mybvc.ca Showcase

Showcase
Next Wednesday (November 28th) you will have the opportunity to learn all about the mybvc.ca portal and the Google Apps that work along with it. The showcase has been established to create awareness of the availability of the portal and the Google Apps for use by teachers and students to improve learning. The showcase will substantiate a dialogue of best practices and encourage further use and support of these applications.

Faculty and staff are invited for the morning session and are asked to register (lunch included); feel free to join us at any time - you don't need to stay for the entire morning. Students can drop by anytime in the afternoon without registering. Please let your students know about this free event!

Where to start
Interested in collaborative writing? Check out the exhibit on Google Drive. Want to know more about finding educational videos? Drop by the exhibit on YouTube. Curious about how to connect with learners outside the classroom? Chat with the experts at the Blogger and Groups exhibit. Click here to see information about all the booths and the day's schedule.

What is the mybvc.ca portal?
The portal provides information, announcements and resources to students 24 hours a day and is accessible with their official mybvc.ca email address. Google Apps, such as Gmail, Drive and Calendar, are available for free for students, with abundant file storage and easy sharing. Students can use the portal as their single sign-on to start using the apps right away, in an environment with which many are already familiar. In short, students can take full advantage of an online and mobile learning environment.

Faculty and staff can take advantage of students' connections to these tools. They can correspond with students, with Gmail and chat. They can send assignments, receive submissions, and reply with feedback, keeping track of these emails for future use as threaded conversations. Faculty can use Drive as a collaborative content management tool for course documents, such as Word, Excel and PDF files, with sharing and real-time mulit-user editing enabled. Faculty and staff can create calendars, for exams and events, to be shared with colleagues and students, made available on the web or Outlook. YouTube videos can be hosted and easily shared.  All of these tools are available free of charge as part of Google Apps for Education edition and can be managed by the college using a full suite of administration tools. Teachers can continue to work the way they currently do and do so more effectively

For more information on this event, please see the Foundational Curriculum website.

Encouragement to Present and Publish

It struck me after looking at the applied research that the Department has been involved in, that I should declare that I am very supportive of having instructors submit papers and presentations to conferences or journals of various kinds.

If you have never done a presentation at a conference or written a paper to be submitted for publication, the process can seem a bit daunting and perhaps even impossible.  While it does take work, doing a conference presentation or a paper is a great learning experience.  When I think of all the things that are being done by instructors and staff, it seems to me that we have a large list of possible topics.  For example:

• methods of conducting real time online labs in any of the sciences
• item bank construction for on line delivery
• creating an in-class community of readers and writers as a starting point for literacy
• learner readiness and adult upgrading
• what accessibility means - a deconstruction (... a little of my personal interests there LOL)
• ...

If you think it would be helpful to have some kind of short session on how to do presentations and papers, let me know and I will work to pull something together to support people in taking the first step.

If you have published something or done a presentation at a conference, this blog is a great place to post that information.

Here's an odd little piece that I just got published http://thephilanthropist.ca/index.php/phil/article/view/948

Awards Ceremony

What a wonderful event last night!  Balloons, the laughter of children, the buzz of conversation between students, staff, and families set the tone for the awards ceremony.  To hear the stories of achievement and lives changed as a result of participating in courses given by the Centre for Excellence in Foundational Learning (our department just in case the new name doesn't ring a bell) is truly inspiring. 

Two awards stood out for the importance of their stories.  First, the Fran and Susan Award for Academic Preparation.  Not only were these two former faculty still excited about what we do at BVC, they provided time for the award recipient Jasvir Sandhu to read her paragraph on how her life was changed by her experience in Academic Preparation.  Jasvir's comment to "never give up on your dreams" was spoken with heartfelt appreciation for the support she received.  It was also an inspiration to others, who like Jasvir, have significant challenges between their dreams and where they are at.

The second award that stood out for me was the Sandra Taylor Memorial Award.  The parents of Sandra Taylor continue to take exceptional pride in their daughter's contribution to BVC and the difference instructors make in the lives of students.  This award reminded everyone on how tightly knit we are as a community of educators... which when so much is going on, is sometimes set aside.  As the "newbie" this closeness was already evident... I just did not understand how deeply it ran.

As every award was handed out, and students - sometimes with their children - took the stage, one could tell that this recognition meant a great deal.  For some, I found out, this was the first award of any kind that they had ever received.  For others, the awards were a kind of motivator to reach further after new goals.  Yet others, talked about how the award proved to them that they could go to university or on to another challenge.  Every story that I heard from award recipients was inspiring - be tenacious, face and overcome adversity, take risks, and celebrate achieving a dream.  

