Leveraging Visual Analytics when using Google Apps (Workspace) in Education

As a leader of an organization, how can you tell if the technology placed in the classroom is being leveraged?  How is it being used?  Is professional Development needed?  And if so, what kind of PD in needed?

When adopting to Google's Workspace, there is an opportunity to transform how students and teachers use the tool for teaching and learning.  When Greenwood College School adopted Google Workspace for Education (then called Google Apps for EDU) in 2012, it evolved considerably but the main principals in it's file structure and powerful real-time sharing has remained the same.  

This real-time sharing give the opportunity for teachers to monitor student's engagement in document creation and developing ideas anytime, not just just when the work is submitted or checked in the classroom.  Seeing the students' work anytime makes the learning process visible. The teacher can also intervene or provide just-in-time learning to address a misconception or give critical next steps to enrich the learning experience.

To help promote this transformation, I bought a tool called Hapara (the Māori word for dawn) Analytics in 2014. It would visualize activity and interactions between students and teachers in Google Apps.  It would look at time, length, frequency and type of interactions, so one could ascertain an idea on how Google Workspace was being adopted and the ways it was being used.

 

The Analytics tool could drill down to see which teachers and subjects gave feedback and interacted with students the most or the least.  In the above graphic, daily interaction between students and teachers, you could see usage grew year over year validating the way teacher's were using the tool was fundamentally changing. It also allowed opportunity to pair high usage teachers with low usage teachers together for targeted professional development.  It was awesome!

When I tried to get an updated report to plan the next school year, I learned that Hapara is now revamping the Analytics tool. My school is in a great position, so there is no immediate urgency to view the data.  Using it for so many years, I have an idea what to do next but I do look forward to what they bring next. I wonder how Hapara's new tool will continue to help us innovate the way we can teach.