Parent Notification
From TeacherWiki
Contents |
Overview
Parent Notification creates a parent account that is linked to their student's account. This enables them to log in at any time and check on their student's performance, giving them access to the same fine-grained data that teachers have. It also gives teachers the ability to send messages to parents through the ASSISTments website, and tie those messages to particular pieces of data (such as Item Reports). We have also just added an automated messaging system that sends parents a weekly (and optionally nightly) e-mail informing them of their student's performance over the time period as well as upcoming and past due assignments.
Scientific Paper about Parent Notification
This is the verion of a article we submitted to the Journal of Interactive Learning Research. It was accepted with minor reveions.
How to set it up
If you are interested in parent notification and would like to help us perform an experiment on its effectiveness, please email us at assistment-help@wpi.edu.
1. Enable Parent Notification
To use parent notification you must first enable it. It is enabled on a class by class basis, so you must enable it for each class whose data you would like to be included in the reports/emails parent receive. To do this, click on the Assess tab to get to your list of classes and then click on Toggle Settings next to the class(es) you want to enable. There you will see an option to "Enable Parent Notification." Click on it to check it off. If you would like your parents to also receive automated messages, there is an option directly below it called "Enable Parent Notification Emails," which you can also check. After you are done, click "Save Changes."
2. Collect Parent Emails
In order to get parents signed up, you will need to obtain their email addresses. There are two ways to do this.
First, you can have your students enter them in. This is best done when the students are first signing up for ASSISTments accounts, but it can be done at any time. Simply instruct your students to click on the Account button at the top-right of the ASSISTments website after logging in, and then have them click "Edit Profile." There should be a field present labeled "Parent Email." Have your students enter their parent's email here and click "Save Profile." If the student has more than one parent who is interested in using the system (this may especially be the case if the parents are separated), you will have to enter the other parent(s) manually as described in the second method. You can see all of your students' suggested parent emails by going to the Roster of a class that has parent notification enabled.
Note: Be sure to warn students about putting their parent email in as their own email when editing their account information. This will result in the student becoming his or her own parent on the website.
One possible way to approach this is to send a letter home to parents explaining to them your intent to try parent notification, and asking them to sign the letter and specify their email address. Students can then bring this letter back to school so you can be sure parents have seen it, and that the email address is correct.
The second method requires you to enter the emails manually. You must still obtain them somehow, whether it be directly from students or from an email list given to you by school administrators. You will have to enter these emails into the Roster of the class that has parent notification enabled. It is there you will see any parent emails your students have suggested, as well as an "Add" link that allows you to enter them yourself. The Add functionality also allows you to enter emails for more than one parent if desired, as described above. If you are using this method, please read the next section before clicking the "Send" button, as this will jump right to the next step.
3. Send out Invites
In order to participate in parent notification, parents must be formally invited by a teacher to sign up. It is important to note that it doesn't matter which teacher does this, and it only needs to happen once. After the parent has signed up, you no longer have any control over the parent--their account is independent of yours. Thus, once a parent has signed up, you cannot revoke that parent's account. You do, however, have control over whether parents have access to data from your classes; that is the purpose of the "Enable Parent Notification" setting in the Toggle Settings for each class.
This means that if you go to the Roster for a class that has parent notification enabled, you may see students whose parents are already registered (the roster does not show any parent information unless parent notification is enabled for that class). You do not have to worry about signing these parents up, as they already have accounts and are ready to go.
Similarly, this means that if you have more than one class on ASSISTments and they contain overlapping students, you only need to sign up their parents once. You will notice that if you send out an invite (described below) to a student's parents from the roster of one class, it will show up under the same student in the roster for the other class. This is again because parent accounts are not tied to any particular teacher or class. The roster is simply the most convenient location to manage parent notification, and each class has it's own roster.
Let's move on then to how invites are actually sent. In the roster, next to each student's suggested parent email, there is a "Send" button. Similarly, if you manually enter an email address, there will be a Send button next to it as well. Clicking this button will send a formal invitation email to the parent's email address. You will notice that after doing this, a bright yellow "pending request" entry will appear under the student's name. If and when the parent signs up for an account, this entry will disappear and it will instead denote, under the student's name, that the parent has registered.
