53 The Future of E-Ducation: the Impact of Technology and Analytics on the Education Industry
CASE STUDY:
ClassDojo Making the classroom more fun with avatars, games & points ClassDojo is a behavioural management program for younger students; an analytics platform for behaviour monitoring designed for parents, teachers and students. In simpler terms, it is a fun way for teachers to keep younger students’ behaviour in check via a system of “feedback points,” displayed in real time. With a single click on a smartphone, laptop, or computer, the teacher can give real-time behavioural feedback to students and parents, through use of encouraging notifications (“Well done Josh! +1 for teamwork!”). ClassDojo’s recommended setup for classrooms is to have the points on display at the front of the class through an interactive medium, in the form of a projector or interactive whiteboard. According to ClassDojo, more than 50% of teachers’ time in the classroom is spent managing behaviour rather than actually teaching – ClassDojo is designed to develop positive behaviour over time, rather than the traditional, less effective and more time consuming model of enacting punitive measures after the fact. By dramatically reducing the amount of time between an action and feedback for said action, the reinforcement effect on the student’s behaviour is significantly increased. It allows parents to monitor their child’s progress via the platform to get a daily breakdown of their child’s behaviour. This is positive in a number of ways, as knowing their parents can assess their daily behaviour motivates students to behave better, as well as eliminating
some of the traditional separation between teachers and parents. Currently, ClassDojo has 15 million users and saves time for approximately 17 million teachers around the world, by reducing their time spent managing student behaviour, and allowing them to focus on the real task at hand.