GAT Meeting - 2019-1-24

Owned by rrozzelle
Last updated: Apr 24, 2019 by Chris Moffatt (Deactivated)
5 min read

The meeting was held via WebEx from 11 to 12:30 pm CT.

Agenda

  1. Ed-Fi leadership updates
  2. Governance activities
    • Update on Leadership Council
    • Reporting and Visualization work group – Finalize charter
    • Reporting and Visualization work group – Community survey request
  3. Community work group updates
    • Assessment work group (Dean Folkers)
    • Finance work group (John Raub)
    • Reporting and Visualization work group (Jamie Martinez)
  4. 2019 planning & priorities
    • Discussion and preparing for February in-person meeting (Tulsa)
    • Technical Congress – proposed agenda
  5. Next steps and key dates

 Link to meeting PPT

Participation

Members:

Support:

Meeting Minutes

Refer to the meeting PPT for additional details on the meeting minutes and discussions.

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

No comments on minutes from the last meeting

Ed-Fi Leadership Updates

Executive session discussion.

Governance activities

Update on Leadership Council

Nancy shared an update on the Leadership Council. Commissioner Kirsten Beasler from North Dakota and Dr. Scott Muri, the Superintendent from Spring Branch Schools in Houston have accepted the invitation to join the Ed-Fi Leadership Council. Troy is reaching out to several leaders from national education partners and Maureen, Rick and Nancy are following up with representatives from higher education, and state and local education agencies. 

Reporting and Visualization work group – Finalize charter

An important role of the GAT is to review and endorse new WG charters. The reporting and visualization work group has completed the draft of the charter for the working group, and submitted it to the GAT for review. 

Chris reviewed the comments and feedback of the RVWG charter. See PPT for additional information. There was a question whether the scope should be expanded beyond instruction outcomes in classroom. Several suggestions were made:

  1. Keep scope narrow on improved classroom instruction rather than trying to be all things for all people.
  2. Re-orient the focus to get a clear value proposition for Ed-Fi including for dashboards.  The majority of LEAs cannot afford to develop visualizations. This focus could make it easier for LEAs to access and transform data for teachers and school leaders and also give clear, easy access for SEAs for compliance-based reporting. Schools going through accreditation process have easy to access, comprehensive data available which leads to better teacher use for instructional outcomes.
  3. Reporting (i.e. state reporting) was part of the original scope and there is a concern that a limited focus on instruction may limit the value proposition of the data model. There are a lot of BI visualizations that don't quite address classroom instructions as the previous dashboard. Focus on what helps teachers, and generally address how other areas (like school improvement planning) might be addressed with BI tools and inclusion in the middle tier data model.

It was decided to recommend that the RVWG develop a continuum framework to help identify and prioritize the different use cases for Ed-Fi data and reporting.  This approach will help to address collective governance opinions and needs.  It was also agreed that the RVWG should send out a community survey to garner types of use cases, using the continuum framework to help guide this.

The RVWG will update the charter to reflect this recommendation, after which the GAT will forward the charter to the Ed-Fi Executive Committee for approval.

Reporting and Visualization work group – Community survey request

The GAT approved helping the RVWG shape the framework and send out the survey. In doing so, it would be good to reach out to potential Ed-Fi adopters and different users including both technical and academic. The RVWG will draft the survey structure and provide it to the GAT for review and feedback. It was suggested that a phone survey in addition to the “mail out” would generate a stronger response.

Work Group Updates

Assessment Work Group

See slides in meeting PPT. Dean provided an update on the efforts of the API Adoption and Awareness Subgroup related to vendor certification including the tracking matrix. The issue was discussed regarding how to create better lines of communication with accountability between customers and vendors and enable coalition influence after an agreement to become certified. This gap needs to be closed to have the certification process work with coalitions to gather needs for certification. The EADM use case approach is an effective model. Also, the Tech subgroup could be the focus for this between AWG and vendor - Cesare is lead for this. It is important to include non-tech voices as well as in-progress vendors especially with diverse set of vendor experiences and expectations.

It was agreed to flag the SEL and curriculum areas as potential new work groups and begin them with incubation in the Assessment Work Group for now.

Finance Work Group

John reported the API development is completed and in sandbox. They are building out the validation data portal. Vendor use cases are drafted in user's guide.  The final UI has been designed and is Wisconsin-centric but with FWG input. The FWG will meet before and then at the Tech Congress to review the work. 

Reporting & Visualization  Work Group

No additional updates

2019 planning & priorities

Discussion and preparing for February in-person meeting (Tulsa)

An in-person GAT meeting is being planned for February 20, 2019 hosted by Stephen Fedore in Tulsa, OK. He shared that their local foundation will be joining the group for dinner on Feb. 19th.

Technical Congress

GAT members are asked to save the date for Tech Congress from April 10-12, 2019 being held at St. Petersburg, FL. An invitation with additional information will be sent out soon. There will be an in-person GAT meeting - 2019 Technical Congress.

Action Items

  •   GAT members are reminded to review minutes from 2019-1-24 meeting and send any comments to Chris.
  • Chris will send out pre-reading materials for the in-person meeting in Tulsa. 
  • Those who are not able to attend the Feb. 20th GAT meeting in Tulsa are asked to provide their thoughts on the pre-reading material to be sent out by Chris to gather input on the road map.
  • The RVWG will update their charter to reflect the guidance around a continuum of use cases and Chris will get circulate to get final GAT endorsement and forward to the Executive Committee for approval.
  • The RVWG will provide GAT an opportunity to review the draft survey and @Chris will coordinate with Ed-Fi Communications to get it distributed.
  •  Dean, Eric and Rick will work with Cesare to connect the assessment vendor certification process with the AWG to better gather certification requirements or use cases.  The plan is to use the AWG tech sub group to help translate certification requirements and use cases from the AWG to the vendor being certified. An update will be provided at the next GAT meeting.