Abstract: At The Virtual High School (VHS, Inc.) our vision is to prepare students to be successful in college, careers, and life, and that vision is best supported by building bridges, sharing resources, expanding learning opportunities, and creating a network of schools and online providers. We’re looking to expand our collaborative further by identifying additional partners to help our nonprofit with some of the challenges we’re identifying below, and we want to hear from you!

When The Virtual High School (VHS, Inc.) started over 20 years ago we were the only supplemental online provider serving K-12 students nationwide. Back then there were far fewer options for course platforms, tools, and student information systems to support online learning, so we were working with some customized and homegrown systems and performing a lot of manual and batch operations.

In the beginning, the enrollment numbers were small enough that this was manageable. In fact, the biggest challenge we faced as an organization was proving that online learning was a legitimate option for expanding student learning opportunities, and that we weren’t trying to replace teachers or local schools. We believe that the majority of students benefit from taking most of their courses through their local brick and mortar school.

It has been awesome to see many additional online program initiatives develop over the years, and we’ve been thrilled to provide guidance, share our resources and support, and also learn from many of them. This community of K-12 educators is brilliant and generous, and just as passionate about online learning and teaching as we are.

As a mission-focused not-for-profit organization, our big question is: How do we enable more choice of content and courses for our students given our very limited resources? This is a question that’s often asked by leaders in brick and mortar schools as well. To this end, there has been a good amount of effort made around collaboration and the sharing of content between virtual schools and traditional schools. But doing that requires that the content “plugs in easily,” and that’s where the issue of interoperability of courses comes into play.

We can all do the same things independently or we can join forces to be a powerhouse and benefit from shared resources. We’re all ultimately working on the same goal of preparing students to be successful. There are membership organizations, such as IMS Global Learning Consortium, which focus on developing interoperability standards for educational technology. What if that same member organization or one similar could also support a network of sharing between K-12 organizations for things like content, teachers, classrooms, learning platforms, and professional development?

The Virtual High School has been identifying partners and exploring the potential for building better distribution channels, and this has led us to a mountain of questions and challenges. When we’re considering content sharing or classroom and teacher sharing, some of the questions we’ve been discussing are:

1. Where is the content being stored and served from?
2. Do we need to support multiple Learning Management Systems at each school or is there a way to build this network of shared resources so it’s platform agnostic and students and teachers at each school have a streamlined and consistent user experience across courses? Can we streamline user experience for school admin and staff? How about for sys admin, training, and end user support?
3. How best can we make content easily searchable and consumable by teachers and schools? How can we give teachers the freedom to choose lessons, modules, tools, activities, and/or the full course?
4. How best to support content ownership, modifications, and version control, while also enabling ongoing improvement and course maintenance?
5. How to support multiple sets of state and national standards?
6. Who is sharing what with whom? And how to ensure healthy community with equitable give-and-take amongst providers?
7. Where is the student work and data being stored? And how do we ensure data security and privacy within this network?
8. How do we support various course schedules, and different release dates and due dates within the content?
9. How do we eliminate hurdles and make registering for online courses as easy and consistent as registering for a local face-to-face course?
10. How can we best track progress, success, and gaps across systems?
11. How do we do all this without breaking the bank?

The future is bright, there are many high quality and innovative programs, and the networking potential is exciting!

At The Virtual High School (VHS, Inc.) our vision is to prepare students to be successful in college, careers, and life, and that vision is best supported by building bridges, sharing resources, expanding learning opportunities, and creating a network of schools and online providers. We believe nothing is more important than educating the next generation, and there is no greater superpower than teamwork! We hope you’ll consider joining us as we continue with our mission to expand learning opportunities for all of our students across the nation and around the world.

About The Virtual High School

The Virtual High School (VHS Inc.) is an online learning pioneer. Since 1996, the organization has set the standard for quality online education. VHS prepares students for college, careers, and life through supportive, instructor-led online and blended classroom experiences.  The nonprofit organization provides high school and middle school courses taught in global online classrooms and online professional development for educators, as well as custom course development and offerings tailored to meet each school’s unique needs. The Virtual High School is accredited by both Middle States Association Commission on Elementary and Secondary Schools (MSA-CESS), and AdvancED. Courses are approved for initial eligibility by NCAA. For more information, visit www.vhslearning.org or call (978) 897-1900.

