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Who is our customer?

I wrote the following to our staff in our internal newsletter some time ago.

If I were to ask anyone from the Service team, SRMs, Solutions, SPS or Systems “who is our customer”, I am sure they would all answer “the teacher”, or “the school.” In our recent performance appraisal, however, we introduced the concept of ‘internal customer’ in the section of the values that referred to ‘Delighting our customers”. The concept of an ‘internal customer’ could, for example, make a Department Head the customer of Finance, a Service Desk agent the customer of Systems, or even Development the customer of QA!

While none of that is strictly wrong, our company tagline is Better Education. Better World, which does not reference ‘internal’ customers. We exist because of teaching and learning and schools and teachers and students and parents – our ‘external’ customers.

So, I would like us, as an organisation, to forget our focus on the idea of internal customers. We have only one customer, and that customer is who we want to wow, love, care for, delight and generally make them feel like SEQTA must be an amazing planet because it is so focused on them. That customer is, first and foremost, the teacher. Of course, there are other users of SEQTA, and we should also delight them.

While it is easy for those external facing teams to identify our most important customer, sometimes, when we’re not directly facing the customer, we can lose our focus. I want us to refocus; whether or not I see the direct impact on the customer of the task I’m currently working on, my customer is always the teacher or the schools. If I’m in Finance, I’m here to support teachers and schools. If I’m in Development, I’m here to support teachers and schools. If I’m the CEO, I’m here to support teachers and schools.

I realise that may sound like nice rhetoric, but how does it play out on the ground? That is the million-dollar question - how do we make delighting teachers and schools the number one thing we focus on across all aspects of, and roles within our business?

I’m not entirely sure of the answer to that question, but I do know that the principle is right; one that we must pursue, and one that I know most, if not all of you, loved about SEQTA when you first joined the team. I do know that, as much as anything, it is an attitude. I do know that we should be testing all of our procedures against the experience of our customers. I do know that we should be refining procedures and processes to be efficient, and to bring value to the customer as quickly as possible.

I also know that to reach our goal, and meet the high standards we have set ourselves to achieve, we need to fully support each other. In particular, those who are directly customer facing need the support of those who are not. It is tough work on the front line, and we all need to be aware of, and appreciate that. It is busy, time-sensitive, often thankless and sometimes unpleasant, dealing with upset, frustrated, and/or aggressive people. The people doing those jobs don’t have time on their side – their response has to be immediate, as things have to be done quickly, because schools are pressure environments. Those of us in the backline have pressure too, no question, but that pressure is often less time-critical-do-it-now-in-your-face. Those of us in the back line focus on the customer by supporting our colleagues on the frontline.

Having determined who our customer is, it is the responsibility of each member of the SEQTA team to deliver delight to our customer, and to recognise that we all contribute towards the delivery. Let’s each make it our personal goal to “delight our customers”, with the conviction that we know who that is, and why we are here.

Defining "learning management system" (or not!)

We hear the term "learning management system" a lot - sometimes with the prefix "online". It sort of sounds wrong to me - managing learning? Doesn't much learning happen in an ad-hoc, chaotic, life-experience, tactile-interaction-with-our-world sort of a way?

In the specific context of schools, which is where my passion lies, lets consider what 'learning management' could mean and therefore derive what might constitute a 'learning management system'.

Firstly, lets just agree that, in the context of school education, the 'management' part is, for the most part, done by teachers and there's some sort of structure to it. Sure there is a lot of self-management, exploration, discovery and discipline required from students, but at the end of the day, schools are accredited bodies with accountability and expectations placed on them and teachers are the agents deployed to classrooms to ensure learning happens.

There are four main aspects to what we 'do' as teachers to 'manage learning'.

We plan: Caring about our students, we think ahead about activities, outcomes and objectives, content, environment, experiences, opportunities etc. that we will provide for our students. We'll plan for differentiation and self-direction, we'll plan for discovery. We'll plan using feedback from assessment to guide us where to go next. We plan.

We facilitate/deliver: Whether we deliver in a traditional sense and/or facilitate students to discover for themselves, we execute the plan we've put into place. For a lot of us, whether we're cutting the edge of using technology or not, much of this happens in the classroom. 'Delivery' is not necessarily the old 'chalk and talk' stand and deliver methodology - good teachers will use a range of strategies to facilitate learning and, at the risk of being unpopular to some, great teachers will use up-front of class instruction as one of the tools in their arsenal. The main point is that we use a range of methods to facilitate learning, both in and out of the classroom. Let me just add here that administrative aspects, such as marking attendance, pedagogical aspects, such as managing group work, and behavioural aspects are an integral part of 'facilitate/deliver'.

