This week, millions of student’s will head back to school.  While our education system is under tremendous fire, it is the time of year for all of us to remember the saying ‘if you can read this [blog], thank a teacher’.

For ten months of the year, our children spend almost 60% of their waking hours with teachers. Teachers spend their time teaching, nurturing, and caring for children… this starts before the bell rings in the morning and extends well beyond after it sounds in the afternoon.

A few years ago I learned that one of my great teachers was retiring.  I contacted his wife and asked her if she would take the time to read something for me at his retirement.  She did.  Here it is:

First, thank you for giving me the opportunity to have a few moments to tell you a little bit about Colin Craig.  Colin has been a teacher, coach, mentor, and long-time friend.  I have three short stories, nothing big, just three stories.

The first one is about kindness. It is about a kid from our class and a childhood friend who played basketball for Colin in the early 80’s.  He had a difficult childhood and grew up in a very tumultuous environment and at times, struggled to find hot meals and a warm bed.  Very quietly and without fanfare, Colin and Jill (hi wife) took this lad in and provided him with a ‘home’.  What I don’t think Colin and Jill ever knew is that everyone at our school not only knew about it but also had a new appreciation for Colin as a person.  There were a lot of whispers and quiet conversations that ended in ‘wow, that’s pretty cool’ – as many of us knew that we were all only a heartbeat away from being in that situation and knowing that there were people like Colin and Jill who would take this on, was powerful.  For those of us who knew Colin, this was no surprise – but the level of quiet respect for Colin from others in the school became exponential.

The second story is about modeling. As a teacher, Colin always modeled what he expounded.  Whether it was health, fitness, or leadership, what he advocated during the school day was modeled after school hours.  It went beyond driving players home after games and practices – he and his wife reached out to a number of us to travel throughout the years to watch games and attend tournaments – even when he did not have his own teams playing.  But that is not what I am talking about when I say ‘modeling’.  I still recall very clearly the day that our team was called out of class at approximately 2:50 PM one afternoon for a meeting in the main foyer of our school.  Colin brought us together to tell us that he would be adjusting his coaching schedule the following yea

r.  He would be taking on less of a coaching load.  He told us that he was soon to be a father  and that he felt it important that he be there for his family.  I think most people were disappointed that he would not be coaching them… but for me it was a lesson not taught in any textbook – one of prioritization.

Colin - Mt Katahdin - Leadership Program 1983

The final story is of leadership. As a coach, Colin not only was a student of the sport but also focused on the individual.  Coaching in small communities, the pure ‘talent’ of aLeBron James or a Lance Armstrong does not come along every day – if ever.  Colin knew this but never spoke it.  Instead, he looked for individuals who were willing to ‘go after the hard ones’.  He looked for those who were first at practice and the last to leave – regardless of their ‘talent’.  He realized that it was these individuals that would pour it on – regardless of

Mt Katahdin - Abol Trail - Leadership Program 1983

the scoreboard or the time left on the clock.  While you always knew he was in charge, I never once saw Colin lose his temper – he led with authority and motivated all to achieve.  For those of us who are ‘note takers’, we took a few pages from Colin’s play book and applied them to life – to our own individual athletics, our work, and our loves.  He taught us respect, humility, humanity and that a strong work ethic are what makes a winner in the long run.

Colin went on to become a school administrator (Principal) and a district administrator (Superintendent), and father –  but for me, he will always be a teacher and coach.

So with this, as you take your children back to school this week, reflect back on your school days and take a moment, to thank a teacher.

I recently did an inventory of the computers that I have owned over the past thirty years and it was an enlightening experience.  If you haven’t done this, it is worth taking 15 minutes to go through it and think about how the technology has impacted your life.

For me, it started in high school.  My mother worked for IBM and I always thought that I would work for Big Blue.  In grade 11 I took my first ‘computer course’ – Basic Programming on the Commodore PET.  We had three computers and three tape drives at the start of the year and thirty students in the class – a 10:1 student to computer ratio.  It was awesome.