Our nation is engaged in a rather heated conversation about how to eliminate injuries and deaths from gun violence in U.S. schools. Formal and informal debates are occurring in the halls of Congress, within state Capitol buildings, at our workplaces and around kitchen tables in our homes. Social media has exploded with conversation, and everyone seems to have a strong opinion on this critical subject. In many cases, intelligent and reasonable people have taken opposite positions when proposing solutions to school gun violence.

Recently, however, I encountered a “solution” to this problem that surprised me.

Due to these tragedies, at least one set of parents in my area has begun to seriously consider full-time cyberschool as an option for their children. They no longer feel comfortable placing their loved ones in brick-and-mortar schools. I am afraid other parents in Michigan will also begin to consider this as a viable alternative to face-to-face instruction.

To some degree, this mentality has existed for a while. Since the beginning of the public education system, a small percentage of parents have elected to homeschool their children for one reason or another, sometimes out of fear of the violence or ideologies they could be exposed to in school. But what we see now is something different. We have parents who have put their faith in the public school system for years who are now are genuinely afraid for their children’s lives upon dropping them off at school.

As a parent, I fully understand the emotion behind this response; however, implemented as a large-scale solution to the problem of gun violence, it concerns me on multiple levels. There are many good reasons to promote the value of online learning, but gun violence should not be one of them.

The Place of Online Learning within the Education System

For the past 20 years, I have dedicated my professional career to promoting the value of online learning in the K-12 community. During this time, I have engaged in hundreds of policy discussions with school principals, curriculum directors, district superintendents, legislators, parents and other stakeholders. I’ve listened to a plethora of perceptions about online learning, including that it:

• differentiates instruction
• generates cost savings
• diminishes the role of the teacher
• eliminates teacher jobs
• provides equity regardless of zip code
• privatizes public education
• represents a major reform strategy
• personalizes learning
• is inferior to face-to-face instruction
• represents innovation

Not once in the past 20 years has someone told me that online education is a good substitute for face-to-face instruction because of gun violence in traditional schools.

My professional opinion is that few children benefit from full-time online learning. Those who do benefit from full-time cyberschool (or virtual charter school) typically have serious medical conditions, athletic obligations or other extenuating life circumstances. In these cases, online learning can provide students who do not have the option to attend a face-to-face school with a pathway to education.

As a leader in the K-12 online education space, I fully believe that all students should have opportunities to experience online learning in some capacity, as this has increasingly become a critical part of the 21st-century learning skills required of them by colleges and workplaces. It is for this reason that Michigan became the first state in the nation to adopt an online learning requirement as a condition of high school graduation.

By and large, however, I do not believe a mass exodus of students from brick-and-mortar establishments to virtual schools would be beneficial for our children or for our society. There are still countless social benefits that children receive from working with teachers and peers in a face-to-face setting that should not be overlooked.

Migrating students into online courses is not a real solution, but merely an avoidance of the problem of gun violence.

Room for Growth in Online Learning

There is room for growth in the realm of online learning. We ought to investigate ways to leverage the technology at our fingertips to deal with some of the underlying issues behind gun violence. Specifically, more can be done to harness online platforms and communication tools to help address the social and emotional health of teens as they struggle with adolescence.

Clearly, too many young people are bullied, teased and ostracized. For students who feel uncomfortable asking for help in face-to-face settings, digital spaces can provide students with safe places to explore critical topics that are not consistently discussed in traditional classrooms.

Why is this? In part, it stems from what I like to call “intimate anonymity.” Certain topics are more easily shared behind the buffer of a screen. It’s why the Internet frightens us parents so profoundly — we aren’t always entirely sure who our children are speaking to and what they are sharing with them.

But this intimate anonymity can also be leveraged to the benefit of our children, so long as we create the appropriate contexts for them to explore in private what they might not be comfortable expressing in face-to-face settings.

Our online instructors regularly report surprise at how willing their online students are to share information about themselves. This might seem counterintuitive, but imagine how the following scenario might happen differently in a face-to-face classroom compared to a private message between teacher and student.

A teacher asks a student, “What’s going on, Sarah? You haven’t turned in your homework for almost a week.”

In a busy classroom, Sarah may blush and provide some off-handed excuse. But, through the privacy of an email, she may be willing to reveal more. Her instructor may discover, through this more personal form of communication, that she’s been struggling profoundly since her parents’ recent divorce and she needs help.