We assess: Are our students learning? Are we moving them forward? We assess for many reasons, not the least of which is to guide us as to the success of our endeavours.

We report: From verbal cues, to written feedback on student's hand-written work, to a summation of the student's achievement across a range of subjects at the end of a year, we report. Formative, summative, continuous, 'snapshot', written, verbal, online: reporting takes many forms. Our parents expect it. Our school expects it. Our Governments expect it. We assess for accountability, but more importantly, the heart of reporting is the provision of feedback to students to help them understand what they have done well and what they can improve.

A learning management system, in a school education context, is a system that assists in management of all aspects of that plan, facilitate/deliver, assess and report process for teachers. It will be a complex system and will include lots of tools to assist both teachers and students.

But I'd add that it must do these things in a highly integrated manner, with work done in one area flowing through to other areas.

I'm passionate about integration, and I'm not going to pull my punches on this front. Teachers for too long have had to interact with a range of 'systems' to manage all aspects of the work they do, and all of this work contributes towards managing the learning environment. A fully integrated LMS will allow teachers to track, plan and manage all aspects of student learning, not just the 'content' and 'learning transactions': attendance, the well-being of the learner, correspondence, assessment, reporting and feedback, individual student needs, student goals, learner preparedness, prescribed curriculum, standards - the list is long.

The crux of the matter is that a learning management system should allow teachers to easily integrate all aspects and facilitate the flow of information between disparate data sets. For example, can I easily see Julie's pattern of absence, what she has missed and simultaneously provide her with the catch-up work? Can I see a pattern in Alison's behaviour that may indicate that some testing should be done to see if she has a specific learning issue? Can I easily identify that Stuart is achieving much higher results on his take home work than in tests and seems to have abnormally low results in Literacy?

The term 'learning management system' is often associated with a range of buzzwords such as Web 3.0, wiki, ning, blog etc. I will often be asked about these features - for example "So, does your system have wikis?"

I always answer such a question with a question: "What are you aiming to achieve with said 'wikis'?"

What a 'wiki' is to one person, is different to what it is to someone else. If the teacher is aiming to provide a collaborative space where students can interact and share knowledge, ideas, resources, web-links, comments etc - then yes, we do that. Is it a 'wiki' - we don't call it that, no. What's it called then? That depends, because there are quite a few ways to achieve that within the system, all of them logged, accountable and risk-managed.

The bottom line for me is this: to claim to have the definition of 'learning management system' would be bold at best. You can describe a list of components that may or may not be included in a learning management system, but possession (or otherwise) of one or more components does not make (or otherwise) a system a 'learning management system'.

In summary...well, perhaps I'll not summarise as that would invite a final attempt to define 'learning management system'.

So, let me finish with this: teachers are the most important resource in a school. Care about your teachers. Give teachers the tools they need to streamline their work, energise them and motivate them to once again be passionate about their work and you're heading in a great direction. The results will naturally be reflected in your schools learning environment with happier, more engaged students.

Of rainbows, caramel and redeeming realisations.

A couple of years back, I had a devastating epiphany. For years I have enjoyed, savoured, and even revered the humble Rainbow PaddlePop icecream on a stick.

On that doom's day, I walked into the corner deli to satisfy my craving for the soothing rainbow flavour of my favourite PaddlePop. Unthinkably, the less-than-prepared delicatessen proprietor had done the unthinkable - he was out of rainbow flavour.

I was salivating rather furiously by this point, and my cravings had to be satisfied, so, like an unfaithful husband who could not wait, I bought a caramel PaddlePop.

I took a lick.

I took a second lick.

With the third lick, my world came crashing down.

It was then that I realised that I had been misled by Streets all these years - rainbow PaddlePops were not in fact rainbow flavoured...they were (wait for it)...CARAMEL FLAVOUR.

The last couple of years of my life have been a blur. If I could be so deceived over such a small thing like an icecream flavour, what big things have I been deceived about?

Do I really like fishing, or is God just taking an opportunity to laugh - after all there's a fine line between fishing and standing on the beach looking like an idiot.

Will I wake up and find that, like Liam Neeson in Unknown, I am not really married to my wife of 20 years?

Perhaps, like Bubba J, I was abducted by aliens and tampered with?

Maybe Julia and Tony are, in fact, down-to-earth, caring people who put us everyday Australians before their own political ambitions?

Today the world was put to rights again. I was carefully removing the caramel icecream from the underside of the Peters' lid and disposing of it the garbage disposal unit God gave me when I had a redeeming realisation.

