Sunday, April 2, 2017

A second look at virtual schooling

I found this week's readings to be very interesting. Overall, I think my picture of online learning was fairly accurate, though I now know many more specifics. I was already aware of the many different factions offering online courses, and neither of the readings this week convinced me that this is a good idea. I would never want to see all online courses being created at the state level, as I believe non-profit organizations may have a lot to offer, and I do believe that some large and well established companies, such as Pearson, may do a very good job developing content. However, I also believe not all of the for-profit suppliers are of sufficient quality. I was pleased to see in the Keeping Pace Report that many states have either a state-run virtual school or have government agencies providing active oversight of online course offerings, in an attempt to assure quality. This also is connected to my fears about unqualified teachers, as I see now that while there are no across-the-board qualifications to teach an online course, individual states can set requirements. 

I was wrong in assuming that most virtual schooling is done from home. The Keeping Pace Report clearly states that most students are accessing online learning from a physical school or other learning center location. While I knew this was possible, I didn't realize it was so prevalent. The Barbour article also made a distinction between virtual schooling, which is often supplemental or part time and provided through public schools, and cyber schooling, which is full-time and more closely associated with charters and the home-schooling movement.

I was not at all surprised by Barbour's evidence that research on virtual schooling is simply not sufficient at this point in time. I was particularly struck by the fact that so many online students in Florida reportedly dropped out of courses, between 25 and 50 percent! Some studies fail to take into account this sort of information, and thus give very skewed results. Another part of the difficulty in researching online learning is, of course, in the fact that it can take so many different forms. Just a look at the Keeping Pace Report’s 3 pages of definitions gives a good picture of how complicated the online learning landscape actually is. 

I also found Barbour’s assertion that asynchronous classes are not taught nearly as well as synchronous classes online to be in line with my own expectations. I agree that asynchronous courses require different teaching skills than a classroom teacher normally uses, and that it's easy in the asynchronous model for very little actual teaching to occur. This is similar to my assertion that it's too easy to teach these kinds of classes poorly. 

This actually flies in the face of the several of NACOL's "myths" about online learning. They say it's a myth that online courses are easy to teach, and a myth that students are more likely to cheat online. They're correct that these aren't necessarily aspects of all online teaching, but I think calling them myths is really presenting an overly rosy picture. 

Indeed, I felt the 10 "myths" were really a lot of hype. Yes, I believe they are "myths" in the fact that they are not necessarily true of online learning, but many of them seem like common pitfalls that require a lot of careful planning and work to be avoided. This includes myth 4, that online students are isolated; myth 7, that online courses are easier; and myth 10, that online courses are an add-on burden to schools and teachers. Again, I believe all of these are IDEALLY untrue, but can easily become true if intentional steps aren't taken to avoid them.

Lastly, I will say that I was surprised by the fact that Michigan offers all public school students, grades 6-12, the opportunity to take up to 2 online courses each term. I was also surprised that they had so much choice, from MVS courses, district and ISD offerings, or community college offerings. I am curious how many students are aware of this, as I know only a few students who take advantage of this, and these are mainly advanced students and those who need credit recovery.

10 comments:

  1. Dayna,
    You touched on many crucial points here. Yes, the myths didn’t seem like myths to me as they can easily be considered “truths” in some situations. I do believe that online courses are beneficial in certain circumstances but by all means they’re not tailored to fit all students. In order to succeed in an online course at a young age, students need to possess certain characteristics. They need to be independent learners with enough motivation to not lose track.
    If I were given the opportunity to take online courses in school, I don’t think I would have succeeded. I don’t think I was driven enough to do it on my own in an online environment. I was more of a face to face learner that required guidance every step of the way. I am now more capable to enroll in online courses due to my age, maturity level and ambition. Therefore, the person I am now is not the same one from 15 years ago!
    Do you think you would have succeeded?

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  2. I am actually quite positive that I would have succeeded in an online course when I was younger. I was a shy, serious kid with some fairly esoteric interests, and I would have loved the chance to take an interesting class or two online. I was exactly the kind of learner you'd expect to thrive in online courses- independent, advanced, self-driven, and motivated.

    However, I also have some solid backing to this claim. The year I was slated to take geometry, we couldn't fit it into my schedule, so I asked to do an "independent study." Essentially, for one of my class hours I was given the geometry textbook and homework assignments, and I sat in a study hall reading and working. The study hall teacher gave me the same tests the regular class was given. I LOVED this. I really thrived, being able to learn directly from the book and to go at my own pace.

    I think one aspect vital to my success, completely aside from my own personality, was that I did have a specific time and place to do the work during the school day. There was also a study hall teacher who could see whether I was working or napping. Had I attempted to learn this same way, but needed to schedule time on my own, I'm not sure the results would have been the same.

    This really makes me interested in the idea of blended learning, flipped classrooms, and even fully online courses that are accessed by a student in a physical school setting. I think we're all aware that time management is not a skill possessed by most youths, and focus and motivation may be elusive. Having a protected time and place to complete their work, and having an adult in the room keeping an eye out, may be enough to keep most students moving forward, even if they're not typically self-driven and independent.

