Centre stage papers – Days 3, 4 & 5: Extending the vision

Working smarter not harder: advancing the process of education in new ways

 

This paper demonstrates how teachers can reduce their workload, improve their understanding of students’ needs and improve their pedagogy at the same time.

With the advent of digital scanning, I felt there was a potential for improved ways of addressing the increasing problem of students having better skills at avoidance than learning.

I won’t detail the trials and tribulations which I went through to achieve the outcome: the automatic assessment of multiple choice questions using either a photocopier or portable, sheet fed scanner. The scanner, when connected to laptop computer, enables me to mark a class of 30 students in less than two minutes.

Early field testing confirmed my suspicions that as a profession we have a very loose grasp on the quality of our teaching and our perception of students' understanding of the subject.

The results per question of a quick assessment clearly informed me of the class performance of each question and by inference the quality of my pedagogy leading up to the assessment. This information enabled me to avoid wasting time covering material which they already knew and gave me more time to address identified gaps in learning.

By assigning a label (strand) to each test question, the software was able to demonstrate the strengths and shortcomings of my pedagogical efforts.

Using these two facilities, I had greater insights into my pedagogical effectiveness and thus able to ‘fine tune’ my teaching practice. The consequence of which has been:

• improved student performance
• happier students
• reduced negative behaviour from poorer performing students
• greater opportunities to provide specific remediation
• additional opportunities to extend the more talented students.

Revealing the unknown

When teaching students whose basic grounding in a subject is weak even the best of pedagogical practice will have its limitations. This is frequently the major cause of student disenchantment and often leads to disruptive behavior, absenteeism and, tragically, to early drop out from school. Often, the classroom teacher’s dilemma is: ‘How do I start to try and fill in the gaps in a student’s grounding?’ This software’s student strand analysis result sheet is a great help when counselling the student, his or her parents and the school curriculum team that intervention is required. When a printout of the initial assessment is kept and compared with results of a similar test after appropriate intervention has been implemented, the student’s success is obvious.

Field testing

When field testing this software, I needed to not only determine that it would work but that it might reveal further hidden ‘truths’. I arranged for access to schools on their ‘bench marking’ day, the day their students sat a national literacy and numeracy assessment. I transcribed student intent from their booklets onto my scannable response sheets.

I noticed that the grade three and grade five tests had about a dozen identical questions in each of them and thought it would be interesting to compare these results by grade.

 
Figure 1: 2002 Results
 

These results (Figure 1) which were from a co-education suburban small non-government school raised eyebrows, particularly when it came to discussing why four questions were better answered by the grade three class than their grade fives.

To me, it further provided evidence of how vague we are as a profession in our understanding of both the quality and comprehensiveness of our pedagogy and our insight into the progress or success of students.

Last year’s results from the same school proved even more dramatic (Figures 2 & 3). The coloured arrows indicate the strands of learning to which the questions belong.

 
Figure 2: 2005 Result

Figure 3: 2005 Results

Identification of quality questions

There are considerable resources on the ‘net’, usually in pdf format, that can be used by teachers instead of writing all their assessments from scratch. Regardless of the source, the quality of questions used in assessments can then be assessed by my software.

Figure 4: Application of Classical Test Theory.
Analysis of the quality of each question is indicated by a confidence interval for each of difficulty and discrimination.

The software combines classes that have completed an identical test (Figure 4). In this case, we have an analysis of each question for 130 candidates and an indication of the test’s reliability. This means teachers can use tests from many sources, knowing they have a means to verify the quality their test questions.

This information allows the teacher to arrange questions in a test based on the level of known difficulty; easier at first and progressively becoming more challenging.

Scanning options

Most photocopiers on school computer networks used as a network printer have scan mode as a capability and can be used to scan students’ responses. The scan function can be easily activated by either the school IT expert or the photocopier service provider. An advantage of using the photocopier in scan mode is that scanning is free because it does not use any of the machine’s consumables.

Most photocopiers scan a sheet per second, so school wide moderation testing is easily achieved giving insightful results enabling spontaneous teaching which creates real progress.

Understanding parent and student views

Surveys and student elections can also be easily conducted using the same software. Instead of burning the midnight oil, organisers of sports carnivals can now transfer their students’ intentions, on paper, to computer in just a few moments. The responses of such activities are downloaded into MS Excel for ready analysis.

As an example, the local Tasmanian Schools Parents and Friends Association used this software earlier this year to survey parent opinion on last year’s reporting process. After printing and circulating the survey, all they had to do was receive the response sheets and place them on the machine to collect the data which was displayed in MS Excel for analysis. ‘It was so easy!’

Given that many schools, both public and private, are increasingly concerned about parental and community aspirations, these can now be easily monitored, using this software to transfer responses on paper to computer via a schools’ photocopier in scan mode.

Academic research

Research is frequently limited by the time required to transcribe a large populations’ responses. Using the combined technology of photocopier and computer this software allows the researcher to survey much larger populations and to obtain quality data which is free of transcription errors.

Conclusion

This innovative approach to self-analysis of pedagogy, and the revelations about gaps in student learning, provides educators at all levels with a unique tool to improve the quality of teaching and consequent student outcomes.

The ability of teachers to gain insights into the quality of their questions and the reliability of their tests can only help them become better educators.

It is ironic that the humble digital photocopier, in scan mode, can be such an important educational instrument when connected to your computer.

I would be pleased to communicate with like-minded teachers.

References

Athanasou, J & Lamprianou, I., A teacher’s guide to assessment, 2002. Social Science Press, Melbourne.
Burns, RB, Introduction to research methods, Longman, 2000. pp.343.
Guilford, JP & Fruchter, B, Fundamental statistics in psychology and education. 6th edition. 1978. McGraw-Hill. pp. 309ff, 427ff.
Popham, WJ & Sirotnik, KA, Educational statistics: use and interpretation. 2nd edition.1973. Harper & Row.
Richardson, MW, and Kuder, GF, ‘The calculation of test reliability coefficients based upon the method of rational equivalence’. In Journal of Educational Psychology. 1939. 30: pp.681-687.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mr Alexander Young worked as a senior teacher in Tasmanian secondary schools for over 30 years. He has also been the treasurer for ACEL - Tasmania for a number of years, having been a member (ACEA) since 1987. While in schools, he was the only teacher in the nation to ever be awarded ‘Teacher Recognition’ by the ‘AMP Beyond 2000 Awards in Science and Technology’. He also received an Australian Council for Education though Technology (ACET) ‘Tasmanian Outstanding Technology Teacher Award’. He recently founded FlickNTick Pty Ltd which produces ‘world first’ software that enables teachers, trainers, psychologists and researchers, amongst others, to reduce their workload and yet improve their productivity.

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