Brad's Blog

A couple of weeks ago I was in Las Vegas for the annual Sloan Consortium Emerging Technologies Conference.  And, I have to say, it was fascinating experience.  The theme of the conference was (probably no surprise to those following educational technology trends over the last number of years) the personalization of the educational experience.

I went to the conference with a particular focus: to explore data analytics and the work coming out of colleges and universities to advance this field.  I know that data analytics hold great promise for K-12 education, and yet I’ve been wrestling with their place within the independent school environment.  For generations now, we have told families: “we know your son/daughter; we know how they learn; we will give them the personalized attention and support that they need to succeed.”  And yet, we can all admit that even with our low student-teacher ratios, our advising systems, and our tight-knit communities, we do still have students who “fall through the cracks” every so often, despite our best efforts.  I went to Vegas to see if there was anything that we could be doing to ensure that students don’t fall through the cracks, but more importantly, to see if there was anything more that we can do to predict which students might be on the verge of falling through the cracks in our classes and prevent that from occurring.  The answer seems to be both yes and no.

One of the most interesting and anticipated sessions of the conference was on the preliminary findings of the “Predictive Analytics Reporting Framework.”  This project, funded by the Gates Foundation, was formed to try to determine whether there were predictive analytics across schools that could help determine student success in online courses — that is: are there any data points across many schools that can help predict the success of students before success or failure becomes apparent.  The goals of the project are noble: to figure out ways to increase graduation rates, lower drop-out rates, and help students succeed.  The findings so far: while each school might be able to identify predictive analytics for their campuses (and many do), the study has yet to find predictive measures valid across all campuses.  That said, it was also clear to the researchers that different learning environments create important variables on the institutional level.  In other words, student success is greatly impacted by the academic environment created by schools (I am sure a few of you are thinking, “well you didn’t have to go to Las Vegas to understand that, Brad”).  And yet, within schools data points can be developed to understand when a student is going to falter before failure occurs so that there can be an intervention from the start.

My primary take-aways from the conference focused on what advantages and challenges independent schools have in thinking about using data more effectively to enhance student learning outcomes and greater personalize their educational experience:

• It was clear to me that independent schools start off in this world of personalization with one incredibly important advantage: we are mission-driven, purpose driven, and an increasingly large number of us are process driven.  We create academic environments that are likely unique to our geographic reach, and, we know, reach a particular set of students well.  Therefore, if we continue to genuinely talk with prospective applicants about fit our environments and communities, and work to make good matches during the admissions process, we have a great advantage in helping students achieve success.
• We also have done an excellent job of sharing qualitative data in our schools for years.  My experience in independent schools has been that through advisory systems, class deans, classroom teachers, tight-knit communities, and even comment writing, we regularly share information about our students (particularly those at the top or bottom of a class) and try to act on that information quickly.
• We do not do a good job of using or understanding the quantitative data that we have, or thinking about what data we should be collecting.  It seems to me that this work starts with identifying the key variables for academic success within our own communities.  And, remember, according to at least the preliminary findings from the Gates funded project, in each of our communities, these variable will be different.  This makes sense, right?  In some schools, Model UN might be the most intensive experience that a student can have, whereas in other schools Model UN is a small club.  In some schools, chorus is just a class that students take, whereas in others chorus is constant performances, competitions, and events.  In some schools, AP Art History is the toughest course at the school, whereas at others, it is just another course.  Our schools have different variables.  And, those of us who have been around the same schools for long enough know innately what those variables are (for example, when I was at Holton-Arms, I knew never to allow an advisee to take AP Art History and AP Biology at the same time).  But, we never use the data to back it up.  We never knew what the expected impact would be of a student taking a given schedule, or participating in the fall play, or playing varsity soccer.  But, we have that data.  We know what the GPA of our students is when they participate in certain major events, teams, performances, etc..  We can cross-reference the data, look at historical trends, and make better informed decisions.  We could be helping students and their families be able to make better informed decisions during the advising process, and pre-identify students who will need academic support because of the combination of course work, activities, clubs, and extracurriculars of which they plan on being a part.  Drilling down another level, we might be able to identify particular stress points within our school calendars where students across the board find challenges, and then act accordingly.  And, we might be able to use admissions data more effectively to identify students coming into our program who need more support.