As I was licking, lost in my ruminations about the day my world was turned up-side down, I realised, in a redeeming sort of way, that caramel is, in fact, rainbow flavoured. Let me say it again.

Caramel is rainbow flavoured.

Rainbow PaddlePops are rainbow flavoured. Caramel PaddlePops are rainbow flavoured. Peters' caramel icecream is rainbow flavoured.

Someone, somewhere, sometime stole the rainbow flavour and called it caramel thinking no-one would ever find out.

WELL WE DID!!!

If we ever need proof of who copied who, we look to which pre-dated the other.

In the case of caramel and rainbows, I think Noah will confirm that there was no concept of caramel when God made the first rainbow.

Life is once again sweet.

Are your software manuals fat?

I recently waded through a competitor's manual for just one small part of their system. It was something like 400 pages - another 150 pages for the optional web version. That's 550 pages in total.

That there is an awful lot of paper pulp, but more importantly, a sad indictment on the software itself.

Most software manuals are like car service manuals - they describe in detail, step by step what to do. Common sense? Maybe. I prefer sense that is not so common, so let me put a different idea...

Make your software so that when a user looks at a screen they know how to use it - it just makes sense. Its design, flow, placement of buttons, balance, is not only pleasing to look at, but instantly the user identifies with it and gets going OR makes a couple of fairly safe guesses and are on their way.

All you need in the manuals are the things that might require a little more knowledge or explanation - and these are inevitable in any broad and deep information system, no matter how well designed.

The SEQTA manual for the same functions of the software I mention in my opening statement is 44 pages - short enough to be read on screen and referenced only when needed.

I guess it's the same argument I have about training - if your software requires a large amount of training, then perhaps the answer is not to keep piling on the training when teachers are not adopting it as fast as you would like. Perhaps the answer is to make the software better so that less training is required.

If manuals need hundreds of pages to describe how teachers use the software, perhaps we should question whether the software needs a serious re-design.

Workflow is king.

A colleague was chatting to an old friend in a school today. The old friend asked what my colleague is doing now. When he said he was working for SEQTA and told the guy what the product did, the guy said they had 'software that did that' and mentioned the name of the product their school used.

This is a response we get so often and, tell you the truth, it really pisses me off. I know the piece of software this guy was referring to pretty well and it pretty much epitomises what's bad about school software. Sure it 'does' the things teachers need to do - and probably does them OK - but it does it in the way programmers and systems architects think we as teachers should do it. Great ideas, crap execution, zero concern for teachers.

Frankly, it sucks - it totally stuffs up teachers workflows and, rather than helping them do things more efficiently, it fragments their workflow. Go over to this part to do attendance, set assessments here, put your marks in over here, go here to do your reports etc - and never the pieces talk to each other in a sensible, actionable way.

We're in the 2010's now guys - we can build pretty software that actually enhances teachers' workflows, makes life easier, gives them really simple ways to do the complex things they'd love to do as teachers, and shows them that we give a damn.

Now sorry if any school software people take offence, but wake up guys. There is not one piece of software (bar SEQTA - yep, I'm serious here) designed to do teaching admin work really makes life not only easier for teachers, but seriously saves them time.

Workflow is king!

If I make your life better because you can do everything you need to do, easily and in the most efficient way possible, then I've done my job - but I'll keep finding ways to make it better. And you're happy, right!

How do we make school IT staff, Deputies, Principals and decision makers take notice - tick the boxes if you must focus on functionality, but give the highest weighting to whether or not the software works FOR teachers, and simultaneously for administrators.

I had the privilege today of showing our software at a school where an IT guy actually got it - really got it (sorry school IT guys, but you often don't see it from a teacher's point of view). This guy is seeing the software and telling me just how the software SEQTA has created is going to not just be easier to use, but really streamlines the workflows for all in the school - including parents and students.

Bucketloads of functionality is nice, but workflow is king. If anyone tells you different, they're selling run-of-the-mill, developer-centric, mediocre teaching-learning software that may have bells and whistles but lacks any semblance of caring about teachers.

Oh, and if you're a teacher and you're hearing someone tell you how their software is so good for you and they're not speaking your language or showing you stuff that sits in your reality, don't accept it. There is better - much better.

And this is my blog, so I'll cry if I want to ;-)

Interface design - simplicty vs complexity

My wonderful Programme Development Manager, Barry, found this great post by a guy called Simon Collinson.

Selfishly speaking, I love this article because it elegantly articulates exactly what SEQTA does with our user interface. Every screen is a tapestry of complex data that just makes sense and looks simple to the end user. While our competitors interpret simplicity as simple data sets, necessitating myriad screens, complex navigation and a veritable maze one has to negotiate, we focus on presenting complex data sets simply.

