Building communities around a program: Dedicate the platform to pursuing excellence
Define what Excellence looks like, and motivate Educators towards it.
January, in most parts of the world, is the start of a new year.
January, in 321 Education Foundation, is the last mile of delivering the program to our educators.
The team gathered: “In three months, we will certify our educators.”
Certification at 321 is developed for three main reasons:
- To acknowledge the efforts of our educators
- To define what Excellence looks like
- To motivate our Educators towards Excellence
“Based on last year’s certification processes, and the schools’ and educators’ feedback, we need to focus on the last point specifically: motivating and supporting our educators for certification.” As the team continues to reflect on what to improve, three focus areas emerge. “We need to clearly communicate about certification, build excitement around it and prepare teachers and schools to succeed at it.”
“We need a way to do all this continuously, and common across all schools and teachers.” The team looked at each other and realized they have the perfect tool to do that: the online communities!
Last time I wrote, in December 2018, the users — our educators — were spontaneously sharing on the communities (point #8 in Article 3), as the moderators were mastering the art of bringing joy, appreciation and wonder (#5) while maintaining a learning-oriented space (#6), as well as nudging (#7). (Article 3: Build communities around a program: Mediate, Nudge, Celebrate)
Hence, it was a good time to dedicate the communities to one objective: getting the educators ready for excellence. Let us discover how we approached this.
#9. Ensure transparency and access to information
Any certification or accreditation body recognizes transparency is an important factor for the process and success of certification. And to effectively guarantee transparency, information has to be available, accessible and disseminated among the people involved in the process. That is the first thing we focussed on.
Communities are the perfect channel to share information in a format that everyone could understand, and go back to, even save in their own phones, or print and hang up in schools for everyone to see.
So, information was distilled to its essential message to ensure comprehension and was made sticky to ensure retention.
A mnemonic has been created to help educators remember the parameters of their evaluation — “KIA”:
- K for Knowledge of the teaching practices
- I for Implementation of the teaching practices in classrooms and their impact on students
- A for Attendance in training and coaching visits
A catchy phrase has been tagged along with the acronym: “Aapne certificate ke liye kya KIA.” [For our certification, we have KIA.]
Educators are eligible for 4 different certificates. To ensure accessibility of information, and to align with our schools on the details of each certificate, visuals are designed and shared with all.
First, the 4 kinds of certificates were announced:
Then, the level of parameters for each certificate was communicated through easy graphs, and discussed on the groups.
The focus on clear and continuous communication about the criteria of evaluation and success has boosted participation in the communities. Everyone knew what needed to be achieved, from educators to school principals. This increased awareness helped in building accountability for preparation.
Along with sharing technical information in easy-to-understand manners, we wanted to build excitement for the whole process of preparing and for reaching [the certificate of] excellence.
#10. Motivate Educators Towards Excellence
“The aim was to inspire educators to get ready for the evaluation. We wanted it to be aspirational and not seen as a ‘test’”, explained Viraj, the Design Manager leading the project.
Motivational messages were carefully designed to set high expectations. After being decided internally, we communicated them clearly to the educators. (see the image below).
As defined in many teaching references, setting high expectations is one key component of motivation, and one key driver of high learning outcomes. At 321, we feel successful when our educators grow in confidence as well as in performance. Hence, we wanted our educators to understand that “pursuing excellence is important as a modern professional, as a modern educator.” One way to pursue excellence is to thrive towards Certification of Excellence.
The messages -“We believe you will do well, we expect you to do well, and you will do well.”- were emphasized week on week.
Another way to help them realize that this is important was to build excitement around the certification ceremony happening during our Celebration Events (motivational events we organize in each school we work with). Hence, we also shared messages to build up the thrill to be recognized in front of peers, schools management, and families.
The reactions were enthusiastic!
#11. Build a culture of better
Along with motivating the educators to drive for excellence, we wanted to help them prepare for it, and especially prepare for succeeding on the first parameter: K — Knowledge, assessed by a test in each school. In order to set them up for success, we decided to do three things: 1) Build their confidence, 2) Do practice testing, and 3) Make the revision fun and joyful.
Many of the educators we work with haven’t given a test in a very long time, some of them haven’t in the last 20 years. The habit of reading questions, and knowing how to answer them needed to be built again. As the test created with our Kaizen team (M&E team) is a series of Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs), it was only logical to practice reading, understanding and answering MCQs week after week on the communities. We needed our educators to feel comfortable with the format of the test so that they can focus on the content of the questions, and the quality of their answers.
In addition to the format of the revision, Moderators are using pedagogy techniques to build confidence. They are using No Opt Out (See Teach Like A Champion field notes): a teaching strategy that gets learners from not answering to answering by encouraging members of the communities to give hints to each other. They are also using Right is Right (Again credits to Teach Like A Champion) to ensure teachers were answering clearly and correctly. Finally, moderators also make sure to Push it, i.e. ask more questions after they get the right answer in order to engage the maximum number of members on the group.
The content of the messages was designed keeping in mind best practices of revision especially practice testing and distributed practice. Practice testing refers to the process of self-testing or taking practice tests over to-be-learned material. At 321 we use practice testing because it benefits all kind of learners. Also, practice testing has been proved to help tapping memory for explicitly presented information as well as comprehension (Dunlosky et al, 2013).
