We are now at the point of sharing this initiative with our staff, with the vision that they will begin to use it themselves to build parent engagement in their classrooms. We've created a mock classroom, with our teachers as the students, and they will get to use the app today in our staff meeting from the perspective of parents. We want them to experience the ease of use, so they won't feel we are overloading them with some new complicated technology.
We're sharing our data results, and own take on our results and the reasons why they will also benefit from this. We're planning to take this out into our community of schools, and in fact Shaun has already started this at Educamp Rotovagus,sessions. We will be doing more of this in Terms 1 and 2 next year.
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We decided we needed a trial that would indicate whether or not engagement in Class Dojo was driven via students, or if parents themselves were motivated to check for updates and posts. We decided to go two weeks with no promotion to our students of any posts we made. We collected the data on views and likes, then spent a further two weeks promoting each post we made to our students. We collected the data again. We hoped that this would provide us with some data about parent motivation related to Class Dojo.
Unpromoted weeks average per post views Shaun: 25.7 Likes 5.5 Sonja 21.7 Likes 7 Promoted average per post views Shaun 24.5 Likes 5.1 Sonja 27.6 Likes 10.2 Sonja had a 5.9% increase in Views and a 3.2% increase in Likes during the promotion period. However Shaun’s results were a slight drop of 1.2% in Views and 0.4% in Likes. We find this these results inconclusive, however we have noticed that certain posts get a better response; possibly based on the information on the post notifications that they receive. How parents get notifications may be a subject of future aspect to research, but the first sentence of a post may well be the critical deciding factor for parents to open to view. 94.3% of whanau are accessing Class Dojo at least once a week (an increase of 15% from Term 2), with 67.9% of them accessing it more often. Two parents still did not have access and didn’t know how to do this - will follow up and help them.
74.6% of parents feel Class Dojo is a great help in feeling engaged in the school (This is an increase of 21.5% from Term 2). Two parents (3.9%) saw no benefit to the programme in building engagement in the school. Many of those parents felt that with Class Dojo, newsletters, app and blogs there was great coverage with what was happening at school. Of those who are not seeing the engagement benefits within the school, one would like more meetings with parents, one would like to be more involved in school activities, two would like posts to related specifically to their child. In terms of engaging in the class, 90.4% feel that Class Dojo achieves this (Term 2 data was 77.6%, an increase of 12.8% - this may . Two parents see no benefit. Three parents would like more meetings as well as Class Dojo, one wants notifications that tells when their child is in photos, one wants more photos of their child. One would like more information about what is happening in class related to areas of learning. In terms of engagement in student learning the results vary. 53.9% see Class Dojo as a great way to engage in their child’s learning (an increase of 0.8% from Term 2). 25% feel there is some benefit, while 13.5% see little or no benefit for feeling engaged via Class Dojo. There are mixed responses in relation to building more engagement; more teacher meetings, more reports - one would like termly written reports, one would like weekly. 58.3% of parents felt the data assessment shared with them was beneficial in building engagement in their child’s learning. 16.7% felt moderate engagement because of that data. 25% saw little or no benefit of that assessment in building engagement in their child’s learning. Of those parents seven don’t remember seeing it and five saw little benefit (10% of respondents overall). There was more confusion and uncertainty from parents around these slides that expected as we had shown and discussed them at last term’s teacher / parent meetings. Access to Class Dojo is primarily parent driven, 57.7% of parents don’t allow their children to access it via their logins. 72.9% of parents are happy to receive messages both via Class Story itself and the Messenger feature. In terms of which way parents prefer to be engaged in their child’s school, class and individual learning, face to face contact was most preferred at 48.1% with Class Dojo coming a close second at 44.4%. This is a similar result with Term 2.
We're surveying our parents again for an update on how they are feeling about Class Dojo, and to inform us of the next steps we need to take.
One of the areas that we have noticed while analysing our data from Term 2, and when considering Term 3 uptake (it's now Week 2), is that parents are slow to get back into checking Class Dojo after the holiday break. We have found that when we promote the app within the class, sharing and discussing the posts we've made, that parent use increases. Our question is: Is Parent Engagement in Class Dojo primarily Student Driven?
We have decided that we will run a small study in class to see if we can answer this question. In Week's 3 and 4, we will not promote any of the posts we make to our Class Story page with our students. Posting will still happen, but we won't specifically talk to our students about them. In Week's 5 and 6, we will promote all our posts on a daily basis with our students. We will measure our results over that four week period to see if we notice any changes. If we do find that usage is primarily student driven it will mean we will have to ensure that promotion/discussion within the classroom is an essential component of Class Dojo use. We have calculated and analysed Term 2 data, looking both at the data as it stands, and then comparing it to Term 1 data.
