This is a guest post from Dr. Beth Holland (@brholland), Research & Measurement Partner at The Learning Accelerator (TLA) - a national nonprofit.
As the school year ramps up again, teachers and leaders have to confront the same challenge that has been plaguing schools since the start of the pandemic: how to develop more effective, engaging, and equitable virtual or hybrid learning environments. However, a major challenge exists in the field: there are few models to help educators define quality in virtual and hybrid contexts.
At The Learning Accelerator (TLA), we have designed two, freely-available, research-based resources to address this need. Our individual self-assessment survey and team assessment tool serve as catalysts for conversations that can lead to improvement, provide a concrete means to identify quality, and help educators, schools, and districts to identify what really might be affecting their students’ experiences within virtual or hybrid settings.
Resource #1: Individual Self-Assessment Survey
Using a research report describing the Key Factors that Help Drive Virtual and Remote Learning Quality as a framework, we designed a self-assessment survey that asks individuals to rate either their level of confidence or the likelihood that certain factors exist in their context. For example, within the Pedagogy section, questions ask individuals to indicate how confident they feel that students experience elements of mastery-based learning such as “giving and receiving feedback from peers.”
Although this self-assessment was designed to be the first step of a team process at the district-level, individual teachers could certainly use it to understand ways in which they might make improvements within their own classrooms. Coaches might review the questions with teachers to identify areas of support, and principals could leverage the questions to gain an understanding of what might be happening across classrooms or grade levels.
Resource #2: Team Assessment Tool
Where the self-assessment captures individual perceptions, the team assessment identifies the prevalence of different factors in context. This tool uses the same survey questions as the self-assessment, but instead of asking individuals to rate their confidence, it prompts teams to use a modified version of the Stoplight protocol to determine whether factors occur consistently, in pockets, or not at all. This second tool also prompts teams to add evidence to support their observations.
For example, one district in our Strategy Lab: Virtual & Hybrid cohort indicated that they consistently “prioritize building relationships with students.” In addition to describing evidence such as having an advisory structure and regular individual meetings with students, the district also noted that 81% of their students responded favorably to a culture survey question asking whether they had a positive relationship with an adult.
Although initially designed to support district teams, teacher teams could also use this tool to better understand students’ experiences across classrooms. Similarly, principals or coaches might form teams to identify areas for improvement across grade levels.
Next Steps
We have already started to see how these two resources can foster meaningful, evidence-based dialogue. As teachers and leaders launch into the new school year, we hope that they can continue to help to identify areas for improvement so that every student experiences a more equitable, engaging, and effective learning environment – whether in-person or online.
Monday, August 22, 2022
Searching is a Thinking Skill
Have you ever had a conversation with a student that went like this?
Student: “Mr. Byrne, Google has nothing on my topic.”
Mr. Byrne: “What is your topic?”
Student: “The Civil War.”
Mr. Byrne: “Are you sure that Google has nothing about the Civil War?”
Student: “Well I looked at a bunch of links, but they didn’t say anything about what I was looking for.”
If you have had a conversation like the one above then you have experienced one of the flaws of the digital native concept. Yes, most students today do know how to navigate to Google.com and enter a search term. But that just proves that they can remember a web address and use a keyboard. Increasingly, due to the proliferation of voice commands on mobile phones, it doesn’t even mean that they can use keyboards. Typing or speaking a query into a search engine isn’t difficult. Knowing which terms to type, which type of resources to search for, and how to discern the good from the bad are the skills that search requires.
Those of us who grew up without ubiquitous access to the Internet remember searching through libraries to find one good book on the topic we were researching. Then diving into the bibliography to hopefully find more resources that we could track down through an interlibrary loan or by making phone calls and driving to libraries far away to find a good reference. The process was long in part because of the time it took to locate resources. And it was long due to the fact that when we did find good resources, we pored over them to squeeze everything we could from them. Whether we knew it or not, the length of the process was good for us as it provided more time for thinking, asking more questions, and analyzing what we did know. Unfortunately, all three of those things are often shortcut by students when they rely on just typing things into Google.
Researching is a thinking skill. It requires that the student first state what it is he or she is trying to determine. Without a clear purpose for the research, students will simply click around the web hoping to find “something useful.” That’s why years ago I developed a pre-search checklist for students to complete before embarking on a research project. A copy of that pre-search checklist is available for free at http://bit.ly/presearch17.
Student: “Mr. Byrne, Google has nothing on my topic.”
Mr. Byrne: “What is your topic?”
Student: “The Civil War.”
Mr. Byrne: “Are you sure that Google has nothing about the Civil War?”
Student: “Well I looked at a bunch of links, but they didn’t say anything about what I was looking for.”
If you have had a conversation like the one above then you have experienced one of the flaws of the digital native concept. Yes, most students today do know how to navigate to Google.com and enter a search term. But that just proves that they can remember a web address and use a keyboard. Increasingly, due to the proliferation of voice commands on mobile phones, it doesn’t even mean that they can use keyboards. Typing or speaking a query into a search engine isn’t difficult. Knowing which terms to type, which type of resources to search for, and how to discern the good from the bad are the skills that search requires.
Those of us who grew up without ubiquitous access to the Internet remember searching through libraries to find one good book on the topic we were researching. Then diving into the bibliography to hopefully find more resources that we could track down through an interlibrary loan or by making phone calls and driving to libraries far away to find a good reference. The process was long in part because of the time it took to locate resources. And it was long due to the fact that when we did find good resources, we pored over them to squeeze everything we could from them. Whether we knew it or not, the length of the process was good for us as it provided more time for thinking, asking more questions, and analyzing what we did know. Unfortunately, all three of those things are often shortcut by students when they rely on just typing things into Google.
Researching is a thinking skill. It requires that the student first state what it is he or she is trying to determine. Without a clear purpose for the research, students will simply click around the web hoping to find “something useful.” That’s why years ago I developed a pre-search checklist for students to complete before embarking on a research project. A copy of that pre-search checklist is available for free at http://bit.ly/presearch17.
History Discussion Prompts for All 50 States
This morning I discovered a new-to-me U.S. History resource created by C-SPAN Classroom. That resource is a collection of video clips and "bell ringers" for every state in the United States. Bell Ringers are short video clips that are accompanied by discussion questions to start a lesson.
C-SPAN Classroom's State History Resources collection could be helpful to middle school and high school teachers who are looking for some resources and ideas to help students make and understand connections between their state's history and broader U.S. History topics. For example, I might use the bell ringer about the removal of the Edwards Dam in Augusta to help my students understand how federal policies and initiatives (Clean Water Act and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) can have an impact on local projects (the removal of the dam and the associated impacts on local town and state policies).
In looking at C-SPAN Classroom's collection of state history resources it appears that the clips and bell ringers cover a wide array of topics related to each state. For example, the collection of Maine resources includes a video of top policy issues according to former governor Paul LePage, the Missouri Compromise, and the removal of a dam on the Kennebec River. The collection of resources about Iowa includes a bell ringer about the history of the Iowa caucuses, a bell ringer about African American migration to Iowa, and a lesson plan about the Louisiana Purchase.
Applications for EducationC-SPAN Classroom's State History Resources collection could be helpful to middle school and high school teachers who are looking for some resources and ideas to help students make and understand connections between their state's history and broader U.S. History topics. For example, I might use the bell ringer about the removal of the Edwards Dam in Augusta to help my students understand how federal policies and initiatives (Clean Water Act and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) can have an impact on local projects (the removal of the dam and the associated impacts on local town and state policies).
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