Evaluate 2.1.1-Data Driven Instruction, Analytics, Reporting

05/02/2014 00:20

Knowledge of the following data sources is essential for an online teacher to be effective. Teachers can find contact information, if the student has special needs , if they have dropped, how they paid, etc. Documenting all communication is beneficial if issues arise regarding poor student performance. Feedback should be clear and free of spelling and grammar errors.  Suggestions for improvement are essential for effective feedback.

Enrollments and Attendance

In this chart, I can see that Economics has the largest enrollment of 49 students followed by American Government with 43 students.  Since AP Microeconomics is more rigorous since it is a college level course, more advanced students typically enroll in this class.  All three classes will consist of students with a variety of learning styles and abilities, so teachers must be versatile in creating activities, assessments and communication for all stakeholders. I can see the beginning and end date of the class as well and the section number of the courses. 

In this image, I can see that there are Regular Education and Gifted Education students enrolled in this course. None of the students dropped the course and I can see what date the students completed the orientation module.  All students are planning to take the EOCT and the school will pay for the majority of the students to take this course.  

This communication log shows me that the teacher used Dial My Calls for all communication with students and parents.  The first call was for the purpose of welcoming the student to the course on January 11th.  The next contact was with the parent a month later when the student was failing.  The student has a 24% average and I find this communication completely unacceptable.  The teacher should have noticed much sooner that the students was not completing the assignments and was not doing well.  The teacher should have never waited that long to contact the parents.  A direct personal contact, such as a personal call or email, should have been completed by the teacher.  Leaving a voice mail is not a direct form of communication and this does not show much of an effort on the part of the teacher to reach out and help a student who is struggling.

In this example, the teacher uses Dial My Calls to welcome students to the course. In addition, the teacher takes the time to acknowledge the success of a student.  It is important to not only contact parents when students are struggling, but also to congratulate and highlight student achievement.  This is a way to encourage and motivate students to continue working hard. 

Monitoring Course Progress With Observational Data & Analytics

This colorful data shows how the students are progressing.  It is easy to see in this chart that although students may be logging in, they are not necessarily doing well in the course.  It is easy for a teacher to see the scores and the time spent in the course.  I really like the fraction on the left to see at a glance what the student has completed.  This is powerful information for the teacher to explain student performance to parents.  By color- coding the usage, teachers can quickly see which students are struggling and need help.

Students Monitoring Their Own Learning

It is very important that the online teacher explain to students how they can monitor their own progress.  It is essential that the students receive valuable feedback in order to know where they are and what they need to do to improve if they have areas of weakness.  In the first example the teacher explains to the student what is necessary to do in order to improve.  The teacher makes many spelling and grammar errors in the feedback and it does not appear professional.  I’m not sure why the teacher gives suggestions to fix the pictures if it is the final draft. 

Here the student can see that both of the answers are incorrect. Since the correct answers are not shown, there may be a second attempt allowed.  The student is asked to review the questions that were missed. 

Here the student sees the grade and can get more details by clicking on “view”. 

In this example of feedback, the teacher gives suggestions for improving a composition or research paper.  The word “ident” should be indent. The 3rd sentence seems unclear, as special skills is not specific and effective feedback.