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UWCSEA Learning Platform

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Recommendation and Overview

Introduction and Rational

A Learning Platform is an online system which supports classroom teachers communicate with students, to share resources and to collect evidence of learning. !

Desired Features
The following criteria were considered important aspects of a Learning Platform. !

Infrastructure & Structural!

Overtime we have used a variety of platforms, including StudyWiz. More recently the Primary Schools of both campuses have moved to using Google Sites as a tool for communication and the Middle and High School of East Campus has developed East Curriculum Online, which is a set of interconnected Google Sites to perform a similar job. !

Hosting arrangements! Single sign-on with other college systems.Underlying technology supported in any modern browser.! Interoperability with other systems including Google Apps, and Turnitin. Social media centric interface,! easy switching between courses and accessible from a landing page. Flexibility to set customised roles and permissions for teachers, parents, HoDs, VPs, students Ability to link tasks/activities to learning outcomes / benchmarks / standards Online markbook where grades can be shared with students.! Add annotations to grades and links to evidence.! Analytics of student performance at quiz or class level. Creation, editing, management of course materials.! Links to Google Drive. Storage of learning platform objects, tagged and searchable. Mobile access to all features, specialist apps for grading. Standards Supported such as SCORM and QTi for assessment data. Export / Import content to transfer to/from other systems Access to Google Doc creation and collaboration from within the Learning Platform. ! Other collaborative tools such as commenting and peer assessment. A range of assessment tools including quizzes, and written responses can be collected.! Supports submission of audio or video for Language learning.! Online feedback can occur via commenting, voice and rubrics.

User Interface

Our desire is that we nd a new system for the Middle and High Schools of both Dover and East Campuses that reect our thinking on learning and the essence our UWCSEA Learning Principles. As a college we believe that Teacher Practice can be split into ve overlapping and interconnected processes. Planning, Delivery, Assessment, Recording and Reporting. An overview of this thinking is outlined in the From Principles to Practise diagram on Page 4. Moving forward, we believe a variety of interconnected online systems will support teachers in these ve important areas. !

Role Management!

Curriculum Mapping / Links! Gradebook! Course Management Repository

The introduction of a Learning Platform would support the Delivery and Assessment aspects of envisaged teacher practice. Other online systems including the College Curriculum Planner would support other aspects of best practice. Overtime we believe that a Learning Platform will help students access information about classes and will lead to improvements and efciencies, thus ultimately being a timesaver for both teachers and students.!

Mobile Access and Apps Standards Supported Portability of Content Collaboration Tools

The Research Process

An initial working group involving staff from a variety of subjects and grade levels was established in March 2013 to explore possible alternative Learning Platforms. The group looked at the following platforms through video conferences and demonstrations from the companies involved.!

Assessment Tools!

Desire2Learn - www.desire2learn.com! Canvas - www.instructure.com! Edmodo - www.edmodo.com! StudyWiz - www.apac.studywiz.com! Teamie - www.theteamie.com! Schoology - www.schoology.com! Haiku - www.haikulearning.com!

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Dover Campus

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Evaluation Process
From the long-list of seven platforms, two strong contenders supported the majority of expectations. These two platforms were Schoology and Teamie. The remainder of other platforms considered either lacked the same rich feature set (StudyWiz, Edmodo, Haiku, Desire2Learn) or were not suitable to a K-12 setting (Canvas).!

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Due to the size of Schoology there was limited scope for any customisation. Any implementation of Schoology would essentially be an off-theshelf installation. !

The Recommendation
In December 2013, after a trial of Teamie and extensive development, the feature set available to teachers was considered to be on par with what was available from Schoology and considerably more advanced in several essential areas; (Google Drive integration, content delivery and assessment functionality).!

Schoology is a Learning Platform, developed in the United States in 2007, with over 3 million users in university or K-12 settings. It is considered a social centric platform for online learning. It uses a traditional curriculum delivery design of folders and customised webpages. The assessment tools covered the range of techniques used by the majority of our teachers. The platform had limited and supercial integration with Google Drive.!

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A proposal to adopt Teamie was presented to the Dover and East Leadership teams and the groups each agreed to the choice of platform. ! A future working group has been formed on each campus!

Teamie is a relatively new Singapore based company, which has also focused on using the power of social networking in education to make learning collaborative. It has a rich feature set supporting the majority of requirements and has deep integration with Google Apps including Google Drive, Mail and Calendars. The content delivery design of units and lessons tted our beliefs of K-12 curriculum design.!

To suggest how the Learning Platform with be

introduced at each campus including a possible timeline and overview of subjects that will be involved at different stages.!

To outline the professional development

required for teachers and methods of delivery.!

To provide a recommendation to campus

leadership on the minimum expectations for teacher use. ! The remainder of this document is an overview of Teamie features and some frequently asked questions relating to Google Sites and Google Drive. #

It was decided in June 2013 to trial Teamie as a learning platform within the College. Teamie as a company was considerable smaller and more nimble and therefore willing to collaborate with UWCSEA on feature developments. If at the end of the trial Teamie had not developed according to our requests then the group would explore Schoology as an alternative. !

Key features of Teamie

Communication: Content Delivery: Assessment Tools: The online whiteboard provides a place to communicate with students, to remind them about homework, post links or to start a discussion. The unit and lesson functionality allows you to link documents from Google Drive, so that students can view them inline and within the context of a unit of work. A variety of online assessment can be utilised including the submission of voice recording to support Language learning. Multichoice quizzes with automatic grading, produce rich analytics of student performance. Written assessment can be collected and graded using rubrics and annotations provided or voice comments recorded. From within the Learning Platform teachers can create Google Docs and share them directly with the respective classes and embed them within a unit of work. The platform includes an online mark book which collates any data from quizzes or assessments within the system. These can be published to the students with annotations.
Dover Campus

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Collaborative:! Markbook:!

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