Sue Sentance & Philip Howlett Streamlining practice-based monitoring: a solution for staff, students and placement mentors Sue Sentance & Philip Howlett

Overview Background: working in partnership Trainee teachers and measuring progress Trainee progress online database Initial trials Full implementation Wider use of tool

Working in partnership Tutor – school visits University tutorials Assignment preparation Academic sessions Mentor weekly meetings Lesson observations Weekly grades to university Any areas of concern

Monitoring progress Assessing learning regularly in order to facilitate progress is a key part of any higher education course (Yorke, 2003) We need an approach that makes it easy for external partners to participate without adding to their workload. We gather information on a continual basis about trainees, including placement progress, tutorials, visits, modules, concerns and results.

Why collect data at all? Ofsted requirements Self-evaluations requirements Trainee support requirements

Placements Overview Placement pattern for PGCE Secondary Initial Teacher Training What happens on a PGCE Initial Teacher Training placement?

Monitoring trainees Current practice Data recorded about each trainee throughout PGCE (teacher training) Uses a spreadsheet Includes weekly grades, module results, enrolment information – everything! Problems Spreadsheet has 73 columns of data(!) and is awkward to complete/view Data is repeated/redundant (problems of 2D flat file) Complex searches are not easy Is only accessible on J: drive (not online)

A database offers… Student data stored once with multiple occurrences of Weekly grades Visits Tutorials Modules No error-prone repetition of data Web access to professional tutors (reducing data entry needed by administrators) More complex search facilities

The story so far … Learning and Teaching Project has financed the development of a database Our Trainee Progress Database (TPD) has been implemented in PHP/MySQL Available at http://angliapgce.net Password entry – 2 levels of access (school and university) Pilot taking place with 3 schools (7 students) User manual produced

Monitoring database

Student lists

Individual student view Removed from presentation because contained personal data

Removed from presentation because contained personal data List of placements Removed from presentation because contained personal data

Professional tutor interface (capacity to input weekly grades online) Removed from presentation because contained personal data

Future Developments Development of a primary TPD Use of database for more advanced monitoring of trainee progress (e.g. a matrix of competency towards the Teacher Standards) Work with schools’ requirements to give them access to historical data about trainees’ weekly grades Move to web hosting provided by the university

Summary Our Learning and Teaching Project award has enabled us to develop an online system to track and assess trainees’ progress whilst involving their placement schools in this process. Other university courses using placements which need to be regularly monitored may benefit from this approach.

Sue Sentance & Philip Howlett (Learning and Teaching Fund project, supported by Anglia Learning and Teaching)