FEATURE: HOMEWORK
and whilst they won’t totally replace or fix the challenges mentioned, they can support and complement your current teaching and learning approaches.
By drawing on a medium we know that pupils often feel very comfortable with, digital tools can also help support engagement levels and give learners immediate gratification via tailored results that suit their style and motivations, for example accessing visual graphs and images of results.
This is particularly important when we consider how to make homework more accessible to all learners. Since our inaugural Pearson School Report in 2022, teachers have consistently told us that accessibility and SEND were some of the biggest barriers to student learning. Encouragingly, last year, around a third told us that technology has not only aided student engagement but also improved accessibility for learners with SEND.
We know from last year’s Pearson School Report research too that around half of all students would like to undertake more learning on digital devices. By leaning into this and using digital tools to make the experience of homework more motivating, interesting and easy to access, we could see more students participating – and indeed succeeding – in homework exercises. But how do we achieve this? Digital tools allow us to access a greater variety of formats including apps, ‘drag-and-drop’ answers, ‘completing sentences’ and even assigning videos or audio exercises for students that provide a varied and interesting approach to tasks.
Offering students ways to learn in styles they are responsive too can be incredibly valuable when combined with classroom or offline learning methods.
I’m certainly not saying that digital homework is the only way forward, but using digital tools for this does provide teachers with more opportunities to capture student interest. It also helps them dissect information in creative and engaging ways to complement and bolster classroom learning.
Step 3 - reap the rewards
One of the most exciting things about using digital tools is the opportunity to make the most
April 2024
www.education-today.co.uk 37 of data insights and analytics.
Showing an individual learner or a class of pupils insights on how they’re progressing, their strengths and areas of improvement, can not only give them the confidence to learn in the classroom, but also at home with the support of a digital solution.
Students want to know if they have done well on homework tasks and through automated response feedback, they can receive that immediately– no waiting for the next day, or the next week, when the opportunity to learn and reflect on the task has passed by.
By instantly allowing students to understand where they went wrong, and giving them additional opportunities to complete the task – homework can, and will, be more motivating. This can be extremely beneficial for students, as it not only maintains their engagement with the task at hand, but also allows access to short, consistent and guided feedback on their work, without having to wait to know if they are right or wrong.
Such solutions can also offer easy teacher and student access to visual data insights on progress and learning. This is a crucial step in achieving metacognition, enabling students to take responsibility for their own outcomes; something the Education Endowment Foundation believes is “worth the equivalent of an additional +7 months’ progress when used well.” For the learner, the instant feedback of how well they’ve done, or where they’ve found things challenging, also offers them the opportunity to give feedback to teachers on what they have enjoyed, or what they found difficult. For a teacher, the data provided by digital tools can have a huge impact on the quality of learning and feedback. Not only can digital platforms provide information on a student’s progress - where they are taking in the most information, where they are struggling and what areas they need to evaluate - but they also allow teachers to understand patterns of learning and favoured learning styles beyond one specific topic. The reward of time cannot be underestimated. Without the need to manually input data into spreadsheets, automated reports provide a fantastic resource to draw on when lesson planning and setting future homework tasks. In this way, digital can support teachers to map the ‘what’, so that they can invest more time focusing on ‘how’ to help each individual student’s best progress.
Is digital the future of homework? Through the introduction and use of digital tools, there is the real potential that homework can do more for you and your students. By ensuring learning is tailored to specific needs, digital solutions offer immediate and personalised feedback. This adds additional value to a student’s learning in an engaging and interesting way, helping to build confidence at home that translates to the classroom. The future really is at our fingertips, and I encourage everyone to open the door to technology in a way that enhances the invaluable work that is taking place in classrooms each and every day. Collectively, we can make homework more impactful for everyone.
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