505 - final evaluation report

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Doiron Final Evaluation Report 1

Google Sites as an LMS for Sunnyvale SchoolsFinal Evaluation Report

May 2013

Submitted to Sunnyvale Schools by Jamie Doiron


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Summary

Sunnyvale Schools is a preK-12 district that currently provides a Google Apps subscription

to all faculty, staff and students in grades 9-12. District curricular administration desires to

implement a learning management system (LMS) at the high school level. Since the district

is already using Google Sites, a user-friendly website creation program, administrationwanted to see if it could be leveraged as an LMS.

The purpose of this report is provide an educated opinion on whether or not Google Sites

would be a viable LMS solution based on the needs of Sunnyvale schools. This evaluation

uses a discrepancy model to compare the capabilities of Google Sites against the needs

of the district. These needs were assessed through interviews with stakeholders and

surveys of faculty members. Once the needs were understood, they were compared

against the capabilities of Google Sites.

Ultimately, Google Sites alone will not fulfill the needs of Sunnyvale school district unless

they are able to provide a dedicated resource to modification, implementation, and

training. The Google apps suite as a whole can provide many of the common features

found in an LMS. However, that requires extensive modification, customization, and

training for users. This is something that Sunnyvale schools was hoping to avoid in

leveraging a tool already being used at the high school. Therefore, Google Sites is not a

good fit for their needs.

Program Description

Program Objectives

Sunnyvale Schools objective is to determine if Google Sites could be leveraged as an

LMS at the high school given that it is already in use in certain classrooms and all students

and faculty have access to it currently. Any LMS must meet the following requirements:

Low-cost. There is no budget available for LMS implementation

Require no additional personnel to manage. There is no hiring budget for a support

person.

Require minimal training. There is only one in-service day prior to the start of the

school year and limited time to train faculty

Support templates. Faculty should be able to set up a course quickly and easily by

choosing a template.

Organize units and assignments and support many file types for downloading.

Serve as a single-destination for all course material for all of a student's classes.

Sunnyvale schools currently uses PowerSchool as an attendance, scheduling, and grade


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management software. Therefore, they have no need of the grading component traditionally

found in an LMS. They also have a quia.com subscription for online quiz creation, so that is

not desired or needed as part of the LMS solution.

Program Components

Google Sites is a free website and wiki creation tool in the Google Apps productivity suite.It allows users to create web pages, share them with other users, upload files, and edit the

content of the site through the use of HTML, Javascript, and CSS. The customization

available through those languages, however, is limited because users must use the

provided site themes and page structure. Users are limited to 10GB of storage.

Sunnyvale High School is a 9-12 school with approximately 1,400 students. There are 160

faculty members and four in-school administrators. District-wide there is an assistant

superintendent of curriculum and instruction and an administrator that oversees technology

implementation and maintenance for all seven schools in the district. He manages a teamof four technicians that serve all schools.

The high school itself has four computer laboratories for all classes to use and one laptop

cart. Some classrooms in the business and technology areas have their own computers in

the room. The district is also currently piloting a 1:1 laptop initiative with 30 students who

have received Chromebooks.

Evaluation Method

ParticipantsThe evaluation involved members of district and school administration as well as faculty at

the high school. The assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction has been with

the district for five years and originally requested the evaluation be performed. The district

technology administrator oversees all technology implementation and maintenance for the

district and controls the budget for such projects. Since the faculty will be the end-users of

any LMS software, they were surveyed during the evaluation. No sampling was used

because there are only 160 faculty members at the high school. Should any LMS be

implemented, it would be managed by the four person technical team that provides support

to all seven schools in the district.

Procedures

The evaluation began with a meeting between the evaluator and the assistant

superintendent of curriculum and instruction to determine what the districts needs were

with regard to an LMS. It was in this meeting that the following needs were identified:

Low-cost

Require no additional personnel


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Minimal training

Templates for easy implementation

Organize curricular units and files

Single-destination for all of a students course work

The evaluator also learned that the district does not require the LMS to provide online quiz

or grade tracking capabilities, since these are redundant with services that the district

already manages and pays for. The district would not be able to discontinue their contract

with PowerSchool in time for an LMS implementation, and the general feeling is that faculty

and administration are satisfied with that software and do not wish to change.

