Ryan Lucas

University of Colorado-Denver

Information and Learning Technologies Portfolio

We the People...
Simulated Congressional Hearing Web site

Problem Statement (top)

During the summer of 2002 I applied and was accepted to attend the Mid-West regional conference paid for by the Center for Civic Education. The focus was to introduce teachers to the Simulated Congressional Hearing. After attending the conference I piloted the program with 10 Gifted and Talented students at Belmar Elementary School. The result was an overwhelming success, but the process of putting together the simulated congressional hearings was cumbersome. Communicating with four different groups of people (parents, students, judges, and teachers) was time consuming and often repetitive. Recognizing this, I identified four problems:

1. There is a need to provide parents with information that students receive at school because there is often a lack of communication between children and their parents (often students do not realize what information that their parents need to know).
2. Due to the amount of information that students need to know about the Simulated Congressional Hearing, many still have questions that have already been answered.
3. Judges for the Simulated Congressional Hearing need more information about the format and students’ experience and prior knowledge.
4. The Simulated Congressional Hearing is an enormous undertaking for teachers to prepare for, and as such, teachers need a forum to share their experience and use other teacher's materials.

Situation Analysis (top)

Front End Analysis

Parents

The majority of the parents of Evergreen Middle School sixth graders have access to a computer and the Internet. For example, 85 of 116 families subscribe to our email newsletter. Additionally, the preferred choice of communication between many parents and me is email. Overall, the community in which Evergreen Middle School resides is affluent.

Goals

• Parents will be more informed
• Parents will volunteer to help with the hearing
• Parents will be able to better help their child with their opening statement

Students

Sixth grade students at Evergreen Middle School are still “learning the ropes” of middle school. Most students enter EMS after a year in which they did not have any homework because their 5th grade teachers didn’t believe in it. Additionally, this is the first time that students have had letter grades. Previously, students have only had number grades 1-4. While the majority of students come from the more affluent Evergreen, some students live in the poorer town of Kittridge.

Goals

• Students will be more informed (test: less questions)

Judges

Simulated Congressional Hearing Judges are parents, school administrators, teachers, and elected officials. Judges are sometimes the same from year to year, but every year there are people that are new to judging the hearing, and these judges need to have information about the format and students prior knowledge. Even though judges receive information via mail, many times they are unprepared when they arrive for the hearing. The majority of judges have access to the Internet.

Goals

• Judges will use the Web site to contact me with their questions.

Teachers

Teachers should use the simulated congressional hearing as a post-assessment. The Center for Civic Education provides training for teachers interested in using the simulated congressional hearing. Since teachers are in a school setting, most have access to the Internet.

Goals

• Teachers will contribute to the documents section of the site
• Teachers will contact me and use me as a resource as they prepare their students for the hearing.

Rationale for Approach (top)

Formative Evaluation

Creating a Web-based source for information fits the needs of all four groups. Students will access the Simulated Congressional Hearing Web site at school during class time. Many students and parents can also access the site at home. Since the Judges that I select for the hearings are all professionals with an advanced degree (masters of doctorate) working in the field of law or government, it is a reasonable assumption that they can access the site from their place of work or from home. Middle school teachers are able to access the site at their schools, even if their connection is slow, because the site was designed with slow connection speeds in mind. The only component of the site that may not be accessible to a few members of the four groups is the video section since the videos do take a considerable amount of time to download, even at 56K. Since the overwhelming majority of the four audiences identified earlier have access to the Internet, creating a Web site to disseminate information and provide a means of contact is a practical solution.

Results (top)

I created the Simulated Congressional Hearing Web site in Fall of 2003. The hearing as at the end of December and as a result, students did not see the completed Web site until January of 2004, after the hearing. Overall, students reported that they wished that they had been able to use the site prior to the hearing. Many students reported that until they actually participated in the hearing they did not know exactly what to expect, and they lamented that the site was not available to them because they thought that it would have answers some of their questions.

This year, the hearing is again at the end of December, and all four of the groups (parents, students, judges, and teachers) have used the site. Currently the site is linked from the Center for Education in Law and Democracy site, and an application is pending to have the site recognized nationally by the Center for Civic Education. Based on the formative evaluation, I have worked to make the video files more accessible. The result is that there is less quality, but it takes less time to download.

Overall, all four groups reacted positively to the Simulated Congressional Hearing Web site.

Evidence of Value (top)

Parents

Goals

• Parents will be more informed
• Parents will volunteer to help with the hearing
• Parents will be able to better help their child with their opening statement

Instead of just receiving a letter explaining the hearings, this year's parents received a letter and directions to access the site. The result is that there were less questions from parents about the process. Parents are more informed about the hearing. Whether parents can help their child with his or her opening statement will be determined in December when students begin writing their opening statements. Finally, more parents have volunteered this year than in previous years and there are 34 less students participating in the hearing (due to declining enrollment)

Students

Goals

• Students will be more informed (test: less questions)

Students were first encouraged to visit the site during "down time" in the computer lab, and many students remembered parts from the site when the Simulated Congressional Hearing was officially introduced in class. So not only did students have less questions, they were also able to provide more details about the hearing as a result of using the Web site.

Judges

Goals

• Judges will use the Web site to contact me with their questions.

Judges have accessed the site and reported finding it useful, but if anything the site has maintained the status quo--prior to the site's inception I was not contacted by judges with questions, and since the site's inception I have not been contacted with questions from judges.

Teachers

Goals

• Teachers will contribute to the documents section of the site
• Teachers will contact me and use me as a resource as they prepare their students for the hearing.

