Question: Whether an IT implementation of the Computing and Maths homework marking policy for years 7-9 could improve pupil outcomes and reduce both departmental costs and teacher administration overhead.

Executive Summary With appropriate use of Schoology and maintaining a mark book in Excel of a specific format, with the use of bespoke software the lesson overhead of returning homework can be reduced and an annual £200 can be saved per teacher in printing costs. At the same time, pupils can benefit from more immediate feedback and better resources for exam preparation.

Introduction The Maths and Computing departments’ homework marking policy uses a 4-point colour scale; Red, Yellow, Green & Purple (RYGP) (Figure 1). Teachers provide feedback to students using a standardised ‘slip’ on what went well and things that could be improved on (Figure 2). Students are encouraged to write a response on the homework slip as a note to their ‘future selves’, and to keep and organize their slips to help them prepare for assessments.

Figure 1 - Homework marking policy

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Figure 2 - Example completed homework slip

Homework slips are usually printed in colour, and completed either by hand or electronically depending on the teacher. If completed by hand, teachers may have difficulty maintaining a record of comments for students which could prove helpful at report-writing time. Moreover, in subjects such as Computing, with few lessons per week, there can be a delay from the homework being completed to the student receiving their feedback. Handing out & reflecting on homework slips in class can take between 5 and 10 minutes out of a lesson, and the homework tracker (Figure 3) seems rarely used.

Figure 3 - Homework tracker

As a computer scientist, I have developed some software and processes to address what I perceive as areas for improvement in the delivery of departmental homework marking policies. This research project investigates whether my implementation can deliver pupil and teacher benefits.

Methodology To determine whether pupil benefits are delivered, I have surveyed 89 students across years 7, 8 and 9 in both maths and computing (Figure 4) using SurveyMonkey, which is free for up-to 10 questions. See Appendix 1: Questionnaire for details.

Figure 4 - Survey responses

Subject Year7 Year8 Year9

Computing 22 13 20

Maths 34

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Results The first question was to assess pupils’ attitude towards the marking policy, as in other subjects (and for assessments) students will only receive a percentage result. With reference to Figure 5, whilst students are generally content with RYGP marking, there is a preference towards percentage marking (22% higher weighted average).

Figure 5 - RYGP vs Percentage

Given that pupils express a preference for percentage marks, the survey asked them what percentage they would consider ‘fair’ for each of the red, yellow, green and purple grades. This can be useful when marking subjective homework, or where the success criteria are for layout, workings or use of particular vocabulary. Figure 6 shows the average percentage that pupils feel would represent a fair mark for the RYGP grades. Based on these results, I recommend R:35%, Y:55%, G:75% and P:95%. By allocating a percentage, this will allow students to access a summary course score for their homework over the year.

Figure 6 - Percentage for RYGP grades

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Now looking at pupils’ attitude towards the comments provided on homework slips, Figure 7 shows that in general the feedback comments are a benefit to students and so it is essential that any technology implementation maintains this aspect in delivering the policy.

Figure 7 - Feedback comments

Moving on to look at other areas of the homework slip, the survey asked pupils to what extent they used the response section to write a message to their future selves. Figure 8 shows that the response section is not well used amongst students. Finding a way for students to reflect on their work or develop a dialogue with the teacher would seem to add value above the current use of homework slips.

Figure 8 - Response section

Looking at how well students do at looking after their homework slips, which should help them prepare for assessments by informing them which areas of the course gave them most trouble, Figure 9 shows that fewer than half of students did this well. Looking at the data in more detail, as students get older they become less well organized, with 60% of year 7

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computing pupils keeping theirs whilst 60% of year 9 students do not, with similar levels across both maths and computing.

Figure 9 – Organization

Schoology implementation In considering an implementation to reduce printing overheads, the obvious candidate is Schoology, which contains a ‘gradebook’. Figure 10 shows that most students regularly use Schoology in relation to their homework.

Figure 10 - Use of Schoology

Looking at the set-up of the Schoology gradebook to support the marking policy, I recommend setting up a rubric to support the RYGP mark scheme when a percentage score is not appropriate. Figure 11 and Figure 12 show how this looks in Schoology, although now referring to the survey results the recommended distribution of points is R:35%, Y:55%, G:75% and P:95%.