We already see some progress in this particular growth area. Some schools are using apps like “Say Something” or “Safe 2 Tell” to provide students with an anonymous forum to report events both at school and outside of school that cause them distress or discomfort. Some believe that the widespread use of apps like this could save lives by allowing school officials to intervene before tragedy occurs.

Other online services such as Evolution Labs’ digital character development and behavior intervention programs have emerged to help teach students to think critically about cyberbullying, mental health, anger management, substance abuse, social awareness, goal-setting and stress-management. For many students, it is easier to explore these critical topics at their own pace in a safe digital space, rather than being asked to speak about them in-person with 23 of their peers.

It is my hope that tools like these will build awareness and create new ways for children to learn and communicate with each other and promote civility. We are all discouraged that a growing number of children and parents view traditional schools as unsafe places. Regardless of your personal stance on possible solutions, I know all educators stand united in wanting to see an end to school violence. I hope local, state and federal leaders can put their differences aside and act with a sense of urgency to address this growing and complex societal challenge.

About the Author

Jamey Fitzpatrick, president and CEO of Michigan Virtual, serves as a catalyst for change and a champion of innovation in education. He provides strategic leadership for Michigan Virtual, a Michigan-based nonprofit organization focused on advancing K-12 digital learning and teaching. In addition to his previous leadership roles at the Michigan Department of Education and Saginaw ISD, Jamey also worked in the private sector for Pitney Bowes Corporation. He serves on the Board of Trustees for Olivet College.

Cooperative and collaborative learning are not new concepts in the field of education – they have been studied for decades and have been used as classroom practices for much longer than that. Although experts in the field might differentiate between the two, I’d suggest that the subtle differences are not all that important. What IS important is that the value proposition of each is similar: to create conditions where students gain interpersonal and cognitive skills necessary for work and life. Development of interpersonal and cognitive skills necessary to partner with others is a critical priority of education.

When specified, the major differences between cooperation and collaboration are with the role of the instructor in the process and the degree to which the community develops valued and shared vision. Cooperative activities are what many consider “typical” group- or partner-based activities: jigsaw, think-pair-share, peer-review, lab groups, or projects where students create a single, unique product that is shared with the class. Students work individually and together and are accountable to the group for the overall success of the activity. Work is structured, with clear expectations and tasks for students. A truly collaborative activity involves more open-ended assignments where students work together to solve a problem or make meaning together. There isn’t as much structure presented to the students during the beginning of the activity, leaving the students to work out the “how” of their project along with the “what.”

Cooperative activities are more often utilized in the secondary classroom because the teacher assists in organizing and supervising work, whereas truly collaborative activities require students own the process of learning more independently (Brufee 1999). It is a nuanced difference, which is why many use the term collaboration to describe both types of activities.

Regardless of terminology, we should all agree that as students progress through education they should be presented with frequent and meaningful opportunities to work with and learn from each other. There are many benefits to learning in groups – the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University outlines many benefits of group exercises on their website. The list includes development and reinforcement of skills that transcend individual and group exercises, such as: time management, project planning and task management, effective communication, and sharing or receiving feedback on performance. In addition, there are a variety of skills that are specific to collaboration, including: delegation of responsibilities, sharing and respecting diverse perspectives, leveraging knowledge and skills of others, risk-taking, establishing group identity, and developing a personal voice and perspective (“What are benefits of group work?”).

Let’s face it: working in groups can be hard. Group activities can be especially challenging in an online classroom where students may live in different states or countries. When roadblocks present themselves, teachers may be tempted to switch to an individualized version of an activity or move away from group activities in the future. When I was teaching in my online classroom in the early 2000s there were times I was tempted to do so myself.

Abandoning collaboration because it isn’t easy sends our students the wrong message. They learn that it might be better to go it alone rather than work together, and the opportunity to build those crucial life-skills might be lost. Partnership for 21^st Century Learning published a research brief entitled “What We Know about Collaboration” that contains valuable information and highlights examples of success. This report affirms the value of collaboration as a critical skill to develop in our students.

Instead of tossing in the towel, here are some ideas to reflect upon. This list is not exhaustive and certainly doesn’t guarantee a successful group exercise, but the items highlighted below are the result of feedback from our students, teachers, and curriculum staff that have worked in cohort-based online classrooms for the past 20 years. They are the benchmarks used by our curriculum team as we discuss online group experiences and are an excellent starting point for any educator interested in enhancing cooperative or collaborative activities.