Class Story: Over Term 2, Shaun posted an average of 5.8 posts per week, which was a reduction 0.38 posts from Term 1. He had an average of 29.85 views per post, which was an increase of 4.40 from Term 1. The number of comments averaged 0.55 per post in comparison with 0.96 in Term 1, meaning a reduction of 0.41 per post. For Sonja there were an average of 4 posts per week over Term 2, which was an increase of 2.37 posts per week in relation to Term 1. The number of views per post for Term 2 were 29.85 in comparison with 30.72 in Term 1, a 0.87 decrease. There was in increase in comments from an average of 1.28 per post in Term 1, to 1.89 in Term 2 There are a number of factors that might have led to these increases and reductions, In terms of Shaun's class, he reduced the number of posts, but increased the number of views. Some of the anecdotal comments received at the school by one or two parents suggest parents don't like to be overwhelmed with information. Possibly the increased views to less posts could be as a result of parents reacting positively to less posts, though the actual decrease in his posts seems negligible at just -0.38 posts. For Sonja the number of posts per week increased significantly (+2.37) and the number of views decreased (-0.87). Two students left the school at the beginning of Term 2 meaning a reduction of in class numbers, and of those two students, one parent had been a very regular visitor to Class Story, liking and commenting on most posts. Patterns have emerged when analysing the data. Parents are slow to view posts at the beginning of each term, and gradually build up their visits over the first couple of weeks. The more teachers promote the posts to students in class, the quicker parents are to view them. This might suggest that parent engagement in Class Story is student driven. In Term 2, Sonja began posting a group photo of students who had completed their IXL homework for that week, with the totals each week added cumulatively, so students had to be consistent with completing homework each week to be in the photo. There was a noticeable spike in parent visits, likes and comments for those particular posts on a Friday in comparison with all other posts. This might suggest that parents are more engaged when their children are being compared/highlighted in relation to the other students in the class. Messaging: For both Shaun and Sonja, the number of messages to all parents has decreased. Shaun used the Messaging feature almost exclusively in Term 1 to communicate messages to all parents. Term 1 does require more communication to parents as routines are set up, by Term 2 parents are more au fait with what is happening in class, needing less group messaging. Sonja has decreased the number of group messages by 1. In Term 1, most of the beginning of the year group messages were via email, and only general reminders were sent out as a group message. For Term 2 both Shaun and Sonja used Class Story more for quick generalised messages to parents rather than ongoing regular messaging. This means that group messages happened less than in Term 1. In terms of personalised messaging with individual parents, once the routines and schedules are set up, and parents have had their questions answered, there is less need to communicate directly. Both classes average around 60-65% ongoing individual messaging conversations with parents. This is significantly more conversations with parents than what we had last year when we were not using Messaging in Class Dojo. Messaging seems to be successful because it give parents quick and easy access to us when they need it, and they usually get a prompt reply. On the 23 June 2016, we were invited to attend a workshop in Wellington. Run by Tim Barling the project coordinator we had the opportunity to discuss our inquiry. So far only four projects, including ours, have been chosen. Along with the others we discussed our progress to date, lessons learned, vision and expectations going forward; as well as giving each other feedback and ideas.
We got to meet Dr Wayne Duncan who will be helping us develop ideas and ask questions, but even more importantly connect us with researchers who can connect our inquiries with actual research papers. The idea is that we will have research to back our work and be co-authors of a research paper. Overall if was a good day for networking and sharing our progress, as well as getting a sense of our parameters for moving forward. We have created a portal website to act as a gateway to promote our inquiries and possibly future Grass Roots projects. In Term 2 at Otonga, we always have 3 Way Interviews with parents and students to discuss learning, achievements and next steps. This year the Year 5/6 team have created a Google Slide for each student with information about test results, learning levels and future goals. These were shared with the parents of each child giving them at home access to the information whenever they needed it. The anecdotal comments made to date would indicate that the parents really like this initiative and feel more connected with their child's learning achievement.
We will ask our parents more about this in our next survey, so we have a better understanding of how this has helped with their feeling of overall engagement, and what else they feel might help build engagement with the own child's learning. When reading some of the parent comments in our Term 2 survey, it became evident that many parents weren't aware that they could access information related to newsletters and events through our school app. This has highlighted the need to promote our school app, as there hasn't been the uptake we would have hoped for. This is a flyer that we will send out to try to illustrate the variety of features in our app (including the areas raised by parents in our survey). We hope we will see an increase in the number of parents using the app.
Our term 2 survey results showed 93.9% parents connected (49 responses of 65? parents) but we already had a high parent connection from the beginning of the year. 89.9% of parents said they access Class Dojo regularly over the school week.
Daily 38.9% Every couple days 26.5% Weekly 24.5% The results for engagement are based on a ranking of 1 to 5, 5 being the highest. By adding ranking 4 and 5 to get the top percentage, we can see that . . . As a tool for engaging in the school: 53.1% of parents feel Class Dojo engages them in school life (as a whole school communication and engagement method we have had mixed responses, perhaps due to a lack of whole school / parent buy-in and education of the Class Dojo platform). How does this compare to the School App? As a tool for engaging in the class: 77.6% of parents feel Class Dojo engages them in classroom life. This is a much higher response as expected as our Class Story focus is sharing the class live and learning with the parents. As a tool for engaging in their child’s learning: 53.1% of parents feel Class Dojo engages them in their child’s learning. Only half; perhaps because not all students get into Class Story photos equally. Do parents want more engagement related to their child's learning? Then is Student Story the answer, or student blogger? 73.5% parents say they have used Class Messenger for 1-1 communication with the teacher, often out of schools hours. Parents seem to feel more positive about being able to communicate privately with easy texts when needed. However parents still find personal meetings the best ways to stay in touch, but when that is not possible, Class Dojo is the prefered choice. In our analysis last term we discovered that we are using Class Story much more (2 to 4 posts a week) because of the ease of use, plus the responses we can track in Class Story. However we discovered that we had done no class blog posts in that term as a result. While this shows the ease and value of Class Story, the other consideration is that a class blog is an open sharing forum, our window to the world, and without it we are moving back into closed communities. Ideally we want both, as they both have value for parent engagement. Class Story captures learning and life in the classroom for our closed class community, but the class blog allows us to share, teach and model digital citizenship with an global audience. |
Meetings and Minutes
This is where we will keep a record of meetings, minutes, thoughts and Ideas. Archives
October 2016
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