Two Steps Forward . . . Several Back

Posted on July 22, 2009 by JimS

Judith SotirBy Judith Sotir

I absolutely agree with Judith McDaniel (What Students Want and How to Design for It: A Reflection on Online Teaching, posted on July 19, 2009) that online learning of any sort requires a different dynamic than traditional teaching techniques. Although technology has moved from an interesting idea in the latter part of the last century to a defining role in this century, I don’t see schools necessarily following suit.

A good example is a recent workshop I did for staff from a local school district. The instructors specifically requested a workshop on “Using Blogs and Wikis in the Classroom” and were willing to give up some summer sun hours to attend. The tech coordinator (or facilitator, since the position of technology coordinator was eliminated and a principal stepped in to fill the gap) was more than willing to set up the workshop. However, when I got to the school (and remember, the TOPIC was blogs and wikis), I found that the firewalls blocked all access to any form of social websites, including blogs and wikis. I spent a good amount of time with the IT department getting access to a limited number of blogs and had to verify the content of those (even my own, by the way) I was given access to.

laptop with the words The Internet crossed out by a red St Andrew's Cross

Even after gaining access, throughout the workshop, that access was spotty, as links were sometimes allowed and sometimes blocked. From the instructor viewpoint, wanting to bring these tools into the classroom was questionable, given that experience. While filtering websites is important to schools, better dialogue is needed to allow instructors the access they need to teaching tools while still maintaining control of questionable content.

As a former school board member, I recall similar issues in the late’ 80s and ’90s with the IT department, administrators, and even board colleagues regarding having access to the Internet itself from the classrooms. While they saw the value of administrators and staff using the Internet, they balked at allowing the same access in the classrooms. I understand well the frustration of instructors who want to use these tools with their students but run into brick walls when they try.

While not identical, limiting access to Internet resources strikes me as similar to banning books. Instead of allowing instructors to develop educational content as needed, a concern from a limited group blocks all access to these sites. A better dialogue needs to be developed, including perhaps even a faculty liaison committee to bring these concerns to the proper channels. Simply assuming that teaching with computers is the same as traditional teaching keeps students from the tools they need to succeed in the real world.

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‘At-Risk’ – Concerns About Its Effectiveness

Posted on July 11, 2009 by JimS

Judith_McDaniel2_80By Judith McDaniel
Editor, Web-based Course Design

[Note: Judith McDaniel originally posted this as a comment to Carrie Heeter’s “Review of ‘At-Risk’: A Simulation Training Program for College Staff.” We’ve decided to publish it as an article to stimulate further discussion on this and similar simulation programs. -js]

Carrie – thanks for the interesting summary and analysis of At Risk. I had several responses myself after trying out the same “free” sample interaction that you did. Let me see if I can summarize some of my discomfort with this product.

First, I don’t think I have had a class at the university level with only 20 students in it since the 1980s. So for me, one necessary assumption is that most instructors are going to be dealing with far larger classes than the one represented here – at least double, probably triple or more. That makes this entire process problematic for me since it assumes that I will be talking to these students about their work outside of class – and in very large classes that seldom happens.

I am concerned too that my role as an instructor, not a therapist or counselor, not be confused – by me or by my students.

a frontal lecture where all the students are using laptops

Further, the self-reporting of changed attitudes is interesting. I did not have the same experience that you did with feeling more comfortable. But that aside, self-reporting, no matter how well-meaning, is not evidence that the program works. Changed behavior in terms of frequency of reporting would be more relevant, but of course that takes years and $ investment.

I also found the “flags” for what we should notice in our students to border on the ludicrous. Does a student come to class looking tired and with messy hair? Yes, that describes about half of a freshman class in early November. Is a student anxious or withdrawn or sullen or non-participative? Yes, inevitably when there are 100 or more students in a class, that describes some of them. I have never found that to correlate to a need for referral . . . that I would have known.

And, finally, that is my last discomfort. I did have a student who disappeared last semester two-thirds of the way through class. She had been doing really well. Emails did not get a response. Finally, the last week of the class, she reappeared. She had been hospitalized after a suicide attempt and was back. I am still working with her to finish her Incomplete. But could I have referred her sooner? I honestly can’t imagine how. Would having taken this training have let me identify her? Not from what I have seen of it.

