ExitTicket – just the ticket

Technology in the classroom isn’t just so your students can enjoy a more interactive experience in their learning journey.  It’s also for teachers to measure training effectiveness and have tools to be able to adjust their pedagogy and re-measure.  Once this feedback is shared with your students, you can safely bet that their competitive spirit also kicks in, and they want those stats to improve!  It’s a very empowering experience for the student cohort to be in charge of their learning progress. A win – win for the whole teaching community 🙂 Who thought an app could do this?

The app I am talking about is ExitTicket.

ExitTicket

What’s an exit ticket?  This is an end-of-lesson checkpoint that your students have understood what you were on about in the past hour or so.  Here is a great explanation on how the ExitTicket app works: https://www.edsurge.com/exitticket

Are you a flipped classroom type of teacher?  Just use this as an entry ticket to your next class so you can instantly measure comprehension of tasks set for your students, and discuss the results collaboratively in groups or as one group.

The ExitTicket concept was created from the simple need to massively kickstart and accelerate student growth. To solve this problem, the ExitTicket design team parked themselves in a classroom and over time developed ExitTicket directly with teachers and students.

Inside the Toolkit (http://exitticket.org/toolkit/) is a growing selection of resources to help teachers capture the same type of growth for their students. ExitTicket was designed and honed by classroom teachers. It’s intuitive but feature-rich. It’s flexible for different teaching styles and content-areas but it improves instructional practices. ExitTicket provided teachers with authentic, longitudinal data showing how students’ comprehension grew and what concepts -not just assessments- needed intervention or earned celebration.

Did I mention it’s free? 🙂 Why not try it for yourself and let me know how your students’ responses helped you adjust your teaching style.

ExitTicket also supports the 4Ms of sound instructional design – meaningful, motivational, memorable and measurable.

I’ll be using it in more depth next year when mentoring teachers who work with English as a second language (ESL) students, so watch this space for my ongoing review 🙂

ExitTicket Module

student logins, shared emails and student privacy

Email

Not every student has their own email, for various reasons.   This may include:

• student is not a regular computer user and is accessing the course from a friend’s account;
• student’s workplace is coordinating the enrollment and provides one contact email address;
• it is a small workplace and they don’t have unique emails.

But, as a registered training organisation (RTO) have you considered whether using a shared email complies with your responsibilities to keep the student’s records, progress and results confidential?
Think about it. Your online course welcome message may include login details, including a password to your no-longer-secure learning management system, all course progression messages may be linked to an email and assessment feedback sent via email.

Your confidence in assessment submission authenticity is weakened as you can’t be sure who really submitted that work, and unless you have face to face contact with the student or build an online profile for the student’s digital identity, any determination could be reasonably challenged.

I would recommend:

• Help the student create their own email using a free account and provide basic support until the student is confident in accessing and responding to emails.  Students can usually use computers at the local library if they don’t have one at home.

If your student does need to use a shared email,  you should also do these four things:

1. Ask the student to sign an Authority to Release Information form giving permission for the shared email owner/s to see their online participation records.
2. Change your assessment strategy to include a signed Declaration of Authenticity for assessment submissions (similar to the process followed for posted assessment submissions)  You may need to strengthen your assessment to include on off-line task.  This is reasonable adjustment to maintain validity.
3. Ensure the online teacher/assessor includes ‘This message is for student xxx’ in any emails so that the receiver is prompted to pass on the message.
4. Change your facilitation strategy to include more student contact so that the assessor is confident who is submitting the final work.  This means more regular phone calls, perhaps trying out a video or web cam session, visiting on site if possible, or inviting the student into a face to face class.

6 steps to e-learning facilitation etiquette

Is it just me or is there a general lack of etiquette with e-learning?  I see all sorts of course Announcements starting with ‘Your assessments are NOW DUE!’ and think ‘how rude!’

If you entered a classroom, you would start by introducing yourself.  This is also easy to do in an online environment and you can even save your recording as a podcast like this one:

http://audioboo.fm/boos/693235-deewr-efs-qld-2012-welcome

Most learning management systems also have instant messaging service; where you can see who is online at the same time as you.  It’s not much effort to type ‘Hi, I’m online too – can I help you?‘

Setting rules for the online classroom is just as important as in the face to face setting.  Here is a link to my slideshare presentation that gives you a starting point for this conversation.

Some examples of welcome messages I send are:

* new LinkedIn members of the group I manage:

or for a new online class member (note I have cropped my contact details at the end to limit spam):

welcome email example

So, when you develop your messages for online participation remember to:

1. Inform the recipient of the intention of the message – are you sending instructions on accessing their new studies, reminding them of assessment due dates, or providing general information?
2. Explain what you want the person to do next – review their lesson plan, completion an orientation, do the ice-breaker activity…
3. Provide a deadline for this next step, but in a passive voice – ‘before next week can you.,,‘; ‘your access to this course ends in 4 weeks…‘; ‘this group will be open for collaborative discussions until May…‘
4. Provide a ‘phone a friend’ option – ‘call me on 555-xxx if you need help’
5. Be respectful – you don’t know if the person you are sending this message to is having a personal crisis unrelated to your intention and ‘do this before tomorrow or you fail’ might push them over their limits.
6. Follow through – there is no point in saying you will be available if you turn off your phone, nor if you have set boundaries but let them be ignored.

See, it’s not so different to person to person politeness.

image sourced from http://free.clipartof.com/pg2

Possibly a Post-script for this post is a reminder of using the appropriate tool for the intention of the message.

• Use Announcements for broadcast messages you might typically hear using a loud speaker system in real life.  An example would be ‘QLD training Awards now open!‘
• Use group emails for group discussions; such as ‘You have received this as a member of xxx; most of you are on track now for your final assessments – well done!‘
• Use personal emails for recording personal discussions for later evidence of student interaction and participation – ‘Hi Anne, thanks for working through the first topic with me today by phone.  You have shown a sound understanding of these concepts for the unit BSBFIM501A Manage Finance and Budgets.  You should now be ready to attempt your first assessment.  Please complete this before the end of the month.‘
• Use instant message or chat areas for informal discussions – ‘Hi Anne – need any help?  I see you have started Topic 1.  I can call you if you want to work through this together’