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LEADing Lights Platform : Learning Analytics in Catholic Education Western Australia
A fully integrated digital platform can significantly augment the learning management and processes in education institutions. One outstanding exemplify is the deployment of LEADing Lights (LL), a Microsoft technology platform, in Catholic Education Western Australia (CEWA). An extensive cloud-based platform connecting over 160 dispersed schools, 15,000 staff and 78,000 students many of whom attend school in very remote areas (Microsoft Corporation, 2018).
Dr Cathy Cavanaugh (2017) the Head of digital transformation, leadership, learning and research at CEWA wrote on Microsoft blog,
"We are one of the early adopters of Microsoft Teams in Office 365 for Education."
In one of the publications issued by the Parliament of Western Australia, the major challenge CEWA faced is the difficulty to share, communicate, and collaborate efficiently across the system since each school used bespoke systems. So started in 2017, CEWA began to encourage the staffs and students to access LL as a digital learning ecosystem.
How it works?
Each of the user or roles are given an email as credential to access the system. The system recognizes 9 types of user. Besides students, LL has 8 roles registered in the system. Below are their responsibilities.
| User | Roles | Responsibilities |
|---|---|---|
| Principal | Active leading by example - champion the vision and support the LEADing Lights (LL) rollout plan |
Communicate the journey among school and leaders Be an advocate for teachers and support for colleagues |
| Assistant / Deputy Principal | Responsible for actioning key items in the LL handbook and liaising with LL Team | Helping teachers to transition to the new technology (specifically, adopt attendance and marksbook) |
| Business / Finance Manager | Looks after all financial aspects of LL |
Leading the Administration of Schools horizon Trialling finance and admin models Organising training for relevant staff |
| Professional Learning Lead (PLL) | Supports ongoing engagement of teachers with LL learning tools |
Helping teachers to engage in all PL experiences Coordinating learning experiences with school needs |
| IT Lead (Technical) | Oversees all LL tools are working as expected |
Liaising with LL technical teams Supporting the school as a whole |
| Digital Technology Coordinator | Supports PLLs to ensure teachers have skills to integrate in class |
Acting as the link between the IT Lead and teachers Modelling examples of how it can be implemented Support teachers with technology |
| Teacher | Needs to learn and utilise LL tools and integrate into teaching |
Using personalising and collaborating with your tools Engaging students with learning tool |
| Parent | Only needs an awareness of LL at this stage, will eventually engage with parent portal | Preparing themselves for a transition from existing portals to LL |
Tools
Learning & Teaching Tools
- Office 365 Suite
- Minecraft Education Edition
- Claned
- Imagine Academy
Finance, School, and Student Management
- Dynamics 365
- Policy Risk & Incident Management for Education (PRIME)
Insights and Data Visualization
- Power BI
Portals
| Teacher Portal |
|
|---|---|
| Student Portal |
|
| Parent Portal |
|
| School Intranet |
|
What are its effects?
Here below are the advantages identified in Inquiry Into Digital Innovation in Secondary Education submitted by CEWA (2019):
- Increasing their social presence with Microsoft Teams
- Enable collaboration and document creation in OneNote
- Enable learning content repositories in Claned
- Increasing student engagement because the system is allowing students to access new information and understandings of interest and importance to them
- As the enagement increases, so does the retention
- Enable commencement interaction to relieve the anxiety associated with boarding, for both parents and students
- Provides opportunities for alternative methods of assessment for students with disability, for example using audio and visual technology
- Other disadvantaged groups such as Aboriginal students in remote areas also benefit from the opportunities provided by remote digital learning.
References:
- CEWA (2017), A Principal’s Guide to implement LEADing Lights in Your School Transforming learning for all across Catholic Education Western Australia, available at: https://leadinglights.cewa.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/LEADing-Lights-Handbook_FINAL2017.pdf
- CEWA (2019), Inquiry Into Digital Innovation in Secondary Education, Parliament of Western Australia, available at: https://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/Parliament/commit.nsf/luInquiryPublicSubmissions/A5F259D1988014BC482584650022ACC2/$file/20190815%20-%20TECH%20IN%20ED%20SUB%202%20-%20Dr%20Debra%20Sayce%20Catholic%20Education%20Office%20of%20WA_Redacted.pdf
- Cavanaugh, C. (2017), Microsoft Teams Stars in CEWA’s LEADing Lights Learning Transformation Plan, available at: https://news.microsoft.com/en-au/features/microsoft-teams-stars-cewas-leading-lights-learning-transformation-plan/
- CEWA (2018), 2018 Implementation Journey, available at: https://leadinglights.cewa.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Leaders-Forum-Poster-A3-Print-v3.pdf
- Image source: https://news.microsoft.com/en-au/features/microsoft-teams-stars-cewas-leading-lights-learning-transformation-plan/
