Adding HODs into all class teams for their department

Introduction

At Cloud Design Box (CDB), we occasionally receive requests to include a Head of Department in all the class teams associated with their respective department. For instance, this could involve adding the Head of English to all English classes or adding the Head of Science to classes encompassing Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. The motivations behind such requests from a school or Head of Department may include:

• Supervise the assignments set by teachers
• Quality-check the resources used by teachers
• Keep an eye on student activity within the class team
• Virtually observe lessons

This short article lists the reasons why we do not recommend doing this, and what your school can do instead to get better outcomes using our wider product.

Disadvantages of adding a HOD into all class teams for their department

The main reason not to add a HOD into all class teams is that it would create a very cluttered and chaotic experience for that department leader - especially in larger schools. 

A Head of English, Mathematics, Science, or Humanities might be added to hundreds of class teams each year. This would cause their Teams app to always load very slowly, making it difficult for them to access their own classes quickly. They would also receive an unmanageable number of alerts and messages from that number of classes. And this could again have an impact on their ability to focus on messages and other activities within their own classes.

Alternatives to a HOD being in every class team

In the physical classroom, department leaders have strategies which allow them to monitor and ensure the quality of teaching and learning across all of the lessons they are responsible for - without marking every book or taking over each lesson themselves. Using the full capabilities of Cloud Design Box (CDB) and Microsoft 365, there are similar approaches for ensuring quality within the digital classroom.

• Our Assignment Dashboard allows senior leaders to see which subjects are setting the most (or least) assignments.
  The tool even allows you to drill down to look at assignments for individual classes and see the titles of each assignment. The tool also allows data about the assignments set to be exported to Excel, where the school data team can produce reports about a range of questions e.g. which subjects or year groups have the most work assigned. The data team could then pass these reports to HODs to inform them about teachers that need support in setting assignments.
  
  

• Centralised subject resources are easier to review for quality.
  The sites we create to hold resources for each curriculum subject. These same resources then appear in related class teams, and can be used in Assignments. So a department leader can review and ensure the quality of each of these resources, knowing that no other resources are likely to be visible to students or assigned to them.
  
  
• HODs, HOYs, and form tutors can review assignments for students using our Student Assignment Search tool.
  Our Student Assignment Search tool allows any member of teaching staff to search for a particular student and see the assignments which have been set for them. The tool also shows whether that student has handed in past assignments and what scores they achieved for them. They can even see the actual work which the student has submitted.
  
  So if a HOD has been told that a particular student is not completing assignments within their department, they can very quickly see that student's progress and ask the class teacher to take appropriate action. They can also check that a given student is not being overwhelmed by too much work being set at once.
  
  

• Arrange 'learning walk-throughs' or 'virtual lesson observations' using our Class Drop-ins Tool.
  Our Class Drop-ins  tool allows selected individuals to add any person to a class team which they don't teach. They can even specify how long that person should stay in the team before being removed automatically. So if a HOD wants to be in certain class teams temporarily to do a learning walk-through over a number of days/weeks, they can ask the Class Drop-ins tool to arrange that for them (see video guide below).