During the summer between my second and third year of college, I was visiting my mother and she came home from work one day with a beautifully packed box that contained my first computer – the IBM PC Jr (thinking that maybe Steve Jobs had one as well – since all of his gear is so neatly packed).  I still get goose bumps remembering the feeling I got when I flipped the switch on that baby for the first time.  It was shortly thereafter that I realized that IBM and technology would not be where I wanted to spend my life but instead, to focus on what could be done with ‘the computer’.  It was crystal clear – this is going to change the way students learn… and I wanted to dedicate my waking hours to figuring out how to leverage this magnificent medium for learning.

Fast forward – over the ensuing years my inventory consisted of an additional 1-286, 1-386, 4-486’s, 12 Laptops, 8-Handhelds, and now… two iPads.

When I broke the seal on my first iPad and began to use it, I had a euphoric feeling.  It reminded me of three previous experiences in my life:

1. The freedom I felt when I got the training wheels off my first bicycle

 

2. The adventure I felt when I accessed the internet for the first time through Netscape

 

3. The openness I felt when I plugged the first wireless card into my laptop

The neurons were firing on how this new device could be used to expand learning opportunities to students.

So why am I saying ‘mobile learning is a fad’?

The reason is simple.  The learning is not about the device, it is about what the medium does to untether the student from physical space and time and the immediacy it offers.  If you think about it, we don’t have programs in schools and colleges called ‘desktop learning’ or ‘laptop learning’… we focus on using these tools and the software to enhance learning and help teachers, faculty, and students achieve their educational goals.

That noted, the three things about this medium that are going to have major impacts on learning are:

1. Instantaneous – Flip of the cover, swipe of a finger and tap of an icon and you are online.  The ability to be online and learning in less than five seconds breaks down a mental barrier.  There are no boot delays or distractions and learners can get locked into their learning immediately.

 

2. Access, Location, & Everywhere – The portability of a 673g (1.35 pounds) device allows learners to take the device everywhere.  Take a look around.  Stand in any WiFi enabled coffee shop in America for 25 minutes and you will see someone with a tablet (to the point where NYC Starbuck’s are blocking outlets to increase flow-through traffic ).  If you don’t have 3G, apps like WiFi Finder and sites like JiWire make it extremely easy to be online and learning almost anywhere.

 

3. Touch, Movement, Manipulation, & Design – There is something intimate about touch.  I am talking about the ability to be able to touch an element on the screen, move it, expand it, shrink it, and manipulate it.  The tactile nature of the device brings a new dimension to learning that has not traditionally been available.  The physicality can make learning more concrete.

As educators and educational service providers, it is #3 that we can focus on to make an impact.  This is where we have the opportunity to leverage the tool and ensure that the phrase ‘mobile learning’ becomes a fad and that the usage is imbued so deeply into our educational environments that it simply becomes ‘learning’.

More on ‘how’ to think about this and do this in Part II…

[CONFESSION: I believe I have become addicted to the tablet and am developing uncontrollable habits.  On a recent Jet Blue flight from Boston to Orlando I found myself touching the TV screen in the headrest and trying to pinch-expand to get a better look at an image.   When I realized what I had done, I looked around to see if anyone had seen me do this.  Luckily, the people beside me were snoozing and my secret was safe.]

This past week I was honored to be able to speak at the Council of Chief State School Officers’ (CCSSO) ‘Future of Learning’ meeting in New York.  In attendance were a number of State Deputies and thought-leaders from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) and not-for-profit educational organizations.

I found it invigorating spending time with this group of educational leaders.  Individually, they each provide direction and leadership to their states on a day-to-day basis and collectively, when together face-to-face, they generate ideas that are critical for leading the future of our educational system.

The day started with an overview of design by Bill Moggridge, Director of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, where the meeting was held.  As the former Director for IDEO, Mr. Moggridge not only has an eye for design but also for innovation.  It was a perfect kick-off for the meeting.

Next up was Jillian Darwish of KnowledgeWorks.  Jillian provided an excellent overview of Knowledge Works 2020 Forecast:  Creating the Future of Learning.  She painted a picture of the future of learning by breaking it down into six key areas:

Jillian then punted to me to help create the connective tissue from where we are today to where we are going.  This is a daunting task as technologies and learning technologies are evolving so quickly, it is nearly impossible to predict what will be available for learners 24, 18, or even 12 months from now.