The yellow entries are important because they let you know which parents you have invited but have not yet signed up. If you make a mistake, you can delete these entries by clicking the "Delete" link. A parent cannot sign up for an account unless there is an active pending request, so even if the invitation email has been sent out, and you delete the pending request, that parent will not be able to sign up. You are allowed to send multiple invitations to the same parent--each time you click Send, another yellow entry will appear and another email will be sent. It is often useful, if a parent has not signed up for a week or so after having been invited, to send another invitation to catch their attention again. Once they have signed up, you can delete any extraneous pending requests without affecting anything. If you have sent multiple requests and a parent still has not signed up, you may want to verify that the email address is correct. Sometimes, however, it can just be difficult to get parents to sign up.
When you send out an invite, parents receive an email from ASSISTments informing them that you have invited them to sign up for accounts to monitor their student's performance. They are presented with a link to click on that will bring them to a special sign-up page for parents.
Here they enter a little bit of information and are given accounts. Parents can log into their accounts in the same way that you log into yours, except that instead of having an Assess/Build tab, they only have one tab: Notify. This tab presents a summary page showing assignments their student has completed recently, unfinished/late assignments, and upcoming assignments (based on what you have assigned in your class). They also have access to an Item Report similar to the version your students can see, in the event they want more detailed information. They also have an inbox where they can view messages you send them (note though that they cannot send messages back to you through the system, which can make the prospect of sending a message home less of a daunting task).
Parents will also have access to a Preferences page. It is here they can specify whether or not they would like to receive automated emails. By default, they will receive weekly emails if you enabled it for your classes. They can also enable one or two nightly emails, to be sent at the time of their choosing. The idea behind these emails is this: some parents may want to be notified each night what their student has done that day, and what they have for homework. Additionally, they may want to be notified later that night if their student has actually completed their homework. The Preferences page allows parents to control how much information they are sent via email.
You can see each parent's preferences by going to your roster. Underneath each student's name, underneath each of their registered parent's names, there are three icons. Each icon is either a check or an X--a check denotes the corresponding automated email is enabled, and an X means it is disabled. The first icon represents the weekly email, while the other two represent the two different nightly emails.
Usage and Assignment Management
Once you have signed your parents up, there is very little you have to do. Parents can log into their accounts when they please to check on their students. If you enabled email notifications, they will begin receiving weekly (and optionally nightly) automated emails containing essentially the same information available on the summary Notify page described previously. There are really only two things you need to think about at this point: managing your assignments, and (optionally) sending your own messages to parents, if you so desire.
Parent notification is very dependent on due dates, so if you want to use it effectively you are advised to start setting due dates for your assignments (this can be done from the assignments page). For example, an assignment will not show up in the list of upcoming assignments and unfinished assignments (in both the automated emails and on the site itself) if they do not have a due date attached to them. So if you want parents to be able to see what assignments their student has for homework and which ones they are not completing, you need to make sure they have due dates attached to them. Also, the same goes if you want parents to be able to see if their students are completing assignments late.
You can use this dependency to your advantage at times, however. If there is an assignment that was simply intended to be classwork, such as an essay critique, by not assigning it a due date you can hide it from parents so that they don't mistake it for an assignment that must be completed (it will still show up in the student's Item Report and list of completed assignments if it is finished, however, which is generally preferable).
Messaging
If you'd like, you can send one-way messages to parents through the ASSISTments system (at least, those parents who have signed up). These can include general messages about what is going on in class as well as messages to specific students with feedback on particular assignments. Our preliminary studies have shown that parents feel much more engaged with their students' learning when they receive such messages from their teacher. Of course, it is not a necessary part of parent notification and is completely optional. Parents cannot respond directly to these ASSISTments messages, which means you are less likely to be flooded with responses than if you had sent the message over email. Additionally, ASSISTments messages can be tied to data such as Item Reports, giving parents some context when sending them feedback on their students' performance. There are two means by which you can send messages, detailed below.
