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CHAPTER 1

Understanding the Modality and the Moment

There are a multitude of applications for online digital learning. This chapter is devoted to exploring some essential questions regarding the applications of this modality—this method for learning—and providing some observations that will help you put the learning in this book into the appropriate context. Let’s start with some important questions about the modality of digital learning.

KEY QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS CHAPTER

• What type of digital learning experience are you facilitating? How does it impact your approach?

• Who is planning and developing the online learning experience, and why does it matter?

• What opportunities do online tools offer, and what are the best methods for nurturing connectivity, learning growth, and innovation?

• How can technophiles and technophobes work together in facilitating online learning?

In thinking about these questions, consider the story of Nick, a fictional fourth grader at Eagle Cliffs Elementary School in Billings, Montana.

NICK AND THE SINS OF SYNCHRONIZED LEARNING

Sitting neatly in a seat in a row with his books strewn at his feet and his notebook open, Nick worked diligently to take notes on the history lesson his teacher was providing. The notes on his page looked more like an Impressionist’s painting than a well-crafted piece of prose. The edges of his papers were perpetually crumpled as his outstretched hands continued to manipulate, flatten, and perpetually rotate the paper to capture notes in some semblance of order. His head would bob up and down, trying to get closer to the paper and then pulling back. His feet nervously shuffled beneath him as looked up, down, and to the side for some inspiration as his frustration mounted. Nick was a kind and obedient boy, but he couldn’t help noticing his classmates as they kept their words so neatly on the page.

One of Nick’s greatest challenges in trying to keep up with his history lesson was the fact that all students were expected to work synchronously. Although the teacher presented the content as best she could, it was a long-standing expectation in her classroom that all the students would be able to follow all the content in a perfect synchronized moment, in the same exact way and at the same time. Nick couldn’t do that, but that didn’t mean the content was too much for him.

Learners like Nick may very well have the competency to engage this content with great depth and understanding, if they have the luxury of digesting the content at a slightly different pace or with slightly different support. Let’s think about some solutions for Nick in a DEL environment that would help him meet his needs. Consider the following.

■ The teacher might have presented the content in an audio or video format that Nick could access on his own device. This would allow Nick to pause it to reflect or take his time capturing the notes at his own pace. Or, he could go back and play a piece of the presentation again if he either didn’t hear it or understand it. This is great for learners like Nick, or any of us that simply may have lost concentration for a moment.

■ While taking the notes in a blended or fully online learning environment, Nick has several options. Certainly, the research on assistive technology shows us that students feel good about the fact that they can use the tools of technology to create written products that have a professional look. In this case, Nick wouldn’t have to look to the left and right to compare his Impressionistic handwriting to his classmates. Instead, he would find that his writing is every bit as good and can be presented in the same form as everyone else.

■ While listening to the presentation Nick can instant message a friend, or even his teacher, and ask for clarification or help. With fewer time constraints, he can wait for an answer. He also could quickly consult a myriad of resources that might help him understand.

■ Nick could learn in his available setting and bring questions for clarification back to the classroom if videos and formative learning were offered online. This allows Nick a more personalized experience to his learning as he drives the learning with his specific needs in mind.

■ Nick could learn fully online and have access to his teacher through the phone or Internet. This model allows him to collaborate asynchronously with other learners, provides the flexibility in time to manage his schedule, and allows him to join groups with similar interests to engage in socialization with peers.

As you have surely guessed, Nick is not the only learner who could benefit from DEL in this way. As you begin to consider how you can use DEL in your classroom, it’s important to start with an understanding of the types of digital learning experiences available to you.

Types of Digital Learning Experiences

One complexity of embracing DEL is the variety of choices educators have for delivering digital learning opportunities to the learners they serve. Suffice it to say, there are some interesting choices that can significantly differentiate the experience. Consider the following questions.

