How to effectively measure student progress and attainment - using data

Learners can now track their own progress and merge teacher expectations with their own motivation and inspiration to produce evidence of learning. I am proposing a potential strategy which can be adapted to any curriculum and any age and any learner.

Curriculum and Age Related Standards and Expectations

All schools follow a curriculum and have clear expectations and standards, The first stage is to develop and produce templates for teachers and students to identify which AGE RELATED standards are expected in terms of attainment. It is a good idea to benchmark these standards against a valid curriculum model. These standards can be used as creatively as the school wants in the classroom and can be co-constructed with students and localised.

Lesson planning

Subject templates are provided for teachers who use these for planning and thus are able empower students to collect evidence - perhaps digitally - using SeeSaw for example. As standards are age related it is easy to self evaluate and indeed identify start points Assessment of the standards can be school specific - we have used a 1-5 reporting system which involves students teachers and sometimes parents in collaboratively providing evidence of robust learning. Assessments can also be used as per school assessment policy.

An example of standard from the English National Curriculum.

I have used GL CAT 4 to validate potential and GL progress tests to validate against age related Mathematics, English and Science Expectations. The NGRT can further validate literacy and can provide intervention information for teachers and parents.

https://www.gl-assessment.co.uk/

An example to tracking standards - using a 1-5 scale and GL data, standards can also have links to evidence via SeeSaw, both photographic, video, assessment copies and other.

Learner Agency

What is most important to the learner is the agency to become responsible for their own attainment and thus progress as learning does not only happen in the classroom and evidence can be collected anywhere. More than often learning is holistic so self assessments can provide evidence for many standards. An enquiry based learning approach works very well and is motivational for the students.

Tracking can be on an ongoing basis - the template can indeed be live. Each standard can be hyperlinked to evidence .... the potential is endless. With SeeSaw parents can track evidence live.

https://seesaw-learning.squarespace.com/

Benefits of using Tableau

The new GDPR regulations that game into play in Europe last year in relation to data management believes that student data is extremely vulnerable if being stored online. Only the big players such as Apple, Google & Microsoft have the resources to minimise the vulnerability of their systems. Hence we recommend the use of Excel templates for the teachers (something they are familiar with) and sharing via GoogleDrive or OneDrive. Also of great importance is the fact that technical experts scan the data before reports are run for errors. Tableau is presently the data analytics market leader thus is the tool of choice for our team to create the final reports. The big plus is that the finished system can be run in school entirely off-line.

https://www.tableau.com/

At this stage the product is still being developed according to learner needs and school requirements, however the benefits are enormous.

Do contact me if you are interested int he project which is being managed by Robert Wilby [email protected]  www.expand-it.net

TAISI Bangalore September 23rd 2019

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