69 4 4.3 METHOD 4.3.1 The Impact! tool Feedback was provided to teachers by means of the Impact! tool, a smartphone application that can be used on a student device (smartphone, iPad or tablet). Students sign in on the application (or web app) and teachers have access to a private web environment. Teachers choose the lesson they want to receive feedback on and at the end of that very lesson, students are asked to respond to the items in the tool. The items measure how a student perceives the lesson; for example, whether students think that the lesson connected well with their prior knowledge. Figure 1.1 (chapter 1) shows examples of Impact! items on a student phone (in the study, questions were presented in Dutch). Students respond to the items on a 4-point Likert scale. If an item does not apply, the option not applicable (niet van toepassing in Dutch) can be used (this option was added to three items). The “i” button provides additional information about how to use the tool. Every time the tool is used, teachers receive a summary of the feedback the students have given (for examples, see figures 4.1a and 4.1b). The feedback is confidential: the teacher does not know what an individual student answered. The web environment makes it possible for teachers to organize students into groups, based on students’ performance levels for the subject taught by the teacher (high, middle and low levels). As a result, students’ responses for an item are displayed per student performance group (see Figure 4.1a; different colours represent different groups). If the tool is used multiple times, then the change in the scores can be displayed per item (Figure 4.1b). 4.3.2 Development of the content of the questionnaire A company developed the technical part of the Impact! tool, based on the specifications developed by the author of this dissertation and her colleagues. The technology was tested in different classrooms until it worked perfectly. To develop the content of the items in the Impact! tool, f irst, the literature about effective teaching was studied. The results of several meta-analyses about effective teaching show a variety of teaching practices that are known to be effective for student learning (e.g., Creemers, 1994; Fauth et al., 2014; Muijs et al., 2014; Pianta & Hamre, 2006; Reynolds et al., 2014; Sammons et al., 1995). For this study, these practices were organized into seven general characteristics of effective teaching (Day et al., 2008; Marzano, 2003): 1. creating a supportive and positive classroom climate (Fraser, 1998a); 2. having well-organized and
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