TIIE-EL-Endline Report

Introduction

As a part of the Technology Integration for Inclusive Education (TIIE) project of IT for Change, a module was developed for assessing mathematics and language abilities of students in grades 6 and 7 in government higher primary schools in Bengaluru at the end of the academic year and a series of interactions. The aim was to facilitate an understanding of their progress through the year. The end line engaged around x students from x schools in a series of activities, wherein students worked individually or in pairs to complete assigned tasks. Their responses were used to learn more about students’ levels of learning, cognitive skills, their engagement and the challenges they faced.

Methodology

Module design - GMP

The sessions in the schools have primarily focused on maths, language and SEL to some extent. The assessment will incorporate UDL principles in its design and implementation. The assessment tools will be similar to what had been used during the baseline where interactions were done individually and in small groups with the students in a non-test-like environment. Maximum care would be taken to ensure that students don’t feel nervous or scared. Multiple modes of assessment will be employed to allow students to show their learning in different ways. It will also include student portfolios to be able to track students’ learning progress over the course of the project.

The end-line assessment will assess students’ foundational competencies in maths and language that the project has attempted to develop using inclusive pedagogies. The end-line assessment will take into account students’ learning in the curricular areas that were focused on during the classroom sessions, students’ perspectives on inclusivity in the classroom, teacher perspectives on students’ responses and learnings, facilitators’ reflections from the sessions, camps and workshops conducted.

As part of the maths assessment, students’ understanding of place value, addition, subtraction and multiplication operation was assessed. Providing multiple means of actions and expressions is a key principle of UDL which underlines the need to differentiate the ways in which learners can express what they know and understand. The maths end-line assessment will incorporate this by evaluating students’ abilities in different formats.

End line Mathematics activities

As part of the language assessment, the objective here was to understand the language competencies of students at the time of the end line study. The relative change in these competencies between baseline and end line, in the intervention schools, was meant to provide important inputs on the effectiveness of the TIIE implementation. Questions were used to assess students' skills such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing, creative expression and their ability to follow instructions, based on pre-designed rubrics. The tool was then digitized using a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) called ‘Xerte’. Data collection was done digitally and uploaded to a central aggregate platform using the FOSS phone app ‘ODK Collect’ for the rubrics corresponding to different ability/ competency levels for each of the skills assessed. This was conducted face-to-face for each individual student.

End line Language activities

In the baseline it was found that students across schools have behavioural issues and struggle with interpersonal skills. Taking this into consideration, the TIIE sessions have tried to incorporate elements of SEL. Observations, evidence and students’ responses from the sessions will be analysed to understand the extent to which some of these elements have been internalized by the students or have helped address some of the issues.

Students’ feedback on the different inclusive strategies used in the classroom such as working in smaller groups, differentiated instruction, multiple modes of engagement, alternate models for understanding, etc. would be taken informally through one-on-one or small group interactions using questions on which maths and language session was most enjoyable for them, why. Whether they tried reading stories in other languages (in Language Lab), and if so, whether they liked the stories and why or why not, in our session. Whether they learned something new in the sessions and what it was. What do they mainly like and dislike, and why? .

Teachers’ perspectives on whether the sessions have contributed to any positive change in students would be captured through interviews.

Questionnaire for children and teachers for collecting feedback

Methodology : - GMP

TIIE school sessions have been conducted in the 5 participant schools over the course of the last 8 months. An end-line assessment is proposed to be conducted in the participant schools in the second and third weeks of February 2023. Since the same number of sessions covering the same topics could not be conducted in all the 5 schools due to different reasons, the assessment will also be modified accordingly, depending on what has been done in each school.

The teams discussed all the end line activities together and defined the objectives and process for each activity, followed by creation of resources for the same. Around 140 students from four different schools participated in the baseline study; with around 35–40 students from each school. Interactions with students happened twice a week for a total of around 80 minutes in each of the schools. The team initially decided to carry out end line assessment at a pilot school (School name), in order to test the end line activities, with all the facilitators participating in that task.

Eight facilitators, divided into two teams of four, visited a single school. As soon as the piloting was complete, the end line assessment activity was revised wherever deemed necessary in terms of its content, materials, worksheet design, method of interaction, and then used in other schools. End line assessment was conducted over a month-long period. Based on the objectives of the end line activity we were intended for individual student interactions and observations. While this was going on, the rest of the students were kept with non-assessment-related learning activities. Data from each(individual or group) activity was collected as per pre-designed rubrics and updated in the teams’ internal database.