Issue Number：HB20210324E Date：24 March, 2021 Author：Global TEAM Model Education Research Institute
Q1. What is the purpose of lesson observation?
Lesson observation has been proposed for many years and is an excellent way to promote teacher professional development. The scientific lesson observation began in 1963 with Micro teaching, and has progressed to the modern-day with new methods and theories to help teachers better implement them in the field.
After 2000, advanced countries began to promote "competence-oriented " teaching, and the enhancement of teacher professional development has become more important. Taiwan also launched a new curriculum after several years of research and development, implementing a policy regarding annual public observation class, hoping to promote the teacher professional development and raise the overall standard of education. Q2. What are the main forms of lesson observation internationally?
In order to promote teacher professional development more effectively, scholars and educational institutions in various countries have developed various models of lesson observation with different purposes and characteristics.
A few well-known models are listed below. TDO Model Kaufman & Grimm published《The Transparent Teacher: Taking Charge of Your Instruction with Peer-Collected Classroom Data》- Open Classroom Observation. It advocates that TDO （Teacher-driven observation）: Teachers need more open collaboration in order to meaningfully practice and refine their teaching. Teachers are guided to open the door from within to customize their own teaching observation experiences, not for summative accountability or evaluation but as a formative data collection process to improve teaching and learning.
Oxford Model Oxford University Press website, "Oxfordowl", published "A Guide to Lesson Observation" which mentions five simple steps to conduct lesson observations: 1. Planning and preparation 2. Observation 3. Record 4. Evaluate 5. Take action based on results
Learning Community Model Japanese scholar Manabu Sato proposed the learning community, which is not just "a change in the way teachers teach" but "a new understanding of education, school, and learning by teachers". A learning community is a group of learners and their helpers (including teachers, experts, and counselors) who communicate and exchange ideas, share learning resources, and work together to accomplish certain learning tasks, thus forming interpersonal connections among members that influence and promote each other.
Taiwan 108 curriculum Model The Taiwan Ministry of Education has proposed a trilogy of teaching observation - preparation, lesson observation, and post-lesson discussion - to provide another pair of kind eyes through lesson observation and discussion, emphasizing "making others happy is making oneself happy".
In summary, all advanced countries and regions are promoting lesson observation, and the process and format are the same: preparation, lesson observation, and post-lesson discussion, which is recognized worldwide as the most suitable model for the teacher professional development. Q3. Why do we use Sokrates Digital Lesson Observation? What is the basis of the study?
According to the study《Visible Learning: Maximizing impact on learning》, written by renowned educator John Hattie in 2009, the study examined which teacher behaviors have the greatest effect sizes on student achievement, including "Quality of Teaching" and "Teacher-Student Relationships", which both contributed greatly to student achievement. Among them, the lower benefit score is 0.11 for "Teacher training", while the highest score is 0.88 for "Micro teaching", which is eight times higher than the former. Digital lesson observation (micro teaching) is the most influential teacher professional development activity for students.
Hattie Ranking: Teacher Effects
Q4. What is the difference between Sokrates Digital Lesson Observation and a regular lesson observation?
In order to conduct observation activities accurately and effectively, the following points are the most significant differences.
1) Time Efficiency 2) Quality of Application 3) Integration of resources.
Time Efficiency
The most effective and formal teacher professional development activities often require 4-5 experts to review and provide feedback on individual projects. In the past, it would take at least a few days to organize and summarize the data collected to study the statistical teaching model, analyze the characteristic data, compile the verbatim script, and even match the video with the teaching field.
In contrast, the automated production of Sokrates Digital Lesson Observation records after the class can be completed in as little as 3-5 minutes, saving a significant amount of time!
Quality of Application
Compared to many "digital" classroom observation processes, which may be done through multi-person collaboration in the cloud, or through video recording for discussion, these data are less likely to have wider application and value, despite the use of digital resources.
Sokrates Digital Lesson Observation emphasizes "data and evidence" in lesson observation. In addition to integrating time markers, expert commentary, and multi-dimensional Sokrates videos, it can also conduct video clip pattern sample analysis, research on teaching and pedagogical data, and achieve in-depth discussion and analysis of Homogeneous Pedagogy Lecture and Heterogeneous Pedagogy Lecture lessons.
Integration of Resources.
In general, teachers and schools have to prepare a lot of documents and forms for observation lessons, including lesson plans and teaching materials for teachers, teaching observation record sheets for observers, feedback forms for observation lessons, or video recording, and it is even more costly to hire external experts. The Sokrates Digital Lesson Observation can improve these pain points and difficulties, and fully utilize the benefits of automated resource integration.
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Value of Digital Lesson Observation Q5. With Sokrates Digital Lesson Observation, what data will be produced and how will it contribute to the quality and effectiveness of teaching and research?
When schools build TEAM Model AI Lecture Observation Lounge (LOL) and start using Sokrates Digital Lesson Observation, they will be able to efficiently integrate lesson preparation, lesson observation, and post-lesson deliberation to complete the various tasks of lesson observation, allowing teachers to face the preparation, execution, and organization of lesson observation with less effort, and archive achievement results more easily.
Sokrates automatically generates 4 data within 3-5 minutes after lesson observations, which helps the whole process to be more efficient, smooth, and time-saving, as explained below.
The elements of Digital Lesson Observation
1. Sokrates Video
Sokrates Video is like teachers' AI Smart coach, it integrates "in-class teaching videos", "teaching behavioral data characteristics", "Expert Marks", "AI analysis" to assist teachers in self-reflection, inquiry, cooperation, and sharing.
Sokrates video (Expert Page)
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Sokrates video (AI Page)
2. Sokrates Report
Sokrates Report presents a graphical representation of teachers' technology usage index and pedagogy application index, which are automatically generated by AI. With a light indicator of 70+ for green, 50-70 for yellow, and below 50 for red, it provides more intuitive data feedback to facilitate and empower teachers' application.
