My target group of learners for my Inquiry 2020 will be my Year 11 NCEA Level 1 class. I intend inquiring into the process of using the LearnCoach online programs (content) and VTaL Visible Teaching and Learning (workflow) to accelerate student achievement for Tamaki College students undertaking courses in Digital Technologies NCEA Levels 1, 2 and 3.

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In a previous blog post, BP4 : Evidence - Year 11 DigiTech Students Learning from Sharing in Google+ Community I outlined the following Next Steps:

Next Steps

The next steps that I will explore with the information in this survey, is to have the learners read through this post, and see if they have a greater or better understanding of why I have set the Year 11 DigiTech Google+ community up, in terms of supporting their individual and specific learning journeys.  I hope that this will provide me with a greater insight into whether this is supporting student learning and if so, how it is supporting student learning.

I also hope that when learners see that I am inquiring into their learning, they may have a greater input into communicating in more detail what they feel their learning needs are, and how may be better achieved through my inquiry this year.

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Deep dive into the 'How' and 'Why'  

In order to enable students to dive deeper into the 'how' and 'why' of using the Year 11 DigiTech Google+ Community, I decided to chunk questions down in order to break down the inquiry process for the students.  I also intended doing this before showing the learners my blog post (mentioned in this blog intro), so as to not influence the students' responses to the questions.

There happened to be one learner who joined the Google Hangout Meet for this lesson.  Here is the link to the Questions I had ready for this process Blog: Questions that relate to the Year 11 DigiTech Google+ community.

And, the Question Chunking process went as follows:

1. I post a question into the hangout chat
2. The student writes their answer to the question into a google doc
3. We repeat this process for all questions
4. The student shares the google doc to me
5. While we are both in the google doc, I highlight sections of the paragraph that are irrelevant
6. I copy and paste the paragraph so that the original paragraph remains untouched, but still includes the highlighted sections
7. The student edits anything referring to Yes or No etc
8. I go through MY blog post with the learner (mentioned in this blog intro) by reading the blog post
9. I talk to the learner about my blog post, to clarify anything about the blog post that the learner may not have understood
10. I talk to the learner about the questions that I posted into the chat function of the hangout and had asked him to respond to in the google doc
11. I talk to the learner about whether he realises that his combined answers are actually an effective comment to my blog post
12. The learner copies and pastes his paragraph into my blog comments and publishes his comment

The following image is the google doc that my learner used to enter his answers to the questions that formed the blog post comment.




He was completely blown away that the paragraph that he had written, actually combined to be an effective blog comment, to a blog post that I had written about his class.  Further to this, his response showed that he viewed the use of the Year 11 Google+ Community as positive for his learning, making statements such as "it's helpful because you can see how other students do the work" "I like sharing my work into the Year 11 DigiTEch Google+ Community because I like to help other students out" "I don't share my work into the Year 11 DigiTEch Google+ Community because I've been asked to share my work but because I like to help" "I share my work into the Year 11 DigiTEch Google+ Community not only because it makes me feel proud but because it's helping other students" and "It gives me a greater understanding of the work that I have completed and shared".

Although this process only included the response from one learner, it is still one more set of evidence that I have from Student Voice that I didn't have before.  I was also enlightened to see that this particular learner doesn't feel a sense of obligation to post into the Year 11 DigiTech Google+ Community, but actually sees the benefit of using the tool and also enjoys it!