Virtual Schooling: Effectiveness for
Students and Implications for Teachers
Cathy Cavanaugh, Curriculum and Instruction,
Abstract: The growth in the numbers of students learning online
and the importance of online learning as a solution to educational challenges
are two factors that have increased the need to study more closely the factors
that effect student learning in virtual schooling environments. Of particular
importance is the preparation of teachers for teaching in virtual schools. This
paper identifies the unique factors of K-12 virtual schooling, outlines a study
of the effectiveness of virtual schools, and describes how leading virtual
schools currently prepare teachers for success.
The
K-12 education community has seen explosive growth over the last decade in
distance learning programs. As of spring, 2004, there were roughly 2,400
publicly-funded cyber-based charter schools and state and district virtual
schools in 37 U.S. states, with an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 students
participating in online courses, according to Susan Patrick, Director of the
U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology (Fording 2004).
While elementary and secondary students have learned through the use of
electronic distance learning systems since the 1930s, the development of online
distance learning schools is a relatively new phenomenon. Online virtual
schools may be ideally suited to meet the needs of stakeholders calling for
school choice, high school reform, and workforce preparation in 21st
century skills.
The
growth in the numbers of students learning online and the importance of online
learning as a solution to educational challenges are two factors that have underscored
the need to study more closely the factors that effect student learning in
virtual schooling environments. Of particular importance is the preparation of
teachers for teaching in virtual schools. This paper identifies the unique factors
of K-12 virtual schooling, outlines a study of the effectiveness of virtual
schools, and describes how leading virtual schools currently prepare teachers
for success.
Distance Education in
the K-12 Context
The
many thousands of K-12 students who participate in online education programs
are attracted to virtual schooling because it offers advantages over
classroom-based programs. Among the benefits of distance education for
school-age children are increases in enrollment or time in school as education
programs reach underserved regions, broader educational opportunity for
students who are unable to attend traditional schools, access to resources and
instructors not locally available, and increases in student-teacher
communication. Students in virtual schools showed greater improvement that
their conventional school counterparts in critical thinking, researching, using
computers, learning independently, problem-solving, creative thinking,
decision-making, and time management (Barker & Wendel
2001). Academic advantages over traditional classroom instruction were
demonstrated by students in Mexico’s Telesecundaria
program, who were “substantially more likely than other groups to pass a final
9th grade examination” administered by the state (Calderoni 1998, p. 6); by students taking a chemistry by
satellite course (Dees 1994); and by students learning reading and math via
interactive radio instruction (Yasin & Luberisse 1998). Virtual school developers and instructors
continue to refine their practice, and in so doing, they learn from reports of
both successful and unsuccessful programs.
Virtual
schooling, like classroom schooling, has had limited success in some
situations. In an online environment, students may feel isolated, parents may
have concerns about children’s social development, students with language
difficulties may experience a disadvantage in a text-heavy online environment,
and subjects requiring physical demonstrations of skill such as music, physical
education, or foreign language may not be practical in a technology-mediated
setting. For example, Bond (2002) found that distance between tutor and learner
in an online instrumental music program has negative effects on performance
quality, student engagement, and development and refinement of skills and
knowledge. While distance learning was viewed as beneficial for providing the
opportunity for elementary school students to learn a foreign language, Conzemius and Sandrock (2003)
report that “the optimal learning situation still involves the physical
presence of a teacher” (p. 47). Virtual school students show less improvement
than those in conventional schools in listening and speaking skills (Barker
& Wendel 2001). Highly technical subjects such as
mathematics and science have also proven to be difficult to teach well online.
The Alberta Online Consortium evaluated student performance on end-of-year
exams among virtual school students across the province, and found that virtual
school student scores in mathematics at grades 3, 6, 9, and 12, and the
sciences at grades 6 and 9 lagged significantly behind scores of non-virtual
school students (Schollie 2001).
Given instruction of equal
quality, groups of students learning online generally achieve at levels equal
to their peers in classrooms (Kearsley 2000).
Equality between the delivery systems has been well documented over decades for
adult learners, and while much less research exists focusing on K-12 learners,
the results tend to agree. “Evidence to date convincingly demonstrates that ,
when used appropriately, electronically delivered education—‘e-learning’—can
improve how students learn, can improve what students learn, and can deliver
high-quality learning opportunities to all children” (National Association of
State Boards of Education 2001, p. 4). Many studies report no significant
differences between K-12 distance education and traditional education in
academic achievement (Falck et al 1997; Goc Karp & Woods 2003; Hinnant
1994; Jordan 2002; Kozma et al 2000; Mills 2002; Ryan
1996), frequency of communication between students and teachers (Kozma et al), and attitude toward courses (McGreal 1994).
