Hours are not the whole story
Our class has been creating a digital guide to the school for three weeks. We want new students to understand not only where rooms are, but also whom they can ask for help. At first, we measured progress by counting finished pages. Then we realised that this missed important work. Nadia has been interviewing students since the project began. She has written only two final paragraphs, but she has collected many useful questions. Mark has completed six pages because he is using short descriptions that the group checked last week. Comparing the number of pages would make his contribution look larger, although the tasks are different. We tried recording time next. This was useful for planning, but it created another problem. Some students worked slowly because the instructions were unclear; others already knew how to use the software. More hours did not always mean more learning or a better result. Now our weekly report has three sections: what we have finished, what we have been working on and what help we need. The report does not rank students. It helps us notice blocked tasks and share useful methods. We are still learning how to divide the work fairly. A progress report is most useful when it leads to a better next step, rather than simply producing a larger number.