■ Is your course or class asynchronous? An asynchronous course is one in which learning experiences are shared without regard to the specific synchronicity of time, space, and events (Smith & Basham, 2014). This means that in your course you present learning opportunities that can be executed anywhere at any time. For example, the facilitator may post a mathematics problem in a digital course using an application such as VoiceThread. He may then ask learners to solve the problem, thoroughly explain their answers, thoughtfully debate, and reflect on each other’s answers over the span of a week.

■ Is your digital class synchronous? Sitting in a face-to-face college lecture or executing a typical K–12 lesson plan in a traditional classroom represents a synchronous learning experience. In other words, in a synchronous environment, all the learners experience the learning opportunity at the same time and in the same space. Therefore, a synchronous digital learning experience is one in which learning experiences happen in real time, and all participants engage in the learning experience simultaneously (Smith & Basham, 2014). A teacher lecture or demonstration using Google Hangouts, Skype, or some type of webinar application represents an opportunity to provide a synchronous activity in a digital environment. Some K–12 digital schools have a student population who live hundreds or even thousands of miles away from one another, yet students’ learning is almost entirely synchronous, with students logging on each day and greeting each other via Skype or Google Hangouts. Their learning is just as synchronous as the students you know who drive or walk to a brick-and-mortar building each day and pull up a chair beside their classmates.

■ Is your class or course an asynchronous-synchronous blend? Some schools offer synchronous learning opportunities with face-to-face, real-time connections happening either in person or with the assistance of technology tools like Skype. Educators may then connect asynchronously by posting discussions or problems to be tackled by the class over a flexible, predetermined time frame. We’ve referred to blended learning multiple times already in this book. This type of class or course is an example of that.

What’s exciting about this option is that emerging evidence shows that this learning modality may, in some cases, provide learners with superior learning opportunities versus traditional, face-to-face-only instruction (Driscoll, Jicha, Hunt, Tichavsky, & Thompson, 2012). Our own experience supports these quantitative conclusions. Although there are K–12 learning experiences that are successfully facilitated in 100 percent asynchronous learning environments, we believe that the best approach is still a blended one in which there is at least some opportunity for synchronous contact and connection followed by asynchronous opportunities for learners to thoughtfully and meaningfully engage the instructor, their colleagues, and the content.

Believe it or not, you may already be teaching in a somewhat blended learning environment. Consider the following story involving a wildly popular, technophobic government teacher, Mr. Hill, and how he discovered he’d facilitated a blended learning environment without even realizing it.

DOUGLAS RETURNS THE FAVOR

Mr. Hill was a very successful government instructor at his local high school. Most of the students went on to college and had fond memories of their experiences with their charming and challenging senior-year teacher. An unapologetic technophobe, Mr. Hill always made the case—with great wit, volume, and exaggerated gesticulation—that technology and learning at a distance were leading to a cataclysmic erosion in creativity, brainpower, and the advancement of the human condition. He was one of those rare teachers who could lecture consistently and hold the students in the palm of his hand. His stories were legendary, and his anecdotes were state-of-the-art cliff-hangers that kept students remarkably engaged. Unlike his teacher colleagues, he did not have a website and didn’t post assignments or discussion notes online.

When a former student, Douglas, returned from college to visit Mr. Hill on the Friday before spring break, “the good Prof Hill,” as Douglas called him, was delighted to see him. As a student, Douglas had been curious, thoughtful, and exceedingly well-read. While in high school, he was willing and able to engage Mr. Hill on a variety of topics, and their debates were legendary and thoughtfully humorous. Given their past penchant for debate, Mr. Hill seized on the fact that Douglas, now a student at a very prestigious Ivy League university, was taking one of his core classes online. With great volume and humorous gesticulation, Mr. Hill chided Douglas for his online learning, professing the inevitable downfall of civilization thanks to the crushing press of an overly digitized world. After taking a breath from his rant, Mr. Hill waited for Douglas to respond. With a small smile creeping on his face, Douglas simply said, “Your class is online already, my good Prof Hill.”

