One to World Student Survey and Focus Group Report

Since the beginning of the One to World program, regular student and staff surveys have been administered to better understand our technology-enabled learning program. Barrington High School (BHS) students who were part of the One to World pilot were surveyed in 2014, and all BHS students were surveyed in 2016. All middle school students were surveyed in 2016. Since 2015–16 was the year for the elementary school pre-launch of the One to World program, only students in Grades 3–5 who were part of the pre-launch were surveyed in 2016.

The most recent series of One to World student surveys and focus groups were administered at the end of the 2018–19 school year. A full report, Student Survey & Focus Group Report, Grades 3–12, was released in December 2019 and contains a detailed analysis of the results of the 2018–19 student survey and focus groups. Some questions allow longitudinal comparisons of data from 2016 for Grades 3–12, while a few topics allow comparisons from the original 2014 high school survey. The purpose of this study was to learn more about our One to World program from our students in Grades 3–12, and establish recommendations and next steps to improve the program.

The following seven next steps are recommended based upon conclusions from the data analysis of the 2019 Student Survey & Focus Group Report, Grades 3–12:

1. Explicitly Teach Executive Functioning for the Digital World—The district should identify methods to explicitly teach executive functioning and device-based organizational skills for the digital world.
2. Continue to Offer Creativity Training to Teachers and Students at All Levels—Barrington 220 will continue to offer professional development to teachers and measure how creativity is being used in teaching and learning activities across grade levels. In addition, methods should be implemented to explicitly teach the creative possibilities to students already available on devices through hardware features, services, and apps.
3. Continue to Offer Digital Learning Activities in Addition to Paper/Pencil Options—The One to World program provides options for students to complete certain activities digitally or using paper/pencil. We believe it is important for students at all levels to experience digital versions of learning activities that were once only available on paper/pencil in a world becoming more digital. At this time, we have no current goal to change student preferences to digital. However, we will continue to offer digital learning activities, track student preferences, and study the effects of the different types of learning and teaching using digital modes and methods. 
4. Provide Hands-On Training and Professional Development for Accessibility Features—Explicit training on iPad Accessibility would be beneficial to both staff and students through professional development and other training opportunities. 
5. Develop a System and Provide Leveled Training to Consistently Cite Sources—As a result of needs identified by this analysis, the district will work with Teacher Librarians to develop a program for all teachers at all levels to appropriately cite text- and image-based research and help students conduct online research from credible and reliable sources.
6. Teach Methods to Promote Digital Citizenship In and Out of School—Barrington 220 has identified the need to develop programs and methods to increase digital citizenship pedagogy among all teachers. In addition, a continuing partnership with families continues to be necessary to help teach digital citizenship outside of school.
7. Improve Assessments and Teacher Feedback—The results of this report indicate that the district should work to develop methods to help teachers improve assessment methods and feedback to fully take advantage of digital devices, apps, services, and other tools already at the disposal of teachers and students.

The full report is available at bit.ly/220studentreport2019.