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When available, meeting minutes should be read, and any corrections sent to Chris.

Technical Congress Check-in​

The question as to whether to cancel, postpone or virtually conduct the April 2020 Tech Congress was discussed in light of the Coronavirus outbreak. Key points:

  1. State and local education agencies are cancelling out of state travel.
  2. California is discouraging meetings of more than 100 attendees .
  3. Postponing the event until summer will put it in competition with other conferences.
  4. There are key pieces of current work waiting for certain Tech Congress sessions to effectively conduct planned summer and fall Ed-Fi related work – will need to ensure these are accomplished virtually.

Recommendation: The face-to-face Tech Congress should be cancelled but mission critical sessions and key deployment training sessions need to be accommodated by some combination of webinars or online work sessions over a period of time.

Report out from winter Leadership Council meeting​

An update was provided on the Leadership Council that was hosted by Flagler County, Florida. The key topic focused on how to remove barriers to vendor adoption outside of state reporting.

Takeaways included:

  1. Provide clear messaging for leaders
  2. RFP strategies with teeth
  3. Privacy and security through interoperability

Next step for the LC is to plan a summer/early fall face-to-face session and consider including the GAT in some way.

Deep Dive Follow Up (Vendor support for Ed-Fi)​

This agenda item was a continuation of the discussion from the last GAT meeting in February, and began with a review of the key items raised (see slide deck for full list). There is a need for simpler and consistent messaging especially to tech providers and instructional leaders to understand the value of Ed-Fi. There were questions about how to know where vendors are in the certification process, whether there is a communication tool between LEAs and vendors to learn about issues such as which have data import tools and whether there is an annual Ed-Fi licensee update.

The proposed AWG assessment certification metrics were discussed next. The reasons for the proposed metrics were stated as clarifying the demand for assessment certification to help vendors prioritize resources and to identify and quantify the gap between customer demand and verified certification availability to help districts plan for assessment data availability to the ODS. 

  • The following questions/comments were discussed:
    • What are the thoughts regarding publication of the metrics? This has not been discussed, but it is recognized that it is necessary to be sensitive to how various audiences might receive the broad publication of the results of the metrics.
    • Have these metrics and the methods for collecting the required information been vetted with a roundtable of vendors and agency reps? While the concept of these metrics was discussed at the September AWG plenary session, which included a number of assessment vendors, the current version of the metrics and the methods for collecting the data have not been broadly vetted, pending a green light from the GAT.
    • We do need to do a better job of tracking demand, the timing of the demand and providing a more consistent representation of requirements.
    • More visibility and communication/coordination as to where vendors are regarding certification and the availability of mapped Data Import capability for vendors would be helpful.
  • Decision: It was agreed that the 3 proposed metrics are a good starting point to be used as broad areas to further refine and define as to what data exactly to gather and report and how to collect and present the data.

Discussion continued regarding actions being taken now and additional actions to be taken as a result of GAT feedback regarding vendor support for certification. 

Action Items:

  1. Proceed with forming AWG subgroup to refine/define the metrics and accompanying processes.
  2. Coordinate work to improve the vendor request form with the AWG efforts to collect demand-side metric data.
  3. Establish as a standing GAT agenda item the topic of actions being taken to improve vendor adoption and support.

Community Work Groups & TAG​ - Highlights and Heads-Up​

Reports from the work groups follow:

Technical Advisory Group

See latest minutes here. The rotation of TAG members is underway and new members are to be announced in April.

Recent TAG topics of discussion include Course Transcript changes and versioning.

Assessment Work Group

The AWG Charter has been updated with some minor modifications and the specific 2020 goals.

As a matter of procedure, changes of a substantial nature to work group charters are to be reviewed and approved by the GAT. The AWG Charter changes were approved.

Finance Work Group

The proposed changes to the finance domain are being developed/tested before final adoption into core.

The finance API is being piloted in Wisconsin and Arizona is considering its use.

Reporting and Visualization Work Group

Rosh Dhanawade from INSITE has volunteered to step in as co-chair to replace Marcos Alcozar of InnovateEDU who needed to step away due to other commitments/workload.

A priority use case (student discipline) has been completed.

The Dashboards subgroup is proceeding with an estimate to upgrade the current Dashboards.

Refinements to the RVWG Charter were proposed as follows:

  • Focus on establishing general best practices and a "playbook" for reporting and analytics using the Ed-Fi stack.
  • Revised approach for the technical sub-group, that includes taking a dependency on the Ed-Fi Analytics Middle Tier and working with the Ed-Fi technical team & roadmap to build out a POC of the infrastructure to support the MVP

Special Education Work Group

The work group recently reviewed and approved the 2020 goals.

A key focus for the work group is around accommodations. Members have begun to share documentation around accommodations.

Teacher Preparation Data Model Work Group

A human capital metrics subgroup is being formed.

The TPDM Dashboard subgroup is working on use case and designs for visuals for teacher prep program audiences. The work group will be working on releasing an RFC for the TPDM model and API later in the summer.

Internationalization Work Group

Assigning a lead for this group will follow as the group roles settle out.