With that, my approach was to focus on ‘The Big Five’ – the five big things that have the greatest potential to impact education in the next 6-24 months.

1.  SOCIAL, IMMEDIATE, AND COMPETITIVE

Social Learning models are beginning to emerge in K-12 and Higher Education.  In general, we are learning that students want to keep their social networks social and their learning focused.  Enter organizations like Edmodo and Sophia.  These networks are designed specifically for education and permit students to engage in collaborative and focused spaces – allowing learners to separate their learning networks from the personal networks.

Near ubiquitous internet access and mobile devices have changed the way learners look for and retrieve information.  Gone are the days of the encyclopedia and the Dewy Decimal System (sorry Sheila  {my mother-in-law who diligently served students as a school librarian throughout her career}).  Instead, learners are pulling what they want when they want it – and it is more than print.  The example I used was the work of Salman Khan and the Khan Academy.  He is turning tutoring upside down (if you have 17 minutes, check him out on TED).

Many believe that gaming will revolutionize education.  Like social networks, students that play massive multi-player games and serious games are still focused on the game itself vs the learning.  Creating environments like this and assuming all students will want to learn this way is risky.  It is more about the game mechanics than the game itself. That is, if we study all of the components from gaming (competitive, badging, leader boards, immediate cause and effect, etc) and we can weave these elements into existing and new instructional strategies – we have something big.

2.  THE IMPORTANCE OF LEARNING DESIGN

When we started building online programs in the late 90′s, we did not know much about learning design specific to online and digital delivery.  Most programs took on-ground lessons and put them on the web.  As our programs have matured, so have our methods for testing and understanding how learners learn in online environments.  We need to understand intrinsic and extrinsic cognitive load, we need to understand the importance of schema building, we need to understand task analysis and we need to develop learning models that are designed specifically for this modality of learning.

In addition to all of this, we cannot forget the importance of developing a solid assessment strategy that is designed specifically for online.  We need to balance objective and subjective assessment and focus heavily on creating authentic, performance-based assessments that allow students to demonstrate their learning… rather than regurgitating facts.

Studying and evaluating learning design is critical to move the student performance needle.  It is something that is impossible to do without teams and methodologies in place that focus specifically on this.

3.  MOBILE LEARNING

Connected, everywhere, and always on.  These three things will drastically change the way students learn and the way education is delivered.  Immediacy and access to information changes the game.  Bill Zobrist and I discussed this in a paper recently published by the SIIA in which we broke the learning that occurs on a mobile device into two categories:

Content Snacking – Quick-twitch learning that occurs when learners use  flash cards, practice for a test, or search for a quick answer to a query -  ‘knowledge-focused’ (i.e. mobile phone / hand-held apps).

Content Digestion – Comprehensive lesson-based content that delivers structured instructional content on a topic or range of topics up to a full online course experience (i.e. tablets).

Note: If you are attending the SIIA Ed Tech Industry Summit in San Francisco this week, pop by the mobile sessions and look for our QR code.  Alternatively, if you would like to download our paper, Learning on the Run, click here.

4.  TEACHER / INSTRUCTOR / & LEADER PREPAREDNESS

With 5.6 M students in Higher Education and 1.5 M students in K-12 taking one or more online courses, a demand is rapidly evolving for qualified online instructors.  The instructional and assessment strategies required to teach in online and blended environments are very different than those of a traditional classroom.  Traditional teacher pre-service programs do not currently prepare educators to teach in these environments and it is incumbent on all of us to help to push for programs that will prepare educators to teach through this medium.

It is also important that we work to prepare our educational leaders.  This ranges from basic understanding for the community, legislators, and bureaucrats to strong leadership and administrative skills for school, district, and state leaders.

5.  AMPLIFIED LEARNING (term borrowed from KnowledgeWork’s 2020 framework)

Learning 1.0 (L1.0) is characterized by an agrarian calendar, all students starting at the same time and all students finishing at the same time (September to June). If a student is ahead, they are forced to wait for the rest of the class and if a student falls behind, they need to figure out how to catch up, risk failure, and are almost certain not to achieve mastery.

L2.0 is characterized by the addition of online learning.  In this model online and on-ground (L1.0) were mutually exclusive and sometimes offered in competition with each other.

L3.0 is characterized by blending L1.0 and L2.0 to a point where time is eliminated from the equation and students are able to co-mingle on-ground and online into a blended/emporium model (where many programs are heading today).

L4.0 or ‘Amplified Learning’ is a next generation learning approach that will allow for all learning to be competency-based and for time to be eliminated from the equation.   It also takes into consideration prior-learning and provides learners credit for what they already know (i.e. Western Governors University).  The best way to describe this is as a learning GPS.  We provide students with the places they need to visit on their journey (learning outcomes), we provide them with the tools to get there (engaging learning content that can be leveled), a travel guide (trained teacher-facilitators), and we let them go.  In some cases, students will take the shortest route.  In others they will take detours to learn more and in some cases they may need to go back to get pre-requisite knowledge that they may have missed – but the key is that their learning events are captured and always aligned to the learning outcomes that have been set for them.

These are big challenges but 100% achievable.  The technology is available today as is the mindshare to do it.  What was energizing for me (how I started this post), was that a number of Deputies approached me after my presentation and they too were energized and positive about the possibilities.  It is discussions like these – with all stakeholders at the table and the commitment to break down barriers and construct educational ecosystems that are beneficial for students – that will change not only education in the US but also our future as an economic leader.

Get ‘em Ready…

Over the past 20+ years I have been fortunate to have been able to work across both the K-12 and Higher Education sectors as an educator, administrator, and service provider.  The one thing that is common among public schools, charter schools, for profit schools (HE & K-12), private colleges and public colleges is that they all share one objective – to provide students with learning opportunities that will help them grow and achieve their potential.  While they all have different methods and philosophy’s on how to achieve this, they all share a common vision.

With that, there is one major disconnect between K-12 and Higher Education.  It is something everyone recognizes as a major problem but many do not understand the causation.  It is College Readiness.

• If you ask a primary teacher what their objective is for their students, they will tell you ‘to get them ready for middle school’.

• If you ask a middle school teacher what their objective is for their students, they will tell you ‘to get them ready for high school’.

• If you ask a high school teacher what their objective is for their students, they will tell you ‘to get them ready for college’.

• If you ask a college instructor what their objective is for their students, they will tell you ‘to get them ready for the world of work’.

What is frightening about this is that there is often little communication between each of the individual groups of educators in order to understand what they are ‘getting their students ready for’.  Exit outcomes are defined on perception of what the entry requirements are for the next level but in many cases, they do not align.

According to the Southern Regional Educational Board, a collaborative of 16 Southern states, 60% of students graduate from high school believing they are ready for college but upon entry, learn they are not prepared and require remediation – courses they need to pay for but do not receive credit for (no, that is not a typo – 60%).

Readiness Gap by Institutional Sector

Source: Beyond the Rhetoric Improving College Readiness Through Coherent State Policy, SREB, June 2010

It is no surprise that the ‘highly selective’ institutions receive the most highly qualified students and do not need to deal with the college readiness issue.  The challenge lies in the more open programs as they are tasked with bridging the gap for the majority of their students.

Before reading on, it is very important to note that it is not that K-12 are not doing a good job in preparing students.  The fact is, the exit requirements for high school do not match the entry requirements for college.

If I were a preacher, I would say that again – the fact is, the exit requirements for high school do not match the entry requirements of college.  Case in point, the typical grade 12 English curriculum focuses on literature while the standard entry-level English course for college focuses on reading and composition (and there are many other examples).  Get the point?  It is like the cartoon of two sets of engineers who start building a bridge at different sides of the cavern and it does not come together in the middle.

Enter the Common Core.  One of the driving forces behind the Common Core is to align the exit outcomes of high school with the entry level requirements of college and to eliminate the readiness gap.  This is going to help a great deal (although it is going to take some time) but there is still a number major challenges that the Common Core is not addressing – two of which are Contextual Skills & Awareness and Academic Behaviors.

Facets of College Readiness

Source: Redefining College Readiness, David T. Conley, March 2007

While the Common Core will address key cognitive strategies and key content, it is unclear how academic behaviors and contextual skills and awareness will be covered – if at all.