Although various forms of
technology-enabled distance education for pre-college students have been in use
for nearly a century, rapid change in technology and the educational context
have resulted in a small body of research relevant to today’s conditions that
can serve to guide instructors, planners, or developers. The temptation may be
to attempt to apply or adapt findings from studies of K-12 classroom learning
or adult distance learning, but K-12 distance education is fundamentally
unique.
Characteristics for success in distance education
Primary characteristics that
set successful distance learners apart from their classroom-based counterparts are
their autonomy (Keegan, 1996) and greater student responsibility (Wedemeyer 1981). By the time they reach higher education,
most adults have acquired a degree of autonomy in learning, but younger
students need to be scaffolded as part of the
distance education experience. Virtual school teachers must be adept at helping
children acquire the skills of autonomous learning, including self-regulation.
Adult learners more closely approach expertise in the subjects they study and
in knowing how to learn, due to their long experience with the concepts and
with meta-cognition, whereas children are relative novices. This distinction is
important because experts organize and interpret information very differently
from novices, and these differences affect learners’ abilities to remember and
solve problems (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking
1999), and their ability to learn independently. Expert learners have better
developed metacognition, a characteristic that children develop gradually.
A second characteristic that
differentiates successful distance learners from unsuccessful ones is an
internal locus of control, leading them to persist in the educational endeavor
(Rotter 1989).
Research has found that older children have more internal locus of
control than younger children (Gershaw 1989),
reinforcing the need for careful design and teaching of distance education at
K-12 levels. Younger students will need more supervision, fewer and simpler
instructions, and a more extensive reinforcement system than older students.
Effective online programs for young learners include frequent teacher contact
with students and parents, lessons divided into short segments, mastery
sequences so student progress can grow in stages, and rewards for learning such
as multimedia praise and printable stickers or certificates.
Young students are different
from adult learners in other ways. Piaget’s stages of cognitive development, in
particular preoperational (2 to 7 years), concrete operational (7 to 11 years),
and formal operational (11 years to adulthood) outline the phases in
development toward adulthood. The stages offer pedagogical guidance for
delivering effective web based education, which should focus on the major
accomplishments of learners in these stages. Each stage is characterized by the
emergence of new abilities and ways of processing information (Slavin 2003, p. 30), which necessitates specialized
instructional approaches and attention to each child’s development. Since
adults have progressed through these stages of cognitive development, delivery
of web based education at the adult level need not concentrate on methods that
help the learner develop these cognitive skills. In contrast, web-based instruction for
students in their formative years must include age appropriate developmental
activities, building on the students’ accomplishments in and through the
cognitive stages. For example, an online mathematics or science lesson designed
for students at the preoperational stage needs to use very concrete methods,
such as instructing the student to develop concepts by manipulating and
practicing with real-world objects. The concept can built upon for students in
the concrete operational stage using multimedia drag-and-drop manipulations and
representations, or realistic simulations. At the formal operational stage,
students are capable of using symbols, language, and graphic organizers to
continue to learn the concepts in more abstract ways.
Teaching and learning theory applied to virtual
schooling
Piaget helps us to understand
that learning should be holistic, authentic, and realistic. Less emphasis
should be placed on isolated skills aimed at teaching individual concepts.
Students are more likely to learn skills while engaged in authentic, meaningful
activities. Authentic activities are inherently interesting and meaningful to
the student. Web-based technology offers a vast array of opportunities to help
expand the conceptual and experiential background of the student (Bolton 2002
p. 5).
Neo-Piagetian theorists have expanded on Piaget’s model of
cognitive development. Among others, Vygotsky
proposed that historical and cultural context play significant roles in helping
people think, communicate, and solve problems, proposing that cognitive
development is strongly linked to input from others. Vygotsky’s
theory implies that cognitive development and the ability to use thought to
control our own actions require first mastering cultural communication systems
and then learning to use these systems to regulate our own thought process. He
believed that learning takes place when children are working within their zone
of proximal development. Tasks within
the zone of proximal development are ones that children cannot yet do alone but
could do with the assistance of more competent peers or adults (Slavin 2003, p. 43-44). When working with children using
web-based technology, teachers must offer students activities that make use of
the web’s powerful tools for collaborative
learning, and are within their zone of
proximal development. Online communities can provide a supportive
context that makes new kinds of learning experiences possible (Bruckman 1998, p. 84-85).