Going home after this I reflected on just how important the work of our department is... of how important the work of each instructor and each staff person is in helping these students achieve their dreams.  I want to thank each of you for your commitment, time, and passion to make a difference in the lives of students.

I also want to thank the team who put on the awards ceremony - Jehad Abu-Ulbeh, Anjali Chugh, Glenna Besse, Iba Boda, Sharon Cameron, Bev Kosior, Alex MacDonald, Petya Mirtchovska, Lynda Newton, Angele Patry, Patricia Price, and Jenniel Taylor-Samuel.  I also want to recognize the two Events Management students who assisted - Janine Cezar and Chantal Godperson.

What did you read today?

Answering a simple question gives you the opportunity to win a Kobo eReader from the National Reading Campaign. One of the priorities of this Canadian initiative is to promote reading in general across the country. With that in mind, they launched a Twitter reading campaign yesterday. You can win one of 10 eReaders by tweeting your answer to the question What did you read today? to @readingcampaign along with the hashtag #whatdidyoureadtoday? The eReaders are preloaded with a great selection of eBooks.

You can easily promote reading and this contest to your learners by downloading the contest toolkit (posters, bookmarks, etc.) from their website: National Reading Campaign.

Need another reason to participate? Here is a great one - Kobo is donating $1 to the National Reading Campaign for every contest entry tweet that they receive (up to $10,000) to help grow reading in Canada.

Contest is open to Canadian residents only and runs until December 31, 2012. Have kids you want to promote reading to also? There is a different contest just for them!

What is the National Reading Campaign?

From the information available in their contest toolkit: 

Since 2008, the National Reading Campaign has brought together people from every region of Canada who are concerned about Canada’s changing reading habits. We represent school and public librarians, parents, readers, educators, writers, students, book and magazine publishers, booksellers, reading promoters, and everyone involved in reading in Canada. Through summits, the development of a National Reading Plan, a public awareness campaign and many other efforts, we aim to make reading a national priority, because when Canada reads, Canada grows.

Our ultimate goal is to promote reading amongst all Canadians, reflecting the value of reading as a tool for democracy and civic engagement, as a means to equalize the playing field for all Canadians, as a way for Canadians to learn about themselves, and as a vehicle for joy. In 2012, The National Reading Campaign was incorporated as a not-for profit organization.  

WikiSeat – learning through making

photo care of wikiseat.org

Have you ever thought about how building furniture can help your learners understand your class? Well, we hadn’t either until we ran across WikiSeat and their vision for a maker education initiative. They explain how critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication are key concepts that are central to 21st century learning. It takes all those skills to do well in your class, and it takes all those skills to build a seat. Starting with a catalyst (pictured), learners engage in the design and building process while linking the four key concepts to the class content.

We are now one of 103 educational organizations internationally who are participating in the WikiSeat initiative. We see the WikiSeat program fitting in with our new Media and Exam Certificate workshops for the department, specifically the workshops on Instructional Design and Leadership, as they centre around the same four key concepts.

Want more information about the WikiSeat initiative? See their website: wikiseat.org.
Want to see examples of seats that students built? See this video: WikiSeats Gallery.
Want to see who the 103 participants are? See the Wiki Educators Map.
Want to participate yourself? Stay tuned to Certificate and Workshop announcements in Spring 2013!

WikiSeat is also currently doing some fundraising to be able to supply the catalysts to everyone. You can find details and donate here: Indiegogo Crowdfunding Platform.

Interpreting Diploma Exam Results

Are we assessing fairly? 
The Diploma Exams are an objective, reliable scale.

I attended the session “Interpreting Diploma Exam Results” presented by Exam Managers from Alberta Education.  Here is some of what I learned:

Factors that Affect Student Performance on Diploma Exams are Difficult to Control

I like the following statement from one of the documents that were distributed at the session because it encapsulates just how difficult it is to help students learn complex academic material:

See how many factors there are that affect student achievement, how many of them are in your (administrators, curricular leaders) control?  As a leader in your district, attending to those things that you can control is very important, but we all know that all of these other things, you cannot control.  You might be able to influence some of those things, but you cannot control them.
It is really important that we all realize this and we focus our attention on what we can control, not what we can’t.  This session today is not about blaming, comparing, crying (though there might be some of that), it is about learning from our results to affect [sic] positive action for the future – for the students.  The results are what they are and we take them and interpret them and then go on with action to change (or keep) policies, procedures, development, etc.  (Alberta Education, 2011).