• How important have I made community in my classroom?
  • Have we gotten to know each other?
  • Have we established classroom norms and/or a social contract?
  • Are meaningful, content-rich discussions regular occurrences?
  • Do students work with each other frequently, or is “group work” saved for rare occasions/big projects only?
• Is the activity created in a manner that will lead to success?
  • Do students understand what needs to be accomplished?
  • Are directions and outcomes accessible to all students?
  • Are roles and expectations outlined and/or assigned?
  • Do students have adequate time to get to establish closer working relationships and achieve the goals of the activities?
  • How am I available to support individuals and groups?
• Are students incentivized to fully participate in the group?
  • How is group activity assessed? Do students earn credit for quality participation?
  • Are elements of the project interdependent enough that a single group grade should be applied?
  • Is the work contextualized so that students understand the value of the learning?

References/Resources
Bruffee, K. A. (1999). Collaborative learning: Higher education, interdependence, and the authority of knowledge (2nd ed.). Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

“What are the benefits of group work?” Carnegie Melon University,
https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/design/instructionalstrategies/groupprojects/benefits.html. Accessed 17 January 2018.

“What we Know about Collaboration” Partnership for 21 st Century Learning,
http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/docs/Research/P21_4Cs_Research_Brief_Series_-_Collaboration.pdf. Accessed 18 January 2018.

 

Idaho has always been classified as a rural state, 479 miles long and 305 miles wide. Idaho fits snugly between economic urban powerhouse states Washington and Oregon and more rural neighbors Montana and Wyoming. The geographic placement of Idaho creates a unique situation when providing equal education access and opportunity to all students throughout the state. Idaho’s population is comprised of 44 counties – seven urban and 37 rural – as classified by the Idaho Department of Labor. Idaho is anything but a ‘one size fits all’ state.

As time passes more people are leaving rural areas out of economic necessity such as seeking better job opportunities, education access and health care amenities. Migration out-flow data shows that rural counties have rates of out-migration – up to 17 percent annually. Though these changes mimic national trends, rural communities throughout Idaho are still active and pushing to thrive. One of the assets Idaho Rural Schools are able to access is the Idaho Digital Learning which currently is supporting 100% of the Idaho Public Schools by providing access and opportunity for students to take engaging and rigorous classes regardless of where they live or the schools that they go to. Approximately three quarters of districts in Idaho are considered rural as defined in Idaho statute. These districts, and the schools within them, struggle to retain teachers and address technology needs in order to deliver effective instruction. To support rural districts and schools, Idaho Digital Learning is able to offer solutions to the challenges rural districts face. During the 2016-2017 school year, Idaho Digital Learning served 27,717 student enrollments and offered 220 unique semester courses.

For many rural students, opportunities such as Advanced Placement (AP) and Dual Credit (Concurrent Credit) courses are not available at their local school. Through Idaho Digital Learning, students currently have access to 12 Advanced Placement courses and 40 dual credit courses, each of which have been aligned and approved for college credit through an in-state higher ed institution. By leveraging these course opportunities, students can accelerate their education and lower the cost of their college degrees.

Idaho Digital Learning is also a proud partner with Idaho Career and Technical Education to provide CTE Digital that leverages online learning to provide access to CTE programs for all students across the state.Students who complete a full CTE program can test for a technical certificate and exit high school ready to enter their chosen career field. Students can also enter a college or technical program and work toward the next level of certification in their career field.

 Rural school districts often are not able to hire local teachers in a particular content area either due to funding constraints or lack of available certified instructors in their region. A critical growth area for Idaho Digital Learning has been a custom solution designed to provide an instructor for classes to address this lack of rural capacity.The custom solution is a joint partnership between an individual school and Idaho Digital Learning where online classes are taken during the school day inside a proctored lab at the local school. For example, many of the small rural Idaho school districts are not able to find certified computer science and math instructors, therefore, Idaho Digital Learning is able to provide the online instructor, curriculum, and student support for their students. The content is also serving as classes taken in part, to the students experience in learning online and to prepare them for success in college and career.

 Idaho Digital Learning also recently concluded a three year Rural Utility Services (RUS) grant through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The focus of this grant was to provide technology carts to sixteen schools throughout the state to enhance technology integration and utilization. The carts are being leveraged to provide access to direct instruction in STEM-based courses. Schools and districts receiving the technology carts can also leverage the technology to help meet a variety of student and teacher needs.

