EVALUATION OF HILLCREST INTERMEDIATE ART WEBSITE

Report prepared by

Molli Brown

Art Teacher, Hillcrest Intermediate School, Norwin School District

Graduate Student, Master of Educational Technology Program

Boise State University

Report Submitted to

Norwin School District Art Department

Summary

The website being evaluated is an art website that was created for use by fifth and sixth grade students and has been in use for the past two school years. Two art teachers send their students to this website for daily use in class and students and parents also visit it outside of class. The goal of the website is to provide students with basic information about the lessons completed in class, links for further inquiry, a place for them to have their work showcased, and a means of communication and connection to the classroom beyond the walls of it. The purpose of the site is also to communicate announcements and other classroom information to parents and guardians of the students. The layout, usability, and various components of the website are being evaluated by four of the art teachers within the Norwin School District. They each completed an online survey after visiting the site, as did 6 students that are taking the class Evaluation for Educational Technologists including the site evaluator. The website usability along with the ease of creating the site with the provided website builder through the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s (PDE) Standards Aligned System (SAS) is also under evaluation. A list of clear objectives and requirements required by the site creator are outlined that need to be met for the current site to be deemed as acceptable for continued use.

This evaluation report displays all the data gathered by the evaluator and offers suggestions for a decision to be made as of how to proceed with the site. Decisions on whether or not the site is acceptable as is, needs to be adjusted, or not used any longer were considered. The results and suggestions of the evaluation will not only help the site creator but also the other art teachers within Norwin School District make an informed decision on whether or not they might use this same site builder. All of the art teachers within the district have varied knowledge and skills in regards to technology and website construction, which is why the simplicity and ease of creating such a site is necessary.

This evaluation compiled qualitative data from educators and site users through online surveys created through Google forms. Other data for the evaluation was compiled by Miss Brown, the evaluator and site creator, by referring to the site builder and FAQ section of the PDE SAS website and also the web traffic report of the site provided by SAS.

The results of the evaluation found that the current web site builder/host and site itself are above adequate and with some minor adjustments. This is in terms of linking to an outside photo sharing site such as Flickr and an outside blogging resource such as Kidblog.org are some suggested solutions. The site was found to have a many excellent resources for 5th and 6th grade students along with simplistic navigation. There were mixed responses in terms of the visual appeal of the site but it really is just a jumping off point for users to many other resources linked there.

Website Description

The art website itself was created for the purpose of use by students in an art class in both the fifth and sixth grade. Both of these grades combined totals around 800 students accessing the site at one time or another. The site therefore needs to be user-friendly for that age group, easy to navigate and appealing to students. Family members of the students also at times peruse the site at home with the students so it needs to be able to act as a positive representation of their art experience at school. Other art teachers within the school district send their students to the site as well and it is viewed occasionally by the school administration when the teacher who created the site undergoes a yearly portfolio review. Other art teachers in the district at this point do not have a classroom website. However, another reason this site and site builder are being evaluated is to share the results with those teachers to offer them information as to whether not they should choose to use this resource offered by PDE through their SAS website.

It is currently free to create a website using this hosting service which is offered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) through a resource they have called Standards Aligned System (SAS). SAS offers a number of educational tools for teachers, a classroom website being one of them. This specific site has a variety of features and main tabs on the left hand side of the site which link to the following: Home Page, Lesson Info, Student Gallery, Interactive Art Websites, Arts Day, Art Club, Museums, and Contact Me. Each of these tabs links to a page within the site providing further resources relating to each of the listed categories. The age of the students requires the site to be simplistic but still visually appealing as to entice and encourage student use. The site is intended to spark further inquiry and availability of resources for lesson material, museum resources, art club, or for students to be able to view their own artwork live on the web for all to see.

The website objectives below were created based off of the specific needs for any art classroom website by the site creator Miss Brown. Objectives 14, 15, and 16 were included not just for Miss Brown but geared more to help determine the use of this site creation tool for the other art teachers in the district.

Website Objectives (The class website will be able to...)

