Drivers

Impact Projects
Introduction	What are Impact Projects?  |  Gateway
Impact project stages	Your mentor  |  The Proposal  |  Progressing the plan  |  Presenting and Evaluating
Impact project framework	How they work  |  The Four Principles  | Drivers  |  Tools and Processes  | EOTC process
Impact project evaluation	4 principles evaluation rubric
Reference	Impact Project Glossary

Drivers

The drivers are:

• evidence of learning
• reflection
• planning tasks
• success criteria
• collaboration

How do the drivers work?

Drivers are practices that help you make your project happen. They sit between the principles and the actual nuts and bolts tools and processes we use to make impact projects tick. While they are described separately, there are strong connections between each and they often work together to make your project successful.

ERPs

Evidence (of learning), reflection and planning work together in a cycle. You will collect evidence of learning and evidence of your product's quality at multiple stages during a project. You can use different technology to record verbal, written and visual evidence. This evidence then feeds into your reflections of how things are going and these reflections then form the basis of good planning for the future - both during and after your project has finished.

This ERP cycle may happen very quickly at a point during the day or it may take place as a larger cycle. You might:

1. collect a piece of evidence during the day
2. reflect on it in discussion with other group members and an expert consultant in period three
3. then conduct the relevant planning for next week.

Success criteria are an important driver here as they can be used to help sharpen your reflections. The planning that takes place after reflection is then well-aligned with the initial project goals and any further knowledge that you gain can be used to refine the success criteria further.

A larger sized ERP cycle might take place across the first few weeks of a progress phase of a project. You could:

1. collect multiple pieces of evidence across a number of weeks
2. reflect on them before an important milestone in the project and discuss this with all the relevant experts,
3. then adjust your planning - success criteria, roles and tasks to better achieve your learning goals and high quality product.

Evidence of Learning

This driver is about your learning journey during a project and helps you to plan your project and future learning.

Purpose

• To help you identify and highlight the important parts of your learning journey
• Feeds into reflection and planning
• Provides accountability and communication with school and home
• Encourages input from stakeholders and your whanau

Guidelines for Use

Evidence should be collected and tracked in an ongoing way. The artefacts you collect as evidence should show your learning as closely as possible. It should be evidence of the learning, not just the doing. Sometimes the choices around how it is recorded are very important. Should the evidence be recorded visually, verbally, in writing or a combination of the three? Is there technology available to make the collection and capture of this evidence easier? Talk to other people and groups about what things they're using to collect evidence of learning. People are discovering new ways to do this all the time!

ePortfolios are a core communication and collection tool required for every group. They can function as a jump-off point for other evidence and can include a collection of links to external evidence (like Tumblr, written blogs etc) as well as evidence embedded on your e-portfolio page. Proposals, evidence of learning and evaluations are all required to be stored in an e-portfolio or (in the case of individual projects) a shared page. Secret URLs should be used to share e-portfolio content with all stakeholders.

Some helpful tools for collecting and linking to evidence:

• Tumblr
• Posterous
• YouTube
• Booklets
• GoogleDocs
• Blogs

The PEEL paragraph structure can be helpful for developing reflections.

Point What was today’s learning?

Example Link to an artefact that shows this OR (if artefact not available) write a specific description of what happened or what you did.

Explain How did this lead to your learning? What was this process like?

Link How might you use this next time? Would your approach it similarly or in a different way How does this learning contribute towards your final product/success criteria?

Evidence and reflections are then used to refine planning.

All projects should have at least one piece of evidence of learning collected and uploaded by end of Period three.

Tools and Processes

Some online tools student have used successfully to collect and record evidence are:

• [tumblr]
• [e-portfolio]

• Adding video evidence of learning to e-portfolios tutorial.
• Using RSS feeds so that your blog appears (is embedded) in your e-portfolio tutorial.
• ASHS radar - spider diagram for reflection (Need to be logged in at school to download this.)
• Instructions for using photocopiers to scan and email stuff on paper to yourself. Great if you have hand-written stuff, diagrams, concepts etc you want to put on your e-portfolio. (Need to be logged in at school to download this.)

Student, mentor activities

Here are some useful activities from the impact project toolbox that will help you figure out how this driver can help you with your project.

