AUSTIN, – June 10, 2026 – Watermark, a leading provider of software solutions for higher education, today announced that Instructor Insights has been selected as winner of the “Course Evaluation Solution of the Year” award in the 8th annual EdTech Breakthrough Awards program conducted by EdTech Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies and solutions in the global educational technology market.
Instructor Insights for Watermark Course Evaluations & Surveys (CE&S) leverages AI to transform large volumes of student feedback into clear, actionable insights for educators. Instructor Insights applies advanced language models to analyze both quantitative ratings and qualitative student comments. The system identifies patterns across responses, summarizes sentiment, and surfaces the most important themes from course evaluations.
Instructors receive clear summaries of course strengths and areas of concern, sentiment analysis that highlights patterns in student responses, and targeted recommendations that can help improve communication, course design, or assignment clarity in future terms. In addition, the solution links every theme, insight, and recommendation directly to the student comments that informed it. Faculty can review the underlying feedback and evaluate the findings themselves, so that technology supports professional judgment.
Watermark Course Evaluations & Surveys serves more than 900 institutions worldwide, providing a strong foundation for collecting representative student feedback. Participation in Instructor Insights is opt-in for instructors, and institutional data remains private within the institution’s environment. Student feedback is never used to train external models, ensuring that institutions maintain control of their information.
“Instructor Insights transforms how instructors interact with student feedback. Feedback from students is a core source of insight when it comes to improving teaching and learning. However, this valuable feedback remains underutilized at many institutions, with hundreds of end of term comments and data points resulting in a difficult-to-interpret, time-consuming process,” said Steve Johansson, managing director, EdTech Breakthrough. “Instructor Insights helps instructors save valuable time, achieve a deeper understanding of their impact, and implement more effective improvements that foster class success.”
The EdTech Breakthrough Awards program returns for its 8th annual cycle with its largest and most competitive field yet, drawing a record number of nominations from innovators across more than 20 countries. The program is dedicated to recognizing breakthrough educational technology products and companies reshaping how the world learns – in classrooms, campuses, boardrooms and beyond. Thousands of entries were evaluated across a wide range of categories spanning the full edtech spectrum.
“Using AI to interpret student feedback quickly and clearly enables faculty to move from raw data to meaningful action. The result is a practical use of AI that supports educators directly, helping them understand student perspectives, refine their teaching, and improve the learning experience,” said Erin Shy, CEO of Watermark. “It’s an honor to receive this recognition from EdTech Breakthrough. The tool was designed ethically, responsibly, and specifically for faculty. While many analytics systems focus on institutional reporting, our solution supports the individual educator by translating student feedback into practical guidance.”
About Watermark
Watermark gives higher education institutions the insights they need to improve, evolve, and empower student success. For over 25 years, colleges and universities have used Watermark solutions to capture and analyze student feedback, assess outcomes, demonstrate results to accreditors, showcase faculty accomplishments, and improve student engagement. Watermark’s Educational Impact Suite (EIS) puts data into context so faculty and staff can focus on what really matters: institutional and student success.
About EdTech Breakthrough
Part of Tech Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence and recognition platform for global technology innovation and leadership, the EdTech Breakthrough Awards program is devoted to honoring excellence in educational technology products, companies and people. The EdTech Breakthrough Awards provide a platform for public recognition around the achievements of breakthrough educational technology in categories including remote learning, student engagement, school administration, career preparation, language learning, STEM education and more. For more information, visit EdTechBreakthrough.com.
