to move staff or students around if necessary. Backside uploads for data are layered and errors can occur without clear explanation. Grading is not intuitive and visualization is crowded. **Recommendations to others considering DnA:** It is a quality product. PLenty of support and resources. Improvements are always coming out. **What problems is DnA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Online assessments and data analysis. ### 15. Fantastic resource to Teachers! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 29, 2018 **What do you like best about DnA?** I like that the program can store many assessments and their answers in order to make grading much more efficient and quick for me! **What do you dislike about DnA?** I dislike having to upload the assessments manually in order to have this process occur. **What problems is DnA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I’m able to put more focus in planning and using data to direct the lessons in my classroom. ### 16. Great product! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kathleen C. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 13, 2018 **What do you like best about DnA?** The ability to collect and analyze data. **What do you dislike about DnA?** I wish there were better data visualization tools included. **What problems is DnA solving and how is that benefiting you?** The ability to improve instruction. ## DnA Discussions - [How do I check my illuminate score?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-do-i-check-my-illuminate-score) - [Where can I find illuminate answers?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/where-can-i-find-illuminate-answers) - [What is an illuminate test?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-an-illuminate-test) - [What is DNA in illuminate?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-dna-in-illuminate) - [View DnA pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/renaissance-learning-dna/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-27+02%3A17%3A06+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=9d74f7f2-8293-4979-8a30-18b820d81c70&secure%5Btoken%5D=b831844d7c87e0b001b2957d5ecb681e98fea7eab874360a8c365f274f92aa6b&format=llm_user) ## DnA Features **Assessment delivery** - Question variety - Real-time assessment - Pre-made content **Grading and reporting** - Automated grading - Gamification - Analytics dashboard - Reporting **Administration** - White-labeling - Mobile compatibility ## Top DnA Alternatives - [Canvas LMS](https://www.g2.com/products/canvas-lms/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (1,732 reviews) - [PowerSchool Schoology Learning](https://www.g2.com/products/powerschool-schoology-learning/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (382 reviews) - [Blackboard](https://www.g2.com/products/blackboard/reviews) - 4.0/5.0 (1,015 reviews)