AFRICAN VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY

MOBILE LEARNING WORKSHOP

Harnessing the Power and Promise of Mobile Technologies to Make Literacy Data Collection and

Management Easy and Fun

May 1, 2023

By: Evans W Mahaya

Crowne Plaza, Nairobi

The workshop will provide opportunity for participants to:Outline their expectations about mobile learning.Acquire knowledge and practical skills about developing data collection tools.Administer surveys/assessments accurately and precisely with confidence using hand-held devices.Demonstrate mastery in navigating the tablet to conduct mock assessments.

Specific Objectives of the Workshop

Analogue: It all Starts Here Right?

Digital: Progress?

Provide Clear, Precise Instructions

Manage Distractions

Participants will listen to “student” responses and code them simultaneously.

Assessments are administered following specific rules and procedures.

Participants will score student responses in the same manner to ensure the data consistently reflects actual levels in terms of reading abilities, rather than scorer’s personal evaluation of the reader’s skills.

Training Approach

Introduction to EGRA Tools

EGRA – Early Grade Reading AssessmentDiagnostic tool designed to assess foundation skills for reading in lower grades.Tools used to determine proportion of learners achieving grade level competencies in reading.EGRA is used to measure pupils’ progress towards fluent reading with comprehension.

What is EGRA?

As national reading diagnostic tools.

To gauge the effectiveness of a program.

For contiunous assessment of pupils by teachers.

To investigate the language-of-instruction policy at

National, County, District or regional level.

Other Uses of EGRA

Why do we Assess?

To determine the level of pupils’ foundational reading skills proven to predict later reading abilities (skills essential for learning to read).

To determine the effect of new/refined instructional approaches e.g. How effective is the intervention?

Develop high quality instructional materials and resources.

Provide richer data for policy formulation.

Why do we Assess?

Implications of Early Intervention

When pupils fail to learn to read early, they struggle throughout their learning lives.

Early success in acquiring reading skills leads to later success in reading as pupils grow.

“The rich get richer and the poor get poorer”

When pupils need to “Read to Learn” (RtL), their reading inefficiency creates difficulty in learning. (Stanovich,1986).

Implications:Matthew Effect (Contd.)

A shift in focus from improving access to improving quality of educational opportunities.

The need for richer data to report on foundations of student learning.

The need to provide a basis for continuous assessment of students’ learning outcomes.

The need to transfer approaches across domains and scale-up for greater impact/wider dissemination.

The need to locate, capture and fix deficiencies in the education system.

Why Early Grade Reading Assessments?

At a national level: To determine children’s current reading levels. If and where there are gaps in the curriculum. To determine instructional areas that need to be

strengthened by teacher professional development.

To determine and set appropriate goals for change.

During an impact evaluation: To determine effect of the intervention on

children’s learning outcomes.

When to Administer EGRA

By assessing a variety of literacy skills across domains that are predictive of reading skills e.g. letter sound knowledge, decoding non-words, fluency.

By assessing domains that are easily measured. By assessing skills that can be changed through

instruction and as a result, improve reading.

How do we get Information?

EGRA provides data to be able to : Intervene early and strategically during the critical

window of a child’s early reading development. Develop and promote a comprehensive system of

instruction. Identify need, allocate resources, design and modify

instruction. Review the language policy. Oral reading fluency

measures are language specific. Word length and orthographic complexity vary from one language to another.

Implications of Early Grades Reading Assessments

Languages differ in their phonological and morphological structures and their orthographies.Phonological System

Representation of sounds used in the oral and writing system of a language.

Morphological SystemRepresentation of meaningful units in the oral and written system of a language.

Orthographic SystemRepresentation of the visual symbols used in the writing system of a language and the mapping of these symbols onto speech and meaning.

Overview of Language and Literacy

Phonemic Awareness

Alphabetic Principle

Vocabulary

Accuracy and Fluency with connected text

Comprehension (Including listening comprehension)

Scope of Early Grades Reading Assessment

Phases of Reading Skill Development

As children map sounds to print, they also access the words in their vocabularies. This knowledge is used to support them in identifying the word they are reading.

Fluency measures assess the child’s knowledge and how they integrate the knowledge and process the information automatically in different contexts.

To be successful readers, children’s basic reading competencies have to be automatic.

Achieving Automaticity

Limited early literacy experiences and lack of instruction / practice.

Failure to develop phonemic awareness

Failure to develop the alphabetic knowledge

Failure to master basic decoding skills

Accuracy in word reading but no Automaticity

Why Pupils Fail to Learn to Read

To address the reading difficulties and successes from a school-wide, systematic perspective.

Reading measure are necessary improve instruction at a national level and in the classroom.

To be effective, these measures must assess skills that have an impact on learning.

Why do we Measure Reading?

A review of the procedures; including establishing rapport and seeking verbal consent.

Completing the school and student information. Detailed coverage of tasks and sub-tasks. Mechanism of administration, prompts and stop

rules. Plenary, Individual and Small group guided practice.

Detailed Coverage of EGRA Tools

Rapport and Verbal Consent

Administrative Details

Capture the school data and all student data This is critical during data entry and data analysis It provides an easy way to cross-reference data sets

Letter Sound Knowledge

Invented Words

Oral Passage Reading

Reading Comprehension (timed)

Reading Comprehension (untimed)

Pupil Context Interview

EGRA Tasks and Sub-tasks

Letter Sound Knowledge Read instructions

and practice letter name examples with the pupil

Start timer when child says the first letter (or after 3 sec. have elapsed)

If child hesitates or stops at item for 3 seconds, provide the letter name, and say “Please go on”

Mark the provided letter name as incorrect.

