What is New Mexico’s Vision for Digital Learning? Digital learning has been in the news recently in New Mexico. A new virtual school is providing courses to any student in NM. An Albuquerque student completed a course over a weekend with Southwest Learning Center blended instructional model. Digital learning is a trigger for conversation about education because it challenges the current structure of our education Virtual, online, blended. Many system – when learning takes place, where it takes place, how terms are used to describe instruction is delivered, and how long it should take students to learn technologically supported something. In addition to raising these issues, it opens the door to education. We use the phrase reflections upon schools and schooling. Is a school more than just a digital learning because it is a place to learn skills and earn credits? What is the role of teachers in more comprehensive term that world of digital learning? Can everything be digitized or are there includes all the ways of certain functions that need to be “live”? providing instruction and curriculum through digital The Learning Alliance believes that an important step in considering devices. education reform is to reflect deeply upon what makes the most sense for New Mexico, given our multiculturalism, geography, and what we want for our children. We need a vision that can guide the development of catalytic policies that enable our children to excel and our schools to perform well. We need to methodically explore digital learning to understand what it can mean for our children, for our communities, for our education workforce, and our economy. We need to untangle digital learning from other issues such as charter schools and competency education. We began our learning with a webinar, The Power of Blended Learning for Education in NM: How online and mobile technology can transform classroom learning.1 This paper, designed to spark discussion, offers definitions, a vision for digital learning in New Mexico, the benefits of digital learning for our children using the Learning Alliance Values Framework, and an exploration of the related, and often confounding, issues related to digital learning. We do not attempt to offer any conclusions to the questions raised here. The breadth of these issues requires our state to thoughtfully and respectfully engage communities in setting priorities for digital learning and how it can best serve students. We encourage you to take these questions into your communities, organizations, and professional associations to think about what a vision for digital learning can look like in your community. Consider organizing a meeting or discussion at your workplace, religious institution, or in your home to talk about these issues. Or join us for a Learning Opportunity. By joining the Learning Alliance (it’s free!) you can hear about webinars and other learning opportunities. The Learning Alliance of NM (Alliance) is dedicated to offering thoughtful discussions on education issues that are not dominated by the political context. We believe that local communities, their school boards, and district leadership hold the key to unlocking education innovation in NM. By building our knowledge and drawing upon our multiculturalism we can design reforms that are rooted in and meaningful to students, families, communities, and schools in New Mexico. www.learningalliancenm.org 1 A Vision for Digital Learning in New Mexico It is important that New Mexicans develop a shared vision for how we use digital learning to benefit our children and schools. The state can pass laws and new rules; however it is in the hands of our communities, their schools boards, superintendents, principals, and teachers to make dynamic digital learning happen. Below is a proposed vision for digital learning in New Mexico. How would you change it? What is your vision for how we use these powerful new tools to help our children learn? Our vision is that the children of New Mexico have access to the best education the world has to offer. This means that all children and youth should be able to take advantage of digital learning to help them succeed in school and be ready for college and careers. In this day and age of a global and unforgiving economy, our children need to know how to learn online so that they can continue to build skills as the world and economy continues to change. We envision that our students will have a more personalized education that responds to their culture, desires, and how they learn best. Students should be able to accelerate their learning with more advanced courses unavailable in their school. We believe students should be able to have choices to select courses that best fit their needs regardless of where or who is providing the course. For students with high mobility, health issues or responsibilities, it is imperative that districts and schools place their curriculum in a blended environment so that students can have the flexibility to continue their education. For those communities without Internet access we will need to be creative in investing in infrastructure and technologies that allow students to continue their learning 24/7. To move forward, New Mexicans will need to work together to create the enabling policies and infrastructure that will be needed. This requires us to engage communities and tribal government to build a common vision and the priorities for the core capacities that are needed to serve our children and youth. Thus we need to immediately develop a digital learning plan that allows us to think creatively and strategically about the big issues that will need to be addressed. It is only through a respectful engagement of our communities that we will be able to develop a strategy that responds to the great diversity and needs of students in New Mexico. Big Issues v How will we ensure that our most underserved students benefit from digital learning? v How do we need to support our educators so that they can effectively facilitate learning within a digital environment? v What do districts and schools need in order to best take advantage of digital learning on behalf of their students? v What is the technological infrastructure that is needed? What other big questions need to be addressed? 