The next step in the evaluation was a meeting between the evaluator and the district

technology administrator to understand the technology capabilities and limitations of the

district. The evaluator learned that there are only four technicians that support seven

schools and there is no available budget to hire another technician to support any LMS.

Should students begin to bring in their down devices to school, the high school wireless

infrastructure would need to be upgraded to support the additional network traffic. There

are currently no plans to add any additional computer labs to the school. Most classrooms

only have one teacher computer in the room and only the business and technology rooms

have one computer for every student. All other classes must use one of the four computer

labs for common use or the laptop cart.

This meeting was followed-up by a survey of high school faculty to determine if they feel the

need for an LMS given their current technology setup. 63% of faculty said that they wouldhost their course content online if they were properly trained in the use of Google Sites, but

many classrooms do not have the required technology to make it useful for students while

in class, even though faculty members want students to be able to access the online

content in the room.

Lastly, the evaluator compared district needs and constraints against the capabilities of

Google Sites to determine if it would be a good fit given the current budget and technology

environment at Sunnyvale Schools.

Data Sources

There are four primary data sources for this evaluation:

Interview with the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction

Interview with the district technology administrator

Online survey of high school faculty

Google Sites itself


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No observations occurred due to the fact that the district does not currently use Google

Sites as an LMS and this evaluations purpose is to determine if Google Sites would meet

the needs of the district. Interview and survey questions are available in the appendix.

ResultsBased on the evaluators interviews with stakeholders, faculty surveys, and an in-depth

exploration of the capabilities, an assessment of how each district requirement would be

met by Google Sites is provided in the following sections. The table below provides a

visual summary of each requirement.

Requirement Met by Google

Sites?

Low Cost Yes

No Additional Personnel No

Minimal Training Partial

Templates Yes

Curricular Organization and File Support Yes

Single-Destination for Student Course Work No

Requirement 1: Low-cost

Google Sites meets this requirement. It is free software that the district already has access

to as part of their Google Apps subscription.

Requirement 2: No additional personnel

Google Sites does not meet this requirement. Given that the district is already managing

technology for seven schools with only four technicians, the additional burden of

troubleshooting technical issues for Google Sites when every faculty member and student

at the high school is using it would be unmanageable. An additional support person would

be required.

Requirement 3: Minimal training

Google Sites partially meets this requirement. Many online tutorials are available for

Google Sites and it is fairly user-friendly. However, the district desires to begin using the

LMS in the 2013-14 school year. Since there is only one day available for professional

development between now and then, it is not feasible to train 160 faculty members and set


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up their courses within that time frame. Should the district decide to pilot this with a few

classes and train the rest of the faculty over the course of the coming year, the training

required would be relatively small given the extended time frame.

Requirement 4: Templates for easy implementation

Google Sites meets this requirement. It is easy to create and use templates. The districtcurrently creates templates for students to use as online portfolios.

Requirement 5: Organize curricular units and files

Google Sites meets this requirement. It is possible for teachers to organize curricular

materials into units and upload related files. Google Sites also supports many types of

embedding that work well with other Google Apps services such as YouTube and Google

Drive.

Requirement 6: Single-destination for all of a students course work

Google Sites does not meet this requirement. Each teacher would create his/her owncourse site but there would be no platform on which a student could log in and see all of

his/her classes.

Additional Constraints

Based on faculty surveys, the evaluator determined that there is not enough technology to

support students using any LMS while in the classroom as many classrooms only have one

teacher workstation. Therefore, any LMS that is implemented would serve mostly as a

resource for students while working from home. Should the district move to a 1:1 laptop

initiative as they are currently piloting, extensive network upgrades would be required.

Discussion

Sunnyvale Schools wanted to know if Google Sites would meet their needs from an LMS.

