Hello, this is Racquel Hernandez, your instructor for Performance and Assessment in a Virtual Classroom. Welcome to week three, lesson four of our topic of data analysis and gradebook management in the virtual classroom. Our objective for today will be to explain how knowledge of the Learning Management System can assist in monitoring student performance. One of the most important pieces of data an online teacher can have, is the last login date. LMS Systems can show not only the last login, but total number of log-ins by date, and number of days since last login. Most LMS systems will have some kind of an exporting function, in which you can pull reports onto Excel, then sort for what you would like to view. For example, let's say you want to know who did not log into the LMS in the last two days, so that means absent one day. Let's say they skipped a day. The teacher can export the data, sort by last login, then produce a mail merge with the data to inform parents that there was no login. You can also use this as your calling list for the day to make sure there is activity from the student. Every school will have its own attendance policy. Some schools will have attendance based on daily login rates, weekly login rates, or even monthly login rates. Some schools will be entirely based on mastery. Let's say, if a student completed a course two weeks before the semester, he or she would not be required to log in every day after that. Other schools had a system where students can maybe work in one or two classes a day, kind of like block scheduling, so students may not work in your class every day. Once you understand the attendance policy for your school it will help drive your organization and management. After a few days into the semester, it will be your responsibility to make sure your students comply with the attendance policy determine who has not logged on and then contact those students. You will then need to trouble shoot with them to try to solve any issues they might be having. If they're not logging on for other reasons, you will need to work with the families and figure out what the barriers are to the education. Most schools will have some kind of a tiered system in place for students who chronically do not attend, and then put them on an improvement plan. Once you have all your students up and running, and you are confident your students are attending as they need to be, the next feature you will want to look at is time spent online. Most LMS systems will have a breakdown by unit. You can see how long, if any time, the students spend on a particular unit, lesson, or even exam. This is a good feature if the student is jumping straight to the exam without reviewing the lessons, which often happens in online school. They look at what's due and they just do that. And they don't want to spend time on the lessons. You can see if a student is spending two minutes on a test let's say that was designed to take 30. Then start the conversation around lessons and study habits. Use this as a starting point in your conversation to help steer the behavior of the students. Use these as a teachable moments for students and parents, not as a, I got you moment. Remember that students need to re-learn how to be a student in the online environment, so direct their behavior as needed. If you find many students are not going into the lesson, there may be other problems. It may be time to take a look at the curriculum. It may not be engaging enough, or it may contain a text overload situation. In this case, look at what you can do to help. Maybe you need to create a video to replace some of the content, or provide a link to a cute story or video. Avoidance of the lessons does not help with authentic assessment, because there really is no lesson involved at all. Once students are logging in, they're trained with navigation, and they're spending enough time on lessons and quizzes, you can now look at the assignment submissions. Since so much of virtual is mastery-based, this will be you best monitoring system throughout the semester. I make it a practice that as soon as a student misses the first assignment to let the parents and students know right away. Some LMS systems have email features where you can email everyone who has a low score or let's say who missed an assignment entirely. So the parents will be notified right away. Sometimes, you will find it's just a matter of miscommunication regarding log in requirements, due dates and expectations. In this case, use what you learn from these conversations as feedback and make adjustments for the future for your own performance. Did I communicate the expectations regarding log in and attendance? Did I communicate the due dates well enough? Do the students know how to navigate through the lessons? And do they know how to submit assignments? Use any data you have from the LMS to see what is going right in your class and what's going wrong in your class. Ultimately, the students' performance is tied to your own. After a few weeks into the semester hopefully most of the login problems will have been solved and students will fall into a routine of working. New virtual teachers sometimes do not realize how long it can take for a student to fall into a routine. There can be a big adjustment period and it may be awhile before you have all of your students up and running especially if you have a large load of students. Once things settle in however, it is time to monitor assignment submissions and grades very closely. A good practice is to pool student data weekly, starting the second or third week of the semester. Begin by calling all failing students and then divide out the load by day to contact as many students as you can reasonably handle in a work day. This practice will be the focus for the week, weeks ahead. You need to plan with these families, eliminate obstacles, make accommodations, help with tech issues or anything else they need to be successful. In planning your own time management as a virtual teacher, schedule yourself a day each week to pull student reports. Have these exported and saved in a file so you can keep track of progress week over week. Focus on login data and grade to date. Check who is logging in and who is not, and then call those students who have not logged in first. Call a few each day who may be failing, and then have a plan of action ready. Figure out what they're doing right. Are they logging in more this week than last? Are they returning phone calls and emails? Then, find out what is not working. Do they have home support? Do they have a learning disability that needs accommodating? What can you do to help? Now a word of caution when using email as the primary source of communication, the student who is not engaged, that is who's no logging on as they should and submitting assignments probably isn't reading email as well. If they haven't been online don't expect replies from emails. If you have a reluctant reader, sometimes too many emails will not help as well. In this case, it's better to pick up the phone and establish contact. Reach out to these students to see what they might need, show them some navigation hints, and let them know that you're there to help them. They may need some one on one time with you in a virtual class, and maybe they even need to complete the first couple assignments together until they feel confident that they succeed. Once you have a positive relationship with a student, you can start holding them more accountable with their work. Most LMS systems feature an in-depth item by item analysis. Here is where you can really break down and study what is happening in your course. Look at the measures of central tendency. See what the mean, median and mode score, scores on an assignment. This is where you can analyze the curriculum and your own performance. Ask yourself if you have covered the topic enough n your live lectures. Does the pre-made curriculum explain the topic enough? Have the students had ample low-stakes practice, or are the students just avoiding entire assignments? Maybe the working is tricky or there is a problem with the assignment link. This is your opportunity to dig deeper into the curriculum and work on course modifications and improvements. As part of your weekly monitoring of students don't forget to take time out of your week to send some positive messages. Advanced, GATE and even average students often get overlooked. Just because they're doing everything right. It's kind of like the no news is good news way of thinking. These students need praise and encouragement just as much as students who may be failing. Take time to make positive phone calls and emails to let your students know you appreciate the great job they are doing. And we'll explore more of this in future lessons. Thank you, we'll see you in the next lecture.