Scoring: Letter Name Knowledge

Example: Letter Sound Knowledge

Practice example words with pupil.

Start timer when child reads the first word (or after 3 seconds elapse)

If the child does not read a word after 3 seconds, provide the word and say “Please go on”

Mark the provided word as incorrect

Invented Words

Stop after 60 sec. and put a bracket.

If the child finishes the entire sheet in under 60 sec, stop the timer and write the no. of seconds remaining in the box

Early stop rule: If the child does not get any word correct in first line with no auto-corrections, say “Thank you” Check the box to indicate early stop.

Rules: Invented Words

Practice examples with child, giving clear instructions. Start timer when child reads first word. If the child stops at a

word or hesitates for 3 seconds, Point to the next word and prompt the child. Say, “Please go on”.

Early stop rule: If all words are incorrect in the first line. Mark incorrect responses by slashing through If child skips entire line, strike through with a straight line.

nog pid lef rix sed Mark self-corrections as correct ker If child finishes before 60 seconds, record seconds remaining

in the appropriate box

Rules: Invented Words (Contd.)

Example: Invented Words

Example: Invented Words

Timed to 60 sec. Start the timer after child reads the first word

Observe the 3 second prompts.

Early stop rule: If all responses

in the first line are incorrect

If child finishes before 60 sec.

Record remaining seconds .

Oral Passage Reading

Example: Scoring Oral Reading

REMOVE the PASSAGE from in front of the child

Allow pupil 15 sec to respond

Read the questions up to the bracket where the child stopped reading.

Tick appropriate box as per the child’s answer.

Questions: Reading Comprehension

Accept responses with the same meaning as those provided. Be careful not to read the answers below the questions to the child

General Instructions on Assessment

How to hold Your Clipboard, Pen and Stopwatch

Place your pen in your dominant hand.

Slant your clipboard such that is points toward the student’s forehead.

Practice turning your stopwatch on and off while holding clipboard, stopwatch and pen.

Hold your clipboard, with your stopwatch in your non-dominant hand.

Start the timer when the child reads the first letter or word.

If the child hesitates for 3 seconds, provide the name of the letter or the word, point to the next letter or word and say “Please go on”

If the pupil gives you the letters sound, rather than the name, provide name of the letter and say; “Please tell me the NAME of the letter”. This prompt can only be given once!

Summary of Procedures

Incorrect answers and omissions: Put a slash through incorrect answers and non-responses. fen Q

Self –corrections: Circle the item already slashed through if the pupil self-corrects within 3 seconds, and count as correct.

tew W

Skipped lines: Strike a line through any row of words or letters that are skipped by the pupil.

nog pid lef rix sed

Summary: EGRA Scoring

Early stop rule: If you have slashed/marked as incorrect all of the letters or invented words on the first line, say “Thank you!” Discontinue the exercise, check the box at the bottom and go on to the next exercise.

After 60 seconds: Say, “Stop” Mark the last letter or word read with a square bracket ( ] ).

Summary: EGRA Stop Rules

Setting up Your Work Station

Setting up…

Develop a soft copy of the tool based on the purpose of the research

Register in Tangerine Central (Creating an administrator i.e the PI’s User Account).

Tangerine: The tool development platform. Create or join a group in Tangerine Central. Create a survey or assessment on the remote server in

Tangerine Central (Or other open source software such as Survey CTO, Survey Monkey e.t.c.)

Refer to the User Manual for a step-by-step outline of developing survey tool and troubleshooting.

Using Hand-held Gadgets/Tablets

Perform a test run and revise the survey accordingly. Generate the Android Package (APK) file and save it

on desktop or dropbox. Turn on WiFi on the hand-held device/tablet. Install the Tangerine Application onto the Tablets by

“double clicking” the APK file in dropbox. Place the icon on the home page for easy access. Click on the Tangerine icon to launch the application. Create a simple user name preferably the surname. Create a simple password such as 1234 or abcd

Using Hand-held…

Sign in to launch the application. Form groups of 4 participants each to role-play. Simulate a data collection session. Click on the

play button to begin the survey/assessment. At the end of the assessment/survey, click the

“Save Results” button to save the assessment. To conduct another assessment /survey, click

“Perform Another Assessment”. Upload the assessments by clicking “Universal

upload” button on the tangerine main menu.

Using Hand-held…

Look out the message: “Results Synched Successfully”

The administrator will be able to access the Uploaded/Synched results on the remote server (Cloud computing).

NOTE: The Help button in Tangerine an be used to avail additional information and important hints / reminders to the enumerator for quick reference.

Using Hand-held…

Capacitive touch screen Android OS [v. 2.3 or higher] - Except Lollipop v.

5.0 HTML 5-capable browser Wi-Fi (b/g/n) 4GB HDD 512MB Memory 1GHz dual-core processor 7 hours battery life (without Internet turned on) Ability to install third-party Android applications

General Specifications

3G connectivity Flash 10 capability GPRS Mini-/USB port 7 inch screen (Surveys are optimized for 7’’

screen) Ideally below 1 lb. in weight (About 450g)

General Specs…

A range of tablets or eReaders that meet the minimum requirements: Archos 70 Huawei Ideos 7 Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 and Tab 7 Cherry Tablet 2 Original Kindle Fire Google/Asus Nexus 7Kindle Fire HD (7 inch and larger screens) Nexus 7 (USD199, USD227 including tax).

Supported Devices

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fen mul pax ove gibwey rog yop pis sozfet hal muk rea vidnog pid lef rix sedhig dox mex tew lubzim ulk aze cid ogfab lop tun mey gillen ker cit tof rinfot nom vev fru rochnith sug doz bab foth

Thank you!