Transforming learning at Tāmaki College with Hāpara

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Customer Details

Location: East Auckland, New Zealand

Number of students: Over 700

Age group: Years 9-13

Tool they leverage: Full suite of classroom management tools, primary Hāpara Workspace

Year they adopted Hāpara: 2011

Featuring: Deputy Principal Russel Dunn and educators Peter Erhard, Faiyaz Hoosein, Nilesh Krishna, Brenton Moyes, Haitelenisia Siulua

Tāmaki College is a secondary school located in East Auckland, New Zealand, serving learners from a variety of cultural backgrounds in years 9-13. Dedicated to ensuring that every learner is successful, technology helps drive their success. One way they are transforming learning is through Hāpara classroom management tools. For Tāmaki College, Hāpara provides a path to equitable and learner-centered education while helping educators manage their digital classroom.

Providing an equitable educational experience

Supporting a diverse community

Tāmaki College is the original Manaiakalani Secondary School in New Zealand. Manaikalani supports schools “in low socio-economic and challenged communities to achieve significant improvements in student outcomes, realising learners’ potential and enabling digital citizenship for tauira (learners) and their whānau (family).”  

The school supports a diverse population of learners, including those who identify as Māori, Tongan, Samoan, Filipino, European (also referred to as Pākehā or Palangi), Cook Islands, Maori from Cook Islands, Fiji and other Pacific populations. 

Deputy Principal Russel Dunn says that families across the community, “want their kids to engage with technology to better ensure success in their education. Nobody’s been left out of this digital revolution that has come, and we’re making sure that communities like ours and around New Zealand are not left behind.”

A commitment to digital learning 

Each Tāmaki learner’s family acquires a Chromebook to help them strive for success in school. To support their digital learning mission, the school operates a lease-to-own system for Chromebooks. Dunn explains this is designed to minimize financial burdens on families and provide them with ownership of the devices over time. “The community is investing in their children’s education,” he says. 

Dunn says the school wants to ensure their learners have the same levels of success as other communities — and technology helps with that.

English teacher Faiyaz Hoosein says, “We have no paper-based activities now. Students do all of their work on their Chromebooks.” 

Sia Siulua is a teacher in the Health and Physical Education Department and is a former Tāmaki College student. “The school is now online-driven, and it’s really awesome for our rangatahi (youth) because for young people, that’s what their world is like now.” 

Empowering educators with streamlined tools

Visibility into learning

To monitor learners’ progress on Chromebooks, educators in the school use Hāpara. For instance, Dunn explains that Hāpara Teacher Dashboard helps them check on learners’ Google Drive files. “We’ve seen a shift in student results and the engagement with their learning because we can go through the Teacher Dashboard and have a look at documents.” 

He continues, “We see the hours the kids are putting into their learning. It backs up what we’ve been thinking about the things that influence the kids or impact their learning time post-school.” Some of the learners at Tāmaki work after school or look after younger siblings. “You can see some of them are engaging with their learning well after 11 o’clock.” 

Brenton Moyes is the Head of Learning, Health and Physical Education. He says that he can check in with students based on what he’s seeing in Hāpara Workspace. This platform is where he and other educators place all of their class resources and assessments. Educators can see learners’ progress across the class activities.

Moyes says, “‘I can see you last opened this assessment last week. Is everything okay at home? Are you all right?’ It’s invited the opportunity to have some really good discussions with students, and even some of those difficult conversations.”

Providing quality feedback

Dunn notes that the ability to easily give feedback to students is one of the most important drivers for learning in Hāpara tools. “John Hattie has ranked feedback in the top. If you give kids quality feedback, it will accelerate their learning.” 

Moyes says, “You can check the students’ work really easily. You’re not waiting till the end of the year or the term or near the end of the assessment before realizing they haven’t completed something.” 

He continues, “You can see when they’ve accessed a document and how much they’ve done and provide feedback to guide them or get them back on track. That’s the biggest advantage for me.”

Efficiency for educators

Hoosein organizes Hāpara Workspaces to make lesson plans clear for learners and easy for him to keep track of progress and resources. For example, he adds lesson expectations, links, video clips and “anything that enhances the lesson. Ultimately, they complete the assessment on a Google Doc, which is linked to the Hāpara Workspace.”

He continues, “I need the structure. That’s where I can find whatever needs to be done. Teaching has changed so much. It’s not about me standing up in front. Students prefer minimal teaching time and more so working independently. So Workspace definitely works for them.”