I know that many of us in the independent school community don’t particularly like to dive into the realm of data.  It’s not why we got into teaching and education, and why we particularly like independent schools focus on the personal and relationships.  And yet, we can all agree that our primary motivation for being in education is to help students learn and grow.  It does seem (and many schools are proving) that data can be part of the equation helping us to get to that goal.  Independent schools have the huge advantage that we are already good at the personal and relationships, by adding some use of data to the equation, we can likely get to the truly personal faster and more effectively than other schools.

My guess is that most of us who went to college find ourselves day-dreaming every once in a while about some of the great courses we took.  For me, my mind goes back to Peabody Hall on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill, listening to the great Joel Williamson’s musing about Southern history.

Joel was one of those incredibly captivating college professors.  As a student in his class, you imagined yourself not in the lecture hall, but with a small group, sitting on his front porch, drinking sweet tea while he told these unbelievably interesting nuggets of Southern history that illuminated the region’s struggles with race and identity over the last three hundred years.  The class was at his attention for the entire time he spoke.  He joked with us, responded thoughtfully to questions we posed, and made us feel that he was personally invested in our learning. In my mind, his classroom was as good a college lecture course could get.

Thinking about my own personal affection for some of those lectures, I found the central question from last Thursday’s New York Times op-ed from University of Virginia professor Mark Edmundson so interesting:

… Can online education ever be education of the very best sort?

Edmundson argues that it cannot be.  For Edmundson, the immediacy of a classroom lecture hall can not be brought online because: 

Every memorable class is a bit like a jazz composition. There is the basic melody that you work with. It is defined by the syllabus. But there is also a considerable measure of improvisation against that disciplining background.

… I think that the best of those lecturers are highly adept at reading their audiences. They use practical means to do this — tests and quizzes, papers and evaluations. But they also deploy something tantamount to artistry. They are superb at sensing the mood of a room. They have a sort of pedagogical sixth sense. They feel it when the class is engaged and when it slips off. And they do something about it. Their every joke is a sounding. It’s a way of discerning who is out there on a given day.

A large lecture class can also create genuine intellectual community. Students will always be running across others who are also enrolled, and they’ll break the ice with a chat about it and maybe they’ll go on from there. When a teacher hears a student say, “My friends and I are always arguing about your class,” he knows he’s doing something right. From there he folds what he has learned into his teaching, adjusting his course in a fluid and immediate way that the Internet professor cannot easily match.

I get where Edmundson is coming from in setting this model up as the ideal.  I felt that way about Joel Williamson’s great Southern history course.

And yet, I struggle because this ideal is very much in conflict with what current research tells us about learning, and the ways that online education is creating new research-based ways for learning.  It was at this point in the article that I realized my troubles with Mark Edmundson’s “The Trouble With Online Education.”

There is No “Education of the Very Best Sort”

For Edmundson to claim that there is an ideal classroom for learning in today’s world strikes me as misguided and a bit elitist.  Brain-based research over the last twenty years has showed us that different learners respond better and worse to different types of teaching and learning pedagogical approaches.  That is what works best for one student does not necessarily work best for the next student.  To ignore this research and instead retreat to the classroom lecture model as a definitive ideal is not in keeping with today’s research and understanding of learning.

Moreover, some learning environments are simply not available to many learners.  The type of learning that Edmundson sets as an ideal is inaccessible to most if only for reasons of finance and distance.  If Edmundson’s intent was to “take-down” online education (and that does seem to be his intent), then he must at least acknowledge the very real challenges and obstacles that his ideal sets up.

Online Education Helps Create Personalization

Whereas Edmundson maintains the college lecture model as the ideal, online education has been pushing the envelope over the last ten years to create more and better personalized learning for students, giving students choice in instruction, format, time, learning needs, learning styles, and more.  Students have greater choice and control over what and how they learn, and greater variety of course work from which to choose.  