In addition to the technology carts, Idaho Digital Learning has also purchased and installed a NetLab. This technology allows students remote access to a server to complete hands-on activities needed to complete CISCO Academy courses, Cybersecurity courses, and other networking courses. Access to this technology will again provide students with equity and access to opportunities, regardless of their zip code.

 

 

 

 

 

Georgia Virtual is embarking on establishing a new learning environment for teachers and staff to reflect the values of rigor, flexibility, and quality that have guided our student course offerings. This initiative will eventually include professional learning opportunities for educators and employees across the state. Building on our experiences with badging, digital credentials and teacher training, Georgia Virtual will begin offering learning pathways – tracks with multiple options for learning styles, professional interests, and the program’s strategic needs.

Several years ago, Georgia Virtual evaluated the professional development provided to new online teachers and found that the model was both extensive and effective, but expensive. Like many online programs, onboarding new teachers is a lengthy process where candidates learn the principles of quality online teaching, train in the nuts and bolts of systems, and have a mentored experience before finally instructing a class. This preparation often took two semesters. Some educators expect online learning to be a simple extension of the physical classroom. Too many would persevere through the complete, but costly, training and then resign after, or even during, their first semester. A cost analysis of training new online teachers led to the decision to develop a free, open course – Effective Online Teaching. This course provides the requisite basic knowledge and skills to be a successful online teacher. Candidates are required to complete the course before applying for a position with GaV.

Following research on microcredentialing, the Effective Online Teaching course was designed to provide two sets of badges signifying separate levels of achievement. Our dedication to Open Education Resources led to the notion of keeping the content open and available for anyone to complete and earn self-awarded badges. These badges are a viable marker for activity and are often sufficient, especially when the course is completed with a cohort. However, the hiring process dictated a verifiable credential to replace a section of the previous training. The verified badges for the Effective Online Training course have become a prerequisite credential, on par with a state teaching certificate. Over 400 educators have earned the verified badge issued through Credly, including all GaVS faculty.

Wanting to assure that any badge provided through our program was universally accepted on social media sites and easily integrated into teacher portfolios, program representatives attended the IMS Global Summit. Our attendees focused solely on a thread of presentations dedicated to digital credentials and standards for issuing badges. Besides the numerous specific takeaways, our general impression was that badging, digital transcripts, and competency-based learning are all coalescing into a viable ecosystem for professional learning.

For the Georgia Virtual program, 2017-2018 is a development year for the new learning pathways. In this design, every educator will be placed on one of three pathways: Professional, Accomplished, and Distinguished. Initially, teachers are assigned based on experience and achievement. The pathways will help determine support levels, including targeted mentoring, classroom observations, and suggested professional development options.

The Professional pathway assembles all the new online teacher induction process. The graphic below offers a mockup of the steps our instructors will take along the way.

Completing the Professional pathway allows teachers to share a collective base knowledge and set of skills. Teachers that progress to the Accomplished pathway will focus more advanced skills and offer more individual choice in honing their expertise. For instance, the FERPA course for Professional Teachers will focus on compliance, whereas the Accomplished FERPA course will focus on tools to comply with FERPA, but share information. The Accomplished level will also indicate opportunities for presenting skills and tools. This pathway will also open mentoring and certain leadership positions within the program. The notion of branching out is critical to the top two pathways. Teachers will share a collective base knowledge and set of skills, but they will decide on the specific credentials to acquire. Mirroring the differentiation we provide for our students, providing instructors with personalized professional learning options is critical to the top two pathways.

The Distinguished Teacher pathway will acknowledge commitment, experience, and achievement. This pathway will also serve as an endorsement in leadership as well as offer independence to teachers that want to pursue outside opportunities. The focus for this pathway will be advanced skills and sharing expertise.

As the learning pathways develop and new professional learning opportunities are created, Georgia Virtual is incorporating the QM Higher Education rubric into the development to meet the needs of adult online learners. The Professional Pathway will encompass the necessary tools for new online teachers. The pathways beyond Professional will incorporate outside professional learning experiences into this ecosystem. The goal is to have dynamic interface for every teacher to recognize their progress and the opportunities available.

Building on the success of badges and digital credentials, Georgia Virtual is hoping to take a few steps forward by a creating a systematic ecosystem of professional learning. This initiative will continue to focus on the onboarding of new teachers, but expand to provide meaningful opportunities for instructors to grow and innovate in their online or blended classrooms.

Submitted by Richard Copeland, Supervisor of Teacher Quality, Georgia Virtual