Students can have their own Drives in SLS

  From R15, all students will be provided with a personal drive (My Drive). While students can copy MOE Library lessons into their drives, we expect that they will mainly use this feature to copy over teacher ASSIGNMENTS, so that they can reattempt and revise these assignments as part of self-study. We hope that students will find this particularly useful in the 2nd half of the year to prepare for their final exams.

Students will be able to refer back to the original assignment or MOE Library lesson when they are working on their personal copy in their drives. For assignments, they will thus be able to check back on their original answers as well as teachers’ feedback and marks, when they are reattempting. When copying, teacher marked quizzes will also automatically become automarked ones, allowing students to do these quizzes on their own (students will receive system suggested answers after submitting FRQ and ARQ, rather than teacher feedback). For MOE Library lessons, they will be notified if an MOE library lesson has been republished and has an updated version which they can instead attempt.

Just as in teacher drives, students can freely create folders and move files. This will allow students to organize their own learning better and build up important self-management skills.

I have also previously shared on 2 other new features for students. From R15, like teachers, students can star lessons which they like, both in MOE Library and their own drive. They will also be able to hold a threaded conversation with their teachers in the teacher feedback section of each question, to clarify doubts or submit corrections. More details can be found in my previous posts.

Some of these student-facing features mark a broader shift that SLS is taking (other than the very visible UI revamp in R14). While we will continue to enhance and build new teacher features, we are also hoping to do more for our students going forward.

In particular, we want to encourage more SDL; nothing heartens and assures a teacher more that students who are curious and motivated to learn on their own. We know that this entails more than simply putting up available resources – till now very few students directly access MOE library resources on their own.

Undoubtedly the diversity and range of resources available remain important, especially in subjects/topics that are interesting to students. We are separately working with external partners to increase the variety of content outside formal curriculum exponentially, especially in preparation for the self-initiated learning component of Blended Learning.

But increasing student SDL also requires giving more choices for students to personalise their SLS experience, create safe communities and personal spaces, while at the same time helping them to build up the metacognitive skills to learn about their own learning. We want the kids to do more than complete assignments in SLS. With assignment features such as the ability for students to share assignments with their friends, class group features such as forum where students can post and comment on topics that are interesting to themselves, and now individual spaces such as student drives, we are giving students more space to do that.

Dated 9 Juen 2021