Edmundson gives high importance to the immediacy of the classroom.  And yet, we know that there are many learners who do not function well in this environment (and not because of a lack of intellect).  Some learners need more time for reflection in order to process and understand the content presented and the questions posed.  Regularly, at the Online School for Girls, we see students who were the reticent “wallflowers” in face-to-face courses become the most vocal participants in online discussions.  It was not that those students did not have anything to say in their face-to-face courses, it was that they needed time and space to articulate their thoughts.  For these students, the online course space is ideal for helping them learn material more fully.

All Online Education Is Not The Same

Beyond that, and importantly, all online learning is not the same.  Edmundson claims that:

Online education is a one-size-fits-all endeavor. It tends to be a monologue and not a real dialogue. The Internet teacher, even one who responds to students via e-mail, can never have the immediacy of contact that the teacher on the scene can, with his sensitivity to unspoken moods and enthusiasms. This is particularly true of online courses for which the lectures are already filmed and in the can. It doesn’t matter who is sitting out there on the Internet watching; the course is what it is.

The problem with this argument is that not all online education is as he describes.  Online learning can be project-based; it can incorporate service learning; it can happen in real time; it can demand collaboration; it can have office hours; and, it can be personalized to the needs of particular students.  This is not to say that online learning is always these things, but it can be these things.  For Edumundson to not be aware of that demonstrates a lack of understanding of the field, and thus an inability to be a critic of it.

Today’s announcement that textbok giant Pearson is launching a new online learning platform powered by Florida Virtual School should come as no surprise to those who have been closely watching the development of online education over the last few years.  My colleagues Albert Throckmorton (Head of School at St. Mary’s Episcopal School in Memphis) and Molly Rumsey (Director of Information and Library Services at Harpeth Hall in Nashville) predicted this would come soon enough in a Whitepaper for OSG from January 2011:

In the 20th century, most of the material used in classrooms came from a handful of content providers (namely textbook manufacturers). This was less the case in independent schools, where teachers were more apt to develop some of their own course materials, and pick and choose from a variety of sources. In the 21st century, one trend that seems to be emerging is pacts between some of the textbook manufacturers and online learning companies or organizations. One of most prominent of these examples is the recent pact between Florida Virtual School and Pearson Education. This is a trend that independent school leaders and public school leaders should monitor, as there are potentially large implications from not just the content coming from a handful of sources, but also the content delivery (teaching or Computer Based Instruction). - OSG Whitepaper, January 2011

Though not a surprise, the announcement should serve as a further indication to independent schools that the world around them is changing rapidly and that education that is truly “independent” is becoming harder and harder to develop and deliver.  In the Whitepaper from January 2011, we further noted that pacts between content creators (large, for-profit textbook manufacturers) and content providers (large, for-profit online schools) should cause worry and change for independent schools:

We believe that this shift will eventually cause independent schools to redefine the nature of their teachers and curriculum, in much the same way that they did in the 20th century. One of the worries in education in the 20th century was that content was produced by a small number of textbook manufacturers, and thus that large states (namely Texas and California) would have large influence over the content in textbooks. This was a prime reason that independent schools hired faculty with strong academic credentials, with many (if not most) independent schools favoring academic credentials (master’s and PhD degrees) over education degrees. If both the content and the teaching will increasingly come from large textbook manufacturers (or other conglomerate entities) in the future, it means that independent schools will likely need to hire faculty (and train existing faculty) to both be able to select appropriate and challenging content and material for students, and teach that content in effective and varied means (not just the means provided by the textbook manufacturer or educational company). - OSG Whitepaper, January 2011

That day is here… who is ready?

The last couple of days, I have been reading a report from the Fordham Institute on the relationship between educational reform initiatives and online learning: Education Reform in the Digital Era.  I’d imagine that the report would be eye-raising to many within the independent school community, both for some of the suggestions and ideas and for the way that the current teaching and learning landscape is described.  And yet, I think that there are lots of lessons to be learned for those of us who love independent school and care about their future in an increasingly digital world.

Chapter 1 of the report “Teachers in the Age of Digital Instruction” is particularly helpful in this regard. In chapter 1, Bryan and Emily Hassel (of Public Impact) make the case for teacher effectiveness in a world with an abundance of options for online education.