2 What is Digital Learning? We propose using the following definition for advancing discussion on digital learning: Digital learning a comprehensive term, includes technology-enhanced education and all types of devices through which instruction and curriculum are delivered. Online learning is education in which instruction and content are delivered primarily over the Internet. It is used interchangeably with virtual learning, cyber learning, e-learning and distance education. This may mean it is synchronous (teacher and students are on the internet at the same time) or asynchronous (there is elapsed time with different tools supporting instruction such as podcasts, video or message boards). Students can enroll full-time in online schools or take a course while sitting in front of a computer at their regular school.2 It is estimated that no more than 10% of students will want to do fulltime online learning.3 Blending learning, or a blended course, is a combination of two modes of instruction, online and face-toface (or live). Any time a student is learning part of the time with instruction delivered online, and part of the time with face-to face instruction, it is called blended, or hybrid, learning.4 There are many ways to design blended learning; more innovations are developing as expertise and technology improve.5 Even though online and blended learning are different ways of delivering instruction, the school and teachers still organize the curriculum and instruction. The difference is that they will have more tools besides lecture, in-person presentation, and print materials, such as podcasts, email, message boards, video, surveys, and adaptive instructional software. Online and blended learning can be delivered on different devices including computers, tablets, and phones. II. What Are the Benefits of Digital Learning to New Mexico? Using the Values Framework as a lens, the following benefits of digital learning were identified. #1 Education Continuity and Flexibility: Digital learning can provide greater flexibility for students to learn any time and anywhere. Online and blended learning can provide continuity for students with high mobility, such as students who move back and forth from a city to their pueblo students who have attendance issues because of transportation and illness, students with tribal responsibility, students on the rodeo circuit, students that take care of family or need to work6, and foster children. #2 Access to Expanded and Advanced Courses: Online courses can be invaluable for students that want to take courses that are not offered at their school, including advanced placement and college-level courses. Strategic development of courses can provide opportunities for high interest context of courses to increase student engagement and motivation. #3 Increase Multilingualism: New Mexico’s multilculturalism and mutilingualism are dynamic assets with 11% of high school students being Native American and 57% being Hispanic.7 According to the US Census, 36.2% of people in New Mexico speak a language other than English at home. Online courses 3 can also support bilingual and dual language programs, and help build skills in home languages that may not be available in the neighborhood school. Blended dual language curriculum can be shared across schools so that students can work on math, science or social studies in two languages. Imagine: New Mexico could have the highest rate of Advanced Placement Spanish students. Native-American students could have access to supports that build language skills, no matter where they are living. #4 Greater Cultural Responsiveness: Digital learning can improve the responsiveness of education for students that want to take courses that are culturally aligned with the culture of their family and community but may not be available in their neighborhood school. #5 Credit Recovery: Digital learning can play a meaningful role in addressing our graduation crisis. Students can recover credits and if not constrained by seat-time can accelerate learning and credit accrual. #6 Customized Education: Digital learning can lead to the personalization of educational content in the classroom. Teachers can use adaptive instructional software in the classroom and rotate students between this technology and small group instruction. Students can receive more personalized instruction and less “teaching to the middle.” With more voice and choice, student motivation and engagement will increase. What Are The Issues Related to Digital Learning? When digital learning is discussed, questions and controversy follow. The following discussion attempts to unpack and clarify many of the issues rated about digital learning. Achievement: The rapid development of digital products and services is not matched by a commitment to evaluation – there are limited sources of information to help inform us about the potential benefits for improving academic achievement and school performance, especially for our most vulnerable students. However, the meta-analysis produced by the U.S. Department of Education provided the following findings8: • Blended and Online As Good As Or Better: Students in online conditions performed modestly better, on average, than those learning the same material through traditional face-to-face instruction. • Blended May Be Most Effective: Instruction combining online and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction than did purely online instruction. • Teachers Make a Difference: Effect sizes were larger for studies in which the online instruction was collaborative or instructor-directed than in those studies where online learners worked independently. • Works for All Students: The effectiveness of online learning approaches appears quite broad across different content and learner types. In addition, in the report Understanding the Implications