For once, Mr. Hill was silent, then he smiled indignantly. “No, really, it is,” Douglas continued. After gracefully popping open his laptop, Douglas took Mr. Hill on a virtual tour that the teacher would never forget. Mr. Hill’s lecture notes, taken by his students, were posted and shared on Google Docs. Given Mr. Hill’s popularity, numerous former students had compiled copious amounts of interactive feedback about his class content online. There was also a Facebook page dedicated to “Hillisms,” with feedback and commentary from current students as well as those who had graduated a decade or more earlier. On a blog, students discussed course content, replete with scholarly references, YouTube links, and Snapchat rants to underscore their points. Douglas told Mr. Hill about the hours he had spent studying for his midterm and final, armed with group-text exchanges, instant-message-fueled cries for help from classmates, and a number of other seemingly endless digital connections reflecting on Mr. Hill’s class.

Mr. Hill is an amazing teacher who engages his students and stimulates their curiosity and love for civics. Despite his attempt, however, to keep his learning environment synchronous, Mr. Hill’s class had been summarily infiltrated by the technology tools of the day, adding asynchronous elements that undoubtedly enriched the learning experience for so many students. The brilliant Professor Hill always made Douglas think about things in new ways. On that day, Douglas returned the favor.

We share this story about Mr. Hill to reinforce the notion that, in many cases, asynchronous learning is already happening in our schools, whether we like it or not. It’s almost impossible to deliver face-to-face content that isn’t directly or indirectly assisted by tools that bring an asynchronous element to the learning process. This is important to note because technology isn’t going away, and we’re better off as a profession being strategic and purposeful about the tools at our disposal. Perhaps Mr. Hill could build on the asynchronous efforts going on around him and make his very good class even better. Of course, doing so will force him to carefully consider how to plan and develop his new online curriculum.

How to Plan and Develop an Online Curriculum

Developing an online curriculum that facilitates DEL requires you to think deeper about the nuts and bolts of your digital learning environment. The way in which the curriculum is presented makes a big difference in the degree to which the facilitator can personalize and tweak instruction to meet individual student needs. It also makes a difference in the way facilitators use and administer assignments and assessments in the course. Consider the following questions about curriculum and planning.

■ Did someone else already establish and write your digital learning curriculum? If so, you are working with a curriculum that some other instructional designer from your area established. It may even come from an outside vendor who created a program that your school utilizes. In this case, your focus is on how to facilitate, further illuminate, and enhance what is already there.

■ Is the curriculum open shell? With an open shell option, your school provides the course shell and the instructor engages in the planning, design, and delivery of instruction. Clearly this is a more challenging option. However, we also think that this is an option that drives the deepest level of innovation. Since the mid-2000s, many schools have successfully utilized prepackaged curricula; however, we believe that, as our culture becomes increasingly comfortable with digital learning options, schools will become more adroit at designing and delivering their own digital learning experiences. Without question, engaging in the design and development of digital learning experiences always enhances the process of working with colleagues to share ideas on planning and innovation strategies.

■ Who can join? Most DEL platforms fall into one of two categories of membership: open or closed.

♦ When membership is open for a digital learning experience, it includes learners who come together from a broad or potentially limitless geographic location (DuFour & Reason, 2016). A massive open online course (often called a MOOC) is just one example of a type of digital learning experience that is available to anyone, with participants allowed to engage the learning in almost any way that meets their needs (Crow, 2013).

♦ A closed digital learning experience includes students from either a previously established learning group, such as an existing German 4 class that elects to work together online, or a recognized group of students who are assigned to a particular digital learning experience. Under this permutation, students may know one another before the learning experience, and the participants are derived from an organized grouping, such as from their local school or a charter school digital academy (DuFour & Reason, 2016). Most of the strategies in this book work most directly with this second, more common, K–12 closed digital learning option. Both options, however, have their place in online learning environments.

Given these differences, developing a curriculum that facilitates digital learning experiences represents a diverse set of challenges. Nuanced distinctions will emerge because of these different delivery formats and decision points, and we have constructed our recommendations in this book with these variances in mind. You will notice that we occasionally call out these differences and describe how facilitators may have to change their approach based on the differences in delivery we describe. However, for the most part, we assemble approaches that work in most of the aforementioned settings.

