K-12 Distance Learning

Through interview, Dr Carol Gordon, through interview, explores the work of Deborah Ehler-Hansen outlining both her theoretical evaluation of the needs of children in poverty and the ways school libraries can play a role in assisting their learning development. The article refers to a range of valuable further resources.

Several online programs have turned to on-site facilitators to create a stronger sense of community and reduce student dropout. However, there is very little research addressing how fully online programs can provide their students with a similar level of support. This study used K12 online research to analyze a case study on a "shepherding program" at Mountain Heights Academy, a fully online high school. We found that the shepherding program enabled fully online teachers to provide their students with many of the services typically associated with onsite facilitators. The roles of the shepherding program included building caring relationships, facilitating content interaction, and providing students with the communication links they needed to be successful. In addition, we found that the shepherding program increased teacher job satisfaction, feelings of responsibility, motivation, and peace of mind. Costs associates with the shepherding program included emotional investment and time. This case study provides fully online schools with one approach for improving online student support.

A growing number of adolescents are taking all or most of their courses online. This places a greater responsibility on parents to support and facilitate their student's learning. This case study used teacher surveys and interviews to better understand how teachers perceived and supported parents' attempts to support their online students at a single online charter school. Results showed that parents supported their students by (1) organizing and managing students' schedules, (2) nurturing relationships and interactions, (3) monitoring and motivating student engagement, and (4) instructing students when necessary. Teachers also believed that parents could act as obstacles to their students' learning by being overly engaged in certain types of learning activities. Additional research is needed that examines parent engagement in a variety of online learning environments. Research that identifies best practices could also be especially valuable to online teachers and administrators wishing to improve the quantity and quality of parental engagement in their programs.

K-12 Online Learning has exponentially grown in the last 15 years. An estimated 1.2 million K-12 students took online classes last year; 45 states currently have some form of online learning at the state-level; and some states mandate some sort of online experience prior to high school graduation. Given its dramatic growth and ubiquity in K-12 schooling, it is critical that administrators learn more about K-12 schooling and the role it may play in their district or building. Unfortunately, there is not one single model of K-12 online schooling. Therefore, there is not one suggested set of recommendations, learnings, or best practices administrators should pay attention to. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce administrators to some of the more generic models of K-12 virtual schooling, the new roles that are created with this innovative form of teaching and learning, and any research that might impact decision-making at the building or district levels.

Depending on the reference, the practice of K-12 online learning began sometime between 1991 and 1996. Yet almost three decades later, there is still little research to describe the K-12 online learning student experience, which has resulted in a lack of understanding of the actual instructional model, nature of the curriculum, and type and amount of support employed by K-12 online learning programs. Further, much of the available research is atheoretical, methodologically questionable, contextually limited, and overgeneralized. All these factors make the K-12 online learning research that does exist of little value in guiding practice. This manuscript examines the maturity of research in the field of K-12 online learning, with the goal of providing researchers with meaningful impact on future practice.

Dependiendo de la referencia, la práctica del aprendizaje en línea de K-12 comenzó en algún momento entre 1991 y 1996. Sin embargo, casi tres décadas después, todavía hay poca investigación para describir la experiencia de los estudiantes de aprendizaje en línea de K-12, que ha resultado en una falta de comprensión del modelo de instrucción real, la naturaleza del plan de estudios y el tipo y la cantidad de apoyo empleado por los programas de aprendizaje en línea K-12. Además, gran parte de la investigación disponible es teórica, metodológicamente cuestionable, contextualmente limitada y sobregeneralizada. Todos estos factores hacen que la investigación de aprendizaje en línea K-12 que existe sea de poco valor para guiar la práctica. Este manuscrