The challenge
The Victorian Government’s Literacy Teaching Toolkit provides lesson plans and activities to help build the capability of teachers and educators to know, understand and develop the importance of language and literacy skills of Victorian children and young people.
We were asked to evaluate the effectiveness of the Literacy Teaching Toolkit with a representative cohort of primary school teachers, literacy leads and principals to determine:
– the usefulness of digital (text, videos) and non-digital (downloadable resources) content
– whether the look and feel of the Literacy Teaching Toolkit is engaging
– navigational ease of use and findability of content
– desire for changes or new features.
Approach
We conducted three workshops and an online study with representative primary school teachers, literacy leads and principals and assistant principals.
During the workshops participants viewed the Literacy Teaching Toolkit website and two peer sites. Guided discussion was followed by detailed content analysis.
Questions were designed to uncover whether the content and page design was useful, whether the content could be adapted to other texts or schools and if it could enhance the teaching practice of teachers.
In addition, an online study was conducted remotely to understand the reasons for visiting the Literacy Teaching Toolkit website and barriers to success.
I would like the content explained in a way that it can be easily adapted to year level and audience.
Outcomes
The outcome of this project was a set of evidence-based, practical recommendations to improve the Toolkit and make it more usable and useful for the target audiences.
Each recommendation included a rationale and step-by-step advice.
We provided detailed advice on:
– users’ preferred content types and when to use them
– page and content design to improve engagement and comprehension, including providing page mockups
– improving video content for ease of use and accessibility
– promotion and placement of Toolkit content
– how to improve navigation and findability.