In the digital future, teacher effectiveness may matter even more than it does today, as these complex instructional tasks are left to the adults responsible for each student’s learning. Teachers who nurture motivated, tenacious problem solvers while using new technologies to reach more children can become the fuel of local, state, and national economies. Schools will not need as many teachers as we know them. But excellent instructors, many in new roles, will need the right technology and instructional supporting teams to achieve excellence at scale, within budget, and potentially for much higher pay than today. - Education Reform in the Digital Era, p. 12

Think about the way that the “teacher of the future” is described here: teachers matter more.  And yet, teachers don’t matter more because they are the best at explaining how to solve an equation or how to understand a Shakespearean sonnet, but because:

As digital tools proliferate and improve, solid instruction in the basics will eventually become “flat”—available anywhere globally. The elements of excellent teaching that are most difficult for technology to replace will increasingly differentiate student outcomes. - Education Reform in the Digital Era, p. 11

For a number of years, we have been working to have our faculty move from being the “sage on the stage” to being the “guide on the side.”  And, many within our faculty ranks I think have bristled at this change in their role and felt like it devalued the importance of their work.  It seems to me that Bryan and Emily Hassel may have given some of the language that we can use to help faculty understand that a new role of faculty is, in fact, perhaps more important than ever before.

Late Friday night, I got home from my second trip to the West Coast in three weeks.  The first trip was for the NAIS Annual Conference and the second was to see some of the great OSG school in Los Angeles.  Both trips confirmed for me something that I have been feeling in my travels throughout the year: change is really (and finally) happening across the board within independent schools.

Perhaps paradoxically, it seems to me that this change has been sped up in the last year by a number of schools who have come to realize that there is no “silver bullet” out there to better our schools: the iPad, online learning, a one-to-one computing program, the SmartBoard, etc. alone will not make our schools and the learning happening within better.  Instead, schools are working toward harder solutions: changing faculty culture, engaging everyone in the learning process, moving to a “growth mindset,” valuing innovation, and having the hard conversations.  

This is true for the most successful schools leading the way in online learning, too.  Leading schools understand that simply expanding course catalogs through online learning does not necessarily help to better the academic program of a school.  However, if the school works with online learning programs that 1) are mission-alligned, 2) agree on general learning philosophies, 3) help fill in gaps of an existing program, 4) expand opportunities for students, and 5) work with the school as a partner not a client, then online learning can be a very valuable addition to the school.

On a macro independent school level, I have seen these ideas embraced like never before at the NAIS Annual Conference.  The Whitepaper that I recently co-wrote with my friend Michael Nachbar, the Director of the Global Online Academy, was exceptionally well received by people at the conference and in the weeks since.  There was a general buzz in the halls of the Seattle Convention Center about online learning, and the thoughtful, mission-alligned approach of the schools in the OSG and GOA consortiums.

I also thought that it was particularly telling that after the keynote address at the start of the conference from Bill Gates, the criticism from the audience (especially on Twitter) was not that he had “pushed the envelope” too far in his address on the powers of technology to help transform education, but instead there was a fairly large cry of criticism from people who believed that he had not gone far enough.  That was a sea-change for an NAIS Annual Conference.

This week in Los Angeles, I felt the change at the individual school level.  I had the chance to speak with two faculty groups this week that I had presented to last March.  Last year, when I spoke to these faculties, there was general skepticism about the Online School for Girls program and online learning, in general.  Faculty were concerned about the quality of education and, quite frankly, that their jobs were being replaced.  This year, faculty were excited by the opportunities that engaging in online learning offered both for them (through professional development and the ability to teach online themselves) and for their students.  A year into having students take online courses, the faculty had heard what the student experience was: small classes, caring teachers, personalized attention, project-driven, and, yes, challenging.  By this point, they had come to know that the Online School for Girls was created to be like them, and was really birthed from their collective efforts and those of great girls’ school educators of years past, too.  Instead of viewing OSG with skeptical eyes as the “other,” most were viewing OSG as part of them.

We are at an exciting time in independent school education.  Our community is working together on big issues in ways that we never have before.  And, we are tackling the hard questions — and that is making all the difference.