data-based decision-making
Value the use of data as the starting point for professional work.
ED 795: Seminar
San Diego History Center Survey Analysis (10MB PDF)
For ED 795, Justin Kennedy and I were assigned to work with the San Diego History Center (SDHC). We had several discussions with the Director of Education and found out that one of her top priorities was to get more elementary school children to visit SDHC facilities on school field trips.
We needed to understand why they weren’t visiting the SDHC, and decided to ask San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) teachers for the following information:
- What would bring teachers and their students to the SDHC?
- What were the factors and incentives that would entice, encourage, and enable them to take advantage of the SDHC’s facilities?
- What stood in the way? What would discourage or prohibit them?
- What value could the SDHC reasonably offer teachers and students?
- In what ways could the SDHC align its resources with the needs and expectations of educators and students—in promotional materials, and with facilities and activities?
We had chosen the SDUSD teachers because the SDHC is within the boundaries of the school district, and because the SDHC participates in the SDUSD’s Off-Campus Integrated Learning Experience (OCILE) program. Many 4th and 5th grade SDUSD students had already visited SDHC facilities on OCILE outings.
The survey provided some very useful information, confirmed some suspicions, and reminded us just how wrong assumptions can be.
Although some of the teachers we had contacted while preparing the survey said they were not at all involved in choosing or planning field trips, virtually all of the SDUSD teachers that responded to our survey said they were very involved in choosing and planning field trips. That was good to hear; we were polling the right audience.
The Director of Education had heard that teachers wanted online materials. The survey confirmed that not only was this true, but that they wanted materials they could easily project straight from the internet onto classroom screens without having to alter them.
So, the survey confirmed a lot of the guesswork that had been going on. But it also revealed some seriously flawed assumptions.
Because so many students had visited the SDHC facilities as part of the OCILE program, it was easy to assume that their teachers were well acquainted with the SDHC, even though the teachers didn’t accompany their students on those trips. However, the survey showed that not only were the teachers not well acquainted, more than half had never even heard of the SDHC.
In light of this information, the next steps were clear. We recommended an expanded promotional program to make the teachers aware of the SDHC and its offerings. And as part of that initiative, we created a virtual gallery that teachers could easily project in the classroom and discuss with their students to give the SDHC a presence in SDUSD classrooms.