Participation

A very difficult problem most teachers struggle with.

This system will help teachers mitigate this problem. The overall approach is to provide visibility, aid learning, and facilitate drive.

For weaker leaners the system can make rich material from previous years available.  Not all material because that would be imtimidating and worse than useless.  Material tuned by teachers over years to what the learner is trying to express.  

An example is markup for a missing article.  The reference contains some hints for median learners who understand the basic ideas but are having some trouble applying in this particupal instance.  It is too hard for a weak learner because they stopped learning years ago.

One strategy for helping talented bored students is to facilitate them acting as Teacher's Assistants (TAs).  An example is to enable them to markup some peer's work with teacher monitoring.

Stronger students and weaker students learn more.  

TAs might be celebrated or effectively secret, TAs provide feedback online and perhaps discretely in person, depending on the school culture.

The system can add value by giving select students markup access to a few other student's class work.

Due to talent differences, interests, grouping students by age regardless (aka platooning), and background there are always large gaps in skills within a class.  A common way this manifests is that some are bored and many are lost.  This contributes to behavior problems and retards learning.

How can this system help me mitigate this problem?

Many students do not care.  A lot of time is spent wondering (mostly complaining about) why and trying to induce caring.  This is rarely effective with poor students but always starves good students.

One strategy is Tit for Tat: focus on students who demonstrate interest and reward them with attention, guidance, and feedback.

An example is providing feedback on written work.  Spending a lot of time to provide quality feedback which is not even read is a waste of time and worse deprives an eager student.

Communication is key to learning.  

Ability to send messages to select individuals.  e.g.  your homework #7 is due, your child's grades are available, take a tour of this feature ...

The messages should be obvious.  Some should be dismissable and some snoozable.  

It is highly valuable to expand on what learner's know.  How do you determine what words learners already know?

Parents should have the ability to easily see their child's progress:  grade, attendance, class participation, materials ...  The teacher could also provide feedback only to the parent.

Parents will need an account bound the their child's account.

One approach is to send an email to the parent with a link.  Another would be to provide an link on the child's account that the parent could use to create an account though this would be gamed.

One aspect of class participation is calling on students to answer a question, solve a problem ...

The system could clearly present the student chosen.  It would be much better if perceived as fair. 

Ideally, at the end of the term all students will have had roughly equal opportunity to contribute before the whole class.

The teacher might assign a score to the student's participation.  The number of contributions and score could be displayed.