Progress Report Tool

[hanleymark]

Progress Report Tool

Describe the problem you'd like to solve

The problem at hand is the time-consuming and labour-intensive process that UK teachers face when creating progress reports for their students at the end of the school year. Currently, teachers must manually compile individualised comments for each student across multiple subjects, which requires significant effort and can be prone to errors. This process leaves teachers with limited time to focus on individual student assessments and can result in generic or less personalised reports.

As a teacher, one of the hacks that is frequently used to make this easier is to produce a set of generic comments for each subject: one for higher achievers, middle-attainers and so on. They then copy and paste the appropriate comment into a student's report and change the names and pronouns as appropriate. This is however prone to embarrassing errors where, for example, Sophie's parents are told that Kevin is doing very well in her maths.

The aim of this project is to develop a web-based application that streamlines and automates the report-writing process, enabling teachers to generate comprehensive and personalised progress reports efficiently.

Who are the stakeholders?

The primary stakeholders of the ProgressReportTool include:

• Teachers: The web application will directly benefit teachers in primary and secondary schools across the UK. They will be the main users of the application, relying on it to create detailed and accurate progress reports for their students.

• Students: Though not direct users, students will benefit from the system as it allows their teachers to allocate more time to personalised assessments, leading to better feedback and an improved understanding of their progress and areas for improvement.

• Parents/Guardians: Progress reports serve as a crucial means of communication between teachers and parents/guardians. The tool will enhance the quality and comprehensiveness of reports, providing parents/guardians with a clearer picture of their child's academic progress.

Other considerations

In addition to streamlining the report-writing process, the ProgressReportTool should consider the following:

• Security: The application must adhere to data protection and privacy regulations to ensure the secure storage of student information and comments.

• Usability: The tool should have an intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it accessible to teachers with varying levels of technological proficiency.

• Customisation: Teachers should have the ability to tailor comments to reflect each student's performance accurately. The application should provide flexibility while maintaining efficiency.

What is currently being done to solve this problem?

Currently, UK teachers rely on manual methods to create progress reports. They spend significant time and effort drafting individualised comments for each student across different subjects. This manual process often leads to generic comments and limits the personalisation of reports. Some teachers may utilise templates or previous reports as a starting point, but they still need to make extensive modifications to align with each student's performance.

What technology might be interesting to explore?

When considering the technology for developing the ProgressReportTool, the following options are worth exploring:

• Front-end Frameworks: Frameworks such as React would suit this project well as it would benefit from a component based architecture.

• Back-end Technologies: Node.js, ExpressJS and NextJS could be considered for building the server-side components of the application, managing user accounts, student details, and comment storage.

• Database Management Systems: Options like MySQL, PostgreSQL, or MongoDB can be explored for storing and retrieving student details, comments, and other relevant data. MongoDB would work particularly well as it would allow the editing of comments easily after they have been assigned to each child.

• ChatGPT API: Leveraging the OpenAI ChatGPT API can provide natural language generation capabilities, assisting in generating initial comments based on subject, level, and student group. This integration can be beneficial in automating the comment creation process.

TLDR

The ProgressReportTool is a web-based application designed to streamline the process of creating progress reports for UK teachers. By automating the generation of comprehensive and personalised comments across multiple subjects, the tool aims to save teachers valuable time and effort. The system allows teachers to store student details, create generic comments tagged by subject and student group, and customise reports to reflect individual performance accurately. Integration with the ChatGPT API provides natural language generation capabilities, facilitating the initial comment generation. The tool benefits teachers by enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of progress reports while allowing them to allocate more time to personalised assessments. Students and parents/guardians also benefit from the improved quality and clarity of the reports. The ProgressReportTool addresses the existing manual process and offers a technology-driven solution to streamline report writing for UK teachers.