• A learning resource on substantial learning driven by evidence of learning and reflection.

Reflection

Purpose

The purpose of reflection is to improve the quality of the project by considering what has happened so far and given that, what needs to happen next.

Guidelines for Use

You should regular have conversations with your mentors and experts during the flow of your project. These will all help with your reflection. There are also times set aside for reflecting on evidence and planning. The project mentor is your main helper when you carry out the reflection part of the process.

Reflections can also provide really good further evidence of learning. Conversations during reflections can be recorded using a choice or combination of the following methods.

• Recorded using a dictaphone and uploaded to a portfolio
• Written in a reflection booklet
• Typed into a portfolio
  

At the end of the day you will work with your mentor and practise taking a “step back” to reflect on the happenings in the day. You might then write to-do lists for the week ahead based on this. Other results might include but are not limited to, clarifying the purpose of parts of your project, refining your success criteria, developing your individual learning goals and developing your collaborative skills.

TKI have a great resource on learning reflection here.

Measuring the Quality of Reflections

1. Describe, with supporting evidence, the effectiveness of an impact project
2. Reflect, with supporting evidence, the effectiveness of an impact project
3. Critically reflect, with supporting evidence, the effectiveness of an impact project

Reflect - For achievement at Level 2 the reflection must, with supporting evidence, draw conclusions about how effective the project has been to date.

Critically Reflect - For achievement at Level 3, the critical reflection must, with supporting evidence, examine, question, evaluate and challenge how effective the project has been to date.

Tools and Processes

Some online tools students have successfully used for reflection are:

• [posterous]
  
• [blogger]
  
• [ASHS microblogger]
• [voki]

Student, mentor activities

Here are some useful activities from the impact project toolbox that will help you figure out how this driver can help you with your project.

• A learning resource on substantial learning driven by evidence of learning and reflection.
• Another learning resource on substantial learning driven by reflection.
• A learning resource on evaluation and transferable learning driven by reflection.

Planning Tasks

Things won't get done in your project on their own. If you build your skills around planning not only will you make better use of your time, your final product and learning will be high quality. It can take a while to find planning tools and systems that work for a particular group and your skillset. Your mentor will help you figure this out and you should be willing to engage in some trial and error here.

Purpose

• To divide up a project goal into smaller 'do-able' chunks.
• To figure out the best person to work on each task.
• To ensure the project finishes on time with the highest quality outcome (both the product and your learning).

Guidelines for Use

Effective task planning considers the following sources:

• success criteria and the progress made with these so far.
• evidence of learning and how this develops your expertise. Tasks should be designed to best use your knowledge and expertise and then given to the best group member for the job.
• reflections (feedback on past planning and feedforward to next planning)
• tutorials and specialist subjects (conversations outside of a Wednesday)

Planning tasks can in short, medium and long term timeframes while being flexible - open to changes as you develop your knowledge, processes and product. Individual group members should also be assigned tasks that fit their role and expertise in the group. Tasks should also be scaffolded (lead-ins, sentence starters, prioritise) and necessary time provided for planning. Development of key tasks can also ’steer’ your breakdown of the big picture into manageable steps.

• give direction/structure/milestones,
• start with the end in mind
• failing to plan is planning to fail
• resources for planning should be accessible for you, mentors experts and tutors.

Long Term - done at the beginning on the cycle and revisited What - A Gantt chart illustrates a project schedule Why - So you can see the relationships between activities, mentors get better indication of substantial learning at start of project, you reflect on Wednesdays and make changes/additions to your Gantt chart Template on googe doc - create new - from template - search Gantt - Impact Project Gantt Chart make a copy Drop Box file: Impact Project Gantt Chart

Medium Term - done 3 to 4 times through cycle

Short Term - done every Wednesday and assigned a group member to be responsible for its delivery. Each task should have an easily measurable deliverable.

Tools and Processes

The first three tools listed below are [here.]

Long term planning - Gantt Chart Template This is to help you figure out the timing of your tasks, how long they take and who needs to finish what and when. It can be done electronically or printed out and filled out with coloured pens.