I recall being shocked when I entered my first college course – Economics 101.  It was in a ‘teaching theater’ (isn’t that paradoxical?) with over 150 students.  Now, keep in mind I had just graduated from a high school with class sizes in the twenty’s and instruction provided through collaborative, cooperative, engaging environments.  I had no idea how to cope (will save that for a future blog on ‘self-paced learning’).  Nearly every student entering college faces similar situations.

To expound on this, a similar situation exists between the exit of college and the entrance into the workplace.  Numerous surveys have illustrated that employers want students who have more than the requisite knowledge to do the job, they need students to come prepared to work in collaborative environments, provide leadership and solve problems – not skills that are typically focused on in college.

There are, of course exceptions to this.  A number of Community Colleges are developing and implementing innovative programs in tandem with manufacturers and other business through which these skills are imbued into the programs – and ensure students are workforce ready upon exit.  It is programs like these that will flourish in our new generation of learning.

Bottom line though, insuring a smooth transition between high school and college and college and the workforce is not going to be easy and not going to be solved by a single set of standards.  It is going to require ongoing, mindful, structured dialogues among all stakeholders.  Conversations need to be open, collaborative, and enduring.  This is the only way we will be able to better prepare learners for all of the transitions they face from kindergarten to their entry into the workforce and beyond… preparing all to be lifelong learners.

… and the 15 ¢ Newspaper

It was 1978.  I had used part of the payout from my weekly newspaper route to purchase Meat Loaf’s hot new album ‘Bat out of Hell’ (vinyl that is).  Every day after school I would hop on my purple Puch moped, stuff my papers in my blue newspaper satchel and hit the route.  Life was good.

Then one sunny day in late May, devastation.  There was a downturn in the local economy and a half dozen of my customers cancelled their papers mid-week.  They told me they no longer wanted the paper and they could not pay.  I had pre-purchased my inventory for the week and was sure to suffer a loss.  When I look back on it, it was such a small amount but at the time, I felt devastated.  I tossed and turned the entire night.

On my way to school the next morning I had an idea.  Each day I rode past the local hospital and thought to myself, ‘I wonder if I could sell my excess daily inventory there’?  So, after school I hit the back entrance of the hospital to avoid the visitor’s reception desk.  I went from room to room on the first floor and in no time, had sold all of my excess papers.  But here is the thing.  At the time, the daily cost of the paper was 15 cents – but people did not pay me 15 cents.  They all insisted on paying a quarter and sometimes 35 cents.  My gross profit margin jumped to 60% – 70%!  This was a gold mine… and I did not even get off the first floor of a three floor hospital.  Others wanted papers even after I had ran out.  I promptly hopped back on my moped, rode the half mile to the local drug store and purchased an additional short stack of newspapers to take back to the hospital.

I then had the idea of increasing my weekly inventory on speculation that I could sell even more at the hospital.  I kept doing this to the point where my hospital deliveries were greater than my regular route.  Life was good again.

After a number of months of doing this, I no longer had to take the back entrance.  The nursing staff all knew me and I could cruise right past reception without checking in during visiting hours.  Then, one day as I trotted in with my bag full of papers, devastation again.  As I approached the reception desk I saw a steel newspaper rack, stacked full of the daily I delivered.  You see, the newspaper company got wise to what I was doing and decided they should put a stack on each floor of the hospital.  I am not sure what an anxiety attack feels like but if it is anything like how I felt at that moment – it is a bad bad feeling.

Then, something strange happened.  The head nurse at the reception desk called me over with a smile.  I had no words.  She said ‘do you see that’?  I nodded.  She walked around the counter, put her arm around me and walked me over to the seating area and began to tell me what had happened that morning.  After the newspapers had arrived, she went down to one of the rooms and told one of the elderly ladies that she no longer had to wait until the end of the day to receive her newspaper from me.  She could pay for it then and get it in the morning rather than at 4 PM.