Constructivism,
a widely used theory in distance education, is founded on the premises that by
reflecting on our experiences and participating in social-dialogical process
(Duffy & Cunningham 1996), we construct our understanding of the world we
live in. Each of us generates our own "rules" and "mental
models," which we use to make sense of our experiences. Learning,
therefore, is simply the process of adjusting our mental models to accommodate
new experiences (Brooks & Brooks 1993). Children have not had the
experiences that adults have had to help them construct understanding.
Therefore, children construct an understanding of the world around them that
lacks the rich experiences that adults have had. Scaffolding or mediated
learning is important in helping children achieve these cognitive
understandings (Slavin 2003, p. 259), and are
essential components of web-based learning experiences for children. Online
learning environments, when designed to fully use the many tools of
communication that are available, can offer a more active, constructive, and
cooperative experience than classroom learning. In addition, technologies that
are easily employed in online environments, such as mind mapping tools and
simulations, are effective means for helping students make meaning of abstract
phenomena and strengthen their meta-cognitive abilities (Duffy & Jonassen 1992).
A Meta-Analysis of
the Effectiveness of Online K-12 Distance Education
The purpose of the
meta-analysis was to provide a quantitative synthesis of the research
literature of web-based K-12 distance education from 1999 to the present,
across content areas, grade levels, and outcome measures. The first goal was to
determine the effects of distance education on K-12 student outcomes,
specifically academic achievement. The second goal was to identify the effects
on student outcomes of the features of distance education, including content
area, duration of use, frequency of use, grade level of students, role of the
instructor, type of school, timing of interactions, and pacing of the learning.
The analysis showed that
distance education can have the same effect on measures of student academic
achievement when compared to traditional instruction. The study-weighted mean
effect size across all outcomes was -0.028 with a 95% confidence interval from
0.060 to -0.116, indicating no significant difference in performance between
students who participated in online programs and those who were taught in
face-to-face classrooms. No factors were found to be related to significant
positive or negative effects. The factors that were tested included academic
content area, grade level of the students, role of the distance learning
program, role of the instructor, length of the program, type of school,
frequency of the distance learning experience, pacing of instruction, timing of
instruction, instructor preparation and experience in distance education, and
the setting of the students.
The analysis showed that for
the factors examined, distance learning did not outperform or underperform classroom instruction. The number of studies
was small, and many studies did not report detailed information, so the results
should be viewed as indications of tendencies rather than prescriptions for
practice. What has been learned from these results is that, based on the best
research available on online K-12 distance education programs, such programs
are effective for student learning. Prior to this point, the field has relied
on small individual studies, syntheses that included outdated analog technology, and syntheses that included adult learners.
Implications for research and practice
Distance education as it has
been implemented at the K-12 level over the past decade has improved over time
according to several measures: providing access to education and choice in
course offerings to increased numbers of students, offering education to a
larger range of grade levels and ability levels, using more interactive and
widely accessible technologies, and leading students to academic success on a
wider range of achievement instruments. The effect of distance education on
learning may be moderated by several factors, existing as it does in a very
complex web of educational, technological, and social dynamics. Factors such as
the design of the distance learning system, the demands of the content, the
abilities and disabilities of the student, and the quality of the teacher are
likely to be influential factors, as they are in conventional educational
enterprises. The consistency of the effects shown in the studies analyzed in
this review suggest that as distance education is currently practiced,
educators and other stakeholders can reasonably expect learning in a
well-designed distance education environment to be equivalent to learning in a
well-designed classroom environment.
How will K-12 distance
education realize greater potential and maximize it effectiveness? How will designers
and managers of K-12 distance education programs make better decisions in order
to design and deliver a more effective program? The answers lie in changes in
the ways policymakers and researchers do their work in this complex context. In
order for distance education to be evaluated, data must be collected and
reported in detail. Such data collection begins with identification of goals.
Policymakers and evaluators must enter into a partnership in which common goals
are identified, an evaluation plan is acted on, and detailed reporting follows.
Evaluation must be seen as a tool to support policy setting and decision making
(Means & Haertel 2004). It is no longer enough to
ask whether distance education is effective, we need to understand why (Sabelli 2004). We need to know how to make it more
effective, what factors contribute most to effectiveness, and in what contexts
the factors operate. Acquiring this knowledge requires consensus on a
definition of effectiveness that goes beyond standardized tests, and a system
for identifying and measuring factors that influence effectiveness. As Means
and Haertel stress, “many studies of the effects of
technology-supported innovations are hindered by a lack of measures of student
learning commensurate with the initiative’s goals” (p. 99).
