This document discusses institutional memory and knowledge management in education. It proposes capturing more qualitative data about student engagement and experiences to better inform decision making. This would help avoid duplicating past efforts and ensure student success is well documented. The document recommends building an explicit institutional memory strategy and using technology to systematically capture and organize relevant information over time. This would create a more complete picture of a school's activities and impacts beyond just quantitative metrics reported to oversight bodies.
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Introduction -Why institutional memory?
1. Personal interest in the notion of accountability in the
public sector.
2. Experience working with the TBS of Canada.
3. Observations within the Quebec educational sector.
4. Current financial compressions.
4. Proposal
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• Given the current formal reporting structure a school
board’s institutional memory only reflects part of what the
school board does.
5. Institutional Memory
• Institutional memory is the preservation of data and/or
actions taken by an organization. Institutional memory can
contribute to effective decision making and is understood
as one component of knowledge management.
1. Isn’t IM another form of a success story culture?
• Multifaceted
2. Isn’t IM another cliché for best practices?
• Honest
3. Isn’t IM another repository of data?
• Complete
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6. Importance of Institutional Memory
1. Great minds think alike.
2. Sometimes we reinvent the wheel and that is costly.
3. School Boards use public funds.
4. Student success can be better documented and
enhanced.
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11. Five Ministry of Education Goals
1. Increase the qualification and graduation rates.
2. Improve English and French language skills.
3. Ensure success and perseverance for students with
handicaps and/or learning difficulties.
4. Improve healthy living and safety in schools.
5. Increase the number of students under the age of 20 in
vocational training paths.
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12. Institutional Memory –Work in progress
1. Within this context institutional memory is a by product.
2. What happens to actions not captured within the formal
reporting structure?
3. What gets measured gets done and recorded and that
which is not measured we might not hear about.
4. We are witnessing trends towards more qualitative
information gathering and recording such as the high
school survey of student engagement (HESSSE).
5. Harvard University and McGill University
6. Institute for the study of knowledge management in
education (ISKME)
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13. Five recommendations
1. In addition to the current official reporting structure and
focus, we need to widen our focus to include more
qualitative data – student engagement surveys and
student driven portfolios.
2. Work with a mixed bag of indicators – a case in point is
Casey Reason’s example of how a school that
acknowledges each student five times a day increased
it’s students success rate.
3. Build an explicit strategy.
4. Use technology to create a process to capture and
curate institutional memory.
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14. Flip Chart Activity Instructions
1. Please get into two teams by splitting the room into two
teams the “right” and “left” teams.
2. Can the “right” team to please record on the flip chart
what currently gets measured in education in Quebec?
3. Can the “left” team to please record on the flip chart
what other things should get measured in education in
Quebec?
4. Regroup and please ask both teams to share their
responses.
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15. “ We give importance to what is easily measurable when
we should be finding easier ways of measuring what is
really important.”
Gervais Sirois quoted by Marc Andre Lalande
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16. What is Learning Analytics?
Youtube : Steve Schoettler, "Learning Analytics"
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20. Education analytics
Type of Analytics Level or Object of Analysis Who
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Benefits?
Learning
Analytics
Educational
Data
Mining
Course-level: social networks,
conceptual development, discourse
analysis, “intelligent curriculum”
Learners, faculty
Departmental: predictive modeling,
patterns of success/failure
Learners, faculty
Academic
Analytics
Institutional: learner profiles,
performance of academics, knowledge
flow
Administrators,
funders,
marketing
Regional (state/provincial):
comparisons between systems
Funders,
administrators
National and International National
governments,
education
authorities
