Knowledge, understanding, learning, creativity, imagination, innovation and collaboration at the speed of light (AIM Program) finds "traditional education" providers unprepared, bordering on irrelevance.
HORIZON Report 2007
http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2007_Horizon_Report.pdf
Gordon Freedman
Waiting for the "What's Next" in Education
By Gordon Freedman
Do you ever get the feeling that the "what's next" in education is not actually going to materialize? Until recently, I thought that the various education camps -- vouchers, charters, constructivist, data-driven, AYP, research-based, technology-enabled, e-learning -- would compete indefinitely and cloud the education waters forever. However, two events have changed my mind; both, ironically, coming out of the "Motor State," Michigan, in the last year -- not a particularly good year for an economy largely based on fossil fuels.
Almost 10 years ago, when state coffers were still filled with dot-com investment dollars, a number of states, Michigan among them, started state-funded virtual schools so progressive governors could navigate online around the entrenched state education bureaucracies. In short order, a menu of advanced placement (AP) and honors courses were available to the hinterlands and the inner cities online. They were followed by remedial courses and teacher development -- all designed, developed, and delivered online by experts.
California, challenged by an access lawsuit, Florida, interested in home learners and choice, and Michigan, in the throes of finding alternate methods of retraining autoworkers, each joined the growing virtual school ranks. In 2002, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) became the law of the land mandating annual yearly progress (AYP) data collection and highly qualified teachers. As districts across the nation bought data packages, installed data warehouses and began analyzing their assessment data, the virtual schools kept pumping out their expensive and engaging courses, mostly unaware of each other's work.
School Districts Use Technology for Gathering AYP Data
What has not happened in the intervening years is the crossing of the data-rich expert curriculum and instruction from the virtual schools with the rich collection and analysis of assessment data from districts. Schools and students consumed online courses to fill in gaps and work around tight schedules, but the virtual schools did not analyze their own data for student learning gains or failures. While on the physical school side of the fence, test data in technology-driven analysis systems located deficiencies that the schools address in the traditional way -- by adding more in-service training on whatever area was found deficient.
Unfortunately, the data-driven analysis has not led to immediate online actions to remedy teaching deficits, supplement curriculum 24/7, or inform parents on the importance of student work.
These two ships are still passing each other in the night. Virtual schools ship out great curriculum but it escapes the district data-gathering efforts. Conversely, schools find deficiencies using technology but address the problems clumsily at best with traditional methods, often subjecting students to re-taking entire courses when they only misunderstood aspects of a course. Technology-driven virtual courses or online tutoring could be systematic answers to certain district deficiencies, but they are not.
Instrumentation of the Learning Process
What woke me up to the possibility of a different world are the following two events where two educational trajectories collided. First, Michigan State University School of Education researcher Patrick Dickson put in a request to Michigan's Virtual High School asking for all their online data for students who had taken Algebra online. Since the courses were delivered through a course management system, there was data from that system on what the students actually did or did not do in the course, in addition to their test scores -- the only data generally available to school data systems.
Dickson wanted to compare what students did in the course (where, when, how) with their ultimate grade (assessment data). He was looking for patterns -- how did students learn well, where did certain students fail to grasp a concept, or begin missing the beat? As a rudimentary attempt, Dickson could easily detect after several weeks in the course which students were going to make it and which ones were not -- all from "click" patterns. It was as if he were looking at an electrocardiogram (EKG) tape of student learning actions. He could tell who spent a lot of time in their lessons, responded to assignments in a timely way, did well on assessments, communicated in discussion with fellow students or in conference with instructors.
What Dickson did with North Central Regional Education Laboratory (NCREL), now Learning Point Associates, funding and Michigan Virtual High School data was essentially "instrument" the learning process. Imagine what it would take to get the same data from a classroom, a study hall, a student's bedroom or family kitchen table. It would be nearly impossible.
Evidence-Based Education and Michigan's Bold Step
I like to think that Dickson is on to something and I am going to give it a name -- evidence-based education -- to add to the education alphabet soup. Evidence-Based Education (EBE) gives us a view into the evidentiary base of learning that can be compared with assessment data and a variety of other data from demographics to lunch menus and bus ride distances. Imagine if not only the virtual courses, but the traditional classroom, could generate this kind of data. The course management system -- whether used virtually or as a supplement to the classroom -- provides the ability to gather learning use data through the process of instrumentation of teaching and learning actions recorded by the system.
That was number one for Michigan ? a new look at learning ? but still this research only created a new camper in the busy and blurry education campground. Now, enter Michigan's second act, which is the first historical crack in the hundred year old traditional land-based school machinery. In summer 2006, Michigan voted into law its high school graduation requirements (it had none before). Included in these requirements was an item supported by Michigan Virtual and the Michigan Department of Education, now working in concert. The item was an online learning requirement. In order for a student to receive a high school diploma in Michigan, he or she must have had an online experience -- a course or something similar to it; the exact definition is on its way.
This virtual crack in the physical armor of education is the first step into 21st century learning, an acknowledgement that what students and parents already routinely do --
use the Web -- should also be part of schooling, officially.
To stimulate more activity and make this move the beginning of a trend, not an isolated case, Michigan Virtual, the Michigan Department, Microsoft and Blackboard have pulled together to provide an online course for the state's ninth graders free of cost to fulfill this particular and peculiar graduation requirement. It is the hope of all parties that online education will become more commonplace in schools as it is now almost ubiquitous in college and the workforce.
Turing the AYP Process into an Improvement System
It is my hope that the education community will zero in on the "2+2=10" equation that can occur when Evidence-Based Education (EBE) data is combined, as a matter of routine, with AYP data that can then almost automatically generate the teacher training, remediation, and parent communication to address deficiencies -- at least for some students. It can also generate what stands between the hundred year old model and the future -- individualized education. School today is about classrooms, it is not yet about students. That eventual shift will be facilitated by student use data combined with student assessment data, which will lead to the ability to individualize education, or at least take the first steps in that 21st century direction, as the Web has for nearly everything else.
I think we are close to the "next thing"; it is lurking out there. Here's what's necessary to close the gap: a form of thinking that says, "One, no significant reform or improvement is going to occur without the use of enterprise technology (both assessment data and online remediation). Two, no significant use of technology will occur without reorganization in school districts and state offices. Three, no meaningful reorganization is going to occur without solid research showing what really works."
Bring in the Researchers, Please
Hopefully, Dickson, NCREL (now Learning Point), the Michigan Department of Education, Michigan Virtual and the technology providers have demonstrated that researchers need to come into the field full force to develop an evidentiary methodology for learning, adding to the already engrained data collection. This one-two punch could well be what's missing in 21st century education. We have instrumented forests, glaciers, space probes, and the human body. Why can't we do the same for learning?
Gordon Freedman is vice president of education strategy for Blackboard Inc.
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