Based on interviews with stakeholders and faculty surveys, the evaluator determined that,

based on the current timeline for implementation, Google Sites only meets three of the six

major requirements. Should the district decide to push out full implementation by a year,

four of the six requirements would be fulfilled.

Either way, Google Sites would require an additional support personnel to make the

transition easier for faculty and staff but it would still not serve as a single destinations for

students to long in and view all of their course work. Additionally, there is not adequate

technology available at the high school to make any LMS implementation meaningful

during the school day. Students would mostly be limited to using it from home since they do

not have computer access except in business and technology courses or when their class

visits the computer lab, of which there are only four for 1,400 students.


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What Google Sites does quite well, however, is integrate all of the tools available in the

Google Apps suite to one place. Should the district decide in the future that they want to

have someone dedicated to creating a rich template that leverages many of the

capabilities found in other Google services, there is potential for a rich classroom website

experience that organizes and displays curricular material in a meaningful way.

Unfortunately, based on budget constraints, this does not seem possible at this time.

Overall, given current budget and technology constraints, Google Sites does not meet the

needs of Sunnyvale Schools. Should there be additional funding for support staff and

technology upgrades in the future, it would meet many of the needs described by district

administration. However, given the current situation, it would lack key technical support and

feasibility in the classroom. This would likely lead to a lack of use among faculty and

students.

Project CostPersonnel

Professional salaries:

Jamie Doiron: 30 days at $500/day $15,000

TOTAL PERSONNEL $15.000 $15,000

Travel

Estimated mileage: 500 miles at $.55/mile $275

TOTAL TRAVEL $275 $275

Communications

Jamie Doirons Phone: 30 days at $3/day* $90

TOTAL COMMUNICATIONS $90 $90

TOTAL BUDGET $15,365

*Phone calculations based on a rate of $100/month


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Appendix

Interview questions from meeting with assistant superintendent of curriculum and

instruction

1. Why use Google Sites? What is the reasoning behind wanting to leverage thatsoftware as an LMS when there are other more traditional choice available?

2. What capabilities from a learning management system does the district need?

3. What about grading and online quizzes?

4. What timeline are you looking to have the LMS implemented at the high school?

5. How do you want to train faculty members?

6. Do you plan to have someone dedicated to Google Sites support?

7. How do you envision the faculty and students using Google Sites after

implementation?

Interview questions from meeting with district technology administrator1. Explain the current technology situation at the high school. Does each student have

a computer to use?

2. Does each classroom have many computers?

3. How many computer labs are there?

4. What about the 1:1 initiative being piloted with Chromebooks? What if that were

expanded for all high school students?

5. Are students allowed to bring their own devices?

6. Do you currently have an estimate for the cost of network enhancements required if

each student had a wireless capable device?7. Can students use smartphones in class to access online resources?

8. How many technicians do you have providing support to faculty and students?

9. Would you be able to hire more should an LMS be implemented?

10. Are there any other technical considerations for implementing Google Sites as an

LMS that you see?

Survey questions and results

1. Have you ever used a learning management system as either a teacher or a

student? Examples include Blackboard Vista and Moodle?

a. Yes - 31%b. No - 55%

c. Unsure - 14%

2. Do you currently use Google Sites to create classroom websites?

a. Yes - 20%

b. No - 80%


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3. If properly trained, do you see yourself using Google Sites to host all of your course

content online?

a. Yes - 63%

b. No - 27%

4. If you answered yes to the previous question, would you prefer that your students be

able to access that content while in class?

a. Yes - 66%

b. No - 7%

c. I would not put content online - 27%

5. Do you have computer for every student in your classroom?

a. Yes - 13%

b. No - 87%

6. Would you be OK with letting your students use their smartphones to access your

course content during class?

a. Yes - 21%

b. No - 79%

7. Do you find that you can always access a computer lab or laptop cart when you

need them for your class?

a. Yes - 60%

b. No - 25%

c. I dont use the labs or laptop carts - 15%

505 - final evaluation report

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