of Online Learning for Educational Productivity, the U.S. Department of Education9 suggests that online learning may lower education costs by using teacher and student time more effectively, taking advantage of home and community spaces, and by reusing and distributing materials on a large scale. However they caution that start-up costs are likely to be higher because of the equipment costs. Going forward, there appears to be enough evidence to suggest that digital learning can be beneficial in 4 New Mexico. These findings are not strong and certainly we look forward to further research and evaluation. A Variety of Providers: Digital learning is offered by a variety of providers – private, schools, district, intra-district collaborations, higher education and the state. In New Mexico we have a mix of providers. IDEAL NM provides a platform so that all schools can provide blended learning. The Rio Rancho Cyber Academy is one of the first digital schools in the state. Albuquerque has the eCademy run by the district and Southwest Learning Center that is a public charter school. The charter school, NM Virtual Academy, is a collaboration of a not-for profit organization with a for-profit company. One of the largest points of contention in digital learning is the fact that private, for-profit companies supply many of the tools, software, and schools. The private sector has always had a large role in educational services including textbooks, curriculum and contracted services such as information technology. We need to understand why private sector involvement in digital learning is a concern. Is it that more pubic investment is leaving the state? That teachers outside of NM will deliver instruction? That the private sector will deliver lower quality education than district-run schools? Perhaps digital learning will increase publisher control of instructional materials - or will it lessen control? Schools and Courses: One of the most complicating issues is the decentralization of the education system in which students enrolled in their neighborhood school can choose courses from a variety of providers. This process of decentralization, similar to the transformations in the health industry, is increasing options for students. Students can enroll in a nearby school while taking a course from an online school or virtual course provider. Though beneficial to some students, this may have financial consequences for how districts and schools manage resources. Furthermore, it may create a competitive pressure on teachers to improve their effectiveness and responsiveness, if students are able to “vote with their feet” by enrolling in other courses. This decentralization also raises questions about what is a school beyond the delivery of courses. Are there functions and capacities that are equally crucial in developing the whole child? This includes providing a safe place for our children and youth to develop interests, dispositions such as perseverance and cultural competency, and participate in extracurricular activities. Personalization and Competency Education: There are many features of personalization including responding to where students are on their learning progression, how students learn, pace, having choices in curricular tasks or demonstrating learning, and the flexibility of anytime/anywhere learning. Many of these features can be implemented in a traditional classroom while digital learning enables others such as anytime/anywhere and to some degree pacing. However, digital learning is deeply constrained by the time-based system of our schools. We’ll need a well-developed competency education policy to allow students to get the time they need, be able to advance on mastery. We want to ensure that students can demonstrate proficiency, not just click through software.10 College and Career Readiness: Digital learning has the same liability as any education reform – if it is implemented poorly, uses low standards, and doesn’t provide extra support to students when they are struggling it will produce lower achievement. Thus, digital learning needs to draw on the best of what we know about Common Core State Standards, teaching the disciplines of math, language arts, social sciences, and science, as well as how to help students have the academic knowledge, skills, and dispositions to succeed in the next stage of their lives. This is just the beginning of the learning process that will enable us to design and implement dynamic, student-centered digital learning in New Mexico. Join us on our blog to share your vision, observations and concerns at learningalliancenm.org through commenting, submitting a post to be published in any of the languages of New Mexico, or send us an email at [email protected]. 5 1 The webinar in November 2012 featured Michael Horn, Innosight Institute; Tom Ryan, Education 360 and Virginia Padilla, IDEAL NM. 2 The Online Learning Definitions Project, iNACOL, 2011. Institute, http://www.innosightinstitute.org/media-room/publications/educationpublications/the-rise-of-k-12-blended-learning/ (January 2, 2013) 4 The rise of K-12 blended learning, Horn and Staker, Innosight Institute, 2011 5 See Innosight Institute’s Classifying K-12 Blended Learning by Heather Staker and Michael Horn for more information about models. 6 According to the report Students at the Crossroads prepared by the Center for Education Policy Research at the University of New Mexico, there are indications that nearly 10% of those high school seniors still in school work and take care of family. We do not know how many of the students that disengaged from school did so because of responsibilities. 7 New Mexico Youth Risk & Resiliency Survey 2011, p. 114. 8 Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, Policy and Program Studies Service, Revised September 2010 9 Understanding the Implications of Online Learning for Educational Productivity, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology prepared by SRI International 2012. 10 See CompetencyWorks for more information on competency education. 3 Innosight 6