Interested to know what you think of the article and, if you're a SEQTA user, what you think of how well we're achieving Simon's ideas.

http://24ways.org/2011/taming-complexity

Why PD is not the answer to low teacher IT uptake.

I've been tracking a few threads on forums where people have been bemoaning poor teacher uptake of technology in the classroom. The threads were really good, questioning whether people are just shoving technology into the classroom for the sake of it and asking whether the best interests of students and learning are being served.

The most commonly put forward solution to low technology uptake in the classroom was that teachers need to do more PD. I find that wrong for a number of reasons. Here are my top reasons:

Many teachers don't have time for PD.

Many teachers are really busy all the time and don't have time for PD.

Many teachers are flooded by school admin tasks and don't have time for PD.

Many teachers are already working 10-15 hours each day and don't have time for PD.

Many teachers don't see the cost/benefit of PD as being worthwhile - being in class with their kids is too important to them.

Frankly, for many (if not most) teachers, PD is just another barrier to the uptake of technology - and there are already enough barriers.

So, what's the alternative?

Give teachers the tools, equipment and software that don't need PD, or need minimal PD, and let them get on with what they do best - teaching.

If technology is hard to use and/or of dubious pedagogical value, they'll spot it from a mile away. Giving them more PD will just exacerbate the problem. Sure, the 'digital natives' and go-getters will spend the time - you may get 15 or 20% natural uptake.

If, on the other hand, the technology is simple to use and they can see its value, your teachers will naturally take it up - it will just make sense to them. A quick PD to point them in the right direction and they're on their way - your teachers will learn quickly through discovery because discovery is easy and natural to them. Simple as that.

I recently perused the marks book manual for one of the school admin packages - 400 pages worth (+150 more for the online version). As a teacher I was befuddled by the language and illustrations used in the manuals - there was nothing in there that looked or sounded remotely like what I'm used to as a teacher.

Am I going to suddenly go 'how about I do a 1 day PD, read all those pages and change my vocabulary so I can spend more time than I am now maintaining my marks book' - just because the school has the software available? Frankly, I'd rather have the paper cut and lemon juice.

How about one of the other admin systems that requires 4 hours PD on marking attendance?

Or the popular 'free' LMS software that requires a huge personal investment by the teacher just to get the classes in and the bare bones ready to put content online.

The company I work for has a 44 page manual for the whole of our online learning management system, marks book and academic reporting. The PD is 2 hours. The video for teachers to learn how to do attendance is 1m 30s. Getting a class ready for a teacher to enter online content happens automatically.

The bottom line...

The bottom line is: choose your technologies carefully and factor in the PD requirement. Sure, its absolutely imperative that it enhances learning, that it has the right features and that it works - these belong on any IT shopping checklist.

Add to your checklist the requirement for PD. Look for products that are self-explanatory, that fit naturally with teachers' workflows and that teachers can master quickly with just a 'nudge in the right direction' type PD.

And when it comes to price, consider the total cost of ownership. Poorly designed software and products need lots of PD, maintenance and a team of minions on the ground to keep the system talking to other systems. Don't just factor in the cost of the PD, but the cost of relief teachers, and weigh the impact of the teachers missing classes.

And a final thought: if a less expensive product is hard to use and results in 15% natural take up by teachers, where a more expensive product results in 60% natural take up, which one represents better value for money?

Don't start with features, start with teachers - IT change in schools.

Lets put that another way, make it less about WHAT it does and more about HOW it does it.

Confused? Sorry, let me go back a bit.

I have been privileged over a number of years to be involved in IT change processes in schools. I've seen it all - from small executive teams who make all the decisions to comprehensive processes involving many people at all levels in the school.

One of the things I love to see is when the process of change starts by consulting teachers. I remember one particular Principal who said to me "OK, you can come in and show it to my whole staff - if they think its a good idea to investigate further, we'll talk some more". That's one gutsy Principal.

So often IT change is led by IT staff who are not teachers. Sadly, such change usually focuses on features and forgets that, at the end of the day, the teachers are the ones that have to use this 'cutting edge' technology. Frankly, if its got silverlighty, portal ning-things, web-SaaS cloud-based hyper-threading, AGP super-video LCD flashing speakers and comes in a black chrome case (machined aluminium is way cooler anyway!), but the teachers find it hard to use - you've just thrown good money after folly.

Radical idea coming...(actually, plain common sense, but let my ego be)...instead of starting with a list of features, start by consulting the teachers. Better still, get them to do some of the early stage product research - give them time to get their hands dirty, talk with their colleagues, consult their social networks, play with demos, visit other schools and come back with suggestions. From there, do a show and tell.

