CCS Open Ed 2013

Editor's Notes

1. I am Heather Leary from the University of Colorado Boulder where I work with Tammy Sumner in the Institute of Cognitive Science and Holly Devaul at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. Today I am going to talk to you about the model we use for delivering OER to middle and high school teachers in a way that is embedded in their practice.We all work within another group called Digital Learning Sciences (DLS), which is a joint collaborative institute between CU and UCAR. DLS has a rich history with OER, that began in 1998 with the creation of the Digital Library for Earth Systems Education (DLESE).
2. DLS works to solve problems in science, and with the digital library specifically in science education. The group thought the problems in science educationcould be addressed by providing free and easy accesstoquality curated resources.DLSdid some very important things with DLESE. Our metadata had capabilities that went far beyondGoogle at the time. DLS developed a sophisticated search engine that allowed users to search by educational standards, grade level, and resource type. Had philosophy of user-contributed content, open and free access.
3. In 2001, DLS took on an even more ambitious effort, the National Science Digital Library (NSDL).
4. We also worked with AAAS, and developed a service to align NSDL resources to the concepts along a developmental trajectory, the Benchmarks of Science Literacy.Again, the goal was access to quality resources, within the context of a coherent learning experience.
5. As we all know, education today has diversity of abilities, values,ethnicities. Disruption is the new normal and technology and open education are part of that.
6. So,given the needs of an increasingly diverse born digital student population, the rise of high stakes testing, and the new emphasis on teacher accountability, we went back to the drawing board and reexamined how we thought that digital library technologies and open education resources could be profitably implemented in the educational mix.
7. The curriculum customization model we use begins with an inquiry curriculum and diverse learner needs. These needs can include areas such as variety of languages and academic achievement. Next digital library resources and materials shared and used by many teachers are incorporated along with some publisher materials. These resources are mixed together and sequenced for the needs of the diverse learners, with the aim of improved learner achievement.
8. The CCS is a concept focused online teacher planning tool that includes a mix of content that are part of the customization model: publisher materials, digital library resources, and teacher contributed materials. The tool is customizable for each district, and I’ll explain more about that later. The CCS started with and continues to use participatory design for tool development. Participatory design involves the intended users in an iterative design process to ensure that the end product meets their needs and is usable. Development is accompanied by rigorous research. And last but certainly not least, is the mix of participants in the development and research of the CCS. This includes teachers, school administrators, curriculum developers, textbook publishers, software developers, and researchers.Intuitive, user friendly tool to enable teachers to access curated contentGoal: increase learner achievement
9. I just noted that materials can be saved to the “My Stuff” area. My stuff is where teachers can save materials in the CCS (embedded assessments from the publisher, interactive resources, their own materials, and materials shared by other teachers). This area provides a space for teachers to have their materials organized by the key concepts. There is also an area called “Shared Stuff“. This area is where teachers can contribute their materials or links to websites with their colleagues. Teachers upload materials such as PP, images, maps, lesson plans, and more. The teachers can choose to share materials or keep them in their private my stuff area.A new feature in the CCS is the playlist. Playlists provide an area for teachers to sequence their saved materials. Additionally they can annotate, or add glue like in Teacher Boxes, around the resources; including instructions or more information about the resource. Playlists can be shared in the “Shared Stuff” area of the CCS. This allows another teacher to save a playlist to their “My Stuff” and makes edits and changes as needed for their diverse learners.
10. I want to point out the items in this playlist. Introduction and learning targets provided by the teachers, interactive resource from a digital library, annotation/glue around the resources, an item from Shared Stuff, and an embedded assessment.
11. The CCS began development in fall 2008 with a teacher advisory board (TAB) from a large urban school district in a participatory design process focused on Earth science. The following school year, the newly developed CCS was rolled out to the entire district’s middle and high school Earth science teachers. This included 124 teachers who were teaching roughly 8,000 students. The following year the CCS development expanded to include middle school Physical science. In fall 2011 the CCS was rolled out to middle and high school Earth science teachers in six districts, with the continuation of Physical science in one district. The Replication Study initially included over 150 teachers and 10,000 students. Currently we are working on a project with the CCS called Inquiry Hub. It is still early stages, we are working with a small group of teacher advisors in a participatory design process with high school Algebra. And we are just beginning to organize a similar group and process for high school Biology. CCS continues even with out research…
12. Research on the CCS has been a mixed methods data collection, including data from students, teachers, and district administrators. It revolves around the adoption and use of the CCS. Along with the support the CCS provides for teachers planning and implementation in the classroom, including their use of interactive resources. We have also studied the CCS and how it supports teacher professional learning communities. And lastly, we have examined student outcomes.
13. Teachers have lots of good things to say about the CCSThis includes its usefulness for ELLs, the sophisticated level of shared materials, one place to put all their stuff, time efficiency for finding materials, collaborations and awareness of what others are doing.
14. From the replication study and weblogs of teacher activity, we can categorize the teachers into four areas based on their patterns of use. This is based on use diffusion model by Shih and Venkatesh (2004). We have power user, feature explorer, specialist, lukewarm user. Student assessments indicate that students of Power Users have medium learning gains, shown here by an effect size of .44. Effect size indicates the magnitude of a relationship (pre/post).When compared with students of Lukewarm users, students of Feature Explorers and Power Users appeared to show statistically significant higher gains (= .85 and = .62, p < .001, respectively) when controlled for other variables. However, students of Specialists didn’t show statistical significant difference. The result suggests that having the variety in using the CCS tool may lead to higher student EDG gains. Interestingly, for every unit increase in teacher’s self-reported student low-SES, their student EDG gain appeared to increase by .38 points, when other variables are controlled. This result suggests that CCS tool tended to benefit the low-SES students across all user types and other teacher and student demographic backgrounds.
15. The Inquiry Hub project is an expansion of the CCS to high school Algebra and high school Biology. We have worked the last year and continue this year to work with a teacher advisory board (TAB) of Algebra teachers. The aim is to increase their understanding of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics as well as adding vetted math tasks to the CCS for the teachers to use. With Biology, we are working with BSCS in Colorado Springs as they have reclaimed the IP of their ecological approach to Biology textbook and they want to create a deeply digital book that will be in the CCS.
16. Our development right now is with integrating Google apps for education, first, as a minimum viable product (MVP), is with Google calendar and our Playlists. We are working toward again, MVP for student access and on a sustainability plan.
17. For educational reform to take hold, we learned…Appreciate and understand-working with a large mix of people and take advantage of school tech infrastructure; importance of all the different players in the mix (need buy-in from all and users)