Encouraging deeper learning: pupils creating surveys

Overview

Duloch Primary School in Fife began to use Glow in early 2010. To take advantage of pupils’ curiosity and interest in ICT, a Glow Worms group of pupils was established. This group are given additional teaching in basic Glow skills and the pupils then become ‘champions’ for Glow throughout the school. Here Emma McLucas and Moray Dickson describe the plans for the Glow Worms group and the benefits of one of the activities they have already undertaken – creating surveys.

Context

The Glow Worms are a group of around 8 pupils from P3-P7 who meet together for sessions over a course of five weeks. These sessions provide pupils with the basic skills of Glow and then allow them to explore it independently.

The members of the group change every 5 weeks, to allow other pupils the same opportunity, thus gradually building up the numbers of pupils with good skills and confidence with Glow. These pupils are then able to support others and become pioneers, leading the way and advising how Glow can be used to enhance learning.

Glow Worms Glow Group. Click to enlarge.

In the Glow Worms sessions, pupils have learnt basic skills such as logging on, navigating around Glow, using web parts, and changing the layout of pages by adding, moving or closing web parts. Pupils have been given ‘Web Designer’ rights to the Glow Worms Glow Group, so any changes they make, affect not only their own view but that of all other members of the group.

This is a higher level of rights than is typically given in a Glow Group (’Contributor’ or ‘Reader with Discussions’ rights are more common). It could potentially cause some problems, such as pupils closing or deleting content added by other pupils or staff. However, Moray and Emma have encountered no problems with this; pupils have enjoyed the sense of responsibility and handled it well.

Survey created by P5 pupil. Click to enlarge.

One skill that has been introduced early on – and for which Moray and Emma can see real potential – is creating surveys.

Many pupils will be familiar with responding to Glow surveys, such as to vote for a favourite book or to give feedback on their understanding at the end of a topic. However, the Duloch Glow Worms have been learning how to construct a survey. This is a challenging task, as pupils first need to decide:

• the information they want to find out
• who they want the information from
• how to frame questions to elicit the right information
• appropriate answer formats

Moray and Emma have been impressed with how readily pupils have taken to this task and the level of analytical skills displayed. One of the first pupils to undertake the challenge had received only a brief 10 minute introduction and then went home and constructed a survey unaided. While the Glow Worms pupils chose their own topics, Emma and Moray could see the potential for the classroom, where creating a survey could encourage deeper learning. Pupils, for example, might be asked at the end of a topic, to create a survey, designing suitably demanding questions, choosing question formats (eg. multiple choice, ratings, true/false, free text), and deciding upon correct/incorrect answers.

Moray Dickson describes the Glow Worms at Duloch PS

Ingredients

The Glow Worms Glow Group was created on the Duloch PS site in Glow. Pupils are given Web Designer rights.

Note the rights required for surveys:

• to respond to a survey, users need to have at least Contributor rights
• to modify a survey, users need to have at least Web Designer rights
• to create a survey from scratch, users need to be Administrators of the Glow Group.

Rights can be set for the Glow Group, or for the survey web part individually.

Recipe

* how to set Glow Group permissions to enable pupils to create surveys

* how to create a survey: teacher’s view

* how to modify a survey: a pupil’s view

* how to respond to a survey: a pupil’s view

Impact

In the first few months of Glow usage at Duloch Primary School, Emma and Moray have been impressed with the speed and ease with which pupils have taken to the collaborative tools and to the responsibility that they have been given in the Glow Worms group.

Working with a small group of pupils at a time has provided an excellent opportunity to explore the potential of features of Glow, such as surveys, and to consider how these can be used to greatest effect to enhance pupils’ learning.

The process of upskilling small groups of pupils through the Glow Worms group will continue into 2010/11 and these pupils will become pioneers for Glow usage throughout the school.

Image credits: Horia Varlan

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