That is when I learned a lesson that has stayed with me to this very day.  The nurse told me that she was surprised by the elderly patient’s comment.  She told me that she said ‘thank you dear, but I want to buy my paper from the little blonde haired boy’.  She got a similar response from many of the other patients.  You see, what the nurses did not know is that in addition to bringing newspapers, a number of the patients would ask if I cold pick things up for them periodically at the local drug store… a hair brush, chocolate, gum, a magazine, etc.  I had not thought much about it.  I would also spend a few extra minutes with many of them talking about their children or grandchildren who were in my school – talking about what happened that day (it was a small community).  I just thought it was the nice thing to do and I loved it.  But at that moment, I understood that doing all of the little things, the right things, that don’t seem to mean much on the surface add up and when it comes to your (paper) business, it means everything.

So what does this have to do with education and learning?  Everything.

As a former educator and administrator, it was crystal clear that the teachers who were successful were those who went the extra mile for their students.  The ones who painstakingly focused on preparing their lessons every single day based on the learning styles of their students, testing and retesting cooperative learning strategies and differentiated assessment, developed out of class programs for students to be successful, etc.  You might say it was the original RTI.  In the online environment it is the exact same thing.  It is the educator that makes just one more call, sends one more email, does one more IM, and does one more WebEx / Elluminate session.  ‘One more’, just when he/she feels the day has ended.  ‘One more’, after dinner, ‘one more’ before going to bed.  Oh, they don’t call it ‘customer service’ but that is exactly what it is – the student is the customer.

Whether you are a service provider like the business I am in or an educator (my former life), you have to realize that we are all in the same business – the customer service business.  It is not easy.  In fact it is very hard.

I was energized this past week being at the annual USDLA Conference in St. Louis.  The event was packed with innovative leaders and educators who were all focused on how to better serve their faculties, teachers, and students.  Online programs are changing the face of education in the US and it is the customer service that they offer that is fueling the change.

PS I still have that newspaper bag.

Peter Drucker is one of my favorite thought leaders.  I have read much of his work but the one thing that I keep coming back to is a paper he wrote that was published in the Harvard Business Review in 1999 entitled ‘Managing Oneself’.  When I first read the article I thought ‘this is intriguing’.  Then I read it again, and again, and again – and started practicing what I learned in this brief and valuable piece of work.  I pull it out every year and read it just to keep on track.

If you have not read it (you should – it will change the way you think), the underlying premise is that in order for us to achieve our potential, we need to focus on improving our strengths and not focus on our weaknesses.  That is, we need to get a basic level of competency in the areas we do not excel in and focus on those we do.  The key areas he looks at are:

1. What Are My Strengths?
2. How Do I Perform?
3. What Are My Values?
4. Where Do I Belong?
5. What Should I Contribute?

From there he makes three key recommendations:

1.  Identify your strengths and put yourself in places where you can use these strengths to deliver results.

2.  Always work to improve your strengths.

3.  Remedy your bad habits – the things that inhibit your effectiveness.

So what does this have to do with education?  A TON!

If you ever came home with a few C’s on your report card and a few A’s (or your child has), the comments almost always are:

‘Nice job with the A’s in Math and Science – but you really need to work on those C’s in Geography’

The fact is (and what Drucker exposes), if we put the same level of effort in the programs that we excel at as we do in those we struggle with, the gains will be MUCH higher in our stronger areas than our limiting areas.  Case in point – Kurt Cobain was born around the same time I was and probably received his first guitar around the same time that I picked one up.  He got pretty good at it.  For me, not so much – no matter how long or how hard I blew into it.

Education & Student Success

Our traditional educational systems do not do a great job at helping students identify their strengths and then teaching them how to leverage them.  We tend to have one set of tools for measuring ‘how smart’ a child/learner is.  These have been around for years and the people who were successful in the systems continue to promulgate their value.

Educational experts have known about the differences between the cognitive and affective domains for years but our systems have not evolved enough to recognize this.  Many systems are still stuck in the ‘how much stuff can you recall and do you know’ (cognitive) and not enough attention is placed on ‘how do you manage yourself to achieve’ (affective).

Mathematics and Literacy skills are critical to success – we know this.  But beyond that, is Science more important that The Arts?  Then Psychology?  Look at who is saying this – is it someone who has excelled in one of these areas.

Drucker’s Principles and Online Learning

From an online learning perspective, these principles align to what we know and what we are striving to achieve.  We know that when we provide students with differentiated learning models that are aligned to their learning styles, they thrive.  We know that when we put students in situations that allow them to leverage their talents, it builds confidence and allows them to grow.  We know that immediacy in adapting and delivering curriculum increases the probability of student success.