Siulua says, “I love how I can upload their assessment, and I can also check the kids’ work. I don’t have to have so many documents shared back to me via my email, because without Hāpara, I would have so many mail notifications from the shared docs.”

She continues, “I tell them that they have to do everything via Workspace, because I can give them feedback. I can check their work, and then we don’t have kids lose their work along the way from sharing docs or making copies of copies.”

Enabling students to drive their learning

One of Hāpara Workspace’s strengths is that it empowers students to take ownership of their learning. By placing goals, resources and assessments in one space, students are clear about what is expected of them and can jump into the lesson no matter where they are learning.

Learning resources in one place

Moyes says, “Hāpara Workspace is definitely our landing pad for all of our students to find and access their work. It’s really user-friendly and easy to use.”

Nilesh Krishna, a mathematics educator who has been teaching for over two decades, uses Hāpara Workspace for all instruction. He says, “In my Workspaces, I have my presentations, videos from YouTube and other resources. There is a lot of self-learning. I also break it down into different sections, so I’ve organized the Workspaces for every topic for every class I teach.

Moyes explains, “They know where the work is and how to access it.”

Peter Erhard teaches Digital Technology at Tāmaki and says, “All the instruction, everything is in Hāpara. Without Hāpara, I can’t function here.” 

He organizes his Workspaces in steps so that learners can easily follow along. “Each section is a step, and the assessment is at the end. The students get their own copy of the document, and they can submit it.”

No disruptions to learning

Dunn says, “It’s convenient for the teacher when they have to cover a class. The resources are already there, and the kids know where to go. There’s no disruption. When the staff are away, the kids can still get on with their learning.”

He continues, “The kids struggle if they don’t know the big picture. When they look at the Workspace, they think, ‘Oh, that’s my assessment.’ Some want to see what they’re doing at the beginning. Their Workspace has everything built in, so it’s no longer just the teacher who knows what’s coming tomorrow. Everybody’s on the same page.”

Learners who are absent can also access their Workspaces on the Chromebooks at home and keep up on class activities.

Siulua uses color coding for sections in her Workspaces so that learners know exactly what they need to work on currently. “When we’ve moved on from a section, I’ll add a color to it. So then students know we’ve done this, and we’ve moved on. All our slides and resources will have a specific color once it’s done, and it helps.” 

She continues, “Then if I have a student who comes in late, instead of having to stop that student, he knows to come in and have a look at the Workspace.” Because of Siulua’s ability to color-code in the Workspace, the learner knows exactly which section or document to begin working on.

Providing differentiation to support all learners

Hāpara Workspace also allows educators to provide differentiated experiences for the learners across their class. They can share goals, resources and assessments by group or provide options.

Dunn explains, “Teachers are giving students with different learning abilities differentiated activities, and they’re also able to offer choice in the kind of assessments they can do.” He explains that when he was in the classroom, he would add different deadlines in a Workspace or give instructions for assessment choices such as vlogs, blog posts or slideshows. On top of that, he could easily manage the process from one spot.

Krishna also uses Hāpara Workspace for differentiated assessments in mathematics. “I added two groups, Assessment Group One and Assessment Group Two.” The groups were for students who wanted to achieve “Merit” status and those who wanted to strive for “Excellence” on their assessment. 

Krishna continues, “It helped me monitor their progress.” He also gives some students differentiated tasks with varying levels of difficulty.

Giving external exams with ease

Teachers at Tamaki College now give New Zealand external assessments through Hāpara Workspace. 

Moyes says, “We did externals for P.E. We use Workspace as a way for our students to access the external exam online. We were able to submit it for them so they couldn’t edit it overnight, and then we could reopen it back up the next day.”

Siulua explained, “All I needed to do was click ‘publish,’ and then they had access to the exam at nine in the morning. It was perfect and made my life so much easier. The digital exam through Workspace as the platform is the way to go.”

She also prepares her learners through practice so they know exactly how to access the exam. She says, “It avoids the stress that they might experience if they can’t access their doc.”

Dunn says they are also able to monitor learners during exams through Hāpara Highlights, a screen monitoring tool. This allows educators to ensure that learners are focused on the assessment.

Building stronger bonds with families

Krishna says that because all of the learning resources and assignments are in a Workspace, it helps parents follow along with what their children need to accomplish. 

Dunn says that visibility in Hāpara also helps him engage in conversations with parents. “I have better conversations when I’m meeting with a parent and a student because I have access to the learning. I can make our pastoral conversations about the learning and the impact because I can see if a kid’s distracted or just not handing in work on time. I can see how it’s impacting their learning.”