Expert Opinion

The Changing Face of Education

Kirk deFord is an associate with the Technology in Education Center at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. The Center includes the Northwest Educational Technology Consortium (NETC), whose goal is to help educators integrate technology into the classroom. deFord spoke with Northwest Education assistant editor, Bracken Reed, in his in downtown Portland, Oregon.

Q: What has NETC's role been in promoting online and distance education in the Northwest?

In 1999 we held a focus group in Spokane at ESD 101 to gather information about a project we started calling Digital Bridges. Our advisors from the five states—the representatives for NETC—had said that because of the rural nature of their school systems they were beginning to use videoconferencing more and would love to see a resource that would support the development and implementation of appropriate videoconferencing systems for teaching and learning.

We came up with a lot of Web-based information as part of Digital Bridges. We also produced two videotapes about the uses of and the support for videoconferencing. Each one has a little bit different focus.

Those are both focused on videoconferencing?

Yes. We gathered a lot of information on the Web site, everything from the critical people that need to be involved, to a sheet for scripting out videoconferencing sessions. Videoconferencing takes a lot of technology support. It takes an initial capital outlay. It takes all kinds of things. Some districts or schools have said "This involves a lot. We just don't have the money or staff to do this." We feel that if we help them make that decision to put it off for a year then that's not necessarily a bad thing. We're doing our job to support them, whether it's helping them get started or helping them decide that they're not ready yet and what they need to do to get ready.

So, it's been a reliable Web site. We've kept it going, and we've given out hundreds of the videotapes. Later, it was suggested that we might want to bring people who are involved in videoconferencing together in one place, and that led to us hosting a National Interactive Videoconferencing Symposium in October of 2002 in Dallas.

What came out of that?

We had about 100 people. 31 states were represented, which was a nice group of people, and all of them were dedicated to working with interactive videoconferencing. Some of those people were from the non-profit end of things and others were from the for-profit groups that provide videoconferencing opportunities, especially interactive ones, like NASA. Those kind of groups do a lot of cool things, but they can typically run anywhere from $100 to $300 for an hour long course. And again, some of it is problematic because the equipment is fairly expensive. It takes a lot of knowledge and support to make it happen, especially with internet-based technology.

Why is that?

Videoconferencing eats up a whole lot of bandwidth, for one thing. There are two different kinds of videoconferencing over two different kinds of lines, and both can go over satellite. It's just how you want to get from here to there.

One is IP [Internet Protocol] which is basically what e-mail and Web sites go over. The other one is ISDN [Integrated Services Digital Network], which is a more secure line but is more expensive. It can cost as much as $100 per hour to run it. So, things get prohibitive. Over IP it doesn't cost you anything, but what you have in organizations such as school districts is that the dedication of that bandwidth is for data, especially for sending e-mail. Well, if you take up 3/4 of your bandwidth with a videoconference at 3:00 in the afternoon then it slows down everyone's e-mail and Web access, and that's not what IT directors want to see happen.

Plus there is the issue of firewalls. At a school that has a firewall in place, you have to ask your IT director to raise the firewall in order to make it happen, and it can be a real problem for them to do that, because their system is then vulnerable to attack.

The different kinds of videoconferencing can be really confusing to a non-technical person. Can you explain some of the different ways it can be carried out?

Basically, there are methods that we call "point to point", which is like if you are in one place and I'm in another and we are just talking to each other. Or I'm a teacher and I teach to a group of students in a remote site and they have a large screen and I have a smaller one and a camera. There can be document sharing, where I can put something up and show it to you. And there are smart boards, where you can make marks on the document that is showing on your screen and I can see it happen on my screen at the same time. There are all kinds of variations on that.

Then there is "multi-point", which means there are a bunch of us that are actually talking with each other, seeing each other, simultaneously, and we have an agenda and we have something we want to accomplish. There are questions that come up in that format. Is there a speaking order? Have you communicated to everybody about what the agenda is? What are some of the resources you need to have in front of you as you conduct this meeting or do this class? It takes a lot of coordinated thinking and planning.

Often, you can have people on the other end act as a cohort. You can give them a question to work around, and then they come back to the videoconferencing unit and describe to the rest of the groups what it is they have come up with. That works really well in teaching, in meetings, in all kind of collaborative situations. Some of this technology is still kind of new for public schools, and what we have to do is prove the efficacy of it.