Technologies are starting to emerge around adaptive learning that provide for differentiated content delivery based on learning style and can be leveled (moved up or down depending on where the learner is).  While these technologies are still in their infancy – they are coming.  As online educators and service providers, we need to be looking ahead to this.  We need to be planning for richer, instructive content developed to reach multiple modalities (video, audio, interactive, inclusive, distributed, etc. etc.).  Oh, and we also will need a LOT of it.  The amount of content for a single course will increase by 5x – 10x in order to meet the needs of a range of student learning styles.

Start developing!

I remember my first day in the classroom. It was a sunny, hot, late-August day. Students filed in, racing for the newest of the 8086 machines in the room. This was before there were networks – these babies were smoking hot monochrome’s (green screen and orange screen) with 5 1/4″ floppy’s – some with dual drives! At that time, there were no methods classes/programs for teaching technology, no instructional or assessment strategies for integrating technologies into the curriculum. Instead, the people who taught these programs were real geeks (when it was not cool to be a geek). Being evaluated was easy – as most administrators were scared to enter a technology classroom and could not wait to get out.

That was 20+ years ago. Schools of Education & Faculties of Education have evolved dramatically to the point where I dare say that every program has some form of technology integration built in. Teachers are graduating with a set of skills that enable them to integrate technology into the curriculum ubiquitously. In addition to this, Administrators are highly engaged and there are a plethora of programs available to them to effectively measure the effectiveness of technology instruction in the classroom.

But what about online and blended? There is a belief by many that new teachers and instructors at both the K-12 and Higher Ed levels are fully prepared to teach online They know how to Google, text message, IM, Skype, tweet, etc, etc, etc. The question is, do these skills translate into knowing how to be an effective online instructor?

Short answer: No.

The first wave of teachers/instructors teaching online at the HE and K-12 level are equivalent to the geeks that were teaching technology in the classroom 20+ years ago. They are the early adopters, supercharged with energy, willing and able to try new things, adapt quickly, change, change again tomorrow, change again the day after that. They go from dusk to dawn often forgetting to eat a meal or take a break. They thrive on it – living on adrenalin and Red Bull.

When online programs launch, it is easy to find these teachers/instructors. You offer them the flexibly of working remotely, the ability to be 100% student centered (why most people want to teach in the first place), and the ability to be part of something that will revolutionize education. Offer these three things and you literally get the cream of the crop when it comes to applicants.

But that was Phase I. What happens after you have exhausted this group of teachers/instructors? What then?

The solution needs to be a two-pronged approach:

1. Rigorous Professional Learning Programs for existing teachers/instructors

2. Pre-Service Programs

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING PROGRAMS

A number of mature online programs have developed exemplary induction and continuous learning programs to foster the growth of their online teachers/instructors. In K-12, two come to mind:

@FLVS has established a stellar teacher induction and growth program that consists of on-ground training, technology training, communications training, facilitation, problem solving, student performance, and customer service (I love the customer service piece – of course, when you are funded based on your student’s success, it is a no-brainer). Then they top it off with mentoring and on-going web-based learning sessions… all archived so their teachers can learn any time any place (sound familiar?).

@Connections4U has a very compelling model where most of their teachers in any given state work together in a physical location which allows for just-in-time professional development and mentoring by seasoned teachers and coaching from their instructional leaders. Their Professional Learning Communities allow teachers to develop skills and offer support on an on-going basis.

In the Higher Ed space, the Louisiana Community & Technical College system is developing a flagship program to ensure their instructors are student-centered and are prepared to teach online.

LCTCS is a consortium of 16 independently governed and accredited community and technical colleges. They have a central college, LCTCS Online that provides centralized online services to sister colleges. All faculty are adjunct and work remotely. With this, LCTCS Online has developed a mandatory online training program that fosters a sense of community and prepares instructors to be successful online instructors.

PRESERVICE PROGRAMS

With online learning enrollment growth far eclipsing on-ground enrollment growth, much more will need to be done to address the pending tsunami of online and blended students that are coming. We (the online learning community), need to go far upstream and work together with Schools of Education / Faculties of Education to develop stellar pre-service programs that will provide K-12 teachers with the expertise they need to be successful in this rapidly growing medium.

