[Assessment_Advisory_Committee] TIDE Focus Groups

[Bain, Brian]

To help ensure that Oregon users are effectively represented, ODE requests your input on how best to recruit STCs, DTCs, and other district- and school-level users of TIDE.

Obviously recruiting through the regular channels, DTCs, AA update, and the Superintendents is useful, but make it clear that it's intended to reach STCs as well as DTCs.  (ie: Forward this email to your School Test Coordinators.)  I think you would want to gather participants from a range of districts based on size, geographic distribution and how they're supported with this tool through their ESD.  (I imagine there are smaller districts where the ESD does much of the work for them.)

I would certainly volunteer mine or Theda's services.  Theda Pansevicius is our assessment assistant, who does a majority of the work with TIDE and STCs.  She also has great ideas about how to make systems and business processes more thorough and efficient.

To help in your distribution: Tigard-Tualatin is a suburban district of about 12,500 students and 18 STCs in the Portland Metro area with demographics that are very similar in distribution to the state's demographics, though slightly higher social-economically.


Brian Bain
District Assessment Coordinator
Tigard-Tualatin School District
6960 SW Sandburg St, Tigard, OR 97223
503-431-4120 - bbain at ttsd.k12.or.us<mailto:bbain at ttsd.k12.or.us>

From: Assessment_Advisory_Committee [mailto:assessment_advisory_committee-bounces at listsmart.osl.state.or.us] On Behalf Of CARTER Holly
Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 2015 4:33 PM
To: assessment_advisory_committee at listsmart.osl.state.or.us
Cc: Greenberg, Elizabeth
Subject: [Assessment_Advisory_Committee] TIDE Focus Groups

To: Assessment Advisory
Subject: TIDE Focus Groups

AIR is recruiting TIDE users at the school and district level to serve on focus groups between January 11 and 22 to offer feedback on a redesign of the current TIDE system designed to improve the user experience. Based on logistics, participants can either join an in-person focus group or be interviewed one-on-one. Some of the interviews will be conducted remotely using conferencing software.

Participants will be asked about their current TIDE use, including the types of activities they perform using TIDE, how they batch these activities, and which activities are most time consuming. They will then view and comment on prototype pages from an updated TIDE interface designed to address the most common issues raised by users in the past. Participation by TIDE users in Oregon will help to ensure that the updated TIDE system meets your needs. Below is additional information about the scope of the proposed focus groups:


Sample

AIR is looking to talk with the people who use TIDE the most. The mix of school-level versus district (or area) level users can be adjusted based on your understanding of how Oregon schools and districts use TIDE. However, AIR would like to avoid mixing people with different levels of responsibility, i.e., district- and school-level, in the same focus group.


AIR also wants to represent large districts with full time staff assigned to test coordination and smaller districts and schools, where test coordination is only one part of a person's job.


AIR is currently planning to conduct two focus groups, each with 4-7 STCs, and 2-3 interviews with DTCs or district-level TIDE users. (Note: Focus groups with STCs would need to be done with STCs from schools that are close to each other so that the STCs could travel to a central location for the focus group.)


Duration

One-on-one interviews are expected to last 90 minutes; focus groups will last 90 to 120 minutes and will be scheduled after school at convenient locations.


Incentives

Where appropriate, AIR will provide a $50 incentive for each participant. Thank-you incentives (in the range of $100) can also be considered for schools that host focus groups or for agencies that allow their employees to participate during work hours.


Scheduling

AIR would like to complete all the interviews and focus groups between January 11 and January 22.

To help ensure that Oregon users are effectively represented, ODE requests your input on how best to recruit STCs, DTCs, and other district- and school-level users of TIDE. Of course, if you have individual recommendations, please feel free to share those as well. So that AIR can meet its timeline, we request that you please provide your input (or nominations) to Jordan Heide at jordan.heide at state.or.us<mailto:jordan.heide at state.or.us> by Wednesday, January 6. Thank you for any help you can provide us with this!


Holly Carter
Interim Director of Assessment
Office of Learning | Inst., Stand., Asmt, &Acc. Unit | Oregon Department of Education
Phone: 503.947.5739 | Fax: 503.378.5156 | *holly.carter at state.or.us




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