California Department of Education, Special Education Division’s special project, California Services for Technical Assistance and Training (CalSTAT) is funded through a contract with the Napa County Office of Education. CalSTAT is partially funded from federal funds, State Grants #H027A080116A. Additional federal funds are provided from a federal competitively awarded State Personnel Development Grant to California (#H323A070011) provided from the U.S. Department of Education Part D of the Individuals with Disabilities Education act (IDEA). Opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of the U. S. Department of Education.
The TEACH California website, www.teachcalifornia.org, was established in 2004 to help in addressing the continuing teacher shortage in California. The Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) Leadership Project, funded by the California Department of Education (CDE), is focused on delivering information resources to potential teachers via the convenient interface of teachcalifornia.org.
After five years of operation, the website has seen over two million visits, from over one million visitors, generating over eight million page views, and continues to be a resource attracting an average of approximately 1,000 visits per day.
Web-tracking software has recorded that over 10% of visitors made two or more visits in the same month, including 120,000 who accessed the site at least three times in a single month. Additional web statistics are summarized starting on page 2.
| Prior to SPDG | 2008-09 | 2009-10 | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Website Visits | 1,769,000 | 274,000 | 321,000 | 2,364,000 |
| Unique Visitors | 980,000 | 169,000 | 167,000 | 1,316,000 |
| Visitors who made one visit | 776,000 | 146,000 | 145,000 | 1,067,000 |
| Visitors who made two visits | 103,000 | 14,000 | 12,000 | 129,000 |
| Visitors who made 3+ visits | 101,000 | 9,000 | 10,000 | 120,000 |
| Pages Viewed | 8,660,000 | 1,171,000 | 1,302,000 | 8,133,000 |
TEACH California is part of California’s special education teacher recruitment effort under the State Personnel Development Grant (SPDG), offering additional information and materials to bolster teacher recruitment in all areas, particularly math and science. It has been operated by the Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE) since it was established in March, 2004.
Web development and outreach activities initiated in these first two fiscal years of the SPDG (Year 1, 2008-09 and Year 2, 2009-10) have solidified TEACH California’s web presence and administration.
A visit is a series of actions that begins when a visitor views the first page of the website, and ends when the visitors leaves the site. A single visit can be brief and cursory or extended and meaningful. While visits are somewhat reduced in volume from the first four years that the website was online, the number of visits to teachcalifornia.org increased by 17% in the second year of the SPDG.
A visitor is someone who may visit the website one or many times. Unique visitors are tracked on a monthly basis, so an individual who visits several times over the course of the year may be counted as multiple “unique visitors.” Despite the increase in visits to teachcalifornia.org, the number of visitors declined by 1% in the second year of the SPDG, suggesting that while more people aren’t accessing the site, they are accessing more of its content.
| Visits | Unique Visitors | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SPDG Year 1 | SPDG Year 2 | SPDG Year 1 | SPDG Year 2 | |
| July | 27,000 | 23,000 | 16,000 | 13,000 |
| August | 24,000 | 23,000 | 15,000 | 13,000 |
| September | 21,000 | 25,000 | 14,000 | 14,000 |
| October | 24,000 | 29,000 | 15,000 | 14,000 |
| November | 22,000 | 29,000 | 13,000 | 14,000 |
| December | 20,000 | 26,000 | 12,000 | 12,000 |
| January | 25,000 | 31,000 | 16,000 | 16,000 |
| February | 23,000 | 29,000 | 14,000 | 15,000 |
| March | 24,000 | 32,000 | 15,000 | 16,000 |
| April | 21,000 | 25,000 | 13,000 | 14,000 |
| May | 22,000 | 26,000 | 13,000 | 14,000 |
| June | 23,000 | 23,000 | 12,000 | 13,000 |
One of the goals of the SPDG is to see the number of visitors to teachcalifornia.org increase by 10% per year. While this goal is being met in terms of visits (+17%) and visitors who visit three or more times (+11%), it must be noted that this explicit goal was not met in the second year of the SPDG.
| SPDG Year 1 | SPDG Year 2 | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website Visits | 274,000 | 321,000 | +17% |
| Unique Visitors | 169,000 | 167,000 | -1% |
| Visitors who made one visit | 146,000 | 145,000 | -1% |
| Visitors who made two visits | 14,000 | 12,000 | -14% |
| Visitors who made 3+ visits | 9,000 | 10,000 | +11% |
| Pages Viewed | 1,171,000 | 1,302,000 | +11% |
The TEACH California website includes a number of pages offering different content. The following chart summarizes the most-accessed pages at teachcalifornia.org. The entry page of the website was the highest-traffic page with almost 229,380 visits so far since July 2008, and is excluded from the chart.