On the Higher Ed side, US News & World Report reported this week on how online education may transform higher education. They noted training professors will be essential to the success of online programs:

‘Standardized methods for training professors to teach online is another potential change on the horizon, and one that is essential to online education’s future viability, experts claim. Currently, there is no standard for training professors to teach online courses. That need could be met by an association of online schools introducing a pedagogy or could be regulated by an accrediting body, says the Sloan Survey’s Allen.

It’s a void that will need to be filled for the quality of online education to increase and for online instruction to be widely accepted at mainstream universities, she says. “Training is all over the map,” Allen adds. “We need to do something about that to address quality.” ‘

The most exciting news is that for all of us that have been pushing on that online learning and blended learning flywheel (‘Flywheel Concept‘ as Jim Collins calls it in Good to Great), we have made it through those first few turns and now have the machine moving. More and more programs are being deliberate in how they train their teachers/instructors – which will result in a much richer and more rewarding learning experience for students.

When I was a little kid I loved Johnny Cash.  Recently a latent synapse fired and I started thinking about the song ‘One Piece at a Time’.  This was the story of a man who had a job in a GM plant building Cadillac’s.  He decided that the best way to have a Cadillac was to take a piece home in his lunchbox everyday and build it himself.  He did it and at the end of the song he is asked what year it was.  His response

‘Well, it’s a ’49, ’50, ’51, ’52, ’53, ’54, ’55, ’56
’57, ’58′ 59′ automobile
It’s a ’60, ’61, ’62, ’63, ’64, ’65, ’66, ’67
’68, ’69, ’70 automobile’

This is a great analogy for facultyware when built by cobbling together mutually exclusive pieces of content found on the web in open source learning object repositories (LOR’s).  Before the hate tweets start, I am not talking about all Open Source – some individuals create good courses but for most, they do not have the time and expertise to develop robust learning experiences for students.  There are also programs like NROC that do a nice job in developing open source courseware but the difference there is that they have fully developed courses that have been developed by teams of experts.

What I am referring to is the belief by some that if we create a bunch of home-grown learning objects and put them up on the web, it will result in wonderful learning experiences for students.  This is just not the case.

If you have ever taught or have had a spouse that has taught, you know how demanding of a job it is.  Educators are focusing on student communication, assessment and evaluation, parent communication (K-12), etc, etc, etc.  In other words, they are focusing on the craft of teaching… a job that does not end at 5 PM.

While the web makes it easy to stitch learning objects together, most instructors/teachers do not have the time nor the professional training to develop robust and rigorous online courses.  The best online and blended courses are made up of TEAMS of Instructional Designers, Subject Matter Experts, Writers (SME’s are not always great writers), Assessment Specialists, Media Experts, Learning Specialists (who understand Bloom, Gagne, Piaget, etc, etc) and Quality Assurance Specialists… and when I say ‘TEAM’s’ I mean multiple people in each of these roles – providing multiple points of view – ensuring a well-rounded experience for the learner.

It is also important to note that developing online courses today is much more like developing software than it is like the facultyware that we all created in the late 90′s and 00′s.  We need to be focusing on schema building, minimizing intrinsic and extrinsic cognitive load, be utilizing rigorous usability testing that is fact-based vs something that ‘looks pretty’.

The other big thing that people forget about when they build online courseware is ‘freshness’.  Many believe that if they build it once they will be done.  Online courses are not a bed – you don’t build them and then sleep in them forever… they are like a ladder – something that is continually progressing to a higher point (iterative development).  You need to fund for this – which means a maintenance and iteration budget every single year for every single course.

If you are reading this blog and have got this far down, online learning is important to you.  The bottom line is that our work in this field has evolved over the past 12 years and what we are able to provide the student of today is a MUCH richer experience than we could in the late 90′s and 00’s. Specialized instructional strategies are required for online learning as are learning technologies and courseware.  From a courseware perspective, learning design is critical to the success of the learner – and that starts with a mindful, holistic approach to design and development along with solid plans for iteration and evolution of all our programs.