Successful Parent-Teacher Conferences
A Scenario-Based eLearning Training
This eLearning concept project presents realistic situations that teachers must successfully navigate to foster positive, collaborative and solution-oriented parent relationships. The learner sees the true-to-life consequences of their decisions along the way in the form of parent responses and the results of a feedback survey. Key skills and learning objectives are embedded in the feedback survey and in the advice of a mentor teacher, making the experience , engaging, and relevant.
Audience: Teachers conducting parent-teacher conferences
Responsibilities: Instructional Design, eLearning Development, Visual Design, Storyboard
Tools Used: Articulate Storyline, Adobe Illustrator, Mindmeister
Overview
Effective parent communication training is not typically included in teacher education programs. In my own experience and from speaking with other teachers, educators learn most of these skills on the job. At the same time, difficult parent interactions are often cited as a contributing factor in teacher burnout and attrition.
For this concept project, I imagined a school district that was dealing with an uptick of parent complaints at the school administration level immediately following each round of parent-teacher conferences. The district was seeking to decrease the number of parent complaints and thus the resulting time spent in communication and follow-up meetings for all stakeholders.
Having experienced the challenges of parent-teacher conferences myself and having discussed them with colleagues, I decided that teachers, especially pre-service and novice teachers, would benefit from learning these skills in a scenario-based eLearning experience.
Process
Action Mapping
I started by using my 17-year teaching experience as the foundation for my research into common problems encountered during parent-teacher conferences. I consulted with current teachers and did online research to ensure the content reflected best practice in the area. I then created an action map using Mindmeister to identify the observable teacher actions that build positive relationships with families and navigate difficult topics during conferences. These are: communicating clearly, providing relevant data on the student, demonstrating a knowledge of and care for the student, eliciting parent feedback and discussion, and building confidence in the shared plan to support the child’s progress.
Storyboarding
Once I had identified the main actions I wanted to highlight in the project, I wrote the script and text-based storyboard. I decided on five key interactions that would provide users the opportunity to demonstrate the skills identified during the action mapping: beginning the conference, sharing the first piece of student data, communicating an area of difficulty for the student, recommending specialized academic intervention, and responding to an unexpected parent concern.
The flow of each interaction was important in how I organized the content. I wanted to make sure that users could make additional attempts to answer each question once they experienced the parent reaction and ultimate consequence; the more immediate feedback allows learners to understand the reason for their errors quickly, while being able to fix them and feel successful without waiting for the end of the experience.
After writing the content of each interaction and the mentor teacher advice for each, I sent them to colleagues for feedback. They related to the situations, and confirmed their experience with each. Based on their input, I edited the ideal teacher response to the last scenario and some of the text to be more concise.
Visual Mock-ups
As I was waiting for feedback on the script and storyboard, I began designing the look of the project. I found inspiration from other scenario-based branching eLearning I had experienced on instructional design portfolios. In particular, I determined that having parent characters with clear facial expressions based on possible outcomes of the conference interactions were key to conveying the challenges and consequences of teachers’ decisions during these interactions.
I decided to use character sets of vector images that I could edit using Adobe Illustrator. Using a calm, but visually-appealing color scheme, I changed the colors of the characters’ clothing and those of the classroom background to ensure the look of the project looked unified.
From there, I used the background and characters to create the images of all three characters together to set up each key interaction and close-ups of one of the parent characters to highlight their reactions to each choice the learner made during the experience. Finally, because the possible choices contained a short paragraph each, I decided to use a simple text-only design , with the exception of the mentor teacher image as a button.
Development
As this was the first time I was using Articulate Storyline, I focused on adding the buttons and triggers that created the branching scenario. When the first workable draft of the project was complete, I again sent it to users to elicit their feedback. A few respondents had felt confused about how to choose the correct answer; we determined that they had not realized that they could click on the mentor teacher image for advice for each question. As a response, I added an animation path on the first mentor teacher page that forced users to practice clicking on her image. For each question page, I had the mentor teacher image bounce onto the slide after the rest of the text had already appeared. I also included the text, “Unsure? Ask Debra,” to make it extra clear to the user that the resource was available.
Once I had addressed the user issues, I decided that the color scheme was a bit too bland, which affected the legibility of the interaction slides. I decided to deepen the light blue to a dark blue-gray to make the design “pop,” and make the text stand out more in contrast.
Results
The final published project represents many hours of learning the basics of Articulate Storyline, familiarizing myself with editing images in Adobe Illustrator, and iterating at each step to ensure effectiveness for the user. I am especially proud of the feedback I received from a colleague, who wrote:
“You’ve really captured some of the hardest nuances of parent-teacher relationships:
Wanting to appease the parents vs. doing what you know is best practice
Delivering hard news but also not wanting to leave parents feeling hopeless and defensive
Validating concerns without letting parents call all the shots.
Asking for time when parents may want an immediate response or solution to a problem they bring up
Inspiring confidence and building trust”
Although a concept project, I think that it could be a useful learning experience for new teachers and even a way to help more experienced teachers ensure they are delivering consistently high-quality parent-teacher conferences that could save them difficult and time-consuming follow-up conversations and meetings.
I look forward to learning more about using a systematic, iterative, and theories-based process to create effective and professional-looking eLearning.