Like all school districts mine is very data driven. We have a set of benchmark assessments that we administer to students every nine weeks to assess their knowledge on the content. Previously our students recorded their responses to the assessments on scantron answer sheets, which would be graded by a machine. After the machine graded the answer documents, the teachers would sit and compile the data and send it in to the county office. This process would take hours to complete. To rectify this tedious process, the school district rolled out iRespond. iRespond is a handheld students response system that has been presented to the schools as a way to collect data on the county benchmarks quicker and in real time. With iRespond we are able to immediately identify and track specific questions students missed on the assessments. In addition, the results from the assessments are immediately sent to the county office for review.
iRespond also is equipped with other features to assist with technology integration. It can also be used as a teaching tool. One of its features is that it has the capability to upload previous created PowerPoint presentations. Once the presentations have been loaded comprehension questions can be added to the end of the PowerPoint for the students to answer using the iRespond system. I upload all my previous PowerPoint presentations into iRespond and added comprehension questions to the end of the slides. I shared with administration how easy this process was and the data that I would be able to collect. Excited about the news, administration allowed me to do a demonstration at a staff meeting and they encouraged the faculty to utilize the features that iRespond had to offer.
Some time had passed and I followed up with the faculty via email to see if anyone needed any help with iRespond and to my finding only three other staff members had attempted to use this feature in iRespond. The teachers felt that it was something extra for them to do and only used iRespond to administer the benchmark test because it was required.
According to Keller’s ARCS model (Driscoll, 2005) I needed to grab their attention first and could have accomplished this through arousing their curiosity. The next thing I needed to do was to relate the technology’s to personal goals (enhancing relevance) (Driscoll, 2005). For example, by uploading the PowerPoints into iRespond and then adding comprehension questions teachers are saving time of creating assessments, they are able to share among colleagues who again would be saving time because they could pull from a multitude of presentations stored, and they would be able to save time grading and receive instant results for future planning. Third I needed to inform the teachers the pieces of data that could be generated from iRespond and how this could be useful to show how each student did in mastering specific content areas (building confidence) (Driscoll, 2005). Finally, share with the teachers that by uploading their presentations into iRespond they are able to do file sharing which in return will save them time and reduce their workload (generating satisfaction) (Driscoll, 2005).
Reference:
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson
iRespond also is equipped with other features to assist with technology integration. It can also be used as a teaching tool. One of its features is that it has the capability to upload previous created PowerPoint presentations. Once the presentations have been loaded comprehension questions can be added to the end of the PowerPoint for the students to answer using the iRespond system. I upload all my previous PowerPoint presentations into iRespond and added comprehension questions to the end of the slides. I shared with administration how easy this process was and the data that I would be able to collect. Excited about the news, administration allowed me to do a demonstration at a staff meeting and they encouraged the faculty to utilize the features that iRespond had to offer.
Some time had passed and I followed up with the faculty via email to see if anyone needed any help with iRespond and to my finding only three other staff members had attempted to use this feature in iRespond. The teachers felt that it was something extra for them to do and only used iRespond to administer the benchmark test because it was required.
According to Keller’s ARCS model (Driscoll, 2005) I needed to grab their attention first and could have accomplished this through arousing their curiosity. The next thing I needed to do was to relate the technology’s to personal goals (enhancing relevance) (Driscoll, 2005). For example, by uploading the PowerPoints into iRespond and then adding comprehension questions teachers are saving time of creating assessments, they are able to share among colleagues who again would be saving time because they could pull from a multitude of presentations stored, and they would be able to save time grading and receive instant results for future planning. Third I needed to inform the teachers the pieces of data that could be generated from iRespond and how this could be useful to show how each student did in mastering specific content areas (building confidence) (Driscoll, 2005). Finally, share with the teachers that by uploading their presentations into iRespond they are able to do file sharing which in return will save them time and reduce their workload (generating satisfaction) (Driscoll, 2005).
Reference:
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson
LaTonya
ReplyDeleteUsing the ARCS method does seem as if you would have saved more time with better results, but perhaps it is not too late. Maybe you could send out an attention getting offer and arouse curiosity for Round 2. We are all aware of the pain staking, mandatory school-wide implementations, but sometime there is a diamond among all of those rocks. I think you could start over using ARCS, and you might just be surprised?
~Wanda Ardoin-Bailey