Messaging Frontend
The "Send Messages" part of the website is similar to a traditional webmail interface, allowing you to send messages to individual parents, groups of parents, or all parents. These messages are not tied to any particular piece of data--that functionality is located in the Item Report, described below. The messaging page is great for sending out more general messages; for example, what is happening in class on a particular day, an upcoming test, etc. It is also useful if you want to send a message to just one parent about their student's overall performance, rather than just on one particular assignment.
You can access the messaging frontend by clicking on the "Messages" link in the blue submenu that appears on each page (right next to the "Need help on this page?" link). By default, you will be brought to your inbox, which likely will not contain any messages (the only people who will ever send you messages should be WPI at this time--as I said, parents cannot respond directly to you messages). If you look at the blue submenu again, you'll notice the links have changed. Next to the Inbox link is "Outbox", where you can see messages you have sent in the past (by default, it only shows the first 25--click the link at the top of the page to show all of them). After you begin sending messages to parents, they will appear on this page. Underneath each will also be a link that, when clicked, will show you which of your students' parents have read the message you sent. This feature is not 100% accurate due to some technicalities, but it is a pretty good indicator of who is regularly checking their ASSISTments mailbox.
Next to the Outbox link is a "Send" link. This page is where you can compose emails to parents. There are 3 panels on this page; the left-most panel is where you choose the recipients of your message. You will notice that each of your classes that has parent notification enabled show up in this panel. If you wish to send a message to the parents of every student in the class, simply check the box next to that class. You can send a message to more than one class by checking multiple boxes simultaneously. Keep in mind that any message you send will only go to parents who have actually signed up for an account on ASSISTments. The website has no way of contacting parent who have not signed up, so when it says it is sending a message to the whole class's parents, it means those parents who have signed up.
If you don't want to send a message to the whole class, you can click on the name of one of your classes to reveal that class's sections. Similarly, if you click on the section name, it will show you a list of the students in the class. If you click on a student, it will show you a list of that student's registered parents. Clicking on any of these names again will de-expand the list. Checking any name higher in the tree will automatically check all names contained within that node. So for example, if you check the box next to a section, it will automatically check all students in that section, which will automatically check all parents for each of those students. This tree control allows you to send messages to any combination of classes, sections, and parents you want, and is fairly intuitive.
Once you have checked off who you want to send the message to, you must click "Select Recipients" at the bottom of the left panel. This will add the recipients to the top-right panel, so you know exactly who you are sending the message to. If your list of recipients is large, you can click the title bar of the panel to hide it, and click it again to unhide it. If you change your mind and want to select new recipients, simply check them off in the left panel and click the button again. This will clear the old recipients and insert the new ones.
The bottom-right panel is where you actually compose your message. There is a box for the subject and a box for the actual message itself. Once you are done composing your message, click "Send" to send it. If all went well, a green bar should appear at the top of the page indicating your message was sent successfully. It should also appear in your Outbox, where you can see who has viewed it. Whenever you send a message, parents will receive an automated email notifying them that you have sent them a message, and providing them with a link to automatically log in and check their messages.
Item Report
You can also send messages from the Item Report. From the parent's perspective, these messages are the same as those composed in the messaging frontend. The only difference is that when you send a message from the Item Report, ASSISTments attaches a link to the bottom of the message. This link will bring the parent directly to their student's Item Report for the assignment that you are commenting on. That way, you can give feedback on a particular assignment and the parent will be able to see exactly what you are talking about! The Item Report also allows for report-card style generic comments, allowing you to give feedback to many students without spending an enormous amount of time crafting custom messages for each one.
If you look at the Item Report for any class that has parent notification enabled, you'll notice a column next to the students' names called "Comments". Each student's row will have a drop-down box next to their name with a list of generic comments. Selecting one of these comments will cause another drop-down box to appear, allowing you to select another comment if you desire. If you decide you did not want to send a given comment, you can click the "X" next to it to remove it. If you want to leave a custom comment, you can select "Custom" at the bottom of the drop-down list, and a box will be provided to you to type your custom comment. You are allowed to send a combination of generic and custom comments if you desire.
Once you have selected which comments you want to send, you will notice a "Send" button has appeared below the drop-down menus. Clicking this will cause ASSISTments to generate a message containing the comments you selected and the link to the Item Report for the given assignment and send it to the parent.