One factor warranting special
consideration in assessing the effectiveness of virtual schooling is teacher
quality. In classrooms, teacher effectiveness is a strong determiner of
differences in student learning, far outweighing differences in class size and
heterogeneity (Darling-Hammond 2000). Based on the similarities in student
outcomes between distance and classroom learning, there is every reason to
expect that teacher preparation is critical in distance education. However, there
has been very little formal preparation available addressing the unique nature
of online instruction and very little time for teachers to develop their
expertise as online instructors. As professional development becomes more
common and expertise grows, student success is likely to grow as well.
Little data is available
about the influences of teacher qualifications in virtual schooling.
Practitioners and policymakers in K-12 distance education are urged to use
data-driven decision making, and to do so they must be informed by experience
and data must be available. In 2004, there have been fewer than ten years of
accumulated experience and too little detailed research published on web-based
distance education methods. The lack of detail in the research to date hinders
thorough investigation of the factors influencing practice, and limits what can
be learned for the improvement of practice. A coordinated research and
reporting effort is needed in order to improve the cycle of conducting research
on practice and applying research to improve practice.
Teachers employed in today’s
virtual school range from highly qualified, experienced, certified educators
who have participated in professional development for online teaching to tutors
monitoring independent study classes. The continuum of teacher professional
preparation in virtual schools is just wide and varied as it is for public and
private classroom-based schools. However, the skills needed for teaching in
virtual schools are fundamentally different. The table below shows the minimum
qualifications required by some of the leading American virtual schools. Not
all private virtual schools have such stringent requirements. Currently, the
virtual schools themselves are filling the gap in skills needed by the teachers
they hire. As virtual schooling grows and teachers begin to move among schools
and among states during their careers, it will become more effective and
efficient to standardize initial and continuing preparation and to shift the
increasing burden of preparation from individual schools to a broader teacher
preparation system. If traditional colleges and schools of education are not to
be left behind in this movement, they will need to quickly develop partnerships
and join the conversations about virtual school teacher preparation.
Table 1. Minimum qualifications required of teachers in some
of the largest
|
School name |
School web address |
State certification? |
Years of teaching experience |
Other |
|
|
http://www.flvs.net |
Yes, or eligibility |
None required |
Criminal history check,
fingerprinting |
|
Virtual High School, |
http://www.govhs.org |
Yes |
Required |
Professional development to
learn online teaching and course design |
|
|
http://www.mivu.org |
Yes |
Not indicated |
Professional development to
learn online teaching |
|
K-12 (Virtual academies) |
http://www.k12.com |
Yes |
Required, amount varies by
state |
Technology proficiency |
|
Connections Academies |
http://www.connectionsacademy.com |
Yes |
Required |
Technology proficiency |
|
Class.com |
http://www.class.com |
Yes |
Not indicated |
Professional development to
learn online teaching |
|
|
http://www.cmacademy.org |
Yes |
Not indicated |
Professional development to
learn online teaching Technology proficiency |
Note: teachers in the state
and district supported virtual school are generally required to meet the same
qualifications as other public school teachers in the state.
For teacher educators to
become part of the emerging system of virtual school teacher preparation and
development, five major action recommendations must be addressed with online
learning practitioners, online learning district-level leadership, and Federal
and State educational policy makers:
This
crucial informational campaign requires professionals working in distance
education in any capacity to network by participating in conferences,
publishing articles and papers, and contributing to discussions locally and
globally where people who are not involved in distance education can learn.
This
outline of crucial, performance-based knowledge, skills, and dispositions must
serve as a guide in the stages of design, implementation, and evaluation of teacher
preparation and development programs. Consensus is needed on the goals of
distance education, and plans should follow to evaluate the role of teacher
quality in making progress toward those goals.
Distance
educators and teacher educators belong to a wide variety of overlapping
professional groups and associations that have the potential to contribute to a
powerful and effective coalition. The larger coalition needed to weld a broader
professional consensus should serve as a central clearinghouse for information
about K-12 virtual school teacher education, a matchmaking service for programs
and teachers, and as an organizational focus for organizing national efforts to
support online and distance learning policy, program development, and
professional development.
Learning, progress, and
data-driven decisions require the availability of relevant data. The K-12 distance education and online
learning communities certainly have the infrastructure for sharing that
information, but teacher educators may not be as connected to this network as
they should be. With availability of high quality teacher preparation and
professional development, parents and practitioners, policymakers and national
political leadership will be assured that virtual schools are staffed to best
educate and equip all our children for life and success during the ensuing
twenty-first century.
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