3. Sokrates Lesson Observation Form
The automatically generated record sheet includes course details, number of commenters, content, photos and Sokrates Report, etc. It can be filtered and sorted by time, commenters, category and content, etc. The results of the lesson observation are clear at a glance, and are automatically linked to Sokrates data slices for high data integration.
4. Classroom Observation Report (Excel File)
The report can be edited and modified in Excel to show the results of experts/observers wisdom, including the content of lesson observation comments, time points, categories, commenters, etc., and automatically accumulate the number of times and time spent on related technology, so that educational researchers can further use educational research tools to analyze data, such as using excel formulas and charts for index and data analysis.
Sokrates Digital Lesson Observation can reduce time costs, increase the quality and efficiency of teaching and research, and reduce data organization, transcription, calculation, and many administrative burdens, leaving all the hassles to the system, lesson observers can focus on the lesson itself and improve quality and performance more easily.
Q6. Can the Sokrates Digital Lesson Observation support offline and online lesson observation activities? What are the differences in the way they are conducted?
The Sokrates Digital Lesson Observation can be conducted online, offline, or after the class, and experts can make comments and give feedback regardless of time and space constraints.
Simultaneous Lesson Observation
Method 1: Teacher and students are on-site; observers are on-site and giving comments
Method 2: Teacher and students are on-site; observers are online and give comments online
Method 3: Teacher and students are online; observers are online and give comments online
Asynchronous Lesson Observation
After the lesson, the Sokrates Video will be automatically uploaded to the school's exclusive channel, and teacher teams can conduct post-lesson discussion on Sokrates channel, including reviewing Sokrates Video markers, and adding/modifying/deleting markers(comment/feedback).
Q7. How do I share my Sokrates Videos? How to protect data security?
The Sokrates Channel, established by the Global TEAM Model Education Research Institute, is a global sharing platform for Sokrates Video and lesson examples. It brings together the most brilliant and intelligent classroom videos from around the world. It has accumulated more than ten countries, hundreds of schools, and tens of thousands of classic lesson videos to unite the classroom wisdom and achievements of teacher professional development worldwide.
Each classic lesson is recorded with the in-class teaching video, teaching material, lesson plan, teaching activity data, and other resources, which are stored in the school's exclusive channel (for internal viewing). In order to promote communication and sharing, each lesson resource can also be made public on the Sokrates platform to share with global smarter schools. Schools can set up channel administrators to edit lesson information and the status of lesson disclosure, as well as add/delete channel members, and other data management functions.
In terms of data security, we certainly have to do the most stringent gate-keeping for schools and teachers. All the data on the platform is stored in the world's top public cloud service space, which is more secure and protective than private cloud space.
Q8. What are some cases of Sokrates Digital Lesson Observation that can be referred to?
Sokrates Digital Lesson Observation has been practiced and applied around the world since 2017, accumulating more than 10,000 lesson data resources, including rich experience and valuable teaching and research data in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, and Jordan in the Middle East and other international regions. Below are a few examples.
2020 Global Smarter Lecture Demonstration - Live Lesson Global Professional Review Exhibition
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the education industry faced huge challenges but at the same time, it has enhanced the momentum of educational transformation. Hence to demonstrate the leading trend of Smarter Education and to facilitate schools’ pandemic preventive measures, the 2020 Global TEAM Model Smarter Lecture also takes a different form of “Live Teaching & Online Professional Review”. There will be 3 concurrent venues in Taipei, Chengdu, and Batangas Province of the Philippines, where Master Teachers have been invited to showcase their Smarter Lesson, which is also streamed live on multiple platforms. We will also be inviting International Experts to conduct professional lesson reviews live online, promoting the development and interaction of Smarter Schools and Smarter Cities globally.
The Sokrates video data for this event are stored in the Master Cup Channel, so you can watch, share, and discuss them at any time. (*We welcome you to use the Sokrates Channel, you can register for free to share lesson resources)
Aesthetic Education, Ministry of Education | "The Beauty of Color" by Yu-Chun Chen, Jieshou Junior High School, Taipei City
Sokrates Digital Lesson Observation was used to promote a professional dialogue on lesson study and to create a mutual learning atmosphere among teachers and students at the Jieshou Junior High School in Taipei City, one of the pilot schools of the "Competence-Oriented Public Observation Lesson" implementation program promoted by the Ministry of Education.
The organizer, the Taipei Municipal Bureau of Education, held a public lesson observation for the Aesthetics and Design course. The teacher, Chen Yuchun, taught "The Beauty of Color" at Jieshou Junior High School in Taipei City, and the participating officals included the Supervisory Committee and the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education.
Q9. How can schools begin to implement Sokrates Digital Lesson Observation activities?
Sokrates Digital Lesson Observation is a revolutionary change in teacher education at the Global TEAM Model Education Research Institute.
Over the years, Sokrates has accumulated tens of thousands of lessons, and is unique in the world in helping all schools that have already installed the relevant hardware and software resources to conduct digital lesson observation activities, inviting all schools to contact, propose and collaborate with us.
Starting from 2021, the Global TEAM Model Education Research Institute, Taiwan Technology Leadership and Teaching Technology Association, teacher training institutions, education management agencies, and AI Innovation Institute base schools will jointly organize the 2021 Teacher Training AI Innovation Institute Global Education Public Welfare Forum to observe the series of activities of classroom research, provide data resources for teaching, learning and research, and share & exchange the results of teaching research data in a variety of formats such as on-site, live, and platform. We hope to achieve the goals of promoting teacher professional development, developing a sharing platform, and establishing a cooperative ecosystem, and we also welcome interested schools to work together to flip the research model.
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