Sponsored by IBM and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)
Brought to you by the Reinventing Education Change Toolkit (www.reinventingeducation.org) project.
Brought to you by the Reinventing Education Change Toolkit (www.reinventingeducation.org) project.
Put Knowledge to Work: Cohorts, Open Your Toolkits!
By J. W. Good and Cheryl Reynolds, Associate Professors of Educational Leadership
Georgia College & State University
As educational leadership faculty at Georgia College & State University (GC&SU), we were introduced to the IBM's Reinventing Education Change Management Toolkit during Spring 2004 because of the vision of the Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement (GLISI) to include university professors in Toolkit training seminars with P-12 educators. At GC&SU, we use team teaching and facilitation through a cohort model with a focus on leadership for school improvement. All technological applications in the cohorts are taught by leadership professors. Three cohorts of 42 students, the first graduate students at GC&SU to use the Toolkit, will complete degree requirements during Summer 2005.
PART I
Why the Toolkit?
We saw three reasons to incorporate the Toolkit in leadership preparation. First, the site was easy to navigate and use with appropriate content and structure. Second, cohort members would be able to apply Toolkit school improvement and management tools to their leadership roles in schools. And, not to be taken lightly, the admission price of no cost was just right for unlimited use of a sophisticated learning and application portal to graduate students -- and a revenue-strapped unit of the university.
What Have We Heard From GC&SU Graduate Students?
Students have now completed two semesters using the Toolkit. The experience of using the Toolkit in graduate leadership preparation is summed up well by Jennifer Puckett, a full-time M.Ed. Graduate Assistant and intern at GC&SU:
As a management tool . . . group members can post their own work and view/respond to others' work at any time. It is also an excellent learning tool in that it organizes school improvement topics into segments that one can investigate. . . . Our leadership cohort has used the Toolkit for communication, management, learning, self-evaluation, and documentation. It is a great tool for groups desiring to communicate ideas and learn new information.Was application of the Toolkit immediately accepted by cohort members? Not exactly. Janie Ross, recently appointed as principal of Pine Street Elementary School in Rockdale County, GA, expressed the initial perception of the cohorts in the following:
When the IBM Toolkit was first introduced to our cohort, I thought to myself, "This is never going to work. I will never learn to use it and if, by some stroke of luck, I do learn to use it, I certainly won't need it in this cohort." Well, I was completely wrong. I "log on" all the time and sometimes I just "log on" to see what has been added. This is a wonderful tool for me, and it is extremely "user friendly."Establishing a vision of how the Toolkit could be used by the cohort learning communities was worth the time we allocated to it. Part of that time was certainly our own development of concepts and application prior to use with graduate students.
PART II
So how did we implement the Toolkit to bring about such a dramatic change in perception? These actions are summarized as follow:
- Post agendas for each cohort seminar with a new project beginning each semester.
- Post minutes for each cohort meeting.
- Examine school improvement as a concept.
- Self-assess individual and team perceptions on leadership and change.
- Post discussions and supporting documentation by seminar topic.
Agendas
We post the agenda for every seminar on the Toolkit. With every graduate student receiving immediate electronic notice of the post, our communication errors are greatly reduced for educators who live as far as 85 miles from campus and have very different work schedules. Additionally, the agendas are always available for reference and follow up.
Minutes
We began by having members of each cohort complete a module on effective meeting skills that we wrote for use by GLISI with state educators. The format we recommended in the module is completely compatible with the minutes template used in the Toolkit. With these skills, cohorts (sans professors) take charge of their own learning as they conduct their own meetings at the close of each seminar to determine what they need to do to address preparation standards and to plan subsequent seminars. Professors then use the minutes to determine how best to facilitate the subsequent work of the cohort.
School Improvement Issues
To focus on the primary application of leadership skills, we put the School Improvement tool to extensive use. We find that the concepts and examples are useful to establish a consistent vocabulary for graduate students. The organization of the tool supports a comprehensive view of the topic. Tami Flowers, recently appointed principal of Westmont Elementary School in Columbia County (GA), added the following:
The Toolkit has been an effective tool for documentation and communication during the Ed.S cohort program. I have gained insights from my colleagues' postings. It is an excellent resource when studying the school improvement process and provides a wealth of information to review. The video clips and scenarios helped to clarify the different aspects of school improvement and revealed what other school systems are doing in the country.Self Assessments
We assign the diagnostic tools to help graduate students clarify their own progress and begin a reflective journey to address gaps in their own preparation. Because assessments have to be based on significant outcomes, they also have easily-located lists for their reference, focus and growth. As professors we use the compiled self assessments to gain a sense of overall growth of the cohort.
Discussion Area
We post major themes in the discussion area to help graduate students share their readings, work and reflections. The ability to attach documents to posts has been important to help organize work, share that work with others and get feedback. Additionally, we can reorganize and view all postings by each member of the cohort. Mary Perron, a teacher and leadership intern at Warner Robins High School in Houston County (GA), noted the following:
. . . I like being able to see other members' work when it is posted. Their insights into the assignments are always a help to me. Having one place to post makes it easy to keep up with what we are doing.Cathy Bazemore, another teacher and leadership intern at Midway Elementary School in Baldwin County (GA), added the following:
We share our ideas and our work with all members of our group by postings on the IBM Toolkit. Any areas of concern are then readily available for help to be offered by the rest of our learning community.Knowledge at Work
A key to the success of our program has been application to school settings. The Toolkit is an excellent example of a technological application that graduate students can begin using immediately in their professional roles. Glascock County Assistant Superintendent Renae Kelly noted:
The Toolkit is an effective tool that may be used for sharing of professional learning group discussions, parent communication, departmental groups, grade level groups, or specific school groups within a school system. The toolkit awards the user the opportunity to view discussions and explore tools when it is convenient.The Toolkit has been an effective and easy-to-use application for us. Even writing this article was made easier because all the comments cited were initially posted on the Toolkit cohort project discussion area!
We believe that it has helped us facilitate the work of members of a learning community taking charge of their own learning. We also believe that the Toolkit will continue to be used by GC&SU graduates in their school settings. As professors, we are exploring both a new project area for networking among program graduates and additional management applications for committee use on campus with shared governance.
The Toolkit is an excellent example of how corporate commitment, state vision and leadership preparation can work systemically for the improvement of leadership for school improvement.