  1. allow access to information about the class and subject of art within and outside of classroom
  2. act as a means to communicate information about things students need to bring in to the art room to them and their families
  3. contain current project information: objectives, examples, photos
  4. showcase student work
  5. slideshow creation tool for student artwork examples for easy viewing
  6. offer a visually pleasing experience that students will be interested in using
  7. archive past lessons, announcements, and student work examples for students and staff to refer back to if necessary
  8. link to art related web content: museums, games, artists’ sites
  9. be built and accessed free of charge
  10. easily allow teachers to upload large quantities of images of student work
  11. ability to act as blog or has blog component for students to communicate about each other’s work or work that I post by other artists
  12. allow for teacher to have control over all student comments and postings on blog component if there is one
  13. offer a place for students and parents to contact teacher
  14. provide access to support for creating site or how to troubleshoot problems encountered
  15. be created without extensive knowledge of creating website (don’t need to know html code)
  16. allow for those that do know code to use it if desired when creating the site

Program Components

The current website consists of eight pages which are: Home Page, Lesson Info, Student Gallery, Interactive Art Websites, Arts Day, Art Club, Museums, and Contact Me. The home page offers a place for announcements about things happening within the art classroom for students and parents alike. The home page and the Interactive Art Website page are the two most often visited according to the Webpage Traffic Report located in the Appendices. This is where students are able to access art games and other art related activities on the web. Information about current lessons in the art room are also on the site allowing for students to independently review information learned in class. The Student Gallery is supposed to act as a place where images of student artwork are placed but at this point only contains one slideshow of student work. The Arts Day and Museums pages provide links to artists that visit the school on arts day and various museums around the world. Finally, the Contact Me tab allows parents or students to email their teacher via the site.

The website creator offered through SAS provides users with a website builder, settings that allow you to choose from two types of layouts, background colors and patterns, and a theme. The site builder has four main sections showing various webpage components which are: My Website Page Header, My Website Pages, My Blog Entries, and My Website Copyright Statement. These are easy to toggle through to add and delete pages. The site creator can make pages ‘Offline’ while creating them or editing them along with changing the order in which the pages appear on the site navigation tab on the left hand side of the page.

When working on designing a specific webpage within the site users are offered various tools including a means to modify the font making it bold, italics, underline, or strikeout, bullets or a numbered list, three alignment options, clipboards for copying and pasting, a table creation tool, and the option to view the page’s HTML code. There are also predefined templates to add to the page if desired, along with buttons to add images or video to the site, and finally a button to add items from the user’s ePortfolio. Images can only be added with the insert/edit image button if the image has a URL. Only the size of the image can be modified by typing in specific pixel dimensions of which it is unclear how to choose correct ones to fit the page. The insert/edit embedded media button provides a place to paste the media’s URL but this function does not work properly. The site creator must use the media’s embed code and place it under ‘source’ in the insert/edit embedded media window. The media’s pixel dimensions can also be set as could the images’. If the site creator prefers or doesn’t have an image URL they have the option to upload images or media to the SAS ePortfolio, another Teacher Tool provided by the site. This feature uploads the files to the SAS server from where it can then be embedded into site. It is unclear the amount of space which is provided to users. The space provided has been adequate for a variety of media this particular site has needed thus far.

The blog component on the website is currently not in use by the site creator. The reasoning for this decision is there are no moderation controls for comments posted or controls over who is able to post comments. When being mindful about representing the school, district, art department, and site creator via this site, the nonexistence of this feature is too large of a risk. Therefore, the site creator placed the blog feature offline. Another feature the ‘My Website Copyright Statement’ allows for the site creator to type in whom the site is under copyright of and it is automatically added to the bottom of every page within the site. The site builder also has a ‘View Reports’ tab to view the webpage traffic.

SAS offers a Help Desk phone number and email along with areas to request additional information about SAS, a place to submit experiences with errors on their site or with the tools, and a comment/suggestion spot.

