OS5+-+Hawthorne

How to improve user experience on the backend - course pages and portals

leader - Lauren @ Solomon Schechter in Westchester NY

Struggles with getting parents behind the password, logging in and getting there. What are we offering our parents to get them to come back. Issue historically with the lower school. Especially seasoned teachers are reluctant to use web tools. What tricks are people using? What visuals are you using to entice teachers?

Put all the important stuff on password. Put things in community groups for divisions: photos, videos, etc. If they don't sign in, they don't see photos of their kids. We use teasers for "get more" to get them to sign in. Drill it in.

We went the oppositie direction. We did that before but our parents got used to using it. When we changed to academic, we didn't feel the need to do that any more. Still do photos behind but not also.

We require all lower school teachers to post photos. We also give all of our teachers digital cameras to be sure they had the tools. They alsohave video on it.

We showed the principals the analytics on pages that had video/pictures on it and that was a compelling motivator.

We made the mistake of holding training of all divisions together. The lower school teachers who didn't use all the tools (grade book, etc.) those teachers didn't know what to do with it. Later we held a session for those people and targeted their specific needs. They changed their layout and now they are using it well. Kid do projects and we post them. Parents are now motivated to go and see the content. That stuff wasn't really pertinent to high school teachers. In lower grades it's show don't tell, no homework until the upper levels of elementary grades.

What are policies about posting? Who manages the content? Who's in charge? We have multiple teachers per grade (religious school). What else have people used to drive parents to the assignments? Why not default collapse some of the channels then? If a channel is empty it shouldn't appear! Vote for this on User Voice!!! I send out a constant contact email blast. Teachers are required to publish a "weekly peek" w/ photo. Instead of emails, created a master editor channel on my portal that only I can see. They have to publish to their page and to mine so I see it right there and I can see they have it done. Assignments. I struggle with the best way to send teachers or parents where to see them. We posted summer reading but we don't add incoming students yet, how do you handl this?
 * once a week
 * Once every two weeks
 * very specific - assignments by 4 PM each day (facilitates kids out sick to collect assignments); elem. every single day. Just what they have to do.
 * Brought the lead teachers in to teach their peers
 * usually it's the teacher who's most adept at doing it (usually the younger/assistants). If you leave it to the lead teacher it doesn't always get done.
 * We chart it out with each department/division. Just like who is taking attendance, etc. With the younger teachers we motivate them by saying this is a way you can make a mark. It shows their involvement in the classroom
 * We published class teachers so each teacher can see the other teachers' pages.
 * Our teachers (4-9 school) say that the class page is good for comm. w/ parents but it's not a course page in terms of content. science teachers don't like it. They have their own pages. We struggle. They post a link to their own pages on their course pages.
 * You can embed a page using a text channel and embedding the content there. Problem is the assignments won't show up. Also it's harder to manage year to year, etc.
 * We use it more for information about the class. The teachers see at as something else they have to do.
 * Most of our teachers use Moodle and WH is looking to establish a connection there so that homework doesn't have to be double entered, which causes a lot of hard feelings.
 * The way that the content is set up, the teachers are saying they can't do what they want to do. Also, some of our teachers are nationally known and they want to have it public.
 * work around is that they can create a guest teacher who can log in.
 * Some have links to their personal pages, but we require that all assignments need to be in the WH platform. We did an in-service that showed the teachers what the students see, which was a game changer for teachers. If you don't mandate it they won't switch.
 * we mandated it in middle school, high school said no. Eventually the parents pushed it up because they had the expectation in middle school. Now it's all there.
 * Number one thing is that all the assignments are right there.
 * It's fair to mandate, but it's also fair to support them. Teachers have changed the way they use projection as opposed to blackboard. Now they see their desktop projected on the wall/board. Now they can pull up their course page and the kids see it right there in the classroom. Or can take content from smart board and upload it to the class pages.
 * Need big assignment
 * Created academic portal...everything that has to do with a course is right there. That cleans up the regular portal.
 * Assignments in summary channel has a link to the big assignments page.
 * Now that portals can be tabbed it's better and can organize the material organized by the activity rather than the role: activity base (academics, front office, calendar, athletics) want to direct parents to where they want to go, make it easy for them to see what they want to see.
 * Lake Forest Academy approach: content based, community, news & media, calendar & events, documents & resources, using the LFA Website, more.
 * Created a files, links and forms channel with a custom header and use the security settings to show up what they can see according to the role.
 * Uses anchor tags in a text box to drop them down to the channel they need to find. Anchor tags are blank text channels above each section. All HTML. Can you share the code??? Will share a screen shot. Basically it's a table with miscellaneous files and links. We've had great feedback from parents. Very helpful. (Blake)
 * Allison channel: use the assignment in brief
 * Make the academic portal the first portal they see and on there have an announcement channel, and the kids' schedule of the day. This way, when parents log in they get all the assignments right there. We make you log in to the portal, removing the login from all other pages. News and announcements are there as filler while you're logging in. Add a choose a portal set of links. Documents, etc., are at the bottom of the page. It's easier to say log in and scroll down.
 * Or add search box, which is awesome.
 * we post it earlier and added an incoming parent portal that has some of this pulled into it. also has a welcome from the head. they are asked to log in the day they are accepted. When they become a parent, the parent portal falls in front of it for them. It was hugely well received by our incoming parents. It replaces all that big summer mailing we used to send them. It's the "New Family Portal". With current parents, we just communicated with them that they'd be seeing this incoming parent role page for a little while. There were no complaints at all. Returning parents don't even see that any more.

Content on a course page. On middle school pages, are students expected to log in, not just parents? Yes, they are trained in 6th grade. We didn't do dropbox training in MS kids and they had no problem with it at all. We use dropbox down to 2nd grade. elementary teachers like it more than the upper school teachers.

Dropbox is tied to the assignment so it tracks the kids and allows them to track it all and tied to the assignment page. The only thing they can't do now is turn it back to the student. The zero file dropbox is really popular. That means they don't link to a page, but they write directly in a text that can be then edited by the teacher and sent back to the student (?- not sure that I got that conversation right).

Can teachers post in foreign language? Yes, they just turn on their Spanish keyboard. It doesn't support Chinese characters.

Images of session and screenshots of portals: []

And another: []

Fort Worth Country Day Portal Buttons

Second Baptist School Portal Links

Table of Contents Code