| Page | SPDG Year 1 | SPDG Year 2 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Understand the Requirements | 36,096 | 34,920 | 71016 |
| Find a Teaching Job | 29,438 | 25,383 | 54821 |
| Search the TEACH California Website | 21,732 | 21,292 | 43024 |
| Requirements for Secondary (Single Subject) | 20,232 | 20,536 | 40768 |
| Answers to Common Questions | 11,455 | 16,574 | 28029 |
| Requirements for Elementary (Multiple Subject) | 15,858 | 15,238 | 31096 |
| Make and Follow Your Plan | 15,188 | 13,343 | 28531 |
| Distinguished Teachers | 1,491 | 12,427 | 13918 |
| Find the Right Preparation Program | 13,525 | 12,056 | 25581 |
| Decide if Teaching is For You | 13,210 | 11,330 | 24540 |
The TEACH California website also offers a number of materials for educators and prospective teachers to order or download, with a distribution of nearly 125,000 over the first two years of the SPDG.
| SPDG Year 1 | SPDG Year 2 | Total | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shipped | Downloaded | Shipped | Downloaded | ||
| Teach Math | 9,486 | 881 | 4,944 | 11,646 | 26,957 |
| Teach Special Ed | 0 | 993 | 4,525 | 13,788 | 19,306 |
| Teach Science | 9,237 | 414 | 4,947 | 3,903 | 18,501 |
| Paraeducator | 6,497 | 1,247 | 2,585 | 4,731 | 15,060 |
| Sevice Learning | 7,084 | 340 | 2,733 | 2,370 | 12,527 |
| Prep Programs Chart | 0 | 5,557 | 0 | 6,277 | 11,834 |
| Become a SE Teacher | 7,991 | 3,662 | 0 | 0 | 11,653 |
| Bookmarks | 0 | 0 | 5,524 | 0 | 5,524 |
| Poster | 33 | 555 | 829 | 1,047 | 2,464 |
| Toolkit | 448 | 0 | 58 | 0 | 506 |
| CD | 16 | 0 | 293 | 0 | 309 |
| CD Guide | 8 | 0 | 290 | 0 | 298 |
| Total | 40,800 | 13,649 | 26,728 | 43,762 | 124,939 |
Web-tracking software also collected statistics on how visitors to the TEACH California website arrived, either directly or referred by another website. Roughly 50% of visits came directly to teachcalifornia.org, as when a visitors types in the url directly or accesses a bookmark. When a visitor was directed to teachcalifornia.org by another website, that websites’ addressed was recorded.
| Referring Domain | Referrals | Percent |
|---|---|---|
| 54706 | 48% | |
| Yahoo, MSN, or other Search Engine/Webmail (not Google) | 20412 | 18% |
| California Government (ca.gov) or K-12 School District | 12692 | 11% |
| College or University (California) | 7587 | 7% |
| calstateteach.net | 5025 | 4% |
| College or University (Out of State) | 2021 | 2% |
| Csumentor.edu | 1528 | 1% |
| teachingtips.com | 1418 | 1% |
| jobstar.org | 1317 | 1% |
| Other | 4571 | 4% |
| Sites Refering Fewer than 100 Hits | 2690 | 2% |
Education-related websites accounted for 39,000 (27%) referred visits to teachcalifornia.org.
Google was the largest single referrer to teachcalifornia.org, with 48% of all internet referred visits, and other search engine domains such as Yahoo and MSN accounted for another 18%. It should be noted that some internet users find it easier to use a search engine than to type out a URL, even when they have a direct reference available. Some of these referrals may have also come from links clicked in an email, as most of these domains also host free email services.
This document was developed for CalSTAT by the SPDG Evaluation Team of Cheryl “Li” Walter, PhD, and Alan Wood.
CalSTAT (California Services for Technical Assistance and Training), at Napa County Office of Education, is a special project of the California Department of Education, Special Education Division. Visit CalSTAT at http://www.calstat.org.
“California Department of Education, Special Education Division’s special project, California Services for Technical Assistance and Training (CalSTAT) is funded through a contract with the Napa County Office of Education. CalSTAT is partially funded from federal funds, State Grants #H027A080116A. Additional federal funds are provided from a federal competitively awarded State Personnel Development Grant to California (#H323A070011) provided from the U.S. Department of Education Part D of the Individuals with Disabilities Education act (IDEA).
“This project is supported by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). Opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of the U.S. Department of Education.”