Short term planning - Day planning sheet This is to help keep track of who is doing what in a single day. Your mentor may ask you to fill this out at the beginning of the day or during period three for the following week.

Short term planning - task setting flow diagram This flowchart has been designed to help you with setting tasks at the beginning of the day and during period three for the following week. Setting good tasks can be more complex than you might think. Try using this flow diagram until you have memorised each step, then just do it naturally!

Short term planning - impact project timesheet [This timesheet ]has been designed to help you organise who does what task and track how the task are progressing. Go to google drive / google docs and hit create --> template. Then search for "impact project timesheet" and hit the "use this template" button.

Student, mentor activities

Here are some useful activities from the impact project toolbox that will help you figure out how this driver can help you with your project.

• A learning resource on planning tasks and setting deliverables.

Success Criteria

These help you develop a picture of what quality looks like in your project. They will change as you further learn about what your quality product could look like and what resources and learning you require to get there.

Purpose

• A compass to keep the project on track!
• To maximise the quality of the product
• To drive quality task setting
• To maximise quality learning

Success Criteria Are

Quantifiable statements (specific and measurable) that allow you to measure the quality of a particular aspect of a project. Built around the:

• product
• knowledge (identified understandings and expertise needed for the project)
• processes (commonly repeated sequences of events)

Guidelines for Use

Success criteria should evolve as the project progresses. They should be specific and measurable to start with but the nature of what they measure may change as the you develop your understanding of the knowledge, processes and product quality measures needed for the project. Success criteria should be reviewed and refined each week. Do they still fit? Can they be more specific? Experts and mentors should be consulted here. Success criteria can also be formally linked to planned milestones, expert consultation and refinement points during project.They should also be aligned to planning for the day, next week and the duration of the project. Resourcing - A volume button/sliding scale could be used as part of your reflection on how you are meeting goals

Tools and Processes

Success criteria are so important, they also have their own page [here] which lists a number of useful tools and processes.

Student, mentor activities

Here are some useful activities from the impact project toolbox that will help you figure out how this driver can help you with your project.

• A learning resource on quality product driven by success criteria.
• Another learning resource on quality product driven by success criteria AND collaboration.

Collaboration

The skills that you need to work with others to achieve an outcome are demanding and complex. Impact projects are an ideal place to develop these skills in a way that will help you in any job and even in life outside of your career. Collaboration is becoming increasingly important in the 21st century world and while it leads to high quality outcomes, it also takes lots of hard work and perseverance.

"In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed." —Charles Darwin

Purpose

• To enable you to work with others effectively to achieve a goal or outcome.
• To develop your communication skills for presenting, communicating and negoiating in your career or other high-stakes communication opportunities.
• To ensure accurate and effective communication with stakeholders.
• To enable you to seek useful feedback on your project from mentors, stakeholders and experts.

Guidelines for Use

An important routine to get in here is regularly communicating with your mentor on how you are working with others in your group and/or stakeholders your project involves. A useful tool to evaluate where you are at and what you next steps might be is the collaboration rubric here. Also see below for different kinds of communication with different stakeholders.

Contacting a potential stakeholder outside the school

1. Identify a possible stakeholder outside the school.
2. Identify any expertise they have to offer and what feedback they can provide.
3. Fill out the telephone script with your mentor.
4. Practice this conversation with your mentor
5. Contact the possible stakeholder and introduce yourself and your project with the telephone script.
6. If the stakeholder agrees to help, use the letter template to write a draft for a follow-up letter.
7. Get mentor to proofread and email to Kim Kindley with stakeholder contact details.Please note it is the mentor's responsibility to ensure this letter has a professional tone and is gramatically correct. Put yourself in the recipients shoes.
8. Wait for recipient to contact students.
9. If no reply is received, look for another stakeholder!
10. Print and take letter of introduction to your first meeting with the stakeholder.

EOTC and preparing to work outside of school

The EOTC process has its own page here.

Tools and Processes

• Collaboration rubric for evaluating your collaborative skills and identifying next steps.
• Please see [here] for contacting stakeholders outside the school.

Student, mentor activities

Here are some useful activities from the impact project toolbox that will help you figure out how this driver can help you with your project.

• A learning resource on quality product driven by success criteria and collaboration.