Evidence/Projects

• DataDirector Final Project Paper
• DataDirector Resource Website

Context

As a student in ED 795A, I worked in a group with Grace Reyes and Jason Barclay to determine the a solution system for the roll out of a new formative assessment program called DataDirector for the a school district in San Diego County. DataDirector is a web based program used to manage formative and summative assessment data. Teachers can develop exams (formative or summative) and upload the data for tracking student progress and analyzing results. My group members and I conducted a performance analysis and recommended a course of action to assist the rollout of DataDirector to a staff of 600 teachers.

Connection

Our first meeting with our client gave us a limited amount of resources and we did not have the opportunity to fully analyze the situation of the rollout of DataDirector. The reason for our inability to fully conduct our performance analysis was the district's decision to rollout DataDirector without waiting for our input. The district was going to have two different trainings, beginning and advanced. The beginning training was to be conducted by all of the administrators of each school site, however there was no formal instructional package given to each administrator to make sure there was consistency of the instruction. The advanced training was to be conducted by a select group of teachers who had been trained by DataDirector personnel. However there were no written objectives or defined instructional packages given to each trainer to use for presentation to their staff members. This lead to a lack of inconsistency for instruction.

To further exacerbate the issue, the client explained we would not be able to include any motivational incentives for teachers to use the program. Therefore the teachers would need to be self motivated to use the program rather than be required to. The reason for not using motivational items to entice the staff to use DataDirector was the strong teacher's union. The union had stated the teachers were not required to use the program because it was not in their contract.

Problem

These two issues severely limited us in our ability to help effectively design a course of action to significantly impact the rollout of DataDirector:

• Instructional training already set by the district before analysis was completed.
• The teacher's union stating no teacher is "required" to use DataDirector therefore no incentive can be offered to the teachers.

Results

We decided, with approval from the client, to produce a website with both video tutorials and job-aids to assist teachers with the use of DataDirector. These resources focused on areas such as:

• Create an Exam using Item TestBank
• Create Answer Sheet
• Share an Exam
• Getting Started with DataDirector

Growth

The extreme limitations of this project, decisions made before analysis and the impact of the teacher's union, made it difficult to produce a product to help the district rollout DataDirector. I learned how to work under these constraints to produce a product which can be used as ancillary items for instruction. These systems which were in place made it a challenge but my group and I were able to work within these parameters.