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Review of ‘At-Risk’: A Simulation Training Program for College Staff

Posted on July 7, 2009 by JimS

heeter80By Carrie Heeter
Editor, Games Development

I vividly remember the day I received email from a graduate student who had gone missing from my online class, announcing that he had “just gotten back from the loony bin.” He wrote that he had checked himself in to a mental hospital and was now back and ready to start making up late assignments (with one week left in the semester). Over the years as professors each of us comes to realize our students are enrolled in classes other than just the ones we are teaching, and beyond that they have real lives, jobs, and families. Our official job is to teach well, to inspire, and to grade fairly while juggling our own impossible to meet demands of work and life. Unofficially, the unfolding joys and concerns experienced by everyone’s whole self may enrich or undermine teaching and learning.

At-Risk is a simulation training program designed to addresses one specific, potentially lifesaving dimension of this complex milieu.

At-Risk was created by Kognito, in partnership with the Mental Health Association of New York City (MHA-NYC). MHA-NYC programs help raise awareness about mental health problems and encourage people to seek treatment. The At-Risk training simulation teaches college faculty to identify mental health problems among their students and to refer mentally distressed students to the college counseling office for assistance.

poster with 3 small people in front of 1 taller person and the words: at-risk - identify students in mental distress - refer them to the campus counselling center

In the simulated 20 person class, 6 students have been flagged as potentially experiencing mental distress. As the instructor, your goal is to talk with each of those students and, if appropriate, refer them to the counseling center. You can review each student’s grades, behavior in the class, and appearance. You are told at the beginning that three of the six are at-risk, but you are not told which three. The training simulation lasts approximately 45 minutes. It is 2D web based and includes many lengthy narrated explanations before and after the interactivity.

At-Risk uses “conversation menus” organized by category to offer choices of what to say next. The animated student responds, choices of what the instructor says next are presented, and the simulation offers encouragement or criticism about the conversation choices.

I played through the free online demo of one of the six students. Wendy’s problems were exaggerated and extreme. She is a 4.0 student who is so nervous she comes in to talk about every assignment. Heart palpitations caused her to go to the health clinic, causing her to skip the class presentation. As I played through the simulation, I argued with myself about whether it is reasonable for professors to call a meeting with 4.0 students who are nervous about speaking in class, even if the student is very nervous. I made a note to myself to check whether my university counseling center still exists, after the latest round of budget cuts, and what services they offer.

I also found that experiencing the simulated conversation was helpful and informative, even though I was trying to figure out what the simulation expected me to choose. It was useful to choose and hear spoken exactly how to bring up the counseling center. If sending students there has a chance of helping them cope better with life and with school, that’s something I would be willing to do. And now I have a better sense of how it’s done. The simulation was more useful in convincing me of the importance of identifying mental health problems and in showing me how to refer people than reading a brochure would have been.

clip-art-like image of a class where students at risk are marked by a white triangle above their heads

I also naively expect socially useful serious games to be free. At-Risk is definitely not free. Licensing fees are way beyond what any individual faculty member would consider paying. I am not familiar with how universities prioritize nontrivial expenses like this for 45 minutes of online simulation, especially in times of deep budget cuts. The online free demo for one of the six students was informative and useful. Playing the other five conversations would not add five times more value — just playing one was enough to get the most important message: referring students is not hard to do and could help them a lot.

Serious game design needs to be accompanied by research to determine whether the serious goals have been met. Kognito has taken this important step. They are studying their own product and using the findings in marketing. And yet, product specific efficacy studies are not an expected domain for academic scientific research. The research findings offer a window onto desired and achieved impacts of the At-Risk simulation. I contacted the company for details about the sample size that I didn’t see online. They responded that 42 colleges and universities (who were not paying customers) were invited to use a trial subscription. The first 35 individuals who completed the training at each institution were automatically invited to complete an anonymous online survey. Respondents who were full time practicing psychologists were excluded from study results which, instead, focus on faculty and staff reactions. A total of 375 respondents are represented in the results. No response rate percentage is known.

Key findings from the Kognito.com online research report:

  • Over 80% reported that At-Risk increased their awareness that identifying and referring students is part of their job role and that At-Risk made them more likely to engage in identifying and referring at-risk students.
  • 87% of respondents indicated they were better prepared to identify, refer, and approach at-risk students, and 82% felt better prepared to help a suicidal student.
  • 99% of respondents said the simulated conversations were realistic representations of conversations they were likely to have with at-risk students.

If I had been a respondent, I would have answered the way the majority of respondents did, based only upon playing the demo.