Teachers are accessing the site via the CELD Web site, but have not contributed documents or contacted me with questions.

Reflections (top)

Creating the site not only helped me learn Dreamweaver better, but it also forced me to justify my decisions about the Hearing. As a result, I am more prepared for this year’s hearing than I have been for previous year’s hearings. Posting my ideas online as a resource for other teachers, including teachers with more experience than me, caused me to rethink many of the organizational documents that I use. Knowing that the documents that I posted online would be used by other teacher (and critiqued by my peers), I found myself revising and editing the documents before posting. Several documents that I have been using for years and meaning to revise because of student feedback finally got a fresh coat of paint. Overall, the site is still a work in progress, and I still have issues with the file size of the video files, but I am pleased with the navigation and professional appearance of my Simulated Congressional Hearing Web site.

Responsibilities Fulfilled (top)

Responsibility 2: Designs instruction or human performance strategy to meet the needs of learners

After hearing back from students and parents that they did not understand the Simulated Congressional Hearing that we would be doing in December, I created the SCH part of this Web site. Later I added the Judges and Teachers pages to address two more groups.

The site was created using the ADDIE process. After analyzing the problem I determined that creating a Web site would help disseminate information to Parents, Students, Judges, and other Teachers.

I then designed the We the People... Simulated Congressional Hearing Web site. I knew that I wanted the Web site to meet the needs of Parents, Students, Judges, and Teachers so I created the site with simple navigation and a basic layout. I also wanted to provide all four groups with video clips since many users would not have seen a Simulated Congressional Hearing before.

After designing the site, I developed it using Macromedia's Dreamweaver. The video clips were rendered using Adobe Premiere.

The entire Web site was finished and implemented after last December's Simulated Congressional Hearing. Since this was the first time that the site would be used by students, I limited it to only two class periods (instead of four). I also emailed Parents to see what feedback they had (see formative evaluation). Based on these two groups' feedback, I re-rendered the video clips to make the files smaller and quicker to download.

The final evaluation of my We the People... Simulated Congressional Hearing Web site is still pending. Students have already begun using the site as a starting point and Judges were given the url in their introduction letters. Parents will be provided the url once we get closer to this year Hearing in December. On the Teacher side of my site, I consider it a success that the Center for Education in Law and Democracy has listed my site as a resource for teachers interested in having their students participate in a Simulated Congressional Hearing.

As a result of using the ADDIE design process, I have developed a coherent Web site that will meet the needs of all four target groups.

Responsibility 3: Uses a variety of media to deliver instruction to students and to engage students in learning.

The Simulated Congressional Hearing Web site allows students to receive instruction from me via the Internet. Additionally, the information that students receive is consistent from one period to the next, unlike a lecture presentation. This is an improvement over how I use to introduce the Hearing to students. Furthermore, not only do students use the Internet to learn about the hearing, they also have access to video segments which provide visual and aural stimulation. Finally, since my site is accessible to students using any Internet connection and I introduce students to the Simulated Congressional Hearing during school and in class, my Web site is more than appropriate in the learner's environment.

Responsibility 4: Understands how to capitalize on the capacities and abilities of each learner

The Simulated Congressional Hearing Web site accommodates students' special academic and social abilities by providing them with the information that they need in order to participate in the hearing. Students that do not have access to the site are still able to participate in the hearing, but they are not as prepared, as evidenced by the contrast between 2003 students who did not have access to the site and wished they would have and 2004 students who only had informal access to the site and were able to contribute to the introduction of the process. By providing one more opportunity for students to excel, my Simulated Congressional Hearing Web site show that I am aware of the range of needs of learners

Additionally, my Simulated Congressional Hearing Web site provides me an opportunity to informally assess whether students know what the Hearing is all about. In previous years, some student groups have started working on their opening statements for the Hearing and then have had to start over because they did not fully understand what was expected of them. By having students visit the site first, and then "formally" introducing the concept of the Hearing in class, I can determine to what degree students know what is expected of them by the questions that they ask. In this manner I am able to assess what knowledge students already have about the Hearing process so that I can guide my instruction in the right direction.

Finally, given students propensity to choose technology-driven instruction over in class lecture, my Simulated Congressional Hearing Web site capitalizes on students' interest in the Internet. Not only are students given free reign concerning what they look at when, they are also allowed to see Web pages that aren't "meant" for them (e.g. pages for Parents, Judges, and Teachers). Looking at the pages meant for other groups is akin to glancing at the answer key, except what students don't know is that I want them to look at other group's pages. I suspect that students once students absorb the information on the pages meant for them, they will pay more attention to the pages meant for the other groups. By capitalizing of students' natural curiosity, I make sure that students are receiving a double dose of information.

Responsibility 5: Manages complex projects and resources in support of learning

Given the need to communicate with three different groups (Parents, Students, and Judges) as well as the need to provide a resource for Teachers, my Simulated Congressional Hearing Web site not only demonstrates my recognition of the complexity of the hearings, but it also helps manage resources, particularly the resources for teachers, effectively. Not only are the supporting documents organized, the video clips are annotated so that the user doesn't spend time downloading clips that he or she may not need. By going to this one site, it does not matter whether you are a parents, student, judge, or teacher; you have access to nearly everything that I have with regard to the Simulated Congressional Hearing. Additionally, I created a document that I use and is also available to teachers to help them organize their own Simulated Congressional Hearing. Finally, my Web site allows me to communicate consistent information to four different groups that are not located in the same place. I created Simulated Congressional Hearing Web site to help manage the complexity of organizing, promoting, and communicating about the Hearing.