We have a document that's called Access and Opportunity that tries to help schools looks at possible solutions to their problems. For instance, if they want to offer a class in physics to a remote site, they have to ask themselves, "Can we do that face to face?" And they might say, "No, we aren't going to bus three kids to a school. And we aren't going to hire one teacher at the remote high school to teach 3 kids." So, it's an issue of how can you give students the access and opportunity to do a physics class or a third year language class or to credit recovery classes? How are you going to do this? Well, maybe they can give videoconferencing or online education a try.

What is NETC doing with non-video online education?

We're currently expanding the Digital Bridges project to include a whole path on Web-based or online instruction. What happened is that we did the [videoconferencing] symposium and then because of the increase in online education we decided to expand the Digital Bridges project. So we have created this continuum where we look at everything from a program that's 100 percent online to one that's 100 percent face to face, and every mix and match in between.

And this is still part of the Digital Bridges project?

Digital Bridges, right. When you go to the Web site you'll see that there are two paths: one is the Web based and one is the videoconferencing. Ideally, a teacher would be able to walk into a classroom and some of their students might be online and some of their students are face to face or if it's all face to face. And one moment the teacher is using chalk and a chalkboard and the next they are using videoconferencing or the internet. The ideal is to have that kind of flexibility in the use of technology and in the modes of delivery.

The big question is: How do you engage kids? You have to get them involved in their own learning and that's no different with online education. You can't just shove text at somebody on a computer and hope they learn. Especially with students that might have poor study skills in the first place. So teachers have to know how to engage students online and how to do highly interactive things. And currently there are hardly any classes or programs that are getting teachers ready to teach online or to teach with interactive videoconferencing.

That's not currently part of any preservice teacher training programs?

I can't think of any programs that would fit the needs of a prospective teacher that comes in and says "I want to learn how to teach online, do you have a program for me?" No, I don't know of a single one.

So they just have to pick up that knowledge randomly?

It's random, yes. What is curious is that if you talk to college students today, especially graduate students, most of them will have taken online classes. In fact there are a lot of master's programs that are completely online, and there are a lot of universities and colleges that are looking to have their online courses accredited, but I don't know of a single program that is really training teachers to teach online or to have online instructional skills. It's just kind of understood that you are a face to face teacher, and then you might teach online occasionally. They're not looking at the possibility that some teachers might end up teaching completely online. It raises a lot of questions that I've been trying to answer myself. For instance, does someone who teaches online have to have experience in teaching face to face?

At the very least they have to have content area knowledge, right?

Exactly. But could they get content area knowledge in their major, and then get a credential in online instruction and pedagogy, and never do any face to face teaching at all?

Do you think that's coming?

I think it is.

What do you think is going to drive that change?

Ultimately, it's going to take students that come in and say, "I don't think I'm going to go to this University because you don't provide any instruction in online teaching."

Otherwise there's not a lot of motivation on their part?

There doesn't seem to be on the part of the universities, no. Most of the university people know the face to face mode so well, they seem a little slow to embrace online teaching. I don't want to fault them. I'm sure there are some universities that are looking into it. I know the University of Alaska-Anchorage, for instance, has done some things. They draw on what they've learned while teaching University-level online education courses.

We're already seeing an increase in students taking online classes. Who teaches those classes?

Good question. They are typically good, experienced face to face teachers that have seen this as an opportunity. They are technology savvy and they just kind of fit into that mode of doing things. They are usually the same kinds of teachers that are eager to incorporate technology into their regular classrooms.

What is NETC doing to try to fill that need for teacher training in online education?

That's one of the next things we want to do with the summer symposiums. We want to look at the issue of curriculum for online teaching, for example. Unless we have curriculum, unless we have units of instruction that look useful and fit the academic style of a University, we're not going to break into that system.

I'm hoping that our symposium is kind of groundwork for that. We've done this for two summers now. We've done an Oregon-based online summer institute for a week, with 40 to 45 participants. Teachers have laptops and they learn all about working with blackboard and other software programs that are used in online teaching, as well as strategies to facilitate student learning. They come out of that fairly knowledgeable on how to proceed with online teaching, and ready to spread the word.

Who is typically attending the symposiums?

There have only been three or four teachers, typically, that are right out of graduate education courses. They've got a teaching credential and they heard about this and they want to learn how to teach online. We're providing some of that. But in general we want to work with experienced teachers because we want this to go regional. We're hoping that from this symposium we will get a core group of people who want to plan a summer institute for teachers that are new to online teaching or for people who have never taught before at all and are interested in online teaching. So, this symposium is definitely for more experienced people.