With this established, all the careful planning in the world may not mean much if the people using these online learning environments cannot work together with the provided tools.

Technophiles and Technophobes: Ending the Cage Match

Technophobes are those who fear and abhor the use of technology. Technophiles, on the other hand, wildly embrace it (Burnett, 2004). In your school, you may have noticed multiple collisions between technophiles and technophobes. These collisions happen in most any educational environment when it comes time to grapple with new opportunities to support student learning. Technophiles tend to seek every opportunity possible to digitize the learning experience, while technophobes fight them every inch of the way, claiming that valuable learning resources are lost if digital learning platforms take precedence.

We, the authors of this book, are certainly not technophobes. However, we do not consider ourselves uncompromising technophiles either. Our passion is learning. To that end, we do not believe technology is the answer to every question. We believe that solid, strategic, research-based pedagogy should be at the center of what we do and, whenever possible, we should utilize whatever implements are available to enhance that process. Thankfully, learning pedagogy has plenty of support from the emergence of numerous digital learning innovations (Amory, 2012). If we were to referee this cage match, we would tell the technophiles and technophobes that grappling over technology is fruitless and that a balanced approach will let them both turn their focus where it belongs—on learning.

Regardless of your outlook, technology has a clear and vital role to play in facilitating distance-based learning.

Program Options for Learning at a Distance

Although learning at a distance is growing in popularity, we must keep in mind that technology is not only changing the learning possibilities associated with facilitating experiences online but also program delivery options thanks to emergent technology, new, rapidly developing programs allow schools to reach learners and support their learning in unique ways, depending on their needs. Consider these eight institutional options in relation to the delivery of digital learning.

1. Totally digital virtual schools: In 2014, there were 135 full-time virtual charter schools in twenty-three states, enrolling over 180,000 students (National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, 2016). These schools are 100 percent virtual in their curriculum delivery.

2. Charter schools: With so many charter schools emerging with highly specialized, topical points of focus, there are obviously several occasions in which a distance learning option can be of great benefit. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (2016) estimates that in the United States there are as many as 6,400 charter schools in existence, several them offered all or in part online.

3. Homeschooling: There are more than 1.5 million homeschooled students in the United States (Snyder, de Brey, & Dillow, 2016). With the growing popularity of homeschooling, communities have established parental best-practice groups that work together to help ensure that parents provide competitive curriculum offerings for home-educated learners. Distance learning opportunities, which can represent all or part of curriculum delivery, increasingly fortify these home-based options.

4. Alternative schools or credit recovery programs: Since the 1960s, schools have attempted to come up with new and unique programs designed to help learners with alternative learning options and credit recovery (Raywid, 1999). These programs can be offered all or in part online. During the 2009–2010 school year, 88 percent of U.S. districts offered students credit recovery courses (Powell, Roberts, & Patrick, 2015). In New Hampshire, the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School offers sixty-two online competency-based credit recovery classes. Interestingly, research shows that online credit recovery programs often cost less than traditional programs and typically offer students a high degree of flexibility in that they can repeat classes at whatever time and pace meets their individual needs (Davis, 2015).

5. Resolution to scheduling conflicts or curriculum supplements: Many schools across the United States are investigating or using digital learning options as a mechanism for saving money on staffing and enriching their curriculum (Clark & Barbour, 2015). If, for example, a group of learners at a school is interested in the pursuit of fluency in a foreign language, it may be significantly cheaper, more efficient, and often more effective to join a virtual learning cohort where these options are available to learners without necessarily hiring a facilitator who must commit to living in the area.

6. International connections: Many emerging international digital schools offer a very interesting value proposition (Clark & Barbour, 2015). They provide a highly competitive, totally digital learning experience, which includes a steady diet of synchronous learning experiences (via Google Hangouts, as an example) that allow participants access to a highly rigorous curriculum, taught by an international cadre of teachers who bring unique expertise to the field. Furthermore, students in these international schools enjoy studying with classmates who come together from all over the world. These highly competitive digital learning environments are often appealing to students with an interest in the international business community because of the opportunity to establish international business connections at a very early age.

7. Preparation for higher education and career training: The number of college students who take at least one online course is increasing every year. For example, 26 percent of 2013 undergraduate students were enrolled in at least one online course, and that number grew to 28 percent in 2014. Thirty-three percent of graduate students were enrolled in at least one online class in 2014 (Kena, Hussar, McFarland, de Brey, & Musu-Gillette, 2016). Therefore, preparing students for a more virtual orientation for future career preparation and training is important.

8. Flipped schools with an asynchronous digital enhancement: At their core, the digital learning phenomenon and the flipped school concept (where students view lectures at home and devote in-class time to discussions and activities) have both emerged with several interesting learning similarities. Both flipped schools and DEL platforms provide learners with control over how they access opportunities for direct instruction. In a flipped school, a middle-level science teacher may conduct an experiment, videotape it, and then post it online with some summative comments and perhaps a link to an additional resource for further study. Flipped schools follow this format to give learners who need more time an opportunity to reflect on what they’re learning and to revisit key elements of the modality of direct instruction. This allows students to come to school and apply the learning with one-to-one, guide-on-the-side assistance from their teacher. This is the exact formula we use in most DEL experiences and it is one that teachers can use for their classrooms. This interesting, innovative similarity speaks to our evolution as a profession. Whether you’re flipping your classroom or using DEL approaches in an almost totally virtual learning experience, we’re keeping in context that it’s all about the learning and finding strategic ways to bring students toward the desired learning goals. In the future, it’s likely that many flipped classrooms will apply much of what we discuss in this book.

In reflecting on these different options, think about how wonderfully diverse each of these learning opportunities is from the others. Think about the types of students each opportunity likely serves. Technology gives us the ability to serve and support learners in a way that, before now, was just not possible.

Although this is just a part of what makes these such exciting times, you should also be mindful of the inevitable digital learning scams that complicate the online learning landscape.

Digital Learning Scams

We would be remiss if we did not speak to some of the unscrupulous vendors who take unseemly shortcuts en route to the allure of profiting from the scalability of digital learning environments. What these entrepreneurs have figured out is that digital learning offers unique scalability due to reduction in overhead. Let’s assume that a state provides $10,000 per student for public, K–12 education. If the state has a voucher program and a family elects to take its $10,000 voucher and spend it on a school that delivers its education 100 percent online, an opportunity for unique profitability emerges. In this case, with the state allocation in hand, the absence of a brick-and-mortar schoolhouse to support the learning process creates remarkable savings. Delivering learning online also saves money on things like electric bills, custodial and support costs, sports programs, and so on.

In this kind of scenario for delivering online education, it would seem logical that the money saved could be reinvested in providing superior resources and potentially hiring state-of-the-art content facilitators. Sadly, this is often not the case. In fact, when it comes to instructors many of these for-profit seeking entrepreneurs hire poorly compensated adjuncts who ultimately work for a fraction per hour of their traditional K–12 counterparts—thus increasing an already robust bottom line (Desroches, 2016; Strauss, 2016). There have been several well-documented news stories over the years highlighting digital learning opportunities wherein students were placed in unusually large classes and taught by part-time instructors while collecting the full, state per-pupil allocation. Although these poorly conceived and poorly executed learning opportunities may look attractive to the economic bottom line, they hurt the cause of learning at a distance by sending the message that this modality is about profit. A quality digitally enhanced education makes this modality about advancing human potential, not profit.

How can you tell if an online learning entity is doing it right? Here are a few questions that will help you get at the truth.

■ Does the school’s goals or mission incorporate student focus?

■ Does the school’s strategic plan include personalized learning?

■ Does the school hold relationships with quality organizations such as the International Association for K–12 Online Learning or Quality Matters?

■ Is the school accredited? If so, what type of accreditation does it have, and how does that compare to other regional schools?

■ What do employee comments on sites like Glassdoor (www.glassdoor.com) say about working conditions and administrative focus on students?

In addition to answering these questions, check to see if the instructors are full time or working in a largely adjunct capacity. For the most part we believe entities that commit full-time instructors to this work are more comprehensively engaged in supporting an appropriate model.

Also, try to determine the teacher salary range at that school. In some cases, less-than-admirable digital learning entities try to get away with paying faculty members a fraction of their potential salary in an equivalent face-to-face environment, attempting to trade convenience and flexible working conditions for salary. We, again, don’t see this as a reasonable transaction. Working in your pajamas is a wonderful benefit, but it shouldn’t be the driving force for saving money on high-quality instructors.

These are, unfortunatley, not the only issues you must consider when conducting your course online. Social media also has a big role to play.

Some Thoughts on Social Media

Despite its many benefits, social media has contributed to a great deal of bullying, unattributed ranting, predators, and countless scams and distractions. In some cases, it has probably contributed to the degradation of writing skills and critical thinking. Conversely, some of the most thoughtful educators we know utilize social media to enhance their instruction and as a mechanism for building resources and connecting with other innovative educators. We believe that social media will continue to evolve and will be a significant component in developing highly competitive digital environments. Tiffany Hallier, founder of OhSoSocial (https://ohso.social), is our social media specialist. She has given us insights into the evolving role social media plays with our work, including developing the following four guidelines for using social media to enhance education.

1. All social spaces are not the same: For example, with Twitter becoming perhaps the most preferred social tool for emerging news, if you are teaching a class that relies on current events, the inclusion of certain Twitter feeds might make your learning space more robust. Instagram, on the other hand, might be a less-than-ideal fit for this kind of class.

2. All learning spaces are becoming social: From how campaigns strategize for political elections to how corporate America markets its products, social media has an impact on everything in our culture. The same is true with learner management systems and almost any type of learning experience. If an educator in a digital environment or otherwise tries to make his or her learning antisocial, he or she is unlikely to be successful.

3. Social spaces aren’t forever: Although our culture tends to enjoy the idea of permanence, social media connections don’t have to go on forever. You can join a group on Facebook and then move on once the usefulness of that group expires. Having the ability to move on and look for other in-the-moment connections keeps social media interesting and allows for the greater prevalence of innovation.

4. Schools need a strategy: It is beyond the scope of this book to delve into too many details concerning social media, but we believe that social media is a very powerful tool if it is utilized strategically. Schools need to have a plan for their social presence. To make social media work, content needs to be consistently provided and thoughtfully scheduled for release. We believe this is true for large corporate and nonprofit entities, and it’s also true for teachers who use social media with their students.

Use these guidelines as you consider how you might integrate social media platforms and tools into your own curriculum.

Conclusion

The introduction and this first chapter provide you with a much-needed philosophical backdrop for putting in context the strategies we will explore throughout the rest of this book. DEL doesn’t represent a new direction or destiny in K–12 education. If executed appropriately, it instead represents an efficient, cost effective, and comparable, if not superior, learning opportunity for the students you serve.

Finally, in Zen practice, it’s not uncommon to deliberately confront either the unfamiliar or irrational as an opportunity to extend the limits of one’s intellect or understanding. Satirist Jon Stewart used to close his popular hit The Daily Show with a funny, obscure, or otherwise jarring image in relationship to the political thought of the day. Think of Mr. Hill, who had his moment of Zen when his well-schooled charge returned and gently confronted him with the jarring reality that his assumptions about technology and learning were wrong. In fact, his students could grow more with asynchronous elements dynamically providing all of the students the opportunity to think things through and respond. In a moment of Zen, Mr. Hill learned to embrace the opportunities provided. Mr. Hill never became a technophile, but that moment gave him the courage to inspire thoughtful consideration of the tools he had come to suddenly understand and even respect.