Week 25 - Act on my plan

To what extent does gamification impact on behavioural engagement for distance learners?

This week was a very busy one as my school had only been open for two days prior. I decided to flag my Year 10 only part of my inquiry as I only have a small class list, to begin with. I have 11 students that I have planned to use ClassDojo with which range from Year 5 to Year 10. I decided to do this so I had enough numbers.

This week I sent out informational emails welcoming students back for the year and explained that I needed to set up face to face meetings with them. I followed these emails up with texts to the supervisors to say that I had sent them an email. Being a distance school, contacting students and families can prove to be very difficult at times and sometimes an email won't even get a response. I found this to be a much better strategy as it prompted responses via text from the supervisors and they went on to check their emails. It worked extremely well as I had four students meetings booked in for this week. At these meetings, we went over ClassDojo and got a permission slip filled out for two of my students that were under 13 years old. I also emailed out the parent's invite to ClassDojo. 

At these meetings, I made sure that we downloaded the ClassDojo App onto the supervisor's phone and that I bookmarked the website onto the student's laptop. I did this here in the office so that the office WiFi was used and so I could make sure that it was set up properly. At these meetings, I also explained a bit more about my inquiry and what kinds of information I will be collecting so that the students and supervisors clearly understood the purpose. By the end of the week, I had seven out of 11 students and supervisors successfully connected to ClassDojo and were using it to communicate with me, which was awesome! This felt like a really positive start as two of the dimensions of behavioural engagement are participation and following instructions, 'refers to the students' participation and involvement in school activities, academic, social or extracurricular,' (Hospel, Galand & Janosz, 2016, p.38).

I sent out my Google form survey to my students and supervisors to collect their opinions on engagement. By the end of the week, I had one student and one supervisor complete the survey. This was a little disappointing so it may need to continue into next week so I can gather their opinions beforehand.

This week I feel great about the steps and actions that have happened so far, considering I did not have a class-list on our Te Kura platform until Thursday morning. I even had two families connect to ClassDojo via my invite over emailing, before even having a meeting with them, which was awesome! I think considering we only just opened as a school, had lots of technical difficulties with our class lists not being set up properly and trying to make that initial contact with families I feel that I have done pretty well. At this stage, I don't think that I would have done anything differently as the technical challenges I came across were out of my control. I felt that this week I took a Situational Leadership stance. I was directive and supportive in trying to make my first connections with my students and their whanau and explained my decisions in my meetings with them so that it provided them with the opportunity to have things clarified (Schermerhorn, 1997, p.6).

References:

Hospel, V., Galand, B., & Janosz, M. (2016). Multidimensionality of behavioural engagement: Empirical support and implications. International Journal of Educational Research, 77, 37-49. doi:10.1016/j.ijer.2016.02.007

Schermerhorn, J. (1997). Situational Leadership: Conversations with Paul Hersey. Mid-American Journal of Business. Vol. 12, No.2. 5-7.