Trip planning support for teachers

This piece of work was undertaken by a visiting student working on the project in summer 2007, as part of her thesis project. We consulted with and interviewed 5 teachers and used online questionnaire data from other teachers during her project. The following are derived from her data analysis and prototype preparation.

Main steps taken by teachers when school-trip planning

• Contact the destination venue(s) and find out about the facilities offered
• Liaise with assistant head teachers to discuss trip viability
• Book the venue
• Allocate staff/parents for managing the trip at the required teacher : pupil ratio
• Consider and book transport
• Inform parents and hand out consent forms

Reported problems during planning a trip

• Time: minimal time for organisation and preparation
• Money: there is sometimes funding available for special kind of trips e.g. Gifted and Talented, otherwise they are funded by parents or school funds
• Risk assessments: necessary for everything, teachers don’t always know which assessments are necessary and may need advice
• Consent forms: not always returned on time, often handed in to the wrong person
• School calendar: printed once a year, difficulties to select a date that can be covered and staffed adequately. Some times of year e.g. before summer holidays, are more suitable
• Work is repeated by more than one teacher: no exchange of skills and tips

Problems discovered during the trip

• Teachers had to exchange their phone numbers between each other at start of day
• Teachers carry around a lot of paper work during the trip
• Teachers don’t know all the children who are taking part in a school trip: difficult for them to identify all the pupils belonging to their own group
• Teachers don’t know all venue’s facilities beforehand

Vision of an authoring tool for teachers

• The pupils play the role of end user of the materials produced by the Authoring System. These materials include letters, work sheets and messages send to the pupils’ mobile phones.
• The parents as the legal guardians have to give their consent to everything their child does on a trip or activity outside the school. To get the permission from the parents the teachers have to send them a letter which informs the parents about the trip or activity and also contains a coupon for their attention ⇨ a consent form to be returned
• The head teacher has to give his consent to the teachers’ plans. He has to be informed about the purpose of the trip and everything related to the trip like means of transport or accommodation if the trip takes longer than one day.
• The staff members accompanying a trip are basically the same target group as the teachers. To guarantee the seamless flow in the phase of planning it is important that every teacher always submits his appointments to the school calendar.
• The trip venues become stakeholders as well if they are allowed to advertise trips or activities in the Authoring System’s repository

Features and requirements for an Authoring System for teachers

• Easy interface and use
• Low mental load
• Straight forward and clear structure, not too many functions
• A central place for all the different forms
• Centralize trip planning in one application
• Rating system for reuse to facilitate teachers in re-use of materials or trip venues
• Tabs for the different functions, clear separation and easy way of navigation
• Integrate with school’s calendar for coordination of dates and free staff automatically suggested
• Automatic check function for what tasks are remaining (different stages for documents)
• Replacement for all the different sheets the teachers use at the moment
• Replacement for consent form problem, identification via credit card
• Financial model - venues pay for advertising their trips to teachers and schools
• Repository for trips or activities

Example teacher profile

The following profile presents an example profile and scenario for trip planning.

Name: Mr Miller
Age: 34
Teaching experience: 10 years at a secondary school

Mr Miller is a biology teacher. He has been working at a secondary school for ten years. During his studies at the University he used a computer for data analysis. In his first few years as a teacher he did all his organisational work on paper. When the school introduced free laptops for the teachers, Mr Miller took part in one week training on how to use his laptop. He likes the ideas of administering all his papers on his laptop, but sometimes he is annoyed, because he cannot perform all his tasks on the laptop. For planning trips or activities, he still has got to fill in a lot of forms handwritten.

Concept video of the second Power Point prototype

Two scenarios: normal flow, based on the information provided by the teachers and new flow supported by the Authoring System for teachers

Prototypes were created depending on the findings during the events and actions undertaken as part of the E-Science Usability project, to design the prototypes as usable as possible some constraints were followed:

• “Help” and “Save” were always placed at the same location on the screen
• Change of background colour for the change from read to write mode
• Different groups of functions are clearly separated by a tab-based navigation
• The system eliminates obstacles before the teachers are confronted by them (dates)

The scenarios and trip planning tool flows

Scenario – normal flow of actions

Mr Miller, a biology teacher, wants to organise a trip for his class. He first checks the topics in the curriculum for the next few weeks. The functionality of a waste water treatment plant would fit together with the induction of the new plant not far away. First Mr Miller browses the internet to find out some news and facts about the plant. On the plant’s website he hits on the email address of the public relations manager. He writes an inquiry, if it is the possible to visit the plant and to get a guided tour with 30 pupils. Three days later he receives a reply:

“Thanks for your interest in our waste water treatment plant. We would welcome to show you and your pupils around. Due to the fact that the interior of a waste water plant is a dangerous place, we must insist on having a signed consent form from every visitor or his legal guardian saying he knows the possible dangers and will follow the staff’s instruction. Enclosed please find our standard form. Furthermore we have to raise £2 admission fee per person for visiting our visitor park with nature trails.”