    Thus, while students definitely need independence, motivation, and self-direction to thrive in traditional virtual schooling, I think schools can provide time, space, and supervision to aid those who may lack some of these characteristics. I also expect they may not need quite the same traits in synchronous models and blended learning,

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    1. What you said is absolutely true! I think blended learning or online courses that are accessed by students in the school setting will work with all types of students. This will also guarantee that all students have equal access to the technological tools needed as well as internet. Besides, it will also assist with time management as not all students can manage their time at this age if given the full freedom to work at their own pace. This is also a great way to introduce students to 21st Century tools that they might not have access to outside of school.

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  3. Dayna, excellent post analyzing and separating the truths from the myths about online schooling, and explaining in detail your thoughts on various points made in the readings.

    For the record, to your and Sarah's questions in the comments here, I think that I could have done well in an online environment, but to your point, I would have done better if there was a teacher watching over me and ensuring that I was keeping up with content. I am not the same person I was 15 years ago either, and I hadn't considered before reading Sarah's post how that may have impacted my education had I not had a teacher specifically there to guide me and help me grow the skills necessary to be successful as an independent learner.

    One of Dr. Siko's focuses this week was on the students in your school who are utilizing the virtual learning opportunities available to them. Since you have already addressed this in your subsequent posts above, I was curious if you could provide any further thoughts on how your school is set up to enable this process. Though it sounds like your students may not be aware of their rights to online learning opportunities, how might you tackle this task if it was up to you as an administrator to potentially retrain staff members, or to set up course offerings for students interested in pursuing unique interests that may not typically be offered in your school? My conundrum when thinking of this question is how a school would be able to function if a larger share of the student body began taking online coursework offerings compared to the few we see today. It could present new opportunities as well as challenges for staff who may see class sizes shrink or their roles change entirely in their school setting.

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    1. One thing to keep in mind is that Dewey and all of the other great pedagogical theorists believed that most students could learn most anything if given proper time and proper instructional strategies that fit the need of the learner. Now, have we been able to do that in our current system? Not really. The opportunities available for online and blended learning provide greater possibilities. In reality, though, things like funding, market forces, profit motives, and even the notion that public schools are really affordable day care, get in the way.

      Your concerns are very real, and this is an area where we must 'research the research' because there are a lot of agendas at play.

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  4. Alan, you make a great point about how our schools may change with a higher percentage of online learners. I admit that I’m not clear on how this is handled in my school, other than the fact that students go through counselors to deal with all scheduling issues. I did just look at the school website, as well as the course guide for students, and neither mentions online classes at all.

    I see a number of reasons why my school wouldn’t want to be pushing online classes. Honestly, I’m not sure we have enough computers for everyone who would need them, considering that computer labs are often booked for classes. We’d also need more teachers to supervise students. Perhaps some teachers would be freed as fewer physical classes of students would remain, but I’m not convinced this is the case. I imagine most students will still want to take classes with their friends.

    It seems like a waste of a good subject teacher to stand in a room simply overseeing students in their online classes. If class sizes shrink due to students taking advantage of online alternatives, I'd imagine a better use of the suddenly extraneous teachers would be to help design and teach blended learning or online courses. They will need training to do so, especially if they're to work on asynchronous classes, which, as Barbour pointed out, require very different teaching skills.

    I'm also curious if we'd see students start avoiding unpopular teachers or classes by using the online alternatives. Could this be a way to "weed out" bad teachers? Or would students start to avoid only the "tough" teachers, leaving some of our strongest, most experienced teachers with few students? If administration notices a high percentage of a teacher's students jumping ship for virtual classes, what should they do about it?

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    1. It's a scary thought about how these factors could alter the landscape for schools across our country, but I am somewhat convinced the more that we study this trend, the more likely that is to happen within the next 5-10 years. One of the reasons I am currently taking these courses is to attempt to stay ahead of the trend and adapt while its still an option to do so. It would be frightening to be a strong, tough teacher, as you mentioned up above, bullied into changing their coursework or requirements so students would remain interested in taking their classes. How frightening to imagine a school turning into a popularity contest, where teachers have to self promote in order to keep their positions intact.

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  5. Dayna, although I was not surprised by the online courses offered by the State of Michigan, I do believe that not many students/parents know about them. I believe districts that struggle with having adequate technology have been slow to implement online technology in their schools and also share availability of such programs.

    I feel my district has been one of the ones to get a slow start with implementing and seeing the advantages of online learning. That being said, online learning is now growing in my district as we find more and more unique ways to implement it. We use it as blended instruction in grades from kindergarten to high school and also adult education. We used it as distance learning in high schools to help students with credit recovery and also to earn accelerated credits.

    What has been your experience with online learning?

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    1. My experience has solely been as a graduate student. I've taken I think 4 classes online, but I have seen huge differences in quality and the ways they were taught. I've taken a class where I literally heard nothing from the instructor, the assignments were posted weekly, and at the end of the week we were required to complete a few multiple choice assessments, graded by the computer. I wasn't convinced that the teacher ever even checked the site. I've also taken a course where instruction was in the form of powerpoints, and the multiple-choice assessments were taken directly from the book publisher's website, where they were all ANSWERED. What's the point of this?

      On the other hand, my other online courses (one of which is this one) were good, with instruction provided in multiple formats, discussion between classmates, and lots of communication and interaction with the instructor. So I guess I'm running about 50% for online classes that I think are being taught well. This isn't high enough for me to see online learning as anything but a crapshoot, at this point. I think we really need to be vigilant with online courses, making sure they are structured well and continue to be taught well.

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  6. I agree... even though online learning takes place through the computer or other devices, the success on them still depend on the instructor and how they implement the course.

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