Evaluation and Benchmarking of ICT in Schools

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Evaluation and Benchmarking of ICT in Schools

• Professor Paul Bacsich
• UK
• 17 October 2003

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Acknowledgement

• The Education and Manpower Bureau
• would like to offer special thanks to
• Professor Paul Bacsich for his powerpoint
  presentation on
• Evaluation and Benchmarking of ICT in Schools

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Evaluation

• In 4 easy lessons

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Evaluation

• Programme-wide with deep drill-down
• Based on numbers and qualitative info, with
  interpretation
• Triangulation and stakeholders

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Flashlight (after Ehrmann)

• See www.tltgroup.org
• And the Flashlight presentation at
  www.roundtable.ac.uk/FLIntro.ppt

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The Flashlight Oath

• "Above all, I will do no harm. I know the value
  of people's time, and so I will be ruthless in
  making my surveys and interviews focused, brief,
  and usefulso that those who have answered my
  questions will be even more willing to
  collaborate with the next researcher or evaluator
  who contacts them."
• "My study's process as well as its findings will
  stimulate reflection and learning"

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Programme evaluation in UK

• Based on Flashlight
• Developed in the Annenberg/CPB trials of
  e-learning in HE c. 1995
• and the OU evaluation consensus
• (Bates, Mason, Laurillard et al)
• First substantial trial in the JANUS evaluations
  of 1993-5
• Refined through TERG (SHU) into a tool for
  evaluation of NLN
• Next set of slides are c/o Ash, Carter and Mistry

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NLN-e1 Findings

• ICT is only appreciated by students when there is
  a reason for it
• ICT is an increasingly effective tool that is
  used with increasing sophistication and
  appreciation
• Increasing ICT skills at schools is pressurising
  teacher skills at FE
• Involvement in evaluation can facilitate
  colleges. organisational development

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Evaluation successes

• A further 84M funding for the skills sector
• DFeS are pushing the toolkit to evaluate courses
• Furthered thought in the identification of good
  practice
• Helping to raise awareness of the issues in the
  pedagogy of ICT teaching

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What is UK doing for the second phase of NLN
evaluation

• Meta-analysis of current and recent surveys
• Quantitative data gathering from across the
  sector
• Twelve In-depth longitudinal studies developed by
  external evaluators
• Focus on the whole organisation rather than the
  course

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What did Phase one tell us about conducting
internal evaluations?

• Tools and processes are often secondary to good
  management
• The process of reviewing and assessing work can
  be threatening and evoke a deeply political
  response
• Evaluations serve multiple functions not always
  those the evaluators envisage

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Conducting the evaluation Data collection

• Leave your baggage at the door
• Pilot everything
• ALWAYS double check and share insights with your
  informants
• Look from multiple viewpoints
• Dont over-gather the same information from the
  same sources

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Benchmarking

• Not an easy subject

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Benchmarking but who with?

• Similar countries/regions but who is?
• Leaders, to provide aspirational role models
• Laggards in case they catch up!

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Criteria

• Population
• And population density
• Type of language (alphabet, ideographic, etc)
• Level of use of ICT in general life
• (Pedagogic) culture

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Suggestions

• Singapore
• Scotland not England
• Canadian (province level)
• Denmark not Finland
• Australia (states)
• Thailand (laggard but trying to catch up)
• South Korea?
• US are we sure?

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ICT findings

• Key ratios

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Key Performance Indicators

• Students per PC
• Bandwidth per student PC
• Or per student (aspirational?)
• Media sophistication of software
• Text, graphics, web, audio, video
• Production to consumption ratio

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Spot emerging trends even if small

• Laptops/tablets are less intrusive and fit the
  paradigm of ubiquitous computing
• Binding of home PCs into school systems
  extranets
• Hosting moving servers out of schools back to
  server farms
• New worldware apps?
• Email integration with SMS on mobile phones??
• Anything coming in from HE (Grid?) or industry
  (cooperative working) or real life (games?)