California Dreamin’ by Rob Darrow

Several weeks ago I asked readers of this blog to add other thoughts about cost items related to online learning. I have implemented online courses in the past but they ended because the state of California does not have a mechanism by which to fund part time online courses. A s part of my recent doctoral class, I completed a review of literature about the costs of online high school in K-12 education which you can find here. I was interested in figuring out how many of the cost items are just for online schools, just for brick and mortar schools, and how many of the cost items were the same for both. K-12 online school courses have been around for about 10 years. Some researchers suggest that teaching online costs less than teaching face-to-face, while others suggest that teaching online costs about the same.

The list below represents my current thinking based on the reports and studies I read:

COSTS FOR BOTH BRICK AND MORTAR AND ONLINE SCHOOLS

• Administration
• Teachers
• Students
• Professional Development
• Student Information System
• State Testing System
• Textbooks
• Courses and course outlines approved by governing Board
• Access to computers
• Special Education Services
• Student Support (counseling, library)
• Network infrastructure
• Telephones and network

BRICK AND MORTAR SCHOOL ONLY

• Buildings and Grounds maintenance
• Security
• Transportation
• Energy
• Computer and Internet access for every teacher
• Teacher sub costs
• Athletics
• Music Program
• Nursing

ONLINE SCHOOLS ONLY

• Space for offices and computer lab for students
• Course management system
• Course content
• Computer and Internet access for every teacher and student
• Mobile communication device for teachers (e.g. cell phone, Blackberry)
• Technology support (e.g. help desk, course updating, server maintenance)
• Marketing and advertising

The above list comes from the studies and reports completed by Florida Tax Watch (2007), Anderson et al (2006), SREB (2006), and Adsit (2004). And, the my overall review of literature regarding cost items for online schools in K-12 is here.

It starts out “Learning to Change…Changing to Learn” and then many experts in the field of educational technology talk about change and school.  Many of the realities that many of us already know about - all put together - make for a powerful video to share with many groups:

• Keith Kruger from the Consortium for School Networking says that schools rate 55 on a list of industries rated for their “IT intensiveness” - below coal mining.
• Julie Evans from Project Tomorrow points out that kids are great content developers with social networking, text messaging and other devices, but all of these things are banned in school.
• Susan Patrick, CEO of NACOL, explains that students working online connect to resources that will fundamentally shift their academic experience and make them better prepared for college and for life.

Many of the people on this video were recently named the “Top 10 Who’ve Made a Difference” by eschool news.  The video includes comments from others you’ll recognize such as Chris Dede and Daniel Pink and many others.

Thanks to David Warlick, Scott McLeod and Richard Byrne for bringing this video to our attention. (Darn, YouTube is not functioning well right now, so I can’t paste it below, I’ll have to do it later)

Here is the link.

Author and Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen and his colleagues are predicting that 50% of high school courses will be taught online by 2019. In Ed Week, the article explains how his past books have analyzed why leading companies in various industries—computers, electronics, retail, and others—were knocked off by upstarts that were better able to take advantage of innovations based on new technology and changing conditions. And now, schools are vulnerable for this “disruptive innovation”. He says, “The schools as they are now structured cannot do it,” he said in an interview, referring to adapting successfully to coming computer-based innovations. “Even the best managers in the world, if they were heads of departments in schools and the administrators of schools, could not do it.” Christensen and colleagues have a book about the topic coming out in June entitled: Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.

Here is the “S Curve” showing the predicted growth of high school online education:

A separate article by Christensen in Education Next about “disruptive innovations” and how technology will transform schools is here. Forbes online also covered the announcement.

The Hoover Institution at Stanford also just completed a survey about parental views about online learning.

The book is due out in June. ISBN is: 0071592067.

The California Business for Educational Excellence organization, along with the Central Valley Educational Leadership Institute at CSU Fresno hosted a town hall meeting in Fresno yesterday which I attended.  President Jim Lanich began the two hour session sharing this information.

• Business CEOs are not happy with the achievement level of students in California
• Business surveys reveal that education, along with health care are a  top priority
• Education is shifting from an “I gotcha” mentality to a “can do” attitude.
• Students who are “below basic” according to the state standards test tend to remain in the “below basic” category throughout their school career.
• Overall, what works?  High expectations of mastery for every student.
• The most important thing that causes teachers to change and to look at data are talking with one another (The most effective professional development is when teachers can visit other schools and talk with other teachers as opposed to words of inspiration from a leader/principal).

The organization has researched test scores and a reviewed a variety of data and found that there are five things they have learned:

• Data drives and informs improvement
• Common myths and excuses are dispelled
• Visits to high performing schools cause teachers to learn what works (The KEY! Need to get out of your own environment and look at others.)
• Productive, organized and focused grade level meetings (Litmus test – are they a “team” or a “silo”…are they collaborating? A visit to any school will tell you this.)
• Targeted assistance that supports improvement, based on a goal.

This organization came to the conclusion that before further improvement can occur, that the data needs to be available to be seen.  They have put all of the data from the state standards test into a data system that can generate a variety of graphs and charts including how one school compares with others of like demographics, how targeted groups such as Latinos or African-Americans are achieving as compared to other schools with similar demographics.   The website that does this is called Just for Kids and here a few of the graphs that can be generated:

Also on the website is the “Best Practices framework” which is linked to “best practices” in key areas of education.  And, they have begun recognizing schools in California that are high poverty and are high achieving on their yearly honor roll of excellence.

All states should be doing this… and maybe they are?  It is nice to know that the California business community is on the forefront of helping to improve education in California by providing this useful information for all educators!

Ray Schroeder over at the Online Learning blog points us to research just completed about using YouTube for higher education learning by Professor Alex Juhasz , Professor of Media Studies, at Pitzer College in California. Dr. Juhasz taught an entire college course through YouTube called “Learning from YouTube” in the fall of 2007. She decided to do this because she “wanted the course to primarily consider how web 2.0 (in this case, specifically YouTube) is radically altering the conditions of learning (what, where, when, how we have access to information).” About the experiment, she said, “…despite the “many resources” that YouTube offers there remain “even greater limitations” to the site.” A blog posting of her thoughts are here. And, on her blog, she shares how she continues to examine YouTube and its possibilities for use for college courses.

Some of the limitations she grouped as follows:

1. Public/private – the intimacy and “safety” of students sitting in a physical classroom was disrupted by critical, semi-anonymous YouTube viewers who ultimately had no stake in the outcome of the course.
2. Aural/visual – the 500 character limit on YouTube’s comments and regularity of web-speak tended to dumb down discussion.
3. Body/digital – the lack of a physical presence severely limits and diminishes the importance played by eye contact and other non-verbal cues in the classroom in regulating discussion and preventing a free-for-all.
4. Amateur/expert – Juhasz notes that while many YouTube aficionados might enjoy the way that the site allows amateurs to challenge and even knock ‘expert’ opinion, within a learning environment this makes structured teaching all but impossible.
5. Entertainmen/education – striking a balance between keeping the attention of students through entertaining them while still feeding them information is much harder online.
6. Control/chaos – the classroom, notes Juhasz, “is not the random chaos of information and power which is YouTube. For effective education, structure remains paramount.”

Here, Dr. Juhasz sums up her experience of teaching with YouTube: