Communications and the flood of information

We live with too much information. Perhaps work rather than live - the individual can choose what their information landscape looks like outside of work. Here's something of a taxonomy (in our school; likely somewhat similar in many schools):

• email (access anywhere, anytime)
• online calendars
• portals (e.g. compass)
• intranet/websites
• social media
• files on a computer
• cloud based files/applications
• smartphone apps
• tablet apps
• paper-based chronicles
• books

Compare to 5 years ago:

• email (access at laptop on desk, probably wired connection)
• paper-based chronicles
• books
• files on a computer
• intranet/websites
• social media

Compare to 10 years ago:

• email (access via PC)
• paper-based chronicles
• books
• files on a computer

As the process has been quite gradual, there hasn't really been any discussion on the implications of this, nor training on how to manage the flood. This is certainly a workload issue, but for many the situation exists outside of work, or the demarcation of work blurs (this is an issue in itself). And it's not only the implications and training of staff - this applies as much to students.

A major concern here is the signal-to-noise ratio. The noise is both getting more frequent (more communications occuring), and stronger (every communication fighting to stand out). So we end up missing things, and the cycle feeds back into itself. Finding the signal in the noise takes time and energy. There are two possible ways forward: decrease the noise, or filter the noise. The former comes from training, etiquette, and careful selection of systems (perhaps cutting out systems). The latter - training people how to use systems more effectively, and employing smarter/better suited systems.

A (perhaps more important concern) is determining if the flood of information is worth it. And if it's not, whether it can be stopped (you can't stop progress).

This issue will be the focus of discussion for much of the coming year.

Continuous and Connected

On paper, data has to follow slow cycles. Computers deprecate such cycles, but our workflows seem stuck in a paper-based ideology. Here's what's possible now:

Continuous Collection

There is simply no need to have a reporting cycle at the end of each semester, when that data can be continuously gathered throughout the semester.

Continuous Analysis

Then, the data can be continuously looked at, trends noted, students and teachers who are falling behind given a hand. The concept of reporting could almost be dropped. Parents could also be given the data on a continuous basis, but that opens up a separate can of worms.

Multiple Sources

Data is connected. Some systems may try to become the One True Data Source(TM), but in reality they fail, and become just another data source in the equation. Data analysis has to account for this. I don't know how well analysis services can query disparate DB systems - for the moment I'm figuring some synchronisation will be the easiest way to achieve this (i.e. creating One True Data Source(TM) from a number of external ones).

The (newly developed) school reporting package we've just moved to doesn't account for this. It can handle the continuous nature of data collection, but less so the continuous nature of analysis, and barely at all multiple data sources. Those latter two can probably be hacked onto it using some SQL, but it's a shame the analysis and import features of the product itself look to the past more than to the future.

On the other hand, if everything is continuously continuous, we lose milestones, a sense of accomplishment, of finishing something. Our minds may adapt to this in time (facebook status vs a letter to a dear friend, web snippets vs a book, youtube vs a feature movie), but for now there still is probably some need to have clear end points for some of this (i.e. end of semester reports). But that can co-exist with the continuous collection and analysis.

Happiness

How can one measure student happiness? Or anyone's happiness, for that matter.

Yearly or bi-yearly surveys do a decent job of this, but it would be interesting to see an ongoing measure of this during the year, and correlating against other events (start of year, holidays, exam time, even particular days of the week).

On first glance, a simple daily (or weekly) user rating might seem a valid solution. At the start or end of each day/week/class/<insert other time period here> the student clicks a thumbs up or thumbs down (perhaps a 'meh' option there as well). A very blunt instrument, but a starting point nonetheless. Comparisons between students might not be valid, as there are probably different circumstances and interpretations of happiness. But perhaps the more difficult problem is authenticity of the data. Someone writing in their own diary might bare their soul as there is no audience - no-one to witness them in a weak, exposed state. But as soon as there is an audience, things change. A depressed student might not want others to know of this, someone with some problems at home might be fearful of consequences, someone feeling antisocial probably won't want the hassle of someone trying to 'help.' When asked to rate their happiness every morning, students have every right to ask 'why?' or 'who wants to know?' And with good reason - this is personal data, that could be used for evil.

So trust is a huge factor here. The student would need to trust the school, the survey, the system that the reasons behind the data collection are sound. At the start of a student's enrolment, that trust is not there, and that is one of the most useful times to have access to this data.

There are other indicators one try to extract this sort of information from - attendance, participation, performance. But the accuracy of those might not be great, particularly without a baseline to measure against.

Crash and burn

Over a month since the last weekly review - hardly ideal. There really needed to be one at the end of the previous term, but with reports eating into the start of the holidays, there wasn't quite the closure (nor the time). And bigger things to worry about during the break.

All indications look to a similar term ahead. I'll potentially be out of action for much of term 4, so planning, training and processes need to happen now, but I haven't been able to grab the ear of the powers that be to get this rolling. Will just have to persevere. Still recovering from a cold, so no thoughts for the week in this review; just planning and administrivia.