When it came to supporting students through individual programming, Medicine Hat Public School Division (MHPSD) had been on the hunt for the right tool for a while. Working with neighbouring school divisions, they partnered on what they hoped would be the solution, only to find that they had only moved to another expensive and rigid tool.
And when students shifted to learning from home during COVID, it revealed a truly structural problem: the systems used to plan for and support students with complex needs were too rigid, too locked in, and too difficult to adapt to new contexts.
Teachers were trying to assess and support students with Individual Program Plans (IPPs) while those students were no longer in their classrooms. Families were being asked to collect evidence of progress in homes that looked nothing like classrooms. Student support teams were trying to coordinate across email, paper, and legacy systems that had never been designed for this level of flexibility.
The division needed more than a new form. It needed a new way of thinking about forms.
This is the story of how MHPSD moved from rigid templates and workarounds to a flexible, co-designed digital platform using Education Forms by Imagine Everything—and how that shift helped turn compliance documents into living tools for teaching and learning.
Prior to Education Forms, MHPSD used another IPP system that began as a shared template across multiple school divisions that, over time, evolved into a patchwork of expensive customizations.
Every improvement cost real money, and still the fit wasn’t quite right. “We were constantly trying to figure out how to work around format limitations,” said Joanne Stockman, Director of Learner Supports and Services.
Then COVID hit. When learning moved into homes, MHPSD staff were forced to ask a new set of questions:
At the same time, the division began learning alongside educator and inclusion expert Shelley Moore, and a powerful idea emerged: a “matrix” that would allow a single goal to look different across environments. At school, a goal might be expressed one way; at home, the same goal might look different, but still connect to the same underlying intention.
The first versions of this matrix lived in Google Docs—a clear indicator that MHPSD was pushing beyond what the old system could do. The matrix made it easier to:
But while Google Docs was flexible, it wasn’t sustainable. They couldn’t handle workflows, signatures, or consistent data structures. Staff loved the new approach, but began to realize they needed something more robust.
Rather than simply buying a new product and pushing it out to schools, MHPSD approached the problem differently. They formed a Classroom Support Teacher (CST) working group to answer a fundamental question:
“What if we weren’t limited by our current system, what could an IPP actually look like?” - Joanne Stockman, Director of Learner Supports and Services
This choice mattered. It signalled that the division wasn’t “doing something to schools”; instead, they were inviting schools and teachers into a process.
Meanwhile, the leadership team began exploring digital platforms that could turn this grassroots thinking into something durable. They needed:
Education Forms and the team at Imagine Everything emerged as the right fit. Unlike the previous system, Education Forms wouldn’t force MHPSD into a single standardized template used across divisions. Instead, it offered a flexible framework in which the division could build and continue to evolve its own version of IPPs, benchmarks, consents, and more.
At the same time, other school divisions were having similar conversations about restructuring their approach to individual student planning. Working alongside Imagine Everything, Calgary Catholic, Medicine Hat Public, Grasslands, Horizon and Prairie Rose School Divisions embarked on a journey to build a platform that worked.
“One of the strengths of Education Forms was that each division could create its own templates. And when people saw what we built, they could say, ‘That’s what we asked for.’” - Joanne Stockman, Director of Learner Supports and Services
No honest implementation story is perfectly smooth—and MHPSD’s wasn’t. But the “bumps” happened in a place that protected teachers: behind the scenes. And the hours invested by the Student Services team were well worth it and would pay off in spades, extending well beyond IPPs.
“We made mistakes in how we built some of our first forms and had to backtrack later. You don’t always realize the consequences until you’ve lived with them for a year." - Tylene Neary, Inclusive Education Coach
While changes can be made and incorporated on the fly within Education Forms, MHPSD took a conservative approach to avoid making radical mid-year changes that would break data continuity. Iteration and customization became an annual ritual, but without the costs typically associated with such changes. Every July, they would review notes, tweak templates, and refine workflows.
For teachers, however, the transition was surprisingly smooth:
As a result, there was little to no pushback on usability.
“There was no pushback from teachers on using the program. Instead of constant workarounds, they started saying, ‘Have we thought about this?’ because they knew we could actually change it.” - Joanne Stockman, Director of Learner Supports and Services
Education Forms also changed the nature of the partnership between the division and the vendor. Rather than simply submitting tickets and hoping for the best, staff sat with Imagine Everything’s developers in bi-weekly sprint-style meetings, explained their thinking, and co-designed new components.
The “card” model for building goals and evidence, for example, didn’t exist at the beginning. It emerged from this collaboration as a new tool within the platform—one that can now be used for problems beyond IPPs.
After several years of building, iterating, and listening to feedback, the impact of Education Forms at MHPSD is clear in three key areas.
What once took hours now takes minutes.
“It’s beautiful. Press a button, and everything goes across for everybody. That’s a huge time saver for schools.” - Joanne Stockman, Director of Learner Supports and Services
Even where challenges remain, such as ensuring every form flows properly into downstream systems, the amount of manual work has been dramatically reduced, as has the room for human error.
A template alone doesn’t magically improve practice, but the combination of new formats and focused learning has made a difference.
Tylene observed that ultimately, “A template is just a template, but this one helped accelerate better conversations. It gave us a reason and a structure to rethink goals, success criteria, and evidence.” Teachers now revisit and rewrite goals annually, adjusting strategies and success criteria based on actual student progress, rather than treating IPPs as static compliance documents.
Education Forms has also changed how and where information lives. MHPSD has steadily expanded its use of the platform to the point that staff jokingly say, “We can build a form for that” when faced with any workflow challenge. Many of those forms don’t even feed other systems; they exist to ensure critical information is stored in a single, consistent place.
Joanne shared that she “rarely goes to the student record anymore. Ed Forms tends to be a better source of information.”
From MHPSD’s perspective, several factors were critical to success:
Staff Voice and Ownership: Teachers and CSTs helped design the system they’re now using. That ownership means they’re more likely to defend and improve it rather than resist it.
On-the-Ground Educational Expertise: Having people who deeply understood classroom realities and student support workflows involved from day one ensured that forms reflected real work, not just theoretical models.
A Culture of Reporting and Responding: Staff were encouraged to report issues and ideas. Imagine Everything responded quickly, reinforcing trust and the sense that the system could evolve with their needs.
Even as the system has matured, MHPSD sees a clear next chapter for Education Forms.
Priorities they’re excited about include:
When asked where MHPSD would be if they hadn’t changed, the answer came quickly: They’d still be:
“We’d still be frustrated. We’d still be squishing big thinking into little boxes.” Instead, even with the occasional frustration, the feeling about Education Forms is clear. “Even when the software frustrates me sometimes, I would never want to give it up. The flexibility is worth everything.” - Tylene Neary, Inclusive Education Coach
MHPSD’s journey with Education Forms is not a story of flipping a switch and turning on a new product. It’s the story of:
Education Forms didn’t create MHPSD’s commitment to inclusion, collaboration, and meaningful planning, but it did give those commitments a better home.
And the story is still being written.
(As of December 8th, 2025 with a student count of ~6,700)
Our team can't wait to show you what we've been up to alongside some of the best minds in Education.