I had a very productive meeting with a couple of colleagues today discussing the proposed Electronic Voting System (EVS) research project we’re planning to carry out (with the help of a couple of  UG research students from the university) in school over the course of the next session. The design and methodology for this project are now taking shape nicely. Basically, it uses the idea of higher-order questions becoming learning objectives at the start of a week. The questions are asked and voted upon acting as a ‘brain-teaser almost. This reveals the extent of existing knowledge. The answer choices are then removed, and the remaining questions become the learning stimuli. The class splits into groups and each group is tasked with researching the questions, finding the answers, explaining why these answers are correct, and presenting this information to the rest of the class in some way (of their choice). At the end of the week, the questions are posed again and the difference in scores for each answer noted. The difference is a measure of learning attainment. I was looking today at a great program, written by Dr Quintin Cutts of Glasgow University’s computer science department, which analyses differences in voting responses for each student and each question. Essentially, it provides visual information on how each student’s choices change, from incorrect to correct, away from correct, and all other combinations. This gives really valuable information on the learning processes taking place, and the influence of these activities on learning. In other words, how effective are the activities on student attainment. The university are going to be using the WordWall system. I’m currently using Turning Point, but will be looking closely at WordWall as well. Their handsets have different options including a ‘Joystick’ mode. They are exhibiting at this year’s Learning Festival so check them out if you’re going along.

Research by Mazur suggests the learning gains from this type of use of questioning is highly transferable, both within and across curricular areas. Dr Steve Draper describes and develops this concept more fully in his recent BJET paper, calling approaches of this type ‘Catalytic Questioning’ (copies from Dr Draper on request if you don’t have an academic library access). We are going to try and gather some information on this by using a third set of similar but different questions assessing the same knowledge ( isomorphic questioning) maybe a couple of weeks later. As our S1 science topics usually last 4-5 weeks, assessed by an end of topic test, we will be able to compare my S1 intervention class with my other S1 class over the whole S1 year-long  science course, and with the 10 other S1 classes taught by my colleagues. The members of each group will self-evaluate their own learning, as well as the contribution of each of their group members, and the other group’s presented work. We will also attempt to carry out a coding exercise similar to the one we used for the GLOW/ICT lessons to help measure time on task in the project/non project classes.

I’m excited by this project as I think it’s shifting the perception of technology as a ‘gimmicky’ occasional thing to a more embedded feature of everyday learning. I’m not convinced that EVS are being used effectively in many meaningful ways in schools  other than qualitatively (fun, engagement etc) yet and certainly not as a tool for raising attainment quantitatively. Of course, the technology is just the means of using well thought out pedagogy to improve learning, in this case, questioning and peer-assisted learning. What is also important is reinforcing the links between educational research and everyday classroom activity in a way that is sometimes not done.

The other project I’m working on is my extended use of GLOW/ICT to raise attainment. My intervention class have just had their standard grade results, and it’s looking like this class has maintained their attainment gains over the rest of their Biology cohort. Particularly, the middle ability students appear to have been shifted from a general to a credit level of achievement. Two things jump out from the extended study;

1 – time on task (measured by classroom activity coding) is greatly improved in the ICT-based classes. Teacher time assisting individual pupils is also much greater than in non-ICT classes. This might be one explanation for the attainment gains.

2- It appears that working in this way can somehow boost a teacher’s ‘results’ to those of the level of much more experienced colleagues. Dylan William found that teacher experience was the greatest influence on attainment, and my own data tends to suggest that GLOW/ICT might be able to compensate for a lack of comparable experience when measuring the effect of pedagogy on attainment. Certainly, in looking at the data, (and the fact that classes are genuinely of mixed ability and randomly assigned to teachers) it would appear that my own class results are comparable to those of vastly more experienced colleagues.

We are still working on the classroom coding paper, and hope to have this ready by September.

Whatever the reasons though, it does appear that using GLOW as a platform in this project, to deliver the embedded ICT has significantly and positively impacted upon attainment.  The big advantage of using GLOW has been that it has provided a good way of combining all the different tools under one ‘umbrella’ . This is not to say that GLOW is perfect-far from it I’d like to think there is a role for GLOW to play in the development of ePortfolios for assessment, but at the moment I’m just not seeing this, apart from using ‘My Glow’ perhaps.

Despite the shortcomings however, I still believe it’s a great starting point for many folk in their use of technology in the classroom. Lets hope that more of Scotland’s LA’s start to help their teachers and students meaningfully engage with GLOW as the year progresses and that it will truly achieve the national usage which was always intended.