Writing my master thesis about MS Teams -> weekly parental digest

[stefanurech]

Hello everybody!

 

I'm a soon to be teacher from Zürich, Switzerland and am currently writing my master thesis on the use of Microsoft Teams and especially the "weekly parental digest“ function.

Since Teams is only making its way slowly into the Swiss school system it is hard for me to find somebody to talk to, who has experience with its use in the classroom and and teachers/parents/students' reactions to it.

Could you maybe help me? I would appreciate it very much! I would only take up about 30 minutes of your time.

Thank you for your answer in advance and best regards from Zürich,

 

Stefan Urech

+41 79 722 77 56

[email protected]

PS: The common way to give school assignments or assign homework in Switzerland is still writing them into a paper agenda, which has to be signed by the parents on a weekly basis. My master thesis tackles the question of whether the classroom management systems like Teams could replace this written paper agenda system and what advantages and disadvantages they bring with them. With a special focus on the „weekly parental digest“ function. Sadly this function isn't fully supported yet in Switzerland, so I had to simulate the weekly emails for half a year by creating Excel spreadsheets for each student of two classes. After the test phase, I questioned the parents and the students about their experience with this new kind of assignment management. The reactions were quite positive. But the parents had some ideas for improvement and a lot of thirst for more information. A majority of the students said that they had a lot more discussions about their homework with their parents than before the "weekly digest" test phase. Many teachers at my school are still quite skeptical about the new system since they worry that it will be a lot more work for them.

[Dave_O]

Stefan

 

I did my Master thesis on the potential of electronic assignment submission to support T&L. The findings (this was back in 2012) were that adoption rates were low amongst staff and students. Parental engagement was virtually nil. I would guess that this Teams feature is hardly used in most UK schools so it is unlikely you will get much feedback. Over the pandemic the workflow of assignments within Teams has improved but only for certain subject areas where document submission is the main transactional method. For subjects such as Art and Music they are of less value (harder to use). To be honest any new approach or focus will elicit a higher level of response initially due to your (the researcher's) involvement (is your research perspective peripheral, active, complete? What are your ontological and epistemological perspectives?) The true test is 1 -2 years down the line, is there still the same (or higher) level of engagement? There are numerous things that affect adoption, many of these depend not just on the technology but, (and in my view and more importantly) the organisation (and it's mindset) that is using it.

[Dave_O]

If you are interested I can send you a copy of my dissertation

[stefanurech]

Dear Dave,

thank you very much for your valuable input! Wow I would be very interested in reading your master thesis! Could you maybe send it to me? 2012... you really are way ahead of us in the UK in this regard! I absolutely agree that the way the technology is used and the organisations mindset towards is at least as important as the technology itself. That is exactly the impression I got from the conversations I've had so far. This morning I spoke with an IT director of a high school in Sheffield who is about to introduce the weekly digest feature. The number of posts here and especially on the Microsoft UserVoice platform addressing this topic makes me believe that there are quite a few schools that are using it. My main focus is not on the question of weather it improves the quality of work or the discipline of the students in any empirical way. By conducting interviews with "experts" on the topic, who have made the shift from the paper agenda system to the new digital way of assigning homework and how teachers (especially IT sceptical teachers) at that school reacted. Do they suddenly feel more observed by parents, who can now see every new task that is assigned? Do they get more phone calls from parents or less? How was the shift to the digital assignment of homework decided? Top down or were the teachers involved in that decision? How were they trained? Etc...

Do I assume correctly that you don't use the weekly (or daily if you work with Google Classrom) digest feature at your school? How are parents informed of their kids assignements?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

That would be very interesting for me! Thank you!!

 

[email protected]

[Dave_O]

Will send you a copy using the email given. I was a teacher for 21 years and in schools IT for 17 in the Sheffield area. I am just in the process of retiring from my present post (IT Director of a MAT) so my involvement is gradually reducing over time. IM me the name of the Sheffield school if you wouldn't mind would be interested to see who is using the feature.

 

1. Do they suddenly feel more observed by parents - There is no one simple answer to this but many factors mitigate against a positive attitude amongst staff eg a) not all subjects are the same in terms of frequency of work submission so this always leads to a distorted expectation from parents eg Johnny gets assignments every week from Maths, why not in English? this can cause issues between staff and parents b) there is a belief that there will be an expectation that teachers respond to parental requests as soon as submitted no matter what time of day or night.

 

2. Do they get more phone calls from parents or less? - This as I have said above will depend on the organisational ethos. In many schools staff do not contact parents directly ie the call goes via pastoral or the department head so this might be difficult to gauge

 

3. How was the shift to the digital assignment of homework decided? - From bitter experience unless this is part of a whole school strategy, supported, implemented and promoted by the governing body and SLT it will fail.

 

4. How were they trained? - This is one area where UK schools are poor. They are reticent to spend money on training. My experience is that department focused targeted training works, whole school training is a waste of time.

 

5. Digest features - No used across the MAT. Assignments by contrast are used extensively both in secondary and primary

 

6. How are parents informed of their kids assignments? - depends on the department (secondary) and school. Many of the primaries inform the parents via a weekly text message. Some just post a PDF schedule on the school website for the term. There is no one set way. One of the secondaries uses show my homework to inform parents but point the work to the appropriate Teams site (bit of a waste of money but it works). Many just say to parents to work with the student on a weekly basis to help manage their (the student's) time and to be involved in their education (works with primary, not with secondary)