You are drawing a lot on master teachers, then?

Master teachers, yes. That's the whole reason to bring these people together. They have a lot of knowledge and we want to pull that out of them. There's not a lot of research on online teaching, especially scientifically based research. What we have to draw from is the experience and the knowledge of master teachers. The term I'm using is practice based research, and we ask some real basic questions. Are they educating students? To what degree are they students kids? What is the success rate of the students that are working online, based on test scores and continued completion? What in practice do you do that makes a difference? Do you write text differently? Does it make a difference how often you communicate with a student online? How much of an online course do you make available on the first day? Have you see a difference in the number of graphics you use? Those kinds of things.

What do you think the proliferation of online education is going to mean for the traditional public school? For instance, there seems to be a lot of competition for students, and part of that, obviously, is money attached to students.

It's strange. It's the entrepreneurial approach to education. They [online education providers] can pull those kids off like crazy. I'm a former school board member, and I've looked a lot at policy, the various ways that policy has played itself out, and I've done that for online education as well. I've really looked at how we can make online education work, and one aspect of this that's still missing is the issue of ethics. With the increase in online education, magnet schools, charter schools, homeschooling, have really blurred the lines. School lines, district lines, and state lines are all disappearing; you can attract students from anywhere. And in a place like Alaska or Washington State, where the money follows the kid, you tend to increase your revenue at the expense of others.

I'm interested in what's best for kids. What is the best approach to ethical educator behavior? How do we need to behave? It's sometimes a hard thing for educators to look at, especially with all the revenue losses going on and cutbacks.

For instance, there is a very sizeable population of homeschoolers, and those kids basically kind of disappear. By that I mean, in a state like Oregon, if they don't get counted you don't get the money. They don't factor in. If you've got 200 kids at your elementary school, and the formula says you're going to get $7,400 per kid for each of those 200, then you just do the multiplication and that is what your budget is for the year. Well, if you are missing kids, you don't get that money. And if those kids are taking online classes, at home or elsewhere, you don't get that money. It's a policy issue, and it's something that really hasn't been tackled yet.

Speaking of policy, how is the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) influencing distance education?

It's just starting to have an impact. There are a number of different ways. First of all, when a school is not meeting AYP then the parents are given the option of accessing supplement services. And many of the programs that have been reviewed by states are online programs. Traditionally you've had a sort of a triangle with the school and the parent and the company that provides the services. In the past, the school has been the moderator. Now, with the money going right to the parents, the school is out of the triangle, out of the loop. That raises some basic questions about who is monitoring the delivery of services.

Another influence [of NCLB] is that nationally there is a heavy emphasis on math, reading, and science. We've all been told that no curricula areas are important unless they can raise math, reading, and science scores. That tends to impact what teachers are able to do in the classroom in terms of enhancement. I'm not necessarily saying that's a bad thing, but it's definitely influenced how teachers use technology in the classroom and how districts approach the use of technology for delivering distance education.

There is a real pressure on schools to individualize education, to provide better service to each student by meeting their individual needs. Do you see online learning as an ideal way to do that?

Yes, and there is another component to this. I went to an NCLB leadership summit in St. Louis and there was a lot of talk about assessment and data warehousing. The government's goal is to have frequent online testing in the classroom. They want to see diagnosis and remediation happening in a short period of time, as opposed to typical testing systems. For instance, where a third grade student takes a test in the spring, and the teacher doesn't get those test scores until the following school year. There is no use for those test scores.

I think that's really beneficial, but I'm not sure exactly how teachers are going to have the time to do all of that. Administer frequent tests, analyze those test scores, make accurate judgments about remediation—all of this when you've got 28 students in the classroom.

So, do you think online learning is going to become more and more prevalent?

Yes. You can't stop it. Especially the way things are going with NCLB and the choice component. They want to encourage people to be able to do things by choice. So I would predict that in the next four to six years every high school student in the nation will complete some part of their high school career online. In fact there are some school districts that are already requiring that a student take one online class in order to graduate.

If online learning continues at the current rate, do you think most teachers will be teaching online at least part of the time? Is that going to be just another part of being a teacher?

Exactly. It will just be part of being a teacher, part of being a student, part of the educational experience.

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