For practice testing, 321 designers referred to the test blueprint. The test, or assessment, blueprint ensures recalling, understanding and application of knowledge is evaluated. It also makes sure questions have a different level of difficulties (easy, moderate and difficult) and checks if the test covers all elements of the Teaching Framework we are following. At 321, and for the current teacher professional development program (Ignite), we align our content to the Tripod 7Cs Framework of Great Teaching ©: Classroom Management, Care, Confer, Captivate, Clarify, Challenge, and Consolidate.
Download the Tripod’s 7Cs Guide here
The messages were designed so that mastery of each 7C is evaluated, at different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, and by increasing the rigor week on week.
From recalling at an easy level:
- “Which of these is used to ensure all students remain engaged in the lesson?”
to understanding at a moderate level:
- “A teacher is teaching a lesson on animals. She wants to use Targeted Questioning in class to check how much and how many students have understood. Which of these questions would be most appropriate?”,
to the application at a difficult level:
- “A teacher plans to ask two difficult questions for the upcoming lesson. How can she plan to ensure all students think about the answer and participate?”.
The second best practice we kept in mind while designing the revision plan is “distributed practice”, also called “spaced practice”. It refers to the process of revising at intervals. We use distributed practice because it works with a wide variety of materials, and benefit long term retention (Dunlosky et al, 2013). Hence, the sending calendar was carefully planned so that the teaching solutions are revised at intervals, allowing for drilling and retrieving.
Inorder for educators to keep engaging with the revision and motivation messages, and give richer answers, we designed fun messages. The formats of our message were bringing joy, appreciation, and wonder. Message formats were colorful, visual, and kept changing to be surprising and attractive to read.
Below are some examples:
Aculture of a better is a culture in which trainers expect and push the learners to give their best. In addition to the steps taken above to show teachers they can do it (pursue Excellence), that it is important, and that we are here to help them prepare for it, we shared revision tips.
Solution cards are a 321 tool for teachers. Each card explains the purpose, the definition and the steps of a teaching solution.
Educators were also encouraged to revise and do practice testing on their own. As part of our program for school principals, we have trained and equipped them to support their teachers in this process. And, they took it on!
A 3-hour Saturday revision session organized by the school principal and lead by teachers.
#12. Witness increase in ownership, and richer answers
The dedication of the platform to pursuing excellence by ensuring transparency, by motivating learners and by building a culture of better has been showing a great impact on educators’ behaviors towards revision and learning in schools as well as on the communities.
The effect of our choice to communicate around excellence and certification is described by 321 trainers: “Reiterating the fact that answering Revision messages over communities would help in performing better in the test and hence, get higher certificate has made it extremely aspirational”. “Revision sessions are driven by school principals since they see Celebration Event as something huge and aspirational and want all their teachers to get there.”
Trainers have observed behaviors and heard discussions confirming how educators have taken ownership of their learning. Sandeep, a 321 trainer testifies:
“I see teachers with solution cards in school so much more. Today itself, while walking down the alley, I saw 2 teachers with Solution Cards who have been prepping for the knowledge test.
The nature of conversations are like ‘What did you answer for that revision message? Is my answer correct? Why not? What is the correct answer? Why did you choose that option?’.”
In certain schools, revision has become a habit amongst teachers, and it has allowed for a better understanding and implementation of the solutions:
“Teachers sit in circle time, discuss the solution cards with each other and this has led to clearer understanding of the solutions when they apply them. Their teaching practices are becoming really nuanced.” — shared Akanksha, a 321 trainer.
Building a culture of better seem to have had a huge impact on the reply rate. The average reply rate has reached its higher number since the start of the communities: 30%. This rate is above our start of year target of 20% (see article 2, #2. Measure your success), and close to last year’s highest engagement rate which was 36%. It seems that incentives are aligned: “Given we have increased our focus towards certification by sharing the criteria, different kinds of Certificates and so much more, what I saw was most teachers began to attempt to answer all messages.”
And teachers took it upon them to seek for clarity:
“I got a call at 11 pm because teachers wanted to ideate around how to appreciate parents’ efforts in the upcoming PTM (one of our revision question), to almost every teacher who directly messages me to clarify and then answers over the group.” — shares Sandeep.
Moreover, the practice of answering the same format, i.e. MCQs, all the time, have built teachers’ confidence to answer. As they know what to do, we see richer answers and joy to push themselves. Viraj explained:
“Teachers on the group, along with options, shared examples and reasons by themselves. They take independence and pleasure to share more.”
Teachers sharing spontaneously the reasons behind their answers.
Teachers building on each other’s responses.
Long and detailed answers to a motivation message about building Indian citizens.
Dedicating our communities to gearing up our educators towards certification and the knowledge test was also validated by the moderators: “The teachers knew better the details of all Solutions done over the year because we created the buzz for almost 2 months for them. Online communities are a good platform for me to leverage. I sent out a lot of voice messages, personal and group both to clarify their misconceptions” — Akanksha.
The increase in ownership and detailed answers are really encouraging signs for educators actually performing well on the knowledge test, and on the certification.
We truly hope that our intentions behind certification:
- Acknowledge the efforts of our educators
- Define what Excellence looks like
- Motivate our Educators towards Excellence,
are, and will continue to be, enhanced by leveraging technologies to magnify a service.
To know more about our work, check out our website : https://321-foundation.org/
This article was originally written and published by Sophie Bereau, former Design Manager at 321 Education Foundation. You can follow her work at https://medium.com/@sophie_b
