Note: This blog post was created in response to an
assignment in a graduate course. While I
am an employee of Darlington School, my work here should not be considered an
official representation of Darlington policies, practices, or philosophy.
Instructional Tool Review: Darlington School’s Faculty/Staff Pages
When I arrived at Darlington
School, the college-preparatory day and boarding school at which I teach, I was
taught and required to use functions of our website that help the school run
more smoothly. Unlike many such systems,
this one was developed by Darlington staff in response to the school’s specific
needs. Garrison and Vaughan discuss the importance of a framework to connect
practice to theory, lest practitioners charge forward blindly, not
understanding why some efforts succeed and others fail. Darlington’s development of its own learning
management system, while not planned carefully ahead of time, has grown
organically from a community of inquiry comprised of IT staff, faculty, and
administrators. When faced with a choice
between adopting tools created by others based on presumed needs and developing
their own tools based on known needs, the Darlington staff have chosen the
latter because their (probably unrecognized) framework allowed them to connect
practice to theory.
As I have progressed in my own
pedagogy and learned more about distance and blended learning, I have begun
thinking of the tools in our system as avenues for instruction, not management
alone. As such, our system has moved me
toward blended learning, which Garrison and Vaughan define as “a thoughtful
fusion of face-to-face and online learning experiences” (5). Here, I will offer
an overview of the system as well as reflect on ways to reap fuller benefits of
distance learning through it.
In the management system, the most
important features appear in the menu on the left-hand side. The first of these is the faculty/staff home
page. This page includes links to
administrative tools, forms, and information, from work order requesters to the
dorm duty calendar to personal leave forms.
Of interest among these is the IT Support Request tool, which allows
users to submit a request categorized by type (laptop, software, printer,
instruction need, and so on), and then sends an email to the IT staff member
who specializes in that area. The IT
department seeks to address and close requests quickly, and they are evaluated based
on their problem resolution. Thankfully,
Darlington’s IT staff, perhaps because several of them are dedicated to
education as much as to their technical work, actually does work with teachers
in the way Brabazon describes as rare at best.
The next three features in the menu
to the left are a group email function, a reports page, and access to student files. The purpose of the first is obvious. The latter two offer extensive access to
data; this resource is very rich but not directly relevant to the use of the
system for instruction.
The remaining tools in the menu
relate to courses. First, the gradebook
offers the same functions as would appear in many course management systems,
with an important addition: a tool that allows teachers to create a submission
form linked to a specific assignment.
For instance, in English 1, I might create a new assignment titled
“Writer’s Memo,” then create an online submission form for it, including a due
date. When students in that class
checked their assignment pages, they would see a link reading “English 1:
Writer’s Memo” that would take them to the submission form. They could type in a text box or attached a
file to submit their work, which I could then access, comment on in my own text
box or attached file, and assign a score, all from the same page within the
gradebook. The feedback function allows the gradebook to be used as an
instructional tool in addition to a performance record, since students can monitor
patterns in feedback or easily refer to feedback on a previous essay as they
prepare to write the next one.
As in other LMSs, the site offers forums.
The current view allows users to read the entire conversation growing from a
post, which might be cumbersome in very long discussion with many offshoots (a
rare occurrence in most classes).
Because some teachers do not prefer this view, next year IT will offer
options for viewing threads. Forums were
the first true instructional tool to be added to the Darlington system, and my
first to use, as well. In the past, my forum
prompts have not sufficiently encouraged expression and interaction,
essentially inviting (or commanding) students to perform. I plan to incorporate
some of Scott Warnock’s suggestions to better use this tool for informal
writing and feedback. I am especially
interested in his suggestions regarding progressive prompts and peer review.
The following three functions,
comments, attendance, and coach class, operate primarily as ways to communicate
with administrators and parents and therefore offer less than other tools in
the way of instruction.
Finally, the assignments and links
pages offer the most untapped potential as instructional tools. Because most secondary classes meet daily,
teachers rarely distribute a complete assignment calendar at the beginning of
the term; instead, they distribute plans weekly or daily, often writing them on
the white board for students to record in their own planners. At Darlington, the online assignment page
allows teachers to post daily plans and homework assignments on students’ home
pages, eliminating the need for transcription and the excuses that come with it. Once posted, the assignments roll over from
year to year, allowing teachers to tweak their plans without having to retype
them. Further, teachers can add links to sites on the web or files placed on a
special drive in our network, a function I will discuss more below.
Thus far, I have used the
assignment page as a communication vehicle. The tool allows me to ensure that,
despite my forgetfulness about in-class announcements, students know what work
is expected of them every day. I find
that I sometimes write more on my assignment pages than other teachers; I give
advice, remind students of an assignment’s goal, or explain complex
requirements. Communicating small goals
and establishing my teaching persona, the assignment page acts as an instructional
tool that reaches every student and can be adjusted quickly in response to
student needs. Because students check their assignment pages regularly (unlike
email), the page can be used to briefly transmit information not only about
expected work, but also about rationale and even theory. The key word here, however, is “transmit”:
the assignment page is useful to make sure that students receive helpful
information, but it does not act as an open line of two-way communication;
students must still use email or chat for that.
The function that takes the
assignment page beyond these limits as an instructional tool is the ability to
link and organize resources. Like the
assignment page itself, I primarily use the link function for the
administrative task of distribution, and I have done so for two reasons: if the
resource is available only digitally (such as a website), and if I have failed
to distribute the document in hard copy during class. In considering my use of the link function, I
notice several patterns. First, I often
use digital tools to remediate my own weaknesses, such as a poor memory and
lack of time. Second, the linking of resources
to the assignment page hints at this tool’s potential as an instructional
tool.
When adding links to the assignment
page, the user can (but is not required to) create custom categories into which
to place them (such as readings, assignments, support websites, and so
on). These links and categories appear not
only on the specific days on the assignment page, but also on the links page,
with the categories as headings for groups of links. Although the links page’s
performance has been spotty in the past, next year it will be revised and
expanded. Instead of growing form the
assignment page, it will be a repository that the teacher can organize as
desired, linking resources to specific days in the assignment page or not, as appropriate.
In a distance course in writing, which
may not rely on a content-heavy text, a combination of the assignment page and
the more robust links page could operate as a custom textbook creator. For instance, I could organize my course into
units, and then use those units as categories for links to documents, videos,
and sites (both on the web and of my own creation), so that my resource page
becomes a clickable table of contents. Further,
one link can be placed in multiple categories, creating an alternate index in
addition to that table of contents. For
instance, a link to Diana Hacker’s Research and Documentation website might be
categorized into “Unit 5: Documenting Sources” but also into the category
“Research Resources,” making it appear twice on the resource page, as both an
informational site in unit 5 and as a resource to be used on any research
project. Hantula and Pawlowicz discuss the book as a technology that allowed
greater distance between the instructor-author and his student-readers, but of
course in most cases today, the author and the instructor often combine (or
compete) to teach a course; this method of creating a custom resources page may
actually return to an earlier conception of a single author-instructor.
The beauty of working with an IT
department who creates our system in-house is that some of these possibilities
have occurred to me, and I’ve then communicated them to IT, while others have
grown from the IT staff’s own ideas, and still others, like the digital
textbook idea above, have developed during conversations between the two of
us. Thus, what began as a suite of
administrative tools has expanded to include many true instructional tools that
respond to institutional needs and goals.
Hantula and Pawlowicz, like many others, imply that the goal of
technological teaching tools is to replicate the richness of face-to-face
instruction, but the varied and synergistic nature of the functions in
Darlington’s system implies that the tools can create a richness whose nature is
distinct from and in addition to that of face-to-face teaching.
No comments:
Post a Comment