For more information about the simulation see http://www.kognito.com/atrisk/

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Computers – The End of an Era

Posted on June 21, 2009 by JimS

kimura80By Bert Kimura
Editor, Ed Tech in Japan

[Note: Bert Kimura posted the following as a comment on 19 June 2009, in response to “‘The College of 2020: Students’ – A Chronicle Report.” We’ve decided to publish Kimura’s comment as an article to facilitate further discussion. The original comment has been expanded to include a note from his email message to me on 6.20.09. -JS]

Jim, thanks for posting the summary. From my own experiences teaching online classes at UH-Manoa in Educational Technology and also having tried such classes with Japanese students, the items summarized certainly make a lot of sense.

There are three items that I believe will become important by then, if not, perhaps passé by then:

1. The 2020 students may not have had any familiarity at all with desktop computers and traditional operating systems. Instead, all of the communications, creation, and retrieval of info will be done with mobile devices. I also believe that, as may of us have two or mobile notebook computers today, 2020 students will have multiple devices to accomplish their online tasks. The proverbial “toaster” could still be one of them. :-)

The idea of the end of the desktops should also be attributed to Alan Levine, CTO of the New Media Consortium. He also does a very informative (with a unique perspective) blog: http://cogdogblog.com/. Alan was formerly the instructional technologist for the Maricopa CC system and was tremendously influential in getting faculty in the system to adopt technology in teaching and learning.

2. Texting such as this comment will be replaced by or, at least, on par with verbal, visual or multimedia communication modes. Consequently, faculty need to be able to reach visual learners in an effective pedagogical manner as well.

3. Internationalization will enable many more distance learners to participate in online courses, and thus the online student community will be more multicultural than the current group. I believe that this will result in a much richer student experience.

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‘The College of 2020: Students’ – A Chronicle Report

Posted on June 19, 2009 by JimS

Jim ShimabukuroBy Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

In the the first of a three-part series in the Chronicle of Higher Education (6.19.09), Chronicle Research Services reports on what higher education will look like in the year 2020. Click here to view a copy of the free executive summary. The first report focuses on students. Here are some quotes from the summary:

  • More students will attend classes online, study part time, take courses from multiple universities, and jump in and out of colleges.
  • By 2020, almost a third of respondents [121 institutions that responded to a survey] said, students will be taking up to 60 percent of their courses entirely online. Now almost no students at those colleges take courses only online.
  • Colleges that have resisted putting some of their courses online will almost certainly have to expand their online programs quickly.
  • Many colleges are learning from the for-profit college industry that they must start courses and certificate programs at multiple times throughout the year.
  • Students will increasingly expect access to classes from cellular phones and other portable computing devices.
  • Classroom discussions, office hours with a professor, lectures, study groups, and papers will all be online.
  • The faculty member . . . may become less an oracle and more an organizer and guide, someone who adds perspective and context, finds the best articles and research, and sweeps away misconceptions and bad information.
  • The average age of students will keep trending higher as expectations shift in favor of people going back to college again and again to get additional credentials to advance their careers or change to new ones. The colleges that are doing the best right now at capturing that demographic are community colleges and for-profit institutions.
  • At some point, probably just after 2020, minority students will outnumber whites on college campuses for the first time.

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How Is the Recession Affecting Online Higher Education?

Posted on March 23, 2009 by JimS

John SenerBy John Sener

It’s been a long time since I’ve watched the 11 o’clock news on television. My recollection is that it consists of an endless series of deaths, accidents, and other disasters, relieved only by the commercials and an occasional human interest story. Ray Schroeder’s blog “New Realities in Higher Education” is the 11 o’clock news for higher education — except without the heartwarming human interest stories or commercials. The stories are pretty much one hair-raising signal of impending doom after another — make sure you’re in a reasonably good mood before tackling this one.

Once the train wreck/auto crash voyeuristic feeling wears off, inevitably when reading New Realities I find myself wondering: Is the recession helping speed the adoption of online higher education, or slowing it down, or some of both? On the one hand, many community colleges are reporting the increases in enrollment demand that economic downturns typically bring, North Carolina being one example. On the other hand, many (often the same) community colleges are also reporting budget cuts which force them to cancel classes and otherwise reduce offerings, North Carolina also being one example.

One school of thought is that the recession will drive adoption of online learning as a cost-saving measure or as a way to provide access to education for cost-conscious students. A counter-argument is that initial implementation of online education requires investment in infrastructure, faculty development, culture change, etc. and that such funds are not available, hence online education adoption is being slowed down.

So far, I haven’t been able to find anything other than speculation about this topic. By contrast, one of Ray Schroeder’s previous blog efforts, Fueling Online Learning, showed pretty clearly that last year’s astronomical gasoline prices had a strong correlation with increased enrollments in online higher education. (The causal connection is less clear, but a case can be made that there was one.)

