Virtual Schooling ?

Following on from my previous post I wanted to explore with you the impact of 'Virtual Schooling' and came upon a post by Tony Bates commenting on the newsletter from ReViCa. This looks like a document that we should all be watching.

However, as a footnote to the newsletter was the link to Morten Flate Paulsen's book 'Online Education'. Although somewhat dated (pub 2003) and at 338 pages (.pdf) it is still a serious read. The following SlideShare brings out just a few of the salient points to whet appetites:

I make no excuse for quoting this academic document which deals primarily with 'Virtual Learning' across Higher Education in Europe. I believe that mainstream schooling can have much to learn from such documents. - It is just a pity that teachers in Secondary schools do not have the time to produce such works.

I quote, below, a number of key points identified as, ' Fourteen interventions to stimulate learner persistence and reduce dropouts.' Most of these points should be discussed in relation to on-line learning and virtual schools:

1. Students’ active participation should be sought in planning remedial or introductory courses.
2. Interviews with students while in their first year (or even before it starts).
3. Skilled diagnostic counseling to “help each applicant to explore his aims, motivation and commitment and comprehend how they might relate to the ... [institution]”
4. Counselling-out of high risk students.
5. “Conditional registration ... after students have taken advantage of the counseling service, every effort should be made by the University to ensure that they are able to follow the courses they really want... Students interested in courses which entail projects should be made aware of the volume of work involved and the type of library resources required (especially remote students)”.
6. “Counselors, academic advisors, course designers, and administrators of distance-taught programs should develop a diagnostic and remedial program to assist students in organizing their time and energy toward a successful completion of their study program”.
7. Regulate the study load of students.
8. Active tutorial assistance during the course. This might be provided either face-to-face or via mediated communications.
9. Examination of students’ completed assignments to analyze students’ cognitive learning styles, strengths and weaknesses, and affective responses to the instructional materials.
10. Provide option of longer time period for students with difficulty to complete the course.
11. Monitor the performance of participant instructors for needs amenable to improve via in-service training.
12. Distance education institutions should develop programs to enhance their academic status and social credibility so as to enhance student satisfaction and commitment.
13. Concentrate resources for student advising and other assistance on the more vulnerable first-year students.
14. Periodical redesign of courses and print (on line? -ed) materials. Cookson (1990)

Online Learning

A recently produced research document makes encouraging reading- even if a lot of the interesting bits are embedded within masses of statistics and tables. However, although this document is about online learning we can extend its conclusions to the additional functionality that an e-Portfolio can provide. As the document is online and available for all to see I trust that the extracts as listed below make a fair basis for further discussion.

US Department of Education
Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning
May 2009

Extracts from the Executive Summary:
Online learning—for students and for teachers—is one of the fastest growing trends in educational uses of technology. The National Center for Education Statistics (2008) estimated that the number of K-12 public school students enrolling in a technology-based distance education course grew by 65 percent in the two years from 2002-03 to 2004-05. On the basis of a more recent district survey, Picciano and Seaman (2009) estimated that more than a million K–12 students took online courses in school year 2007–08.

These activities were undertaken to address four research questions:

1. How does the effectiveness of online learning compare with that of face-to-face instruction?
2. Does supplementing face-to-face instruction with online instruction enhance learning?
3. What practices are associated with more effective online learning?
4. What conditions influence the effectiveness of online learning?

Worth noting:
When a α < .05 level of significance is used for contrasts, one would expect approximately 1 in 20 contrasts to show a significant difference by chance. For 51 contrasts, then, one would expect 2 or 3 significant differences by chance. The finding of 2 significant contrasts associated with face-to-face instruction is clearly within the range one would expect by chance; the 11contrasts associated with online or hybrid instruction exceeds what one would expect by chance.

Key Findings:
The main finding from the literature review was that:

• Few rigorous research studies of the effectiveness of online learning for K–12 students have been published.
• Students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.
• Instruction combining online and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction than did purely online instruction.
• Studies in which learners in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition found a greater benefit for online learning.
• Most of the variations in the way in which different studies implemented online learning did not affect student learning outcomes significantly.
• The effectiveness of online learning approaches appears quite broad across different content and learner types.
• Effect sizes were larger for studies in which the online and face-to-face conditions varied in terms of curriculum materials and aspects of instructional approach in addition to the medium of instruction.
• Blended and purely online learning conditions implemented within a single study generally result in similar student learning outcomes.
• Elements such as video or online quizzes do not appear to influence the amount that students learn in online classes.
• Online learning can be enhanced by giving learners control of their interactions with media and prompting learner reflection.
• Providing guidance for learning for groups of students appears less successful than does using such mechanisms with individual learners.

Extract from the Conclusions:
In many of the studies showing an advantage for online learning, the online and classroom conditions differed in terms of time spent, curriculum and pedagogy. It was the combination of elements in the treatment conditions (which was likely to have included additional learning time and materials as well as additional opportunities for collaboration) that produced the observed learning advantages. At the same time, one should note that online learning is much more conducive to the expansion of learning time than is face-to-face instruction.

Personal Observation:
Although there are some remarkable facilities available to some students in the US, I wonder just how many children in 'average' schools in the US have the same computer ratios as in the UK or more importantly what % of the US population uses 'Home Access' as we are beginning to understand it here in the UK.

I say this because I am not sure how well we can compare 'like-with-like' across different countries. Until the UK can get down to producing similar research for our 'K-12' cohort we will not be able to begin to ascertain the added advantages of e-Portfolios.

There are still many 'loopholes' in the paper that I am still trying to clarify with the American authors. For instance, were their 'online learning courses' freestanding tools with no f2f support? And then, what does f2f mean? Individual 1:1 tuition or one lecturer in front of 200 students? Did the online courses allow collaboration? Did they allow individual investigation or project work? Was the students' work machine-marked or was it assessed by a real person? Why, in some cases did online retention rates drop - was this just bad teaching or was it online technical frustrations?

For me, the document, despite all its academic excellence, raises a number of issues which need to be discussed with those who are aware of the contexts.

What does your e-Portfolio look like?

Following Dr Helen Barrett's blog it worried me that her graphical representation of all of the various aspects of an e-Portfolio was beginning to get a bit too complex to be of any practical use - apart from provoking some intense discussion. In her discussion forum it soon became apparent that there are many contrasting elements both linear and cyclical. Maria lists some of the essential contrasts:

"The key concepts: process vs product, formative vs summative evaluation, internal vs external audience, inmediate vs retrospective reflection, learning experiences vs learning outcomes/standards is a welldefined framework."

I therefore attempted to create my 'Radar Diagram' and thus presenting a useful representation. I soon realised that this could be used by tutors to discuss with their students such things as learning styles or areas needing more attention etc. Students, too, could use this as a personal self-assessment exercise, comparing their results with 'ideal' results at stages throughout the course.

The obvious input for this was to create a set of questions where an individual might give a '1-10' response. Similarly, this approach could also be used to identify a whole class's or cohort's general position on this learning diagram.

I attach the spreadsheet used to generate the Radar Diagram or Map. I do not claim that this is a perfect solution and would therefore appreciate your feedback. Thinking in terms of formative assessment, the same spreadsheet could obviously be developed to assess the general understanding of the uses of an e-Portfolio for a whole class and thus meet Popham's first level, ie that of adjusting one's lesson plans to suit the needs of the class.