How can we better involve students in active reflection of their own learning?
December 8, 2009 at 3:59 pm 7 comments
One of the topics I have been thinking about a lot lately is how we can foster an environment that encourages students to be reflective about their own learning? When I was a classroom teacher, I tried various things to encourage my students to both set goals, and then monitor their own progress toward those goals. I did a lot of cooperative learning in my classroom, and also explored variations that encouraged teams to set and monitor group learning goals.
It seems that a lot of the focus on the analysis of assessment data has been focused on teachers and administrators. That’s appropriate, because those audiences obviously need to be able to make meaningful decisions based on the data at hand. Still, I wonder if there are things we could be doing to facilitate conversations between teachers and students, among families, and by students themselves, around a more active reflection of student learning?
I’d like to hear your ideas about what we might do within the current Edusoft or DataDirector systems to encourage this type of thinking on the part of our students. Thoughts?
Entry filed under: Reporting, Student Reflection. Tags: data displays, goal-setting, Reporting, Student Reflection.
1.
James Bathgate | December 9, 2009 at 11:26 pm
I think the biggest part we can take in encouraging a more community driven approach to education is to provide tools to make it easier. There are a couple different ways we can do this and incorporate them into DataDirector or Edusoft.
The first possibility that jumps to mind is a simple content management system for teachers or other district personnel that would easily allow them to create websites to provide information to students. We could host these small websites for the users and allow management of said sites through DataDirector or Edusoft. These sites would not be heavily visited so cost would be minimal.
Several different modules could also incorporated that would directly tie into our platforms. Students perhaps could have a login to the teacher websites and access grades and other information that would be pulled directly from the DataDirector or Edusoft databases. We could also incorporate community interaction by allowing users to have message boards or some other sort of communication tool (Google Wave) built into these websites to interact with students and allow students to interact with each other. The possibilities for these modules are endless, blogs, assignment lists, twitter integration, classroom resources, RSS feeds, and countless others could easily be brought in and added piece by piece by users.
I believe if we provided a tool, such as this, that would allow teachers and other district personnel to easily build a web presence to help them give more information to students and their families they would be heavily leveraged.
2.
Daniel T. Assisi | December 10, 2009 at 1:00 am
Have we considered providing students with a login to the assessment platform so they can follow their assessments/data? Some SIS do this, and my experience with students (especially HS) embracing their data has been positive.
3.
Mike Oswalt | December 10, 2009 at 3:24 pm
I think having this type of access for parents/students is critical. However, just having it available is only the first step. The next step is that we must have in a display like this something about ‘how to interpret.’ As we all know, having access to data is good, but without proper professional development/guideance of what to do with the information incorrect conclusions could be made.
This could be simply a short 60 second video, a one page flyer/job aid, or mouse overs – or all of those. Would also be good to give districts tools (PD documents) that they could use in communication with parents both in email and in parent teacher conferences.
I suggest is this is added (and it would be wonderful) that it not be added without these type of resources at the same time.
4.
James Bathgate | December 10, 2009 at 4:03 pm
@Daniel
As far as DataDirector goes I’m not sure if access directly to the platform is the best idea, the user interface has been designed with teachers access groups of data together, not the singular sets of data that a student would see.
However, a student portal could be designed that would tie into the DataDirector back end and allowe students to view their data directly.
5.
Liz Frischhertz | December 11, 2009 at 3:42 am
Our department’s focus this year is to complete the feedback loop – getting the data to the students. Currently, students are plotting their scores on line graphs as well as working through item analysis activities. An interactive site for students would be an interesting addition to Edusoft. Students could construct graphs online to track their progress or pinpoint weak or strong standards. The data could be at their fingertips and the teacher would not have to print labels or multiple measures.
6.
Patricia A. Nelson | December 11, 2009 at 2:34 pm
In the data driven management environment of today, it is important to provide a feedback loop for students. A student portal where students could track their progress on standards would be motivational. It will be important to develop tools to help them interpret the data.
7.
James Bathgate | December 11, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Helping a student interpret what certain data means is really just an issue of how well it is displayed. Listing a set of standards and a percentage value for that student for that standard isn’t enough. Perhaps based on previous achievement on certain standards teachers can setup standard goals for students which would be custom proficiency levels for a standard for a student and then a students result can be color coded to show how well the student is doing in that standard as far as achieving their goal.
If a student is doing very poorly in a standard and is able to progress to being adequate then I’d say that student is doing very well. If a student is truly excelling but falls back a bit there should still be a warning.
In addition to this standard descriptions should be provided for a student can understand the area in which they are struggling. Perhaps some online resources could also be provided to the student in order to help them progress on the standards they are having trouble with outside of the classroom.