REPRODUCTIVE TOXICITY STUDIE OF MALE AND FEMALEpptx
Lowes research
1. TEN LESSONS LEARNED
FROM TEN YEARS OF
RESEARCH ON
K-12 ONLINE TEACHING AND
LEARNING
Dr. Susan Lowes
Director, Research and Evaluation
Institute for Learning Technologies
Adjunct Professor, Program in
Computing, Communication, Technology and Education
Teachers College/Columbia University
Presentation to the NECC/NYCC Virtual Learning Summit
April 27, 2011
3. Lesson 1: Young field, exploratory research
Research has been based on the need to
understand a fast-evolving field
Surveys—about experiences, perceptions, and
attitudes
Case studies—program evaluations, chapters in
edited collections, journal articles
Dissertation-level qualitative studies
Lots of practical experience, leading to many
standards, but standards are not necessarily built on
research
Very few well-executed experimental or quasi-
experimental designs
Very few studies that delve deeply into the data to
4. A few recent interesting examples
In-depth qualitative single-case studies of pre-service teacher
training and of virtual school teachers’ practices, each in a
single virtual school
Ongoing evaluation of North Carolina Virtual School, from
teacher and student perspective
Using back-end data to show that time spent in a course, not
number of visits, is correlated with student success
Using content analysis to understand the dynamics of student
interaction in discussion forums and in collaborative group
projects
A comparative case study of online and f2f environments that
analyzed the benefits of each for teaching a foreign language
A comparative case study of online and f2f teacher
professional development that analyzed the benefits of each.
A comparative case study, using network and content
analysis to analyze patterns of interaction in an online
professional development course in order to understand
5. Lesson 2: Early focus was on comparing
online with face-to-face
Many studies as new field needed to prove itself
Generally compared non-comparables
The online students were almost always a self-
selected group to start and even more so after attrition
The curriculum was generally different
The teachers are almost always different
Most studies cited are from higher education
and cannot be assumed to apply to K-12
Overall, they suggest that online (done well)
was at least as good as f2f (done well)
6. Lesson 3: We now need to ask different
questions
We still need to survey the field
But we should turn our focus toward making
online courses as good as, or better than, f2f
courses
We need to tease out the affordances and
constraints of each environment so educators
can build on these
We need to understand online better
We need to use the data generated by the
LMS, but we must combine it with other analyses
8. Lesson 4: Online teachers have certain
characteristics
Online teachers are …
Experienced teachers
Life-long learners looking for new challenges
Well-organized
Online teachers agree that teaching online takes
at least as much, and often more, time than
teaching f2f
Online teachers play many roles
(facilitator, technology trouble-
shooter, counselor, administrator, customer
service representative)
9. Lesson 5: ... but online teachers are also
similar in some ways to face-to-face
teachers
Online teachers …
Have different teaching styles and beliefs about
teaching
Want control over their courses
See their courses as works-in-progress and
continually make changes
Engage deeply with the students they are teaching
Successful online teachers are able to establish
teacher presence and student presence in their
online classrooms
We need to know much more about the
intricacies of teaching online and far more about
the 1-to-1 model
10. Lesson 6: Online teachers need tailored
training
Online teachers want training that ..
Starts early
Is substantial
Is ongoing
Is “bite-sized”
Is fully online and facilitated
Some of the training needs to be subject-matter
specific
Few colleges that train teachers are training
them for teaching online; fewer still have
collaborations with virtual schools
We know very little about what makes
professional development effective and even
less about pre-service training
12. Lesson 7: Successful online students have
these personal characteristics …
Online students who succeed (complete) tend to
be…
Motivated
Organized
Have good time management skills (self-discipline)
Independent learners
BUT taking an online course can help develop
these skills
And many different types of students are highly
motivated, including at-risk students
13. … and certain background characteristics
Online students who succeed tend to have …
Good technology skills
Good academic preparation
Students therefore need to be carefully
prepared for online learning using …
Diagnostic pre-assessments
Technology preparation
Mini-courses to try out the environment
We need to know much more about how best to
prepare students
14. Lesson 8: Successful online students are in
environments conducive to learning
Successful online students are in environments
that …
Have technology problems resolved before the class
begins
The first weeks of an online course are the most important
weeks in terms of managing attrition
Have a set time period reserved for the online course
Have a set place to do the work
There must be active supervision and
guidance, and active
communication/coordination between the
student’s site-based supervisor and the online
15. Lesson 9: Successful online students are
also …
In schools where online learning is considered
as good as face-to-face learning
Less successful students often have two
misconceptions about online courses
They are easier than f2f courses
They take less time than f2f courses
Students pick up these misconceptions from the
attitudes of administrators or teachers
Engaged by their courses
Students want interactivity and to have the course
connected to the real world
Students want to interact with each other
17. Lesson 10: We have so much more to
learn…
We need to continue to survey the field
But we also need detailed studies of online
learning
We need more comparative studies that compare
online to online
We need to compare the same implementations with
different conditions
We need to make much more use of back-end data
We need more in-depth looks inside courses
We need follow-up studies, especially for professional
development
Many LMS’s collect massive amounts of data
but most schools are not prepared to use it
18. For list of references, contact:
Dr. Susan Lowes
Teachers College/Columbia University
lowes@tc.edu
Editor's Notes
T
Surveys, many in the iNACOL research briefs, plus some more recent studies of online teachers and teaching practicesCase studies of a single schoolProgram evaluations, some very strong; NCVPS in particular has generated many interesting studiesStandards are in fact not linked to research findingsThis is very difficult research to doThe recent SRI/USDOE Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning found only 9 studies conducted with K-12 students and ALL of these were in some kind of blended environment. Two were excellent studies that will be referred to here but were not fully online—students had someone in the classroom with them.
These studies are too difficult to do well—we had ample evidence of this is a series of studies funded by the USDOE to Learning Point Associates in 1995Obligation was gold-standard studies, so everyone triedAnd everyone failed—for these reasonsEven where teachers are not different, the nexus of teacher-students is different—the class dynamic—so need more than once instance
Principals says one reason they send kids to online courses is because it helps with scheduling—this is not the way to go
There are no studies that I know of that look at the one-to-one model.
Engaged: we know that students need to communicate, interact, and collaborate with each other to learnNeed to review the courses carefully—they vary greatly, even from the same provider
Should professional development be up front, broken into pieces, or both, and what should go into each piece?What should be the mix of student-teacher and student-student interaction in asynchronous classrooms?What should be the mix of synchronous and asynchronous interaction?What instructional designs work best for what subject areasNeed surveys to look at what is going on—examples are foreign language learning, student preparationCompared f2f and OL PD and found that each worked better for different thingsSpanish—teased out the different aspects of language learning that worked well OL and f2f
