Month: August 2017

Myths about Analytics in Schools

deraadt3 Comments

At recent school level (K-12) ed-tech conferences I’ve witnessed a larger than expected amount of fear-mongering, prognostication and exaggeration. There’s also been a great number of presentations about analytics, pronouncing as “here now” or impending many data-related technologies that are arguably not achieved. I thought it was worthwhile scrutinising some of these claims.

My critique is likely to become outdated in the near future (at least I hope it will) but is intended to be a general reflection of the state of analytics in schools in 2017.

Myth 1: “We have analytics”

I have seen a number of people claiming student-data-related reports are analytics. What defines analytics is the analysis of trends, usually relating to behaviours, to allow prediction. I would also add that the point of analytics is to promote proactive responses. Anything less than this is simply a report, regardless of how many graphs are included.

Oneschool dashboard
Education Queensland’s Oneschool Dashboard

 

Myth 2: “Build it and they will come”

Another claim I have noted is the prediction that, with “analytics” in hand (or more accurately reports as I have seen), teachers will transform education. Simply providing more information to time-poor educators is unlikely to encourage change.

field of dreams
From the movie Field of Dreams

Where analytics have the potential to encourage positive change in education is through highlighting where action is needed and prompting teachers to undertake that action. Analytics tools need to be following trends silently in the background, incorporating new information as it becomes available, making predictions and proactively prompting action when thresholds are passed.

Myth 3: “We have too much data”

As the technology of analytics filters down from the Web to higher education and towards schools, some of the rhetoric about “big data” is naturally transmitted along with those ideas. However, in schools, there is not really a large number of rich data streams to be compared.

Student data

In higher education analytics are employed to track participation and submissions, primarily to determine “students at risk” as it relates to drop-outs and also to placement funding. Student activity in higher education is focused on activity in LMSs where most document sharing and assessment takes place. It is a focused, rich source of behavioural data.

In schools, blended learning will remain a focus for the foreseeable future. Also, the purpose of analytics in schools is more about improving student outcomes. The set of data streams is quite different at these earlier years of education. Attendance is the richest source of data, but even that is prone to errors and anomalies. Some schools have LMSs, but utilisation varies, making it difficult to compare students or even focus on a single student across courses. Common assessment information tends to be summative and describes learning across periods such as terms or semesters, not days or weeks. In order for analytics to be feasible, schools need to mandate more frequent points of electronic assessment and additional streams of information need to be added, such as pastoral and attitudinal information.

Ultimately, I think we still have a way to go.

How electronic forms are changing the business of schools

deraadtLeave a comment

When I was a student, the only way of requesting information from student families was by using paper notes. In many schools today, that is still the case and the number of forms is ever increasing as the demands on schools to capture information grows.

At Canberra Grammar School, an ongoing project is transforming paper forms into electronic forms, and making quite a difference to the way the school operates. The School uses a proprietary form system called Infiniti from Intelledox, an Australian company based in Canberra, but the benefits could be seen using any forms system, even HTML forms.

The forms system is being used to collect information from families and staff. Coupled with an electronic announcements system, this has changed the way the School requests and collects information.

The Figures

Infographic.png

 

Advantages of an Electronic Forms System

There are a number of advantages to using an electronic forms system.

  • Less frequent information requests
    Forms feed directly into the Student Information System (SIS), in our case a system called Synergetic, but again that’s not critical. Once stored securely in the SIS, information can be accessed on demand or used to create reports, so information only needs to be provided by families once or when updates are needed. As the forms system knows the user, there is no need to duplicate what they have provided before. When an excursion is undertaken the information is already available, so there are no paper forms to be passed back-and-forth at the bottom of student’s school bags.
  • Reduced manual handling
    Because form data is added directly into the SIS, no paper handling is involved. Time saved receiving and handling forms could be estimated to be equivalent to a full time employee; that time is offset by the time taken to developing the form in the first place. However, time spent filling forms and submitting is greatly reduced for both staff and families.
  • Reduced printing and postage costs
    If time is money, reduced handling and filling times are saving money, but these are hard to convert into objective figures. It is possible to estimate a few more tangible items, such as printing and postage. In the last 12 months, based on forms completed, relative to past printing and postage practices, we can estimate significant cost savings as shown above.
  • Facilitating processes
    It is possible to use electronic forms as part of a process, passing through a number of people before being finalised. This is has proven to be very useful and simplifies process handling, particularly for staff. We are now discovering processes where there was previously no paper form, or a paper form followed by manual processing, and establishing new processes using electronic forms.

Of course, a forms system does not come instantly. We have spent more than two years improving the way we create forms. Several forms have been created over a number of weeks and never used, so there is now an emphasis on involving stakeholders, defining needs and testing. A number of database-integration hurdles have been overcome to get to the point we are now.

Uses for Forms

The forms are used to collect a range of different kinds of information.

  • Student data and choices
  • Student enrolment
  • Absence reporting
  • Policy agreement for staff and students
  • Staff data
  • HR data collection including applications
  • Event registration

Form Fragment

As well as data collection, the forms system has become another interface to other systems, such as the SIS. Where the SIS has a cumbersome and complicated user interface we can provide an alternative interface that is streamlined for our own context. Coupling this with the ability to drive processes, the forms system is becoming more than just a data collection system. In terms of the SAMR model, we are going beyond substitution (paper for Web) and higher levels of transformation.

In conclusion, the forms system is proving itself to be beneficial for the wider School community and we are discovering new uses for the system over time.