A lot of thought and planning has gone into the student e-portfolio initiative and developing the e-portfolio implementation plan. Is it worth putting forth the effort to follow through with this plan? What can we expect as a result? What will be needed for it to be a success? While we may not be able to answer those questions with certainty, we can take a look at other educational institutions that have implemented student e-portfolios and learn from their experiences. The literature review addresses a variety of experiences other educational institutions have had.
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According to Mertler, action research is conducted by teachers over topics of their choice that will help them make sense of what is going on in their classroom and in turn improve what is going on in their classroom (2011). As I read through the first few chapters of Action research: Improving schools and empowering educators, I kept thinking to myself, "This is me! I can actually do this!" As teachers, the different stages and steps are not foreign to us, we go through them all of the time. The vast majority of teachers do not follow lesson plans from their first year of teaching exactly as they were written. Why? We are always looking for ways to improve. It happens so often that we do not always make note of it. If a lesson bombs first period, we aren't going to do it the exact same way the following periods, and we surely aren't going to do it the exact same way the following years. We gather data, analyze data, develop action plans, reflect, research what other people in our content area are doing, etc. Action research simply provides a formal and systematic way of doing what we already do. So why is it necessary? It can be helpful because teachers deal with a lot of whirlwind and this will allow us to maintain our focus. My action research will focus on the impact of student e-portfolios on student engagement and academic performance for 8th grade students in the AVID elective. As we repeat reflect on our findings, and repeat the procedures, the goal would be to include more students every time.
This action research plan is specifically focused on students in the 8th grade elective as they will serve as the pilot group. After going through this process with this small group and reflecting on the results, we will plan together as an AVID Site Team for the upcoming year. The goal is to expand a bit more each year starting with one elective, expanding to an entire department, expanding more to campus wide, and eventually district wide. The proposed procedures and timelines could be altered to better meet the needs of our students. We will let our findings determine in which direction we go next.
Student e-portfolios have been recognized as beneficial tools toward creating more meaningful learning experiences. I am interested in learning more about the impact student e-portfolios have proven to have over the course of time at several locations in order to better prepare to implement the student e-portfolio innovation plan at my own campus. The impact will primarily focus on student engagement and academic performance. Read the literature review below to become familiar with a few projects and studies that have explored the impact of student e-portfolios.
Action research involves teachers, campus administrators, and school counselors seeking a deeper understanding of how their school works and how their students learn. According to Mertler, action research "is not the simple implementation of predetermined answers to educational questions; it explores, discovers, and works to find creative solutions to educational problems" (2017, p. 18). Action research can be very powerful because teachers are researching things that directly affect their students. Teachers can take their findings and immediately apply it to their teaching practices. Below you will find the action research plan I developed in order to pursue the implementation of student e-portfolios.
It is not enough to have an innovative idea, it is not enough to draft a plan, it is also not enough to rally people into joining the movement. In order to piece everything together and give the innovation plan a chance of being a success, someone must step up to lead the organizational change. This can be a rather daunting idea and it may seem like a huge burden to take on, however the 4DX model provides a way for the implementation of an innovation plan to be more of a true group collaboration process. Using 4DX will help set up the road for success. Before we explore how 4DX will help drive our student e-portfolio initiative, we will take a look at the 5 stages of change and the 4 disciplines of execution.
My student e-portfolio innovation plan is not one that can be properly executed by just one person. So many factors attribute to the make or break of this initiative, therefore it is safe to say that rather than focusing on changing one thing, the focus should be on leading organizational change. How do you go about doing that? Simply commanding people to make a change is very unlikely to give you the desired results. A better approach is to use the power of influence, one method in particular is the Influencer Model as outlined by Patterson and Grenny. (2013) The Influencer Model starts by identifying measurable results, then finding the vital behaviors that will make those results achievable. The next step is using the six sources of influence which are as follows: personal motivation, personal ability, social motivation, social ability, structural motivation, and structural ability.
If you walk into a school and survey the students, many students will describe school as boring; they lack to see the importance in going to school and will either merely comply to meet the requirements, cheat their way to graduation, or drop out. Is this what we want for our children? Is this what we want for our society? Do we want our society to be made up of members with regrets and unfulfilled goals because they lacked to see value in the education they were being provided with? Personally, I would love to see a world with an abundance of doctors, engineers, scientists, meteorologists, architects, lawyers, educators, and pharmacists that pursued a higher education in their respective field because they discovered a passion for that subject and continue to educate themselves in order to feed that passion.
Prior to starting the course EDLD 5313 Creating Significant Learning Environments, I believed that the learning environment referred solely to the physical aspects of my classroom. Now I know that it extends far beyond that. The post Creating Significant Learning Environments, contains my thoughts on the importance of CSLE, how we need to allow students time to explore/discover on their own in order for them to take ownership of their learning, which will lead to more meaningful learning experiences, and the importance of seeing the big picture.
In the old model of teaching, knowledge is simply transferred from teachers to students, which is not suitable for this century. Thomas & Brown (2011) discuss in detail The New Culture of Learning which is better suited for the 21st century. This model is more of a learning based approach which focuses on learning via engagement within the world.
The new culture of learning compromises two elements. The first is a massive information network that provides almost unlimited access and resources to learn about anything. The second is a bounded and structured environment that allows for unlimited agency to build and experiment with things within these limits. (Thomas & Brown, 2011) In different videos, Douglas Thomas and Dr. Tony Bates both use the analogy of a plants in a garden to stress the point that teachers cannot force students to learn. We cannot simply funnel knowledge into their brains. What we can do, much like a gardener, is provide a good environment to grow. This is why the creating a significant learning environment is so important. Have you ever asked a student what they learned in school that day? Have you ever gotten a response that consisted of more than a mere shrug and a one word answer? Surely in the eight hours (or more) a day that students spend within a school building there is at least one thing they have learned, so why the lack of response? Often times this occurs because students play a very passive role in their learning and therefore do not feel any ownership over their learning, which results in their learning experiences not being very meaningful. What can we do to change this? We can begin to use student e-portfolios in our classrooms. I am on a mission to help create more meaningful learning experiences for students. When learning has meaning to the students, we are able to unleash much more of their potential. The content our students are receiving is very rich, but that in itself can be an issue, they are simply receiving. Many students go to school every day and are passive learners. If students are given choices in the way that they showcase their learning and are guided to reflect on their learning, they begin to take ownership of their learning. When students take ownership of their learning, that is when it begins to have meaning to them.
The integration of student e-portfolios have proven to be beneficial in creating more meaningful learning experiences. Read the literature review below to become familiar with a few projects and studies that have explored this idea. I invite you to take a look at my Student E-Portfolio Initiative for the upcoming school year. A literature review, and an implementation plan with logistical information will follow within a couple of weeks. If you have implemented a plan to use e-portfolios at your campus I would love to learn from your experiences. What were some challenges you faced? What were some unexpected benefits that came out of this initiative? Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email.
This week wraps up my second course of the Digital Learning and Leading Program, EDLD 5303. This course gave me the opportunity to do the following:
-Learning Manifesto -Learning Communities (PLN)
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