Anyone have any concrete evidence on the recession’s effect on online education?

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It Depends ­– On the Economics of Education

Posted on February 6, 2009 by JimS

By Steve Eskow
Editor, Hybrid vs. Virtual Issues

Lynn (“Hybrid, Online, or F2F – It Depends“), as you and Carrie (“Online Hybrid as Asynchronous, Co-present, and Remote“) and all of us agree: it depends. And perhaps it depends on some matters you haven’t mentioned.

For example, it depends on whether your students can get to campus, have the auto or the bus fare, have the baby sitter or husband who will babysit. Those who can’t may take their graduate study in an all online program.

You’re a researcher, Lynn, so I can ask this: Is it possible that the agreement you report – your students and you having similar opinions in favor of hybridity – is a result of their clear awareness of what you’d like them to think? Would they give me the same opinions you get if you weren’t in the room? If I were your student and clearly aware of your views, I don’t think I’d want to risk offending you by suggesting that I’d just as soon have all the sessions online.

eskow_feb09I’m a bit troubled by your frequent references to students who are better at expressing themselves orally than in writing. I’m not sure the best pedagogic response to that common feeling among students is to go with it. Perhaps those students weak in writing are those most in need of more practice.

Increasingly we hear of students resisting buying the required textbooks and, crucially, resisting reading them. And I hear of teachers in this age of student evaluations who react to this resistance by respecting it: less reading and writing, in an age where the new technologies put a premium on the reader (of blogs, if nothing else) and the writer (of blogs, if of nothing else). Might we as a profession need to take a stand on more writing in academic instruction?

As I’ve indicated, my own work is in the poor countries and is influenced by the economics of building-based education as well such other social impacts as the disruption of communities. I’d be willing to bet with you, Lynn, that as the economic situation in the US worsens we’ll experience lots less resistance to technology-mediated education by taxpayers, teachers, and students. Those buildings your students come to are a technology that costs millions to construct and maintain.

It does indeed depend.

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Needed – A Professional Approach to Teaching

Posted on December 15, 2008 by JimS

adsit80By John Adsit
Staff Writer

I approach the subject of Rhee and the reactions of the teaching “profession” with a sadness bordering on despair for I enter a battlefield on which I have often fought. My few small victories pale in comparison with my many painful defeats.

I put “profession” in quotations because I am not sure teaching can be called a profession. In what other profession can its members practice with no training whatsoever, as happens frequently at the college level? In what other profession can its members start with basic training and learn nothing new over a 40 year career, as frequently happens at the K-12 level? If a doctor were to start bleeding patients rather than use the results of the latest medical research, he or she would be hauled before a medical tribunal, but in education ignoring research results is the norm.

adsitdec1508Nearly 20 years ago I was a highly regarded teacher. Although I was somewhat innovative, I used a largely traditional approach, imitating the best of those who had in turn taught me. All my graduate work was in my content area so I had little education training beyond my initial certification. One day I was sent to a workshop introducing a very different educational approach. Most of what I heard sounded perfectly wrong, and I was close to dismissing it.

I was intrigued by some points, though, that made me fear some of my practices might be harmful to student learning. I took some of the more interesting ideas back to my classroom and gave them a go. I first completely changed some of my favorite lessons into authentic learning projects, and I started experimenting with a mastery learning assessment process at the same time. (For more on the “mastery learning assessment process,” see my earlier article, “Old School Thinking Blocks Quality Online Science Classes.” In upcoming articles, I’ll delve deeper into these approaches.) The level of immediate success was shocking. I implemented one change after another and watched student achievement soar beyond my wildest dreams until I was a complete convert.

One year I had more students get top scores (5) on the AP exam than all the other AP teachers in the school combined had students pass (3). I also taught a remedial writing class, and its average score on the district writing assessment was higher than most of the regular classes. Despite objective measures of success, my colleagues angrily accused me of lowering standards because so many of my students were getting A’s and B’s! I was not teaching the right way, the way teaching had always been done.

When I was brought into the central administration to help teach these methodologies, I became an education literature junkie, learning many things that the general education community evidently does not wish to know. Longitudinal studies, for example, have shown that some teachers have significantly superior student achievement than their colleagues in the same school, year after year, and some teachers have consistently poorer student achievement, year after year. If an elementary student is blessed with three consecutive years of good teaching, his or her achievement scores will be about 50 percentile points higher than a student cursed by three consecutive years of poor teaching. The most effective and least effective methods of instruction have been identified. Processes by which whole schools can be turned from failure to success are known.

adsitdec1508bNone of this is a secret. All of the nation’s top theorists are largely in agreement. Outline the main concepts before a meeting of district curriculum leaders, and they, too, will nod in agreement.

