Education Team/Survey questions

Preamble

Teachers, students, and engineers worldwide are testing and improving Sugar. With your help—telling us what problems and suggestions you have—we can create a better learning experience for all children.

Consent

Survey on Instructional strategies using “Sugar” learning platform

You are being asked to participate in a research study conducted by Walter Bender from the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). The purpose of the study is to get feedback from teachers who have been using the Sugar learning platform—the software that runs on the OLPC-XO-1 laptop. You were selected as a potential participant in this study because you have been using Sugar as part of Project Ceibal in Uruguay. You should read the information below before deciding whether or not to participate in the survey.

Your participation in this survey is voluntary. We expect that the survey will take about 15 minutes, however you have the right not to answer any question and to stop participating in the survey at any time and for any reason.

You will not be compensated for participating in this survey.

The information you tell us will remain anonymous and confidential. Only aggregate results will be published.

Please contact Walter Bender (walter -AT- media.mit.edu) with any questions or concerns.

If you feel you have been treated unfairly, or you have questions regarding your rights as a research subject, you may contact the Chairman of the Committee on the Use of Humans as Experimental Subjects, M.I.T., Room E25-143b, 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, phone 1-617-253-6787.

Issues

The primary purpose of the survey is to help Sugarlabs prioritise resources amongst already identified issues and to identify any further needs. It is also an opportunity to gather success stories. Survey results would ideally be translatable into actionable items.

Identified issues include:

The balance between self-directed project-based learning and more traditional or didactic learning. Should resources be directed at generating lesson plans, e-books and instructional materials or towards enriching Activities which offer self-directed problem solving? Are some of these learning styles better supported by other teaching materials eg. chalk board, paper books?

Should the teachers adapt to Sugar or Sugar to the teachers? What obstacles hinder appreciation of the two perspectives and movement together?

Can some materials be better supplied server side in a non-sugar specific way, requiring only a compatible browser? What then should Browse support? Flash, Java, tabbed browsing, auto-complete?

How can the Journal best meet the target of “low entry high ceiling” easy for beginners but no roadblocks for more experienced users? If there has to be a trade off, what are the relative importances of each.

What is the importance of sharing? What are the different sharing mechanisms? Activity sharing, blogs, wikis, upload areas, private/public? How do kids get the most benefit? Share viewing or authorship rights? Share the whole Activity or objects within the activity?

Show source, editing and re-purposing. How realistic is it that students tinker with their Sugar software? How important? What are the benefits? What are the obstacles? How can easy pathways and bridges be supplied?

Please add your questions for teachers here

jt4sugar: Ask the teachers in Uraguay to tell us how they would get other teachers involved

In questions, we should try to separate the concepts of

access to computers,
electronic content,
the specific features of the XO hardware,
the operating system Sugar,
the Activities, and
internet access.

Thoughts on the OLPC five core principles—

Child Ownership,
Low Ages,
Saturation,
Connection, and
Free and Open Source.

How important are they in the context of your community?

The OLPC can be customised for the local language. How far has this proceeded? How important is it? What are the problems? What are the perspectives of different stakeholder groups? (In South America, to what extent has Spanish displaced local language?)

How can ICT in general and Sugar in particular be appropriated to meet local needs? Are there any anecdotes of appropriation?

How might ICT education in general and Sugar in particular change relationships between people in your country, for example gender access to technology, relationships between children and adults, urban and village? How might kinship relationships be enhanced or weakened?

We should get feedback on the Journal, View Source, Browse and Collaboration...

We need to state up front that participation is voluntary and anonymous and that they can stop at any time. If they have complaints, they can contact the ombudsman.

For a self administered test can have 10-20 questions maximum? For a conference with 600 teachers with OLPC experience could we ask more questions of a smaller group?

Select questions from the list below, need to cut back to a much much smaller number:
(when drafting questions consider carefully whether to say OLPC program OLPC, XO, OLPC software, XO software Sugar etc)

I think we should explain that Sugar is the software (including Activities)that runs on the XO computer and that we are asking for feedback on Sugar.

What year level do you mainly teach? P, 1, 2 ....12, other

Learners access to computers is important because computers can be a tool to think with, they facilitate problem solving and deep thinking. disagree 12345 agree

As a result of OLPC I now believe this less 12345 more

Learners access to computers is important because they need to learn how to use programs such as word processors to participate in a technological world (disagree 12345 agree)

As a result of OLPC I now believe this less 12345 more

// these questions or similar evaluate the teacher's position on instructivism/constructivism for correlation with other responses

It is important that computers provide an easy entry for first time users (disagree 12345 agree)

As a result of OLPC I now believe this less 12345 more

It is important that computers support more complicated tasks as a users competence grows (disagree 12345 agree)

As a result of OLPC I now believe this less 12345 more

// these questions or similar evaluate the teacher's position on low entry/high ceiling for correlation with other responses, relevant to Journal and show source

My students' 3 favourite Activities are? # since it will be in Spanish, we don't need to quibble about British vs US spelling :)

The 3 best learning Activities are?

The 1 Activity that is missing from Sugar is?

The 1 Activity that needs the most improvement is?

How satisfied have your students been with the XO? 12345

How satisfied have you been with the XO? 12345

How satisfied have parents and the community been with the XO? 12345

The XO would be better if it ran Microsoft Windows? 12345

Rate the importance of (unimportant 12345 important)

Child Ownership,
Low Ages,
Saturation,
Connection, and
Free and Open Source

How important are:
Have your students used:
How satisfied are you with:

Journal,
View Source, and
Collaboration

The XO has resulted in (disagree 12345 agree)(from link)
0.Reduced absenteeism
1.Greater engagement by children
2.Empowerment of teachers
3.Increased esteem of teachers
4.Reduced need of discipline
5.Less disruption by students
6.Increase in self esteem by students
7.Increased “connection” with the world (other cultures, languages, ideas)
8.Increased involvement by parents
9.School becomes the centre of the community
10.Development of a sharing culture (child to child, school to community, teacher to parent)
11.Better results than with Computer Labs

And a few final questions about you:

How long have you been teaching? (years, numeric input)

Do you teach in an urban, suburban, or rural school?

How comfortable were you using computers before you first used Sugar? (uncomfortable 12345 very comfortable)

Was you prior experience with computers on (check one or more boxes)

Windows,
Apple, or
Linux?

Had you ever used a computer in your classroom before using Sugar? (yes/no)

How comfortable are you using computers in your classroom? (uncomfortable 12345 very comfortable)

Would you be willing to participate in a more detailed, follow up survey? (yes/no)

Would you be willing to participate in an on-line forum with other teachers to share ideas about Sugar? (yes/no)

Would you be willing to participate in an on-line forum with software developers to share ideas about Sugar? (yes/no)

If you answered yes to any of Questions X,Y, or Z, please contact...

What on-line forums do you use, if any? (chat, irc, blog, wiki, email, twitter, Facebook, ning, discussion forum) Other? (check one or more boxes)

Individual responses to this survey will remain confidential but aggregate responses will be published. By participating in this survey, you agree to Sugarlabs aggregating responses and publishing aggregated data.