Building Portals for Evidence Informed Education: Lessons from the Dead 

Mike Blamires

email Michael.Blamires@canterbury.ac.uk Canterbury Christ Church University, United Kingdom

Death eats up all things, both the young lamb and old sheep

Cervantes

What are the aims of the TTRB?

• To make available the professional knowledge base supporting teacher education

• Increase range and quality of resources available

• Raise the status of teacher training research and knowledge

• Promote change: Research Impact on Practice

• Provide a personalised support service

TTRB Structure Contractual relationship

Guidance, Advice & Progress

TTRB Project TeamLightbox Education, Canterbury Christ

Church University, Institute of Education, British Education Index

Key:

DcSF, Ofsted, CFBT.NCSL, Becta, UCET, TLRP, ESCalate, NFER

TTRB ReviewersOver 200 reviewers have contributed to the TTRB

Students/Trainee Teachers, Teacher Educators, Mentors,

Academics and Trainers Representing

the Profession

The Users

Teachers &

Other Professionals

National Stakeholders

Editorial & Commissioning

Advisory Board

Enduring and Emerging priorities

• Every Child Matters (five outcomes)• Subject Knowledge / Pedagogy• Personalised learning • Education for Sustainable Development• Integrated working to support the achievement and well-being of

every child • Improve levels of early reading & writing • Revised secondary curriculum 2008 • Introduction of 14–19 Diploma teaching from 2008 onwards • Masters for Teaching and Learning (MTL)

– raising standards and narrowing the achievement gap• SEN & Disability

Illustrative Usage figures taken from TTRB(independently gathered from google analytics)

Over 210,000 page views a month Over 7000 page views a day Over 2000 visits per day 62,000/month 16,000 Registered Users

37% trainees: 21% Tutors : 22% Teachers One article released every day Users over a 30 day samplefrom UK 23,152, US 985, Australia 255, Canada 163, India 119,

Ireland 118, Spain 116, Philippines 96, Malaysia 88, Germany 72, UAE 64,

Singapore 59, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 56

140 Active reviewers from over 70 Institutions:

1 CEA 2 RSPE 3 EBEST 4 CUREE 5 EPPI6 EEP 7 TTRB 8 CFBT9 EDUCARCHILE

Leeds Evaluation: Accessibility

• The accessibility to a range of resources, previously unavailable

• ‘marked impact’ on part-time students/trainees, for “finding a great starting point for their research”

• ‘personal research’, further their subject knowledge, and to “leave the day with further research, further reading to do some background stuff”

• “I often refer [the students] to the E-librarian, particularly when they’re doing the more independent aspects of their course”

Leeds Evaluation: Theory/practice

• “making a bridge between the theory and the school practice”

• “What we’ve tried to do is to encourage our trainees to address [their inclination to the practical] head on and learn in a variety of different ways not just by doing teaching in a classroom but also by reading by engaging with what research is out there and the TTRB has been a tremendous help in terms of been able to link them very, very quickly with that.”

Validation

“Given the quality of the site in terms of content and presentation, its value to tutors and trainees and how highly it is rated, it deserves to be exploited by the widest possible constituency of users.”

Archive

Lessons• Agree ownership via new copyright formats

• Agree project risk procedures as part of the QA

• Future proof the classification systems

• Make these transparent to the user

• Harness Open Educational Resource attitudes and technologies (microdata, HTML5)

• Link Really Simple Syndication etc to your categories

• Work as a channel with provenance rather than a web site (eg Jorum publish paradata in the learning Registry)

• Prioritise dissemination and valorisation

Back from the dead?