DEANZ Discussion – Today’s Student And Virtual Schooling: The Reality, The Challenge, The Promise…

As I mentioned at the beginning of the week in The Journal of Distance Learning – Online Discussion, over the past seven days I have been participating in an online discussion forum with DEANZ members surrounding my Journal of Distance Learning article entitled “Today’s Student and Virtual Schooling: The Reality, the Challenge, the Promise…” (see DEANZ Notes for additional information).  Here is a portion of the message that I posted to begin that discussion:

I graduated high school from Herdman Collegiate in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada in 1993. The year I graduated Herdman (a grade 10-12 school), located in a city of about 30,000 (the third largest city in the province) had 857 students and was the third largest school in the province. My school offered a wide range of elective courses, and when the Advanced Placement (AP) program was introduced into Newfoundland in my grade twelve year, my school was among the first to offer it. The AP program allows students in high school to take university level courses and challenge an annual exam that could grant them university credits for their efforts. Because my high school was big enough, I was among the first students in Newfoundland to enrol in an AP European History course.

Then I graduated from high school, went off and got my B.A. and then came back to Newfoundland and got my B.Ed.. After a year of substitute teaching in the capital region, I got my first full-time teaching position at Discovery Collegiate (a grade 8-12 school with 644 students) in 1999-2000. Discovery was located in a rural community of about 3500 people and its student catchment area was thirteen communities that combined had a population of about 5000. The only AP offered at Discovery were online AP mathematics and science courses offered through a district-based program. You see, in order to get enough students who were capable of and interested in taking AP courses they had to pull students from the 10 schools with secondary grades in my district and the 13 secondary schools in the neighbouring district.

Even then, when I began offering an online AP European History course during my first year I only had three students. In four years at Discovery Collegiate I developed and taught a total of six online AP social studies courses – never with more than five students in a single course. I left Discovery after the 2002-03 school year to pursue my Ph.D., and by the time I left the student population had decreased to 442 (yes, due to the low birth rate and out-migration in rural Newfoundland, this rural school had lost an average of 50 students a year for the four years I was there). During that time and since, I have been involved in virtual schooling as a teacher, course developer, administrator, evaluator and researcher – with more than a dozen different virtual schools in Canada and the United States. However, when I look at the literature and the state of virtual schooling – and K-12 distance education/online learning in general – I go back to my time at Discovery Collegiate and the rural students, some in all grade schools with less than 100 students.

I have always been a believer in the potential for virtual schooling to expand the curricular opportunities for rural students. Research has consistently shown that students in rural areas do not have the same selection of courses, and in many instances even the mandated curriculum is taught at a level that these rural students are placed as a disadvantage if they ever considered post-secondary options (and fewer and fewer students are taking this route). The problem is that the literature on virtual schooling indicates that only the best and brightest students succeed in virtual school environments (as I discuss in my article). So what of the other students?

For example, in my home province right now there are many rural schools where in order to take the academic curriculum – as opposed to the basic level courses – students must take their mathematics and English language arts online. Teachers and parents have reported, in a anecdotal manner, that students capable of taking the academic courses are choosing to take the basic curriculum – which removes any hope of post-secondary education after high school – simply to avoid taking an online course (and the initial research a colleague and I are doing bears out this trend). Simply put, the inability to take the mandated curriculum necessary for college or university application in a face-to-face environment is forcing these students to make the decision to take themselves out of running for higher education as early as grade nine.

So, while the potential for virtual schooling to provide opportunities to rural students seems limited. In fact, it seems in some cases virtual schooling is actually limiting the opportunities of rural students. This situation lends itself to a basic question, how do we design and deliver virtual schooling so that it is accessible for all students?

This basic question leads to several others… What constitutes effective web-based design for adolescent learners? What pedagogical strategies are most effective with adolescent learners in a largely independent, online environment? What is the role of school-based, local, or mediating teachers in supporting students engaged in virtual schooling? What skills and knowledge do teachers need in order to do the kinds of things required by these first three questions? How are teacher education programs reacting to ensure pre-service and in-service teachers possess this knowledge and these skills? What characteristics are required of students to be successful in these largely independent, online environments? Is there a reliable and valid way we can measure whether or not students have these skills, knowledge and dispositions? If we are able to identify students as being weak in some of the skills, knowledge and/or dispositions, are there ways in which we can remediate them to ensure the student has the opportunity for success?

The problem is that there is little or limited amounts of research in any of these areas. And we would literally need a large team of academics or hundreds of graduate students writing dissertations to conduct enough research to answer these questions in any comprehensive way. Even then it would take a decade or more. The problem is that virtual schooling is growing, and its practice far out-paces the production of useful research as it is. And as long as this continues, some students will be left behind, while other students will have their future academic careers limited, and only the best and the brightest will be able to take advantage of the “opportunities” being offered.

When Mark first approached me about taking my 2008 DEANZ keynote and turning it into a manuscript for the Journal of Distance Learning, he advised me to be conversations and informal, and to try and challenge the reader in the same way I challenged the audience in Wellington. Over the next seven days I hope to continue to challenge you, with this basic question…

How do we design and deliver virtual schooling so that it is accessible for all students?

About half way through the week, to address the first portion of my article, I posted this discussion prompt:

Since we are about half way through the week, and the discussion focused largely on virtual schooling is starting to peter out, I thought it was time to switch gears and maybe consider some of the aspects of the other half of my Journal of Distance Learning article – today’s student (and I believe this is more of interest to Mark, so maybe he’ll jump in on this one).

It is interesting that I came across an article earlier today, not really a new one (a year old in fact), but one that is relevant to this discussion:

Bennett, S., Maton, K., & Kervin, L. (2008) The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(5), 775-786.

See http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120173667/abstract

In the article, the authors (who are from your neck of the woods in University of Wollongong and University of Sydney) discussed the literature surrounding the labels of digital native and net generation and stated:

“Our analysis of the digital native literature demonstrates a clear mismatch between the confidence with which claims are made and the evidence for such claims.” (p. 782)

Then later stated:

“Cohen’s (1972) notion of a ‘moral panic’ is helpful in understanding the form taken by the digital natives debate. In general, moral panics occur when a particular group in society, such as a youth subculture, is portrayed by the news media as embodying a threat to societal values and norms. The attitudes and practices of the group are subjected to intense media focus, which, couched in sensationalist language, amplifies the apparent threat.” (p. 782)

As I read through that section I thought of the Michael Moore movie Bowling for Columbine (and if you haven’t seen it you should really head out to the nearest video store and rent it), when he begins to examine what was on the evening news in the United States compared to what he was seeing on the evening news in Canada, and how the amount of violence portrayed on the American news has contributed to the belief by Americans that the United States is a crime filled nation and that everyone needs a gun in order to protect themselves.

You see, I have to agree with Bennett et al. here, and that the media and popular literature have been portraying this generation of students as something to be feared, and you better run out and get a computer or a laptop or a handheld or cell phone or some other mobile device so that you can keep up – and hopefully one day be able to teach these monsters that are coming to a school near you. The problem is, as these authors concluded:

“The picture beginning to emerge from research on young people’s relationships with technology is much more complex than the digital native characterisation suggests. While technology is embedded in their lives, young people’s use and skills are not uniform. There is no evidence of widespread and universal disaffection, or of a distinctly different learning style the like of which has never been seen before. We may live in a highly technologised world, but it is conceivable that it has become so through evolution, rather than revolution. Young people may do things differently, but there are no grounds to consider them alien to us.” (p. 783)

This was similar to the findings from the work of Thomas Reeves that I discussed in my article:

“The major question addressed in this review is whether generational difference is a variable important enough to be considered during the design of instruction or the use of different educational technologies. At this time, the weight of the evidence is negative.” (Reeves, 2008, p. 21).

The thing that is most troubling about this moral panic is that educational leaders are buying into the hype without substance, and forcing change upon those involved in the front line delivery of education (i.e., teachers) that are totally unnecessary at this time.

Then yesterday, I posted the final – concluding – message for the discussion, and here is a portion of what I had to say:

As the week draws to a close, I want to thank those who participated in this first discussion for the 2009 issue of the Journal of Distance Learning. I know that this was the first of a series of discussions on the articles in this issue, and hopefully the first online discussion of many future issues still to come.

Over the past week our discussion has focused upon two topics:

1. how do we design and deliver virtual school opportunities so they are accessible to ALL students; and
2. how do we overcome the “moral panic” created by the proponents of generational differences to continue to focus upon sound pedagogy irrelevant of technology.

On the first item we explored the role of the school-based facilitator in the success of virtual school students and how teacher education programs are only now beginning to address some of the gaps in training teachers to design content and teach in this environment (along with exploring an innovative program led by Niki Davis – likely the first comprehensive effort in both North America and New Zealand).

On the second item we discussed (some would say argued) about the role of technology in the classroom and what technically literate students mean for classroom teachers.

I have reproduced these prompts, along with the summary, here to allow for those who aren’t DEANZ members to join the conversation or if any DEANZ members want to continue the conversation.

Also a reminder that the discussion on Rachel Roberts, “Video Conferencing In Distance Learning: A New Zealand Schools’ Perspective” article begins on 26 October.