Evaluation Method

Participants

The participants in the evaluation included the evaluator, four other art teachers from the school district, and fellow educators taking the class Evaluation for Educational Technologists with the evaluator. The population sample was selected because the evaluator is also the creator of the website, Molli Brown. She has been teaching art for the past three years at Norwin’s Hillcrest Intermediate School. Brown will be able to closely evaluate and have access to the website builder tools via password as others will not. The other art teachers in the district were selected as part of the population sample as one of them, Sue Teems, sends all of her students to the website so she has vested interest in the evaluation results. Teems has been an art teacher in the Norwin School district for the past 16 years. The others are interested in possibly creating a site for their classes in the future and wonder if this is the best web host to use. The fellow educators will be taking part and providing a fresh perspective with their responses to survey questions about the site. They are also familiar with objectives, whether or not they are met, and the evaluation process in general. Because they have never seen the site before taking the survey they have a similar perspective that parents of the students who use the site and their responses will be treated as such.

Procedures

The website was evaluated by the participants as it was left at the end of this past school year 2011-2012. The last change to the website was in April of 2012 and this was only to the homepage for an announcement. The website was accessed by each participant, both the art teachers and 505 class members, individually and the survey completed as was convenient for each participant of which there were ten total. All data was gathered from the participants via a survey completed over the internet while viewing the art website. The program evaluator, which is also the website creator, evaluated the website builder with password access to the SAS teacher tools.

Data Sources

The art website address was made accessible to all participants via the survey they each completed. The participants completed a survey online, both the art teachers and 505 classmates, that was built using Google Forms. The survey outlines objectives 1-8 listed above that can be measured by viewing the site and also includes numerous text responses to gather personal opinions regarding website layout and functionality. PDE’s SAS website has a contact page where information regarding support for building the site will be gathered along with observations made regarding the website builder. The data for objectives 9-16 was compiled and outlined by the evaluator in an objective matrix below. The webpage traffic report was also considered and is listed in the Appendices.

Results

The data in the table below was compiled from the online survey. The median of each Likert survey response was determined and placed to the right of each item it corresponds with. The closer the median is to five the more positive the results are for that item as each had a scale ranging from 1-5. The items with the ** after them had a follow up entry on the survey asking participants to write a short explanation of their answers. Each of these written responses are located in the Appendices.

Likert Survey Item / Median of Responses
On a scale from 1-5 rate the level to which the announcements on the front page grab your attention (1 being very little to 5 being they really jump out at you). / 3
In the lesson info section of the website, rate whether or not you feel the information provided is not enough, adequate, or too much. (1 being not enough at all to 5 being too much information) ** / 4
Rate on a scale from 1-5 the ease of viewing and the quality of the slideshows showcasing student work currently embedded in the website. (1 being the lowest quality and ease of viewing 5 being the highest) ** / 5
On a scale from 1 to 5 rate the level to which you think the website is visually appealing. (1 being not appealing at all to 5 being the most appealing website you’ve ever seen) ** / 4
On a scale from 1-5 rate how interested 5th and 6th grade students would be in using this site inside and outside of school for a classroom website. (1 being not at all interested to 5 being incredibly interested) ** / 3.5
On a scale from 1-5 rate the organization of the website. Compare the organization of the website to this which would be a 1 (very unorganized): and to this blog which would be a 5 (very organized): ** / 4
On a scale from 1-5 rate the ease of navigation through the website. (1 being difficult to 5 being very easy) / 5
This particular web host/builder does not allow for site creators’ posting of information, announcements, and lessons to be archived for organizational purposes. Users have to scroll through all previous posts, or the creator must delete the previous content to make room for the new. As a site viewer/user rate how important it is for the site to have this function from 1-5 (1 being not important to 5 being very important). ** / 4

The following data outlines the Gap Analysis for objective 9-16. This information was compiled by the evaluator/creator of the site by exploring the site builder and web hosting tools and capabilities. This table outlines whether or not each of the objectives were met and explanations on each where necessary are marked by the objective they are explaining and two stars **.