Mr Miller is happy about this positive reply and starts planning his trip. Mr Miller finds out, by using a route planner, that they will need about one hour to reach their destination. This time he could use to inform the pupils about the functionality of a waste water treatment plants and repeat the facts they had already heard about at school. The guided tour through the plant will take about 2 hours. After 3 hours of input he decides to give the children 20 minutes off to play near the plants’ park near the fish ponds. After this break the pupils are to follow the nature trail Mr Miller will choose for them and to complete a worksheet about the waste water treatment plant. Mr Miller estimates 1.5 hours for this part of the day. When the children have finished their task it would be time for lunch. The public relations manager had recommend that they eat in the plants’ staff canteen. Between 1pm and 2.30pm the manager would be free to answer the pupils’ questions. Mr Miller wants to benefit from this opportunity and tries to match his time plan to this appointment. He quickly discovers that he will not make it to finish the other tasks until 1pm. He writes to the public relations manager again and asks him if it is possible to reschedule their appointment to 2.30pm till 4pm. Fortunately the manager agrees to Mr Miller’s proposal, but he can only afford one hour, because Mr Miller’s enquiry was so late. Now they would arrive back at school between 5pm and 5.30pm. Mr Miller writes down his time plan on a piece of paper. After his idea for the trip he has to start the organisation. First he writes a letter to his headmaster to get an approval and maybe some extra budget for his trip. On the next day he gets feedback from the headmaster, who appreciates the trip to the waste water treatment plant and accredits £150 out of the school’s budget. Now Mr Miller can book the coach, recruit two more teachers and inform the parents. The coach will cost £5 per person, therefore the parents will have to pay the admission fee and the lunch. Mr Miller recommends £10 pocket money to cover all the expenses. It takes him one week to collect back the consent forms and the money from the pupils.

Meanwhile the three teachers meet to plan their lecture on the coach and the worksheet. They visit the plant one week in advance to get to know the public relations manager and the nature trails. They decide on one trail, make some notes and finish their preparations on the day before the trip.

On the day of the trip two children have forgotten the recommended raincoats and the pocket money. On the coach Mr Miller tells the pupils about the waste water plant and pictures are handed round. After the guided tour Mr Miller hands out some worksheets, which are to be completed on the nature trail. He had made some extra copies because pupils tend to lose or damage them outdoors.

After the trip the pupils have to copy their notes and findings on their PCs to prepare a presentation for the next day. Mr Miller has to put together an information leaflet for repeating and learning for tests.

Scenario – new flow using an interactive trip planner

Mr Miller, a biology teacher, wants to go on a trip with his class. He first checks the topics in the curriculum for the next few weeks. The functionality of a waste water treatment plant would fit together with to induction of the new plant not far away. Fortunately there is already a hint in his Mobile Mission Trip Planning Tool saying that the waste water plant is happy to invite school classes to visit the facility and to talk to one of their experts. The plants consent form for visitors and an interactive map of the nature trails with GPS information is already deposited for teachers.

Mr Miller enters his wish date, the number of people, and his five aims (guided tour, expert interview, nature trail, time to play, lunch nearby) in the systems inquiry form and dispatches it. The plant replies two days later, confirms Mr Millers wish date and suggest tow appointments: a 2 two hours guided tour at 10am and 2 hours time with their waste water expert at noon or at 3pm. Mr Miller chooses the 3 o’clock appointment. In the meantime the pupils are invited to explore the trails and to have lunch in the staff canteen.

Using the System’s integrated features Mr Miller informs his headmaster about his planning. After the headmaster’s approval and the accreditation of £150 out of the schools budget, the System automatically informs the parents via email and forwards the plants consent form and opens a new trip object for Mr Miller. The trip object already includes all the information Mr Miller has entered in the inquiry form.

Mr Miller now creates a tour with guide-object, expert-interview-object, trail-object, play-object, and lunch-object. He specifies the objects’ attributes and puts them in the right order. Since the System knows the time schedule after Mr Miller’s release of the trip it asks automatically for offers from the local coach companies, recruits two more teachers and informs the parents about the trip’s schedule and the advices Mr Miller had specified before.

On the next day Mr Miller gets four offers from local coach companies and can decide for the best offer and confirm it. The System creates all necessary reminders in Mr Miller’s personal diary and he can concentrate on the planning for the nature trails. The System has imported the interactive map for Mr Miller. He may know pick out certain spots and create questions related to this spot for his pupils. If the pupils pass by a spot with their mobile phones they get a message with the question or the task.

On the next day in class they can transfer their answers directly to the teacher’s laptop or the whiteboard. Besides Mr Miller’s questions are all put together in an information paper into which the best answers from the pupils can be added after the trip. As soon as the paper is complete, it is forwarded as PDF to the pupils to keep it for repeating and learning for tests.
Mr Miller’s colleagues and other teachers using the Mobile Mission Trip Planning Tool can now view Mr Miller’s trip and reuse his planning for their own trips. After reusing a trip it is possible to rate the trip and the provided material.