1. Sue Sentance & Philip Howlett
Streamlining practice-based monitoring: a solution for staff, students and placement mentors
Sue Sentance & Philip Howlett

2. Overview Background: working in partnership
Trainee teachers and measuring progress
Trainee progress online database
Initial trials
Full implementation
Wider use of tool

3. Working in partnership
Tutor – school visits
University tutorials
Assignment preparation
Academic sessions
Mentor weekly meetings
Lesson observations
Weekly grades to
university
Any areas of concern

4. Monitoring progress
Assessing learning regularly in order to facilitate progress is a key part of any higher education course (Yorke, 2003)
We need an approach that makes it easy for external partners to participate without adding to their workload.
We gather information on a continual basis about trainees, including placement progress, tutorials, visits, modules, concerns and results.

5. Why collect data at all? Ofsted requirements
Self-evaluations requirements
Trainee support requirements

6. Placements Overview
Placement pattern for PGCE Secondary Initial Teacher Training
What happens on a PGCE Initial Teacher Training placement?

7. Monitoring trainees Current practice
Data recorded about each trainee throughout PGCE (teacher training)
Uses a spreadsheet
Includes weekly grades, module results, enrolment information – everything!
Problems
Spreadsheet has 73 columns of data(!) and is awkward to complete/view
Data is repeated/redundant (problems of 2D flat file)
Complex searches are not easy
Is only accessible on J: drive (not online)

8. A database offers…
Student data stored once with multiple occurrences of
Weekly grades
Visits
Tutorials
Modules
No error-prone repetition of data
Web access to professional tutors (reducing data entry needed by administrators)
More complex search facilities

9. The story so far …
Learning and Teaching Project has financed the development of a database
Our Trainee Progress Database (TPD) has been implemented in PHP/MySQL
Available at
Password entry – 2 levels of access (school and university)
Pilot taking place with 3 schools (7 students)
User manual produced

10. Monitoring database

11. Student lists

12. Individual student view
Removed from presentation because contained personal data

13. Removed from presentation because contained personal data
List of placements
Removed from presentation because contained personal data

14. Professional tutor interface (capacity to input weekly grades online)
Removed from presentation because contained personal data

15. Future Developments Development of a primary TPD
Use of database for more advanced monitoring of trainee progress (e.g. a matrix of competency towards the Teacher Standards)
Work with schools’ requirements to give them access to historical data about trainees’ weekly grades
Move to web hosting provided by the university

16. Summary
Our Learning and Teaching Project award has enabled us to develop an online system to track and assess trainees’ progress whilst involving their placement schools in this process.
Other university courses using placements which need to be regularly monitored may benefit from this approach.

17. Sue Sentance & Philip Howlett (Learning and Teaching Fund project,
supported by Anglia Learning and Teaching)