But talk about it in a meeting at the school level, and you’ll be lucky to get out alive.

Only a few weeks ago I watched a school leader outline the steps her school would take to improve its miserable failure rate, and I saw the same failed ideas that have been used for decades. I asked if they were planning to investigate the latest research on successful schools, and she said no, they were sticking with “tried and true” methods.  I was reminded of how George Washington’s doctors bled about half of the total blood volume from the choking ex-president  (the tried and true cure) and refused to allow another doctor to perform a new procedure, the tracheotomy that might have saved his life[1].

Change can happen. Individual teachers can change instructional methods and vastly improve student achievement. Schools can adopt processes that have been proven successful. This will not happen, though, as long as the majority of educators stick with the “tried and true” methods that have brought us to where we are today. This will not happen until education becomes a true profession, with members who view the educational process as worthy of study in and of itself.

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Two Ambivalent Views of Michelle Rhee’s Efforts

Posted on December 10, 2008 by JimS

By James L. Morrison
Guest Author
and
MaryAnne Gobble
Guest Author

[Editor’s note: These two comments, by Morrison and Gobble, Innovate‘s editor-in-chief and managing editor, were part of a December 8 email discussion on Michelle Rhee, the controversial superintendent of DC public schools.]

Morrison:

After reading Clay Risen’s article about Ms. Rhee, “The Lightning Rod,” in a recent issue of Atlantic, I am a bit ambivalent about what she means for education reform. For me, the three most salient parts of the article are these excerpts:

[1] “As a teacher in this system, you have to be willing to take personal responsibility for ensuring your children are successful despite obstacles,” she told me. “You can’t say, ‘My students didn’t get any breakfast today,’ or ‘No one put them to bed last night,’ or ‘Their electricity got cut off in the house, so they couldn’t do their homework.’” This sort of moral certitude is exactly what turns off many veteran teachers in Washington. Even if Rhee is right, she seems to be asking for superhuman efforts, consistently, for decades to come. Making missionary zeal a job requirement is a tough way to build morale, not to mention support, among the teachers who have to confront the D.C. ghetto every day.

[2] Rhee advocates another controversial plank in the reformist agenda: merit pay. Vociferously opposed by the teachers unions—a National Education Association convention audience booed Barack Obama when he told them he supported it—merit pay scales a teacher’s salary based on student achievement. Proponents say this is the only way to make teachers want to improve their performance. Opponents say it will torpedo already low morale and drive a wedge through faculty solidarity, and that basing merit pay on student performance leaves out all sorts of nonquantifiable aspects of learning.

[3] The divide means that Rhee’s challenge is not just to reform one of the worst school systems in the country and, in effect, prove whether or not inner-city schools can be revived at all. It is to answer a basic question about the nature of urban governance, a question about two visions of big-city management. In one, city politics is a vibrant, messy, democratic exercise, in which both the process and the results have value. In the other, city politics is only a prelude, the way to install a technocratic elite that can carry out reforms in relative isolation from the give-and-take of city life. Rhee’s tenure will answer whether these two positions are mutually exclusive—and, if they are, whether public-school reform is even possible.

I applaud Rhee’s efforts at reform, particularly with the DC schools, but it appears that she may not recognize or address the influence of parents, the community, and peer groups on human behavior and learning. Incorporating a plan to address and use these factors are also necessary to achieve her objectives, which are laudable.

Gobble:

I would agree that “business as usual” is not an option. Change is necessary and inevitable. I applaud Ms. Rhee’s drive to bring change to the DC system, which is among the systems most in need of some kind of reform. I think she has the best of intentions; her dedication to the cause is indisputable, and her tolerance of risk and uncertainty is absolutely necessary to the job she’s trying to do. I think she has the potential to do a lot of good — unless she so profoundly alienates her constituency that she cannot function. As the Atlantic profile points out, “Whether she recognizes it or not, her task is political as well as educational.”

I would disagree with Rhee’s fundamental assumptions: that there’s only one way to get there; or that you can get there by imposing a single set of views and standards on teachers, students, parents, and the community at large; or that there is only one possible measure of success. As a parent, I’m alarmed by the reliance on standardized test scores, which Ms. Rhee seems very invested in. Sure, a test score can tell you if a kid can read, and I think there’s a place for them in education. You have to make sure everyone’s got the basics somehow. But it can’t tell you if the kid can understand what he has read at any level beyond basic comprehension, or connect it to something else he saw or heard or read, or see its relevance to his own life. And, at least the way we’re testing now, when that test score becomes the end-all of the education process, it means there’s no time to explore those connections or build the kind of love for learning that means that kid will read.

Worse, there is not yet a test score that can account for the kid who can read and appreciate, but can’t function under the pressure of a test gobble01bor has a disability that keeps him from grasping what’s asked for in those circumstances. I have a brother with a serious learning disability. He barely escaped high school, and yet he’s a brilliant satellite electronics engineer, a very smart, imaginative writer, and a prolific reader. His emails and letters are, in his own words (although not his spelling), “grammatical train wrecks” that require a certain kind of translation, but they are imaginative and engaging, full of original imagery, as are his stories and comics. He can’t spell, and he would never, ever have passed the end-of-grade tests my middle-school son must take almost every year, but I would argue that he is as smart as or smarter than many students who ace all the tests, and in ways that matter more profoundly to his adult life than any end-of-grade test score will ever be able to measure.

I think that what’s wrong with public education is that it has become so profoundly separated from the communities in which it is supposed to happen. Standardized tests are part of that, because they force teachers and students to sit in classrooms focusing on a test that has little to do with the world around them, rather than turning outward to explore the world they live in. Imposing a change from above, without considering the community and the context and without involving those most invested in it, both expresses and perpetuates that reality. It is the most damaging kind of business as usual.

And that’s what scares me about Michelle Rhee’s approach.

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Ineffective Use of Computers in Schools

Posted on December 10, 2008 by JimS

Harry KellerBy Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

On Tuesday, December 9, 2008, the New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote, “Obama wants to put more computers in classrooms, an old idea with dubious educational merit”[1].

It’s true that people have been putting computers in classrooms for many years. It’s also true that the impact of these computers has often been less than wished. However, neither of those facts tell us that we should stop. Rather, they tell us to review how and why computers are being used in those classrooms.

In my own visits to schools across the country, I have seen those computers being both underutilized and over-utilized. In some schools, the computers sit idle while traditional instruction continues. Occasionally, students are allowed to use the computers, and they get to use the standard business tools available such as spreadsheets and word processors. Sure, it’s nice that the students are learning to use those tools, but are they helping students learn their subject? I think not.

In other schools, I’ve seen computer rooms fully booked so that some teachers are unable to use them at all for their students. Upon inquiry, I discovered that math and English classes have priority because of high-stakes testing. The computers have various programs on them that drill the students on concepts required on those tests. In my opinion, these schools are wasting a valuable resource.

Computers slowly and quite certainly have revolutionized many businesses. Lawyers, among the last to succumb, now cannot live without their word processors with the ability to rewrite accurately, insert boilerplate, and check spelling and grammar. Software has been created to support the advances in productivity that we’ve seen in many industries. So, what’s the matter with education?

keller04The larger class sizes we see in schools are not the result of improved worker productivity; they’re caused by budget shortfalls. Clearly, computers have not improved teacher productivity. Students aren’t learning better. Just look at any number of international measures of student success in mathematics and science. We (the United States) are losing.

At least in traditional classrooms, neither the quantity nor quality of product has improved in this age of technology. Charter schools are making some headway mostly because their employees work multiple job descriptions and long hours. Generally, online education works because students self-select based on study skills, and teachers have tools to allow them to have slightly larger numbers of students. Those tools come with “learning management systems” (LMS) that online schools use to handle administration of classes.

To be fair, the United States has over 50 different sets of standards for education and administers those standards from a very large number of individual school districts. That fact makes creating software usable across the entire country quite difficult. Turkey has committed its education system to online learning and doesn’t have the same problems. The software I’ve seen from Turkey is first-rate and shames our own home-grown efforts.

If we don’t get moving on real innovation in education right now, we may find our children learning from online schools headquartered in Turkey, Israel, and Singapore quite soon. Teachers, like factory workers, will see their jobs disappear overseas.

Instead of waiting, as the automobile industry did, until it’s too late, begin today by merging the various state standards, requiring teachers to use good computer-based learning tools, and having our federal government support innovation that uses technology to make a real difference and that’s not just drill repackaged or textbooks converted to online format with animations and sound or other similar old methods with new facades.

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Defining One’s Diversity Philosophy: A Crucial Skill in a Changing World

Posted on December 8, 2008 by JimS

osborne80By Randall E. Osborne
Staff Writer

In a world that is becoming increasingly “smaller” due to technology and ease of travel, it seems imperative to help individuals to expand their diversity views BEFORE they venture out into that world. In other words, it seems important to make an effort to expand people’s abilities to accept difference before they venture out into a world that is so obviously different from any one individual’s background. In an effort to do this, the author incorporates a diversity philosophy into his internet course on the Politics and Psychology of Hatred. Through assignments on middle class mentality, analysis of hate sites on the web, reading books about the Holocaust, personal explorations of privilege and other assignments, students are required to explore their own personal philosophies and views about the importance of difference.

The following is excerpted from a “Philosophy of Diversity” survey created by Cornell Thomas and John Butler (2000). Students are given an opportunity to answer questions about their diversity philosophy and then score them to determine whether they had more responses in assimilation, tolerance, multiculturalism, or inclusiveness. These categories were defined by Thomas and Butler in the following manner:

Tolerance = acceptance and open-mindedness of different practices, attitudes, and cultures; does not necessarily mean agreement with the differences. Implies an acknowledgement, or an acceptance or respect. Not necessarily an appreciation and usually consists of only surface level information.

Essentialism/Assimilation = the practice of categorizing a group based on artificial social constructions that impart an “essence” of that group, which homogenizes the group and effaces individuality and differences. The word implies that we are forming conclusions, relationships, and other cultural ties based only on the essential elements, as determined by “us.” It also implies that there is some minimal level of understanding that applies to groups.

Multiculturalism = the practice of acknowledging and respecting the various cultures, religions, races, ethnicities, attitudes and opinions within an environment. The word does not imply that there is any intentionality occurring and primarily works from a group, versus individual, orientation.

Inclusiveness = the practice of emphasizing our uniqueness in promoting the reality that each voice, when, valued, respected and expected to, will provide positive contribution to the community.

This was a learning experience for many students. For example, the “lesbian-identified bisexual” wrote that she was surprised to find that several of her responses had only been tolerant. She said osborne1she had expected that, because she was different, she should have all multicultural or inclusive responses. Another concern she brought up revolved around the possibility of using inclusive language but having the goal of making all people think or act the same way. This sparked an interesting debate about both inclusiveness and assimilation.

Before another assignment was due, students had a chance to “talk” via email and to “interact” through two discussion forums, one centered around the relationship between fear and hate, the second related to our moral or ethical obligations when dealing with hate. These fora allowed students to share their views and develop a sense of trust with each other. Next came the “hate site” assignment. It required the student to go to sites on the web that promoted hate and to analyze them by describing each site, defending its right to be there, and then explaining why it should not be there. By the time we were faced with the “hate site” assignment, many of us had already started to develop a sense of understanding regarding our own assumptions and biases. What resulted was that many of the students this semester did not “pat themselves on the back” over their own acceptance of difference after the evaluation of these sites; instead, many of them discussed their own reactions to the sites, sharing how it angered them or frightened them because some of the sites were written so well that they could almost be convincing.

It seems to me that such an exploration would be healthy for everyone. As people are exposed to more people in the world (through travel and through technological access to that world), stark differences in viewpoints and ideologies are going to become even more apparent. If we are to avoid having these differences only strengthen existing prejudices or even prompt hate-based behavior, it seems necessary to promote progression along the diversity philosophy continuum outlined by Thomas and Butler. This must be done at home, through schools and through the media.

Reference

Thomas, Cornell, and John Butler. 2000. Diversity philosophy. Paper presented at the Race, Gender and Class conference, Southern University at New Orleans.

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Resistance to Technology: Conscious or Unconscious?

Posted on November 10, 2008 by JimS

lynnz80By Lynn Zimmerman
Editor, Teacher Education
10 November 2008

In July 2008 James Morrison initiated a discussion on Innovate-Ideagora which he called  “Addressing the problem of faculty resistance to using IT tools in active learning instructional strategies.” This lively discussion has touched on any number of issues related to education, teaching, and learning. The contradictions inherent in education always fascinate me, and this topic has brought up many of them, from assessment issues to institutional climate.

In his introduction to the discussion Jim wrote that “we should be using technology enhanced active learning strategies to improve student learning” and effect changes in the organizational culture “so that most professors [and teachers] will be receptive to adopting active learning methods and using IT tools to enhance the effectiveness of these methods in their classes.” I assert this “resistance” is also embedded in how teachers view education.

Although most of the discussion centered on higher education, as a teacher educator, I am always focused on what is happening in the K-12 classroom and what my students may confront as they go into their classrooms. The issue of teacher resistance to technology has immediacy for teachers in zimm02K-12. As I was thinking about these issues, I remembered something I had read when I was teaching an Introduction to Teaching course: many teachers consider that they have a fairly liberal teaching philosophy. However, in practice, their teaching styles tend to be more conservative than their philosophical stance. (If you would like to make this comparison yourself, you can look at your teaching style at Grasha-Reichmann Teaching Style Inventory.) Therefore, it is possible that not only are teachers actively resisting learning about technology and technological advances, but some are perhaps unconsciously resisting it. In trying to determine where the disconnect is, researchers may need to look more closely at what teachers are really doing as opposed to what they think they are doing in the classroom/educational space.

My undergraduate students recently observed teachers and classes in a new elementary school which has up-to-date technology. One student was dismayed to see that the teacher was using the Smart Board to produce worksheets! I know that teachers at this school had received in-service training for using the technology in their classrooms and I assume the training was focused on the effective use of these technologies. As the student described the teacher’s style, it appeared that she used an authoritarian model of teaching, which seems to be reflected in her view of how to use technology. Was she consciously resisting using the technology to its fullest or was she just unaware that she had not made a shift in her thinking about using technology?

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Old School Thinking Blocks Quality Online Science Classes

Posted on November 6, 2008 by JimS

adsit80By John Adsit
Staff Writer
6 November 2008

Online education is bringing quality education to many thousands of K-12 students who would otherwise not be able to access it, but in doing so it is forcing us to rethink some of our traditional ways. Unfortunately, we are too often clinging to old rules and old ideas that stand in the way of this progress.

One example is in science education. In 2005, the National Research Council published America’s Lab Report, a scathing indictment of how science classes in regular schools include labs in their instruction. [The entire report is available online at no cost. Click here for the table of contents.] It identified seven goals for a lab program:

  1. Enhancing mastery of subject matter
  2. Developing scientific reasoning
  3. Understanding the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work
  4. Developing practical skills
  5. Understanding the nature of science
  6. Cultivating interest in science and interest in learning science
  7. Developing teamwork skills

After examining hundreds of studies, the NRC concluded that what it called “typical” lab programs did a “poor” job of attaining any of those goals.

adsit012The problem is not in the labs themselves but rather in how they are included in the instructional plan—or rather how they are not included in the instructional plan. The NRC identified a different approach, which it called an “integrated” lab program, a design that makes science labs a critical part of the instructional process in ways that are fully in keeping with modern concepts of best practice in education. The report is pessimistic about the chances for this happening, though, for it notes that these methods are not a part of typical science teacher training.

After reading the report, several educators active in the North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL) theorized that by using this report as a guide, online education schools could create science courses that far surpass the quality of what students in “typical” schools are experiencing now, and they convened a committee under the direction of Dr. Kemi Jona of Northwestern University. Eventually, Kemi and I coauthored the results of that committee’s work in the form of a white paper describing how online science courses could be designed, using a variety of inquiry experiences that can include high quality virtual labs, to follow those guidelines and produce an excellent total lab experience.

Unfortunately, the old rules are getting in the way.

For example, the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) has established the “a-g standards” that determine if a high school course is adsit021acceptable for admission to any of the UC schools. They require online students to make some sort of arrangements with a school to use their lab facilities under supervision. Students must leave their online setting, travel to a supervised lab, and follow precisely the procedures the NRC describes as “poor.” If an online program contains even a single virtual lab or simulation of any kind, it is not acceptable for admission. If an online class meets all their requirements and then decides to add a high quality simulation to the program, then it is no longer acceptable. If a student takes and passes a College Board approved Advanced Placement class that includes a single virtual lab, that course cannot be counted for college admission.

UCOP is only an example; it is not the only institution or state to have such a rule or law. If online education is to bring quality science education to students in remote areas, we must do what we can to help the die hard traditionalists who make the rules understand the new realities:

  • The traditional lab experiences students have in regular schools are not as valuable as is assumed, and in fact research says they are “poor” and ineffective.
  • Well-designed online classes have lab programs that are far superior to what students encounter in “typical” lab programs.
  • Archaic restrictions based on false assumptions are depriving thousands of students of the high quality online and computer-based educational resources that are not otherwise available to them.

Responding Article

Simulated Labs Are Anathema to Most Scientists by Harry Keller

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