Educational software, unlike household appliances for example, does not usually come with after-sales support included in the price. Users are often left to their own devices to work out how best to use the programme. But unless the software is extremely intuitive – or very simple – many users may never learn how to best use it, particularly if they are busy teachers with several dozen better things to do.
However, SAM Learning has taken a different approach. Launched at the BETT show in 2000, the online subscription service for revision, aimed at GCSE and SAT candidates in English secondary schools, has enjoyed rapid growth in recent years and is now used by 1,800 schools – more than half the total – in some 60 local education authorities.
According to Jonathan Wells, the firm’s sales and marketing director, part of the success is down to the policy of employing teams of consultants – many of whom are former teachers – to visit client schools. They work with teachers and students to ensure both groups understand the service, what it can do and how to use it most effectively.
Tania Gooch, head of ICT at Haybridge High School, a technology college in Hagley, Worcestershire, says that teaching the teacher is vital. “Once colleagues hear and see what can be achieved without changing or adding to their existing workload, their enthusiasm and drive of the usage of the system grows,” she explains. “This has to be an ongoing undertaking to incorporate new staff and refresh enthusiasm.”
Because all learning materials and data are stored on the company’s servers, there is no additional workload for IT staff. Wells says that students are able to log on from any computer – or mobile device – with Internet access.
A broadband connection is not essential as he says the materials work well even with dial-up. Neville Coles, deputy headteacher of the Priory School in Weston Super Mare, North Somerset, is aware that the digital divide remains an issue, but has become much less of a concern in the three years that his school has used the service. Just 5 per cent of students at Haybridge do not have internet access at home. Nevertheless, students can use computers before as well as after school at a SAM Learning club.
An estimated 800,000 students are expected to have used the service this year. Wells says it has proved popular largely because it treats them as adults rather than children. There are three types of activities for learners: revision, exam practice and exam papers. Revision exercises use a drag-and-drop format that motivates and builds confidence. When an exercise is completed, a percentage score is given and stored in the learner report.
Exam practices are prepared by examiners to represent the type of questions students will get on their actual exam and can be completed on paper as well as a computer. Students assess their answers using the on-screen marking scheme and are again given a grade.
A key feature of the service is a facility that reports the amount of time students have spent logged on. Wells says teachers are often surprised to find that the pupils they least expected have made the most use of it. “It seems to particularly encourage boys to revise,” Gooch adds. “Those that might not usually revise are drawn in by the ICT aspect.” The figures also allow teachers to compare the school’s overall score against local and national performance.
SAM Learning has commissioned the Fischer Family Trust to carry out assessments of the impact the software has had on students. The most recent report found that learners who used it for 10 hours a week achieved 4.7 per cent more A* to C grades at GCSE than predicted. The research also concluded that improvement was greatest for students in middle and lower attainment groups in terms of overall GCSE points score.
“For pupils in the lowest prior-attainment band, using e-learning for 10 task hours or more achieved gains of nearly half a grade,” the Trust wrote. “This is the equivalent of 50 per cent of students achieving one grade higher than expected.”
Coles says that SAM Learning has helped the Priory boost its A*-C pass rate from 32 to 58 per cent in three years – the same amount of time the school has used the software.
Gooch says that her school agrees that 10 hours is the correct target. “We have seen significant improvements in grades and although we wouldn’t like to solely attribute this to SAM Learning, we think it has made a measurable impact,” she says.
Haybridge is also using the service in a way that not even its founder, David Jaffa, might have imagined. During ICT in-service training days, teachers set students work to complete from home, Gooch explains: “The day is not wasted and students don’t lose out on learning time – instead it becomes an e-learning day for them as well.”