The IWG Charter has been developed with very specific goals, and the IWG has been exploring a small set of highly impactful data model issues. These issues relate to internationalization but also overlap with current community issues, and include:

  • Person entity and issues
  • How to have a strong domain driven design but also allow for flexibility
  • How to model organizations and organizational inter-relationships more flexibly

Show and Tell​ - Ed-Fi Managed Platform Providers​

The top 4 Ed-Fi managed platform providers were discussed along with their variations of services. These include:

  • Certica Solutions – Data Connect and Videri
  • EdWire – EdGraph Platform
  • Inteport
  • InnovateEDU – Landing Zone and Data Viz

The meeting was adjourned.

Action Items

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Covid-19 Response & Ed-Fi

Gathering input on priorities from GAT members

Troy opened the discussion for this session by announcing that the Alliance is actively soliciting input from the Ed-Fi community to understand how to best help in the emerging “next reality” of COVID-19.  Troy discussed the guiding principles for this COVID-19 listening campaign.  The principles stress the importance of understanding the details, focusing on execution, using the resources and talents available, making investments in near-term payback and judiciously placing student learning above standards adherence. 

With this introduction, the GAT members shared a number of current and emerging issues:

  1. Collecting data on the usage of ed-tech products: With school districts turning to online learning and making additional expenditures in this area, knowing what is being used and the return on these investments is becoming more important.  The existing xAPI standard is a possible source for collecting this type of data, but assistance around where to place the data and how to analyze it is important.  Usage data could also be used as a proxy for attendance and for helping to flag issues students have with access to online tools.  Enrollment and usage data by product also allows follow-up on broadband and device access. 
  2. Attendance: Districts are collecting attendance in various ways.  Understanding attendance beyond the teachers’ coding in the SIS could include a mashup of tool-usage data as well.  This is particularly difficult with the various ways products provide login (attendance) and use data.  Districts want this not only to monitor online learning and develop individual student learning plans but also to identify inactivity and conduct wellness checks for problems such as food insecurity.
  3. The challenges are coming in daily – the new (or next) reality imposed by COVID-19 is still unfolding and will continue to do so for the coming months. For example, being able to measure engagement data as well as log-in/usage becomes more important.  Pressure right now is on getting students back in school, but need to plan for probable rolling closures next year as well. Boston’s newest challenge is how to develop an IEP for online learning for students. 
  4. Data requirements for the return of school is an evolving issue. State summative assessments have been postponed or cancelled for this school year. Knowing how to place students and understanding their level of mastery of learning standards will be key as schools/districts open next year and need to place students and plan for instruction.  Virtual charter schools may have some lessons learned that would be helpful here. 
  5. Districts and states are wrestling with how to deal with legislative requirements such as teacher certification renewals and how to categorize low-performing schools for 2020-21.
  6. The question was raised to the vendors whether they have a forum for gathering such emerging needs.  While vendors have customer-feedback mechanisms, there may be value in participating in forums to aggregate and discuss emerging issues.
  7. The question was raised to the states as to whether the existing CIO networking meets their needs for collaborating or could the Alliance be helpful also. The example of the recent Alliance-hosted discussion of rostering (by Sayee) was cited as very helpful and is an example of the type of assistance needed. The CIO network is a good venue but does not get to the level of detail sometimes required.  LEAs would benefit from this type of support as well.  Need to look at CARES Act release (should be this week) and what data will be required.

Helpful links from the chat log are also provided below:

Key takeaways regarding assistance possibilities:

  1. Ed-tech product usage data capture/retention/analysis
  2. Data analytics to better discern attendance
  3. Data collection and analytics to support understanding of student mastery of learning standards
  4. Hosting state/district work and/or collaboration sessions around key state and district challenges (rostering, attendance, etc.)
  5. Hosting vendor discussions regarding COVID-19 emerging challenges

Other Ed-Fi Alliance Activities

It was discussed and agreed that due to the pressures of COVID-19, certifications for Ed-Fi Suite 3 could/should be extended for 12 months.

Ed-Fi Assessment Roster Working Draft has been developed.  Discussions continued with IMS regarding how to best work together on this body of work (including One Roster).  The discussion with IMS came to agreement to do some additional knowledge transfer and gap analysis on the two bodies of work and then to reconvene around the “technical lift” and organizational willingness to move forward.  Options exist for 3rd party leadership/convening by ACT or Delaware.  Field testing of the Ed-Fi assessment roster working draft continues in Wisconsin and Delaware.  There was agreement to continue to work towards potential collaboration so draft RFC can serve across multiple jurisdictions

Governance Activities

Topics were deferred to the May meeting

Show-and-tell

The announcement that Ed-Fi has gone open source was discussed:

The meeting was adjourned.

Action Items

  •  Determine COVID-19 near term actions from feedback received

Action items from 3-12-2020 GAT Meeting:L

  •  Establish as a standing GAT agenda item the topic of actions being taken to improve vendor adoption and support.
  •  Future topic: CEDS (as an open source community) and Ed-Fi communication, coordination and alignment.

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