You'll be surprised at how many teachers are more swayed by the HOW (will it make life easier or harder for me) than WHAT it does.

That said, they'll definitely be interested in what it will do to make help them be more effective both in and out of the classroom.

The best thing about doing it this way - the product you end up with will (likely) be better accepted and take up rates will be higher. The benefits will flow on to students and parents and your money will be well spent.

#IT change #school IT #teachers #change management

Who said "Students are digital 'natives' while teachers are 'laggards' "?

A guy called Tony Bates said it in an interesting online article (see reference 1 below). It's pitched at Universities, but is, nonetheless, relevant to primary and secondary schools.

The article caught my attention as I've recently been thinking a lot about why teachers are perceived to be 'laggards' in terms of taking up technology to enhance learning in the classroom. Is it just a perception, or is it reality?

I think part of the issue is that kids genuinely are digital 'natives'. My 11 and 13 y.o girls certainly prove that - they pick up new technology with no training - just give them a password and they're off and they'll find their way around. My own experience in software development and implementation in schools is that kids often just need to be pointed in the right direction.

For the most part there's a skill and knowledge gap between the digital 'natives' and the teachers. Because the students are advanced, the perception is that teachers are lagging.

During teacher training in the mid-1980's, we rarely used computers except for in specialist areas, such as CAD drawing, searching the library system and the occasional trip to the mainframe terminals to do a 'special' job on a word processed assignment (remember the robot-like dot matrix printouts with the tractor holes on the side???)

When we graduated, the schools we went to had few computers, and all we did from day-to-day was paper based. Slowly, we got computers at home (late '80s and early '90's) and sometimes even a computer in our department office.

Technology has advanced, and importantly, become more affordable and accessible. At the same time, teacher workloads have substantially increased due to external factors such as increased risk management, accountability, government reporting, increased registration requirements etc. Teachers have always been busy - now they're busier than ever.

While there's a new breed of young teachers who are graduating as 'digital natives', teachers with 10+ years of experience, even those who are highly computer literate, lack the time and often the patience to learn the software their schools make available to them to 'bring technology into the classroom'. Further, some teachers are not convinced that there is really educational benefit in utilising the software they are being asked to use. More often than not, that concern is valid.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that the software teachers are asked to use has a steep learning curve, takes time to implement and, despite sales pitches to the contrary, add significant workload if implemented in a worthwhile manner.

While highly energetic teachers with great tech skills will go in boots and all, overcome the hurdles and get online (regularly coming to work with baggy eyes!), the bulk of teachers will hit the first hurdle and say "I haven't got time for this - there are so many other things I have to do", and dismiss it as a waste of time. That's not to say they're lazy or lack patience. On the contrary, they're incredibly patient - what they lack is time.

So, what's the answer? In many ways that's a difficult one - particularly given that this blog has really taken a fairly superficial look at only one aspect of the problem. On the other hand, there's a fairly simple answer that can work...

...find software that doesn't put any hurdles in teachers' way. Find software that has been designed so that teachers can naturally transition to it, that doesn't add extra workload (or that reduces workload). Find software that when teachers first use it they say 'hey, this is OK. I can do this!'

Tony Bates (see link 2 at bottom of this blog) also suggests that we need to '..develop new methodologies that seamlessly integrate technology with instruction rather than simply layering technology on top of existing educational models.'

I totally agree, but beg pardon to take that idea in a slightly different direction: we need methodologies that seamlessly integrate technology with our existing work flows; methodologies that let us work how we want/prefer to and the great tech stuff happens automatically. Methodologies that save us time and yet enhance teaching and learning. Methodologies that draw us in, that invite us to experiment, rather than put barriers in the way.

I love what Scott Berkun has to say about software. (With poetic license, I've adapted this quote for teachers):

"We must always, always remember that teachers don't want to use our software – they want to finish their work and go play outside." (see reference 3 below)

I couldn't agree more!

But the question remains: are teachers technology 'laggards'?

Personally I'm not sure that's the case. Given the right amount of time, the right tools, and access to the right resources, I believe most teachers would scramble to take up a range of technologies, both in and out of the classroom...IF they're convinced that it will significantly enhance students' learning.

Now there's an interesting lead in to another blog down the track....

Stay posted.

References:

1. http://www.tonybates.ca/2008/12/19/the-state-of-e-learning-2008/#comments

2. http://www.tonybates.ca/wp-content/uploads/technologyandeducation-3.pdf

3. http://coderoom.wordpress.com/2010/06/06/is-that-all/

Visit the SEQTA website

#teacher #ICT #education #learning management systems

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."

Albert Einstein

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