Potentials for Data-Driven Instruction

The Chess Fountain, Gran Estación Mall, Bogotá, Colombia - Photo by Jonathan Acuña

Potentials for Data-Driven Instruction: What is in Store for ELT?

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed. School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica Sunday, May 6, 2018 Post 317

As a curious traveler who intends to explore new places, I’ve been too several intriguing but fascinating non-conventional sites in my life. And while strolling down the many shopping places, museums, and other tourist attractions in Bogotá, my wife and I came across this amazing sight, a chess fountain. And since I am the kind of person who always wants to understand things beyond what is really perceived by the naked eye, here I was faced with these gigantic chess pieces, like the mammoth issue linked to the “effective, meaningful” usage of an LMS (learning management system) in a language institution interested in using data coming from it to refine its language programs.

Whenever I think of chess, I always picture those Muslim noblemen from a different era making their right plays towards a chess mate to win a game. And as you must be certain, in order to win a chess game, several moves are made to achieve that goal. However, when I relate data-driven instruction in ELT to winning a chess game, I often wonder if we can ever get to win this game we are playing now to have learners profit from their use of an LMS. How far have we come along this road to take advantage of an LMS aligned with an institution’s curricula? Well, let me share a bit of what I have experienced and mull over for quite some time …

The LMSs in the Lookout At this point in our history, most publishing houses in the ELT business have come to devise their LMS to provide schools, language institutes, universities, etc. with a digital way to track student coverage of thematic units from the coursebook they have chosen for their programs. I refrained myself from using the word learning (to replace coverage of thematic units) since the act of learning is a very personal moment of self-discovery that is not exactly measured through an LMS devised by a publisher. For me, learning is an intimate moment when each individual discovers s/he is now in possession of new knowledge that can be used otherwise. And the “possession” of new information can be attained through a platform such as the LMS. What worries is not the presence of an LMS in a language institution, but the way it is being used by the school’s instructors. Based on my personal experience with teachers having to assign content in the institution’s LMS and memoranda that I have written to myself over the years after talking to my peers in various university settings in my home country, the school’s platform is more likely to be used as the substitute of the paper workbook we used to have before; it has become an e-Workbook full of exercises that can be assigned or deassigned by the instructor. The statistical evidence that a system like an LMS can generate is not being used profitably to enhance the learning process by educators or school policy makers. All this situation resembles again as if we were in this chess game against one of the Muslim noblemen facing a “check,” and we are close to discover that any effort is not enough to win the game because we are not really using the LMS to help plan for learning.

The question now is, is this abandonment of statistical evidence taking place because of lack of teacher training or dearth of understanding? Are we about to lose our chess game because of lack of expertise in the game? Being someone dealing with some sort of administration of an LMS, I see the lack and dearth in teachers’ platform tasks. Based on my reflections regarding this abandonment of statistical evidence, educators are not grasping the real use of an LMS for learning purposes. We have not trained our educators/players with the right “plays” (moves) to use a platform for the sake of student learning.

Additionally, instructor supervisors are not providing an accurate and meticulous follow-up of teacher work on the platform. And all this panorama makes us wonder whether we really overlooked the real potential of Data-Driven Instruction (DDI) in ELT or not. Did we also overlook the fact that chess players are also taught or self-instructed to be good in the game, even when it comes to be playing against a computer software?

Pinpointing Problem Areas The one question to ask over here, in this chess game-like situation, is: “are we teachers planning around troublesome areas when teaching and then using an LMS as part of our blended learning approach for student language development? If we all use the data that LMS platforms generate to enhance our teaching, we “teachers can more accurately pinpoint the problem areas that most of the students have and then spend class time on those” [ CITATION Bab13 \l 1033 ]. However, we tend to plan around the textbooks rather than around the troublesome areas that our institution’s platform is revealing but that are not being taken care of “accurately.” By far the LMS can help us spot “problem areas” by analyzing data connected to student performance while working on the exercises (or tasks) on the platform. But, are we doing it? If we are not exactly doing this, not spotting the language learners are struggling with, planning cannot be geared towards aiding pupils to improve and master vital contents in their language development.

Baber (2013) suggests being more creative in the use of a data-driven language class. For him, “being perhaps a bit more creative, there’s scope for different classroom constructs altogether” [ CITATION Bab13 \l 1033 ]. What about teaching a class based on data from the LMS that has been analyzed; the analysis can tell us what needs to be taught and who needs to be guided and

instructed. Suppose we have a group of students dealing with past perfect, and there might be a section of the class that with the platform work they are able to master the topic quickly and accurately. What do we do with these pupils? Baber (2013) suggests that “instead of shepherding them all into one room three times a week,” we can “have three different classes, each focusing on a different problem area that a subset of those students have.” And the benefits? These can be much better for all students by having the ones with very particular troublesome areas to overcome practice work with the instructor, and those who do not need that much instruction can focus their attention on other language contents that require more work for them.

A Shift in Class Constructs Based on what Baber (2013) comments about “shepherding” students, why do we have to make learners attend class? As educators we have all experienced the situation where a subset of learners in class already know the content we are to study. Depending on the ages and maturity of students, this particular scenario can trigger boredom and class disruption affecting classroom management. Isn’t it better to ask pupils to come when they need to? “While the total classroom time per student is less, it meets the needs of those particular students far better, and performance can be increased” [ CITATION Bab13 \l 1033 ]. Language instruction does not always happen in the classroom; many of the LMSs do include this instruction with inductive and deductive tasks for learners to come up with their own rules, or simplified versions of the content (especially grammar) that needs to be mastered by the student. The class needs to become a place to practice the language being studied for those pupils who have areas that they must strengthen. “The online component is also delivering teaching, not just consolidation exercises or assessment, so students benefit via both mediums” [ CITATION Bab13 \l 1033 ].

As the chess players of these teaching scenarios where an LMS can provide us with information about our learners, are we profiting from these learning platforms by using the right moves? “Blended learning has long been heralded as the Holy Grail but I don’t think we’ve actually seen the benefits yet” says Baber (2013). Learning management systems can provide us with data to drive our teaching to help students where they really need; it can provide as with very punctual information about where students are experiencing a problem area.

We are at a “check” point on our LMS chess game because we are not really instructing our educators (and ourselves) to use every datum to potentiate student learning and mastery of the target language.

Data-Driven Performance Improvement Are we really meeting learner needs in the classroom? If we think we are fully fostering student learning in our classes, we can be surprised by what students can say about that. That we are not trying to attain the correct deployment of LMS use is not being stated here, but that we need to try to redirect our teaching to meet learner needs is by far a fact of teaching and language mastery goals.

Data-driven teaching can be the way to cater for learner needs and language mastery goals. Can student performance be really improved with this new approach for playing this chess game-like new way of planning? Why not!?!

If we teach what data coming from the LMS states, we are bound to discover that learning materializes in different ways. Since “Data Driven Instruction and Inquiry (DDI) is a precise and systematic approach to improving student learning” [ CITATION Newnd \l 1033 ], the usage of the inquiry cycle of data-driven instruction that “includes assessment, analysis, and action and is a key framework for school-wide support of all student success.” And as data-driven instruction is conceived, assessment is already covered by our students when working on the LMS, but analysis is what may be missing in the correct “play to attain a check mate;” that is, when we analyze the data, the proactivity in action we are to embark ourselves in our teaching and planning is linked to the problem areas students must improve to master the piece of language they are studying with us.

Taken from the Engage New York New York State Education Department’s web page at https://www.engageny.org/sites/default/files/ddi-arrow-chart-small.png

The Need for More Training “Teachers who are trained in using [the LMSs] and evaluating students’ performance data can make a real difference to their students’ learning” [ CITATION Bab13 \l 1033 ]. But the fact of life is that we are not there yet, and we must work towards teaching our instructors how to use the DDI teaching model. And this has to be done through closer supervision. We cannot pretend that our language trainers will learn to do this overnight, especially when we think that the trainers are the first ones that must be trained to coach their supervisees.

The first step towards the use of data from the LMS to teach is to help educators understand and analyze reports. All teachers must have their eyes open to see how to make their next “chess-playing movement;” once instructors can identify the red flags, they have to analyze time spent on tasks to spot troublesome areas, the grades students are getting, the number of attempts registered in the platform, the frequency of sign-ins to platform, and so on. But more than identifying the red flags, they must read between the lines to see what is actually happening with pupils and their language learning.

Concluding Remarks For those of us newbies with LMSs, data-drive instruction, the DDI teaching model, and so on, we must all agree that:

1) It’s important to get trained to profit from all data coming from a platform and convey more significant learning to and for our pupils in the classroom; 2) It’s sensible to expand our understanding of all these new elements that are becoming “the next big thing” as Eric Baber, former IATFL President called all this back in 2013. The more we get familiarized with the data functionalities in the LMS, the better for our teaching and for our pupils’ learning; and 3) It’s our responsibility to have us deepen ourselves into data-driven instruction to find more meaningful ways to teach our students, so they can really profit from any time they invest in their language learning.

Let’s turn our teaching more DDI-ish to really provide language learners in our classes with more accurate instruction and more memorable learning moments for our students. By doing all this, and many other “chess plays” or tricks we can learn along the way, we can become better players aiming at winning the game and materializing student language learning.

References Baber, E. (2013, May-June). Data-Driven Teaching: The Next Big Thing?

(IATEFL, Ed.) Voices(232), p. 3.

New York State Education Department. (n.d.). Data Driven Instruction. Retrieved from Data Driven Instruction and Inquiry: https://www.engageny.org/datadriven-instruction