The Alliance for Building Capacity in Schools (ABCS)
Project Description
Communication and Information Technology (CIT) was approached by the MSU Office of K-12 Outreach to provide Web development support for a Michigan Department of Education-funded project. The project was called the Alliance for Building Capacity in Schools (ABCS). The purpose of ABCS was to recruit veteran educators who would be trained to become school improvement coaches and who would assist Michigan schools to increase student achievement levels.
CIT involvement in the ABCS project occurred in three phases and resulted in the design and development of three Web products.
Phase 1
A Web site for recruiting veteran educators.
Phase 2
A Web site to house the training materials and to promote communication among the educators.
Phase 3
A Web site (with a database) for promoting the coaches who would be hired by Michigan schools.
Given the complexity of the Phase 3 Web site, a focus group and a formal site evaluation were conducted to gather data on the usability and usefulness of the site.
CIT employed an information architect with an instructional design background as the ABCS project manager because this particular project required categorizing a large amount of training material and collecting and organizing a large amount of data from coaches. CIT also employed a graphic designer to develop the graphic look of the Web sites, an editor, and a computer programmer.
Phase 1: Web Site for Recruiting Veteran Educators
For this phase, CIT was asked to build a Web site for inviting veteran educators to apply to the ABCS training program. The Web site promoted the ABCS initiative and the philosophy behind the training curriculum, and provided application instructions and the application form. CIT incorporated the latest design and development techniques to ensure compliance with federal accessibility regulations for people with disabilities and best practices related to usability. Because of its limited objective, this was a relatively simple site with a simple information architecture. CIT created the information architecture, built the site, and hosted it.
Phase 2: Web Site to House the Training Materials and to Promote Communication
The second Web site had two main purposes, to house the training content and to allow the coaches to communicate with each other (coaches resided all over the state and only infrequently met). After doing a great deal of research on the type of system that would best suite the needs of this phase, CIT decided to use ANGEL Groups the MSU-supported course software adapted for groups. ANGEL Groups has built-in communication tools (email, discussion boards, and chat rooms) in addition to content material place-holders and other useful resources.
Once the coaches were selected and recruited, coaches began their training. The CIT instructional designer and the editor attended all the training sessions to collect the training materials and to conceptualize how to represent the training content on the Web site. The instructional designer then categorized and annotated the material (which consisted of book and journal article references, links to Web sites, and content generated by ABCS) based on topics. There were over 350 entries that comprised the training content.
CIT worked with MSU Libraries Computing & Technolgy Training Program staff to provide training in the use of ANGEL Groups software for the coaches. This training was delivered in four Michigan locations. CIT staff provided ANGEL Groups technology support throughout the duration of the project.
Phase 3: Web Site (with a database) for Promoting the Coaches
The purpose of the third Web site was to connect the coaches who successfully completed the ABCS training with the Michigan schools who would be hiring them as part of the schools' improvement efforts. CIT began by interviewing several coaches to determine some of the basic features and requirements for the Web site.
Based on these informal interviews, it was determined that schools would likely prefer to search through a database of coaches for suitable candidates to interview. It was agreed that each coach would provide a biosketch, contact information, a resume, and their preferences regarding location and type of school (elementary, middle, or high) they prefer to work in. Other elements that the site would need to include were information about the ABCS initiative, information about the training curriculum, and clear contact information for the ABCS organization. The CIT instructional designer created a survey on ANGEL to collect this.
After developing a prototype for this site, CIT organized a focus group of ten Michigan school principles who provided valuable feedback on the prototype. Their two main suggestions were 1) to add information on how schools can pay for hiring the coaches, and 2) to make the link to finding a coach more prominent on the site.
After developing the site, CIT worked with a firm in Ann Arbor to design a formal evaluation of the Web site. Typical users were asked in one-on-one sessions to perform a series of tasks on the Web site. Evaluators recorded the paths that each user took to complete each task and whether it was completed successfully. After completing each task, users were asked to rate the ease of the task and to provide feedback and suggestions for improvement. After implementing the recommendations from the evaluation, the Web site was launched.
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