Academic Centre
Project name: “IT-based support system prototype for providing feedback and improve student performance in literacy and numeracy acquisition”
The purpose of the project: Growing demand for educational quality from society, resulting in educational reforms with updated competence-based curriculum, with the need to optimise school network, and also with the oldest and prevalently female teacher workforce are some of the current challenges best describing the educational sector in Latvia. With the consistently low share of students reaching the highest levels in PISA tests, the educational system needs to take a completely different path.
Experience from other countries show that an increasing number of administrators at national, state and district level have discovered the potential of formative assessment to make students’ thinking processes transparent so that it is “now recognized in the research literature as one of the most powerful ways to enhance student motivation and achievement.'' The most recent review of key publications in the area of formative assessment and self-regulated learning (SLR) propose that new research should take advantage of the latest advances in SRL measurement, especially online measures that combine measurement and intervention using the latest technologies.
Therefore this project is focused on developing an IT-based support system prototype that incorporates these latest technologies and has online measures combining assessment and intervention with an automated data analysis, management and communication service for providing feedback to basic school students and teachers on student performance in literacy and numeracy acquisition. During the project, this prototype will be validated in school practice by combining innovative knowledge and empirical experience gained from synergies between academic research and the business environment.
The project aims to introduce evidence-based and data-driven decision making in the educational sector. It will allow the comparison of different teaching and learning practices enabling teachers and school leaders to make evidence-based decisions to improve the educational quality. Comparison of school performances by introducing also dynamics of student individual growth will enable municipalities as school founders and financers to have data-driven decisions on budgeting, teacher incentivisation and the school network optimisation.
However, the largest beneficiaries eventually will be students, who will be able to enjoy more diverse teaching methods providing them with relevant content not only on the class level but also on a group or even individual level. By receiving feedback immediately after showing proof of learning, students respond positively and remember the experience about what is being learned in a confident manner. Decreasing role of a teacher as the main evaluator will shift the focus from vertical relationships to more horizontal where educators and students work for a common goal - improved skills and knowledge of students.
Core activities:
- conduct a scientific literature review on current best practices for how feedback to students is being provided in the school level and by using design-based research approach, develop a conceptual model for the IT-based support system prototype;
- develop documentation for the IT-based support system prototype;
- create the prototype;
- validate the prototype in school practices and
- disseminate project results for the local and international educational research community and local education practitioners.
Project deliverables:
- Research and IT-based support system prototype for an automated data analysis, management and communication service;
- Formal description and infrastructure of the prototype, including descriptions of statistical processing and data organization models and specifications of algorithms;
- Validation of IT-based support system prototype in basic education school practice;
- Recommendations for further improvement of the prototype.
Outcomes of the cooperation between project partners:
- Long-term partnership between the project partners for continuing to implement the feedback service prototype;
- Database with anonymised data relating the feedback with the student performance;
- More than 2000 representatives of the educational sector involved in validating new evidence-based educational tool;
- 4 presentations in international scientific conferences;
- 1 scientific publication in a peer-reviewed international journal and 3 articles in conference proceedings indexed in internationally recognized databases (Web of Science and SCOPUS);
- Project webpage for communicating the progress and results of the project;
- 2 new researchers involved.
Agreement no. 1.1.1.1/19/A/076
Funded by: European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
Project implementer: Interdisciplinary Centre for Educational Innovation
Project partner: SIA “Izglītības sistēmas”
Project implementation deadline: 01.09.2020. - 31.08.2023.
Total budget: 645 893.75 EUR
Timing: 36 months
RIS3 priority: ICT
NACE 2 code: 63.11
Research category: industrial research, experimental development
Field of research: Natural sciences, 1.2 Computer and information sciences, 5. Social sciences, 5.3 Educational sciences
Keywords: Educational sciences, EdTech, Formative assessment and self-regulated learning, feedback provision
Type: project not related to economic activities.
Project leader: Leading researcher, Dr, ped. Dace Namsone (dace.namsone@lu.lv)
Project administrative manager: Laine Blūma (laine.bluma@lu.lv)