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Figure 11 - Gradebook rubric

Figure 12 - Rubric details

In addition, I recommend setting up three categories; Assessment, Homework and (optionally) Revision. These can be seen in Figure 13, from the gradebook.

Figure 13 – Categories

In the materials section of Schoology, I recommend creating a folder called ‘Homework’ and a sub-folder for each of the three school terms, as shown in Figure 14. This allows students to quickly find their homework and prevents clutter as the school year progresses.

Figure 14 – Materials

With this configuration in place, setting a homework in Schoology becomes straightforward. As shown in Figure 15, the due date and time can be set and the category would usually be ‘Homework’. In preparation for assessments the students may have revision tasks which you do not want to count towards their summary performance, in which case these can have the category ‘Revision’. Finally, I have found it useful to add a gradebook entry for end-of-term assessments with no due date but with the category ‘Assessment’ so that students can see their common assessment grades at a glance.

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Figure 15 - New Homework

The scale/rubric can be left as numeric if there is a percentage score that can be given to the work. However, if there is not a percentage score then the ‘Perse’ rubric can be chosen so that an RYGP grade can be assigned. Against the ‘Advanced’ section I recommend selecting the ‘Submission Enabled’ option so that the teacher is able to engage with the student outside of the classroom in case they submit a poor homework online. Figure 16 shows an example where a homework has some issues and the student is able to address them before the lesson, improving their grade and reducing the feedback cycle.

Figure 16 - Student dialogue

Finally, the ‘Show Stats’ option should be enabled because, as shown in Figure 17, two thirds of students find it helpful to understand their performance in relation to the class.

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Figure 17 - Statistics enabled

By selecting that option, each student will be able to have a view of the summary statistics for any given assignment as shown in Figure 18.

Figure 18 - Student stats view

With these simple options selected for each homework, over the course of a year the students build up a valuable resource as shown in Figure 19.

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Figure 19 - Student view

Continuing with the theme of organization, and the link to preparation for assessments, students were asked whether they used their homework slips when preparing for end-of-term tests. Looking at Figure 20, about half of students do whereas about a quarter of students admit that they would if homework feedback was organized for them.

Figure 20 - Assessments

At one year 8 parents evening, I was thanked by a parent for this use of Schoology, because it had helped him to keep an eye on the homework deadlines and grades for his son.

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Support software The mark book is an important document for teachers, with a number of pedagogical uses outside of keeping track of raw homework performance. Excel is a tool many teachers use for their marking, bringing the dual benefits of familiarity and powerful features. Taking the software DRY approach (don’t repeat yourself), it would be foolhardy to manually maintain both an Excel mark book and a Schoology gradebook by hand. The software that I have developed to increase my productivity allows me to maintain student grades and homework comments in Excel as shown in Figure 21, and automatically upload both of these to Schoology so that students benefit from the accessibility and features of that platform.

Figure 21 - Excel mark book

At a basic level, whenever I set a homework on Schoology, I have to take a note of its ID in my mark book. In the example shown in Figure 22, the ID is 529045935. With this ID, my software can push grades and comments into Schoology.

Figure 22 - Schoology ID

Costs In the 2015-2016 academic year, I have set 236 assignments (a combination of homework, assessment and revision) across 12 classes. When printing homework slips, I am able to get 3 to a page, so most homework takes between 7 and 9 colour pages of printing. This costs roughly £0.90 per homework (see Figure 23), giving an approximate annual cost of 236 × £0.90 ≈ £200.

Figure 23 - Printing cost

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Conclusions With appropriate use of Schoology and maintaining a mark book in Excel of a specific format, with the use of bespoke software the lesson overhead of returning homework can be reduced and an annual £200 can be saved per teacher in printing costs. At the same time, pupils can benefit from more immediate feedback and better resources for exam preparation.

Further work There is a piece of work necessary to make the software that I am using available to other staff, and to improve the user interface to make it accessible to non-technical people. There is a second piece of work required to document the format of Excel mark book that interfaces with the software, so that it can be adopted by other staff if they see the benefit for their classes.

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Appendix 1: Questionnaire

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