Proportions of Students Who Achieve A, B, C or F on the School Mark and Exam Mark

Alberta Education is concerned when the proportion of students who receive a grade of F on the diploma exam is at least 10% more than the proportion of students who receive a grade of F on their school mark.  This is of significant concern because the most important standards to distinguish between are the acceptable standard and the unacceptable standard--whether the student passes and earns credits, or fails and earns no credits.  We want to be sure we are awarding credits that are appropriately merited.  If a significant number of students have a passing class mark, but then get a failing diploma exam mark, then our assessment instruments are likely too easy (Edwards, 2011).  

Individual Students’ School-Awarded Marks Should be within 15% of their Diploma Examination Marks Just Two Thirds of the Time, but the Average School-Awarded Mark and Average Diploma Examination Mark Should be Very Similar

A main function of the diploma exams is to ensure that schools are evaluating students with the appropriate standards.  There are two main standards categories used by Alberta Education from K to 12:  Acceptable Standard and Standard of Excellence.  Note that performance standards must be distinguished from cutscores.  A performance standard is a description of what a student needs to be able to do in order to be classified at that performance level.  These are clarified in the Information Bulletins.  A cutscore is the particular range of numbers on the score scale that correspond to each performance level.  In Alberta, the cutscore range for the  Acceptable Standard is defined as grades from 50% to 79%.  The cutscore range for the Standard of Excellence is defined as grades from 80% to 100%.  

A student’s school awarded mark should be within 15% of their diploma exam mark 67% of the time.  Differences greater than 15% between the school-awarded mark and the diploma exam mark for a particular student are a consequence of individual student differences and because teachers assess several outcomes in class that cannot be assessed on a machine-scored examination.  However, although individual students’ school marks may vary significantly from their diploma exam marks, the average mark awarded by the school should almost equal the average diploma exam mark achieved by the school.  The diploma exams provide teachers and schools with feedback about whether their courses have an appropriate difficulty level relative to the rest of the Province (Edwards, 2011).

Use z-Scores to Compare Our Student Performance to Provincial Performance

“Subtests and reporting categories are of different lengths and difficulties;   z-scores make all subtests and reporting categories of equivalent lengths and difficulties,” (Edwards, 2011).

The formulas recommended by Alberta Education are:



For example, let us say that on a certain diploma exam our students’ average school-awarded mark was 64.1% and the average provincial school-awarded mark was 63.7%:

This indicates that our average school-awarded mark is very close to the average school awarded mark of the province.

Let us say that on this same exam, our students’ average diploma exam mark was 58.5% and the provincial average was 63.8%:

According to the session presenter, z-scores between −0.25 and −0.50 are of some concern, and z-scores less than −0.50 are of significant concern.  Consequently, a z-core of -0.44 is of some concern, however, it is not unexpected that upgrading students would score lower than the province due to the many challenges they need to deal with.  What is of more concern is that on this particular imagined exam, we awarded an average class mark .03 standard deviations above the provincial school-awarded average, but then our students scored 0.44 standard deviations below the provincial diploma exam average.

I suggest we calculate the difference between the two z-scores calculated using the formulas above.  A difference greater than 0.50 would indicate that our exams and other assessments are too easy and do not match the standards set by Alberta Education in the Information Bulletins.  In this imagined case, the difference is (+0.03) - (-0.44) = 0.47.  

For these calculations to be valid we need a significant sample size.  For example, a sample size of 10 or below provides meaningless data.  A sample size of 80 could be used to derive statistics we could have much more confidence in.  It is also possible to calculate the confidence intervals for various statistics from sets of data but I will not do so here.

Causes of Class Averages Being Significantly Higher than the Diploma Exam

A common problem is that the average school-awarded mark is significantly above the average diploma examination mark.  This is often caused by the following factors:

• Exams used in class have too few questions at the Standard of Excellence
• Too many marks are given for participation and completeness of work, rather than for quality of work
• Lack of awareness of the provincial standard for the examination, whether at acceptable standard or at standard of excellence

(Alberta Education, 2011)

Hypothetical Analysis of Diploma Exam Results Completed by an Alberta Education Statistician

For an analysis of a hypothetical school, see P:\STAFF FOLDERS\Michael Gaschnitz\Case_Study_03.pdf.  The notations are those of an Alberta Education statistician.  Note that in this group of 81 Chemistry 30 students, 22.2% failed received failing class mark, but on the diploma exam 34.6% received a failing mark, a margin of 11.4%, which exceeds the 10% limit. The statistician highlighted this category in pink to indicate a significant concern.  

References

Edwards, J.  (2011, November).  Interpreting Diploma Exam Results.  Poster session presented at Calgary Regional Consortium, Calgary, AB.