Worcestershire LEA ICT Conference
March 2005
Largest TurningPoint polling session ever staged in the UK
Overview
Dave Thompson presenting the day
He found the TurningPoint system remarkably easy to use which meant that he was not apprehensive about using TurningPoint on such a large scale
The resulting graphs were incredibly thought provoking as they painted a full and uncensored picture of the ICT situation in the LEA
The Worcestershire LEA ICT Conference is an annual event run by the Worcestershire LEA ICT team. The delegates are a mixture of headteachers, ICT co-ordinators and subject teachers. The aims of the conference included finding out opinions of the different delegates about education in Worcestershire.
The Worcestershire LEA ICT team thought that interactive polling using the TurningPoint Assessment System would be a good way of interacting with the audience while building a true picture of the way they were thinking with regards to ICT.
Preparation
Dave Thomson, Inspector for ICT at the LEA prepared 18 questions for the event. Since many other presentations on the day were also in PowerPoint, Dave simply used the same template and created slides in the normal way. The entire process took just 15 minutes. He found the TurningPoint system remarkably easy to use, which meant that he was not apprehensive about using TurningPoint on such a large scale at the conference.
The demographic feature of TurningPoint, which allows the user to slice and pivot the polling data in real time, also impressed the ICT team.
The event
During the conference, 128 TurningPoint handsets were given to the delegates so that they could participate in two polling sessions during the day. In the morning the delegates were asked demographic questions about their role and the kind of school they came from, followed by questions on ICT spend, training and commitment at the school. They responded to the questions using the TurningPoint handsets. Immediately after each question the results were displayed on the screens for all to see. The presenter was also able to scrutinize the results live, displaying charts on how different types of teacher or different types of school responded.
There was a second polling session in the afternoon, at which the teachers were asked questions about how ICT impacted teaching and learning in the classroom. Again the results were displayed live and the presenter was able to drill down to look at more interesting demographic data.
During the sessions the demographic data slicing turned out to be the most significant feature of TurningPoint. The delegates were voting anonymously and so could answer truthfully without fear of embarrassment or without being influenced by their peers. The resulting graphs were incredibly thought provoking as they painted a full and uncensored picture of the ICT situation in the LEA – highlighting the positives as well as exposing the negatives. The demographic results also showed significant and telling differences between the responses of ICT coordinators and those of head teachers.
Following the event
It took just five minutes to publish the data the next day into four different formats:
- A graphical summary of the overall results in Microsoft Excel format.
- A graphical summary of the demographic results, group by group in Microsoft Excel format.
- A list of the questions asked in Microsoft Word format.
- A snapshot of the presentation at the end of the day, with all the live graphs captured, in Microsoft PowerPoint format.
Dave Thomson plans to use this information to help form and direct a detailed ICT strategy within the LEA.
Quotes
“Putting the questions together was interesting as it forced us at the LEA to think in more depth about what we wanted to know.”
“TurningPoint is instant, thought provoking, and forces everyone to participate, all factors which change the usefulness and shape of the results.”
“The instant results on the day were more than enough to tell us that there were discrepancies in opinion of our strategy around the LEA.”
Dave Thompson,
Inspector for ICT Worcestershire LEA
“I thought the event went spectacularly. I already use TurningPoint but wasn’t aware of the demographic feature. I will definitely go away and explore it for use in my classroom.”
Alison Stirling,
Key Stage Two teacher and ICT coordinator