Evaluation of Student Facing Web-Based Services: Final Integrated Report (CORE Education)

Are there unanticipated benefits or issues arising for learners, teachers, schools, school libraries and project partners, and what are the implications for service providers and policy making?

Unanticipated benefits for learners, teachers, schools, school libraries and project partners:

Unanticipated benefits for learners:

The immediacy and relevance of the assistance that came from AnyQuestions and Studyit increased learner satisfaction. For example Studyit after exams discussions were observed to continue that were not about the subject listed on the forum header. The strength of the committed community sustained conversation beyond the immediate need created by exams to incorporate future study and career plans.

The emergence of student voice and evidence of leadership in Studyit was an unanticipated benefit for learners. Studyit was set up within a quite didactic view of how discussions would occur. But there is evidence there was much more co-construction of ideas emerged than was expected.

Expert teachers and students appeared to offer a considerable amount of emotional support to other students in Studyit.

What was unanticipated was that participation appeared to be greater for students with greater level of confidence and who were higher achievers. Less participation by lower achieving students was unexpected and requires more study to understand.

Teachers, Schools, School libraries:

For teachers in general, the benefits of these services are not being made the most of. While these services are intended to directly support students with their schoolwork and are generally not, apart from WickED, intended to be integrated into instructional strategies there nevertheless remains a role for these services in classroom programmes. AnyQuestions presents the possibility of bringing the reference librarian right into the classroom especially for teachers undertaking inquiry approaches with students and could be a valuable resource indeed for students needing help with constructing inquiries and for researching and locating appropriate information and developing the skills of inquiry. Use of AnyQuestions in this context appears to be limited. With expanding and greatly more flexible timetable options in the senior school where students are provided school based study periods there could be a role for Studyit where students are not supported by a teacher with the science and language expertise they need.

For teacher and reference librarians involved in the delivery of these services a number of benefits have become apparent.

• The AnyQuestions operators commented that they have developed a far better understanding of New Zealand curriculum and student needs from their work in the online environment. They felt rewarded and satisfied by their online experiences with students. There is a lot of learning by sharing between operators of useful search tips and strategies and ways of dealing with questions.
• Feedback from the Studyit teacher mentors indicated teachers developed a deeper appreciation and understanding about how students were thinking about NCEA requirements, as well as a better understanding of their approach to study, stresses of external examination pressures and future aspirations. They were impressed by the value of Studyit for students and the opportunities this online environment offered. They were also deeply impressed by the maturity of these students and their preparedness and ability to help solve each other’s problems.
  
• Teachers considered it a career opportunity to be able to work in different ways with these students.
  

Project partners:

The nature of the AnyQuestions and Studyit services in particular allows for ‘third party’ providers or non-school providers a direct access to students without the mediating influence of teachers and schools.

Others can readily be part of the educative process and this can include parents. It was noticeable in the NNR AnyQuestions report that some adults were monitoring their younger childrens’ involvement in the ‘chat room’ with the librarian and in the process were themselves being introduced to good practice in search techniques.

Students use family members (89%) and internet search tools (88%) as the first ports-of-call for finding out about a topic or question independently of school. While school libraries are high on the list of places students choose to go for help, public libraries are not so important to them. This is different for teachers, librarians and other adults who continue to rate offline resources such as books, school and public libraries, and people in the community very highly as sources of information for students (NNR, 2006a, p 58 & 65). Providing national and public library support for young students via online services and through means that young people can value and should be an effective way to strengthen the place of libraries in the lives of a younger generation.

Unanticipated issues arising for learners / teachers, schools, school libraries and project partners:

Unexpected issues include,

The need to extend resourcing of the AnyQuestions service by extending hours further into children’s homework time. Having school class time available by the service is a good idea but more teachers need to be encouraged to trial this as a class-based resource for independent student inquiry as well as use as a home based resource.

The need to extend resourcing of the AnyQuestions service by looking at ways of extending the software affordances to allow more operators to work concurrently. AnyQuestions operators need to be able to spend quality time with young learners as they take them through the information inquiry approach and not feel time-constrained by waiting queues. There are issues for all student users and providers here.

Some public safety concerns appear to exist around the synchronous chatroom functionality of AnyQuestions. There was evidence in the NNR report that some parents were sitting with children when they were using the text based chat function. In the CORE report there was evidence that there were some limits placed on access to chatroom functionality by schools. Teachers had warned children not to enter chatrooms for safety reasons. A similar finding occurred with the forum areas of WickED. Children interviewed were listening to these warnings and avoiding these services.

The value of WickED for students as a support service and for teachers as a resource for classroom use. Some re-examination of the goals and purposes of this service is essential and repositioning of the service to better meet the needs of both groups or the student group on its own, may need to be considered. Younger New Zealand students are, on average, spending 3.5 hours a week for school related activities at home. Overall 50% of these younger-student respondents (data from the WickED report, NNR 2006c p.45) are spending up to two hours a week using the internet at home for their schoolwork. Also interesting is that students in mid and lower decile schools spent 62% of their home internet use time doing schoolwork. A well-structured, school-linked, active support area is an opportunity to support students to  develop as independent learners.

Implications for service providers and policy making:

Need for appropriate educational spaces for students:

The internet is playing an ever an increasingly and larger role in supporting students’ educationally both within and beyond school. Educators who are more aware of the internet support services available to help students working on their own could more readily direct students to appropriate services and provide opportunities for their students to understand how these services work.

Need to expand the reach existing successful models:

• Services such as AnyQuestions and Studyit appear to provide an important link between school expectations and independent learning.
• Effective student driven learning processes and effective teaching practices are underpinning elements of both services and other services could well be modelled on their successful attributes.
• These sites have considerable merit and educational value and need to expand their reach to a much greater extent into the student population than they currently do.
  

Need to revamp and realign WickED to better suit the student user group and advance the reach of this service to diverse groups of students:

• WickED could play an important role in attracting the younger primary and teen group who need safe places in which to explore and engage with online interactive and communication elements in educationally relevant ways.
• WickED could provide activities and functionalities that may attract and engage those children in the mid to lower decile school range who spend considerable time on the internet as well as offering more sophisticated interactives for the slightly older teen group it is currently attracting. To a certain extent WickED is already attempting to attract these groups, but with apparently limited success.
• There is a need to stay true to agreed objectives and not try to be all things to all people. It may be important to target the learning needs of young students who are emerging as independent learners more closely, rather than also try to provide a service for classroom teachers.
• Some revamping of this service to better suit its targeted student user groups is advocated. There is a need to take notice of the patterns of behaviour, use and expectation of younger users in a Web2.0 environment. More research may need to be carried out with young New Zealand students on this aspect of internet use and how it may be linked successfully with their school related learning needs.
  

The services need to retain their commitment to be student centred while keeping close links to curriculum, the work of schools and therefore relevancy to students. The importance of developing notions of student ownership and some student control may need to be considered by WickED providers.

Further work is required regarding the use of inquiry models in online services. There is a need to understand the place and role of these sorts of services and create opportunity to link with New Zealand compulsory schooling curriculum.