Challenge, developing an online system for evidence collection

Finally writing up an inquiry I worked on a couple of years ago. Could we look at better outcomes for students using ICT/BYOD to support students in their evidence, would it make a difference

How to take something that was once a paper based exercise and reflection, and to make it online.

In the staff room early 2014 talking in the staff room, one of the PE teachers talked about if it was possible to do something better, use the BYOD aspect, the students devices, and school laptops to be able to record and reflect on evidence for an achievement standard. The aim was for a NCEA Level One achievement standard to be Substituted at first, but then came Augmentation (SAMR model) with the extra improvements.

This was one schools data and approach. The school will not be mentioned in this post.

90962 Participate actively in a variety of physical activities and explain factors that influence own participation.

Clarification of the standard

AS90962: Participate actively in a variety of physical activities and explain factors that influence own participation

Updated June 2014. This document has been updated in its entirety to address new issues that have arisen from moderation.

Explain factors that influence own participation

Using ongoing reflection, student responses must provide an explanation of the most relevant factors that influence their own participation.

The explanation should include:

• what the factor is
• how and why the factor influences own participation
• specific examples of how the factor influences own participation in the chosen physical activity
• a range of factors.

There is no step up required for the explanation.

Participate actively

Students need to participate actively in a variety of physical activities over a period of time.

For Excellence, students must consistently show a high level of effort and engagement in participation. This must include students’ regular contributions to support others to be active and/or showing a sustained effort to improve. Refer to the exemplars for examples of how the practical evidence may be interpreted.

Collection of evidence

Teacher verification of students’ active participation in a variety of physical activities over a period of time is required, for example, over the whole year or at least one term. Required evidence should include observational notes, verified self or peer assessment and/or teacher recording sheets.

The teacher may consider validated self and peer observation sheets as additional evidence to support judgements.

Interpretation of evidence for Merit and Excellence

When interpreting the evidence collected, it should be noted that the step up between Merit and Excellence is on the consistency of the criteria for a high level of effort and engagement in participation.

Overall judgement

A holistic judgement should be made as to whether or not the student has participated actively/participated actively with a (consistently) high level of effort and engagement in a variety of physical activities, rather than quantitative marks such as 80% participation to achieve with Merit. 

 

Throughout the year the Google Form that students were filling in needed an extra frontend for students and teachers to see where they were at and what evidence was missing.

The annodotal evidence was that students were doing better. Teachers talked about more students achieving and handing in the material rather than handing in a blob of paper at the end of the year that had been sitting in their bag with the old uneaten lunches. Though we needed to see what the data said. 

In 2013, the work was handed in using booklets.

The data

2013

Number of results 154

Not Achieved 25 16.2%

Achieved 37 24.0%

Merit 59 38.3%

Excellence 33 21.4%

In 2014, the work was recorded and reflected using a mixture of google forms and an online system to report back to students.

2014 

Number of results 158

Not achieved 21 13.3%

Achieved 35 22.2%

Merit 58 43.0%

Excellence 34 21.5%

In 2015, the work was handed in using booklets again.

2015

Number of results 176

Not achieved 33 18.8%

Achieved 45 25.6%

Merit 61 34.7%

Excellence 37 21.0%

The annodotal evidence was correct, more students saw success, but not at the achieved level, it was up to a merit level. The evidence from students wasn't limited to a small box or lines in a booklet, it allowed students to write as much as they wanted.
Students commented on how easy it was to make sure where they were at, removed the troublesome paper that was left at home, or damaged in a wet school bag or lost. They often talked about being able to complete the work at home, or in another class when they finished their other work. 

The writing provided opportunities for students to explain how factors influenced their participation in the sport.

There was also a section added in the work that allowed feedback from teachers to put in comments about had they done enough. Once comment from a teacher using the system was, "I am able to give feedback while on the toilet". This is not something that the writer of this post recommends. But it does highlight the fact that teachers are not limited to where they provide feedback, its online, can be opened on a phone, or tablet. It is not limited to a bunch of paper sitting there to have feedback written onto and then handed back to the students. It is real time. teachers have teh opportunity to use there non contact time and quickly go through and check, and make comments on work that students can fix later that day.

This was simple enough and translated to a google form rather well. The data was designed well and was able to be transferred to a mysql table.

Design was not considered an important aspect, it was more about focussing on the content and delivery on as many devices as possible.

Enteries, while it was not encouraged to do 15 enteries, through the development of the project we talked about a finite number, as some students would need to do extra to make sure that they had worked towards the achieved level. In this case it was about there participation factors.

teacher comments

Some of the issues,

The system is not self aware, new students and changes to timetables happen all the time in schools. Needing to make sure that new students were added so they could evidence their learning needed to happen each month. At least with the google form, all the data was recorded.

Having a mix of systems. One teacher used both ways of evidencing, google forms and paper, this added to confusion on how many enteries that students had completed.

Students couldn't remember what entry they were up to if the system hadn't been updated. This was a case of going through the spreadsheet and changing numbers of enteries each month to reflect the work that students were doing. This would be fixed under the next version, which would remove the google form aspect.

When the developer leaves the school, this is always a risk and something that needs to be thought about.

While the excellence results did not have an improvement, this could be around teh literacy of the students to highlight.

Moderation, was not an issue as the eight samples of work were able to be printed out, or moderators could have access to the teacher side of this to be able to go through the work.