The question this prototype seeks to answer is "what information do we need to provide teachers with so that they understand where their students are struggling". For example, we could just give the teachers the skillometer, but our bet is that this information is too decontextualized to be useful to the teachers-- researchers might understand what the skill "identify units" means (because they have performed the task analysis of which "identify units" is one step). But imagine if another group performed a task analysis with a skill/step labeled "communicate attributes"-- would this be meaningful to Carnegie Learning? Would this be meaningful to teachers? What information does the teacher need to make sense of "identify units"? Download PDF
This prototype argues for presenting the teacher with the task analysis in order to explain and give context for understanding the skill.
Context for usage
trigger: do poorly on standards
Goal: improve performance on standards
1. $$ available for addressing the problem
2. use asssistments to more accurately pinpoint the problem
3. assign another worksheet for homework
trigger: start lesson study group
goal: improve learning
1. use standards as a gross measure
2. use asssistments to more accurately pinpoint the problem
3. use the task analysis to better understand how problem can be taught.
4. re-design a lesson
5. Use Assistments to gauge progress
Lesson Study Applications
In the first context, a teacher merely uses the system to assign more worksheets, which I would argue would not do much to promote learning. In the second context, a lesson study group could use the task analysis to redesign a lesson. In this case, Assistments compliments and automates what they already do by hand. For example, before re-designing a lesson, the Lesson study group at Kawana School in LA creates a " Learning Trajectory" (which is just a teacher made task analysis based on expert performance). The lesson study teachers then observe the lesson and redo the learning trajectory based on their observations. In fact, the task analysis shown in this print-out/report is based on a learning trajectory the Kawana teachers created for kindergarten. Furthermore, the learning trajectory the Kawana teachers decided to analyze was for a task the believed is connected to the Measurement and Geometry standard on which the school performs the most poorly. If Assistments can provide this task-analysis information in a lesson study group, it would reinforce and complement already existing practices that are believed to improve learning.
For non-lesson study teachers, the task analysis would at least educate teachers. However in that case, Assistments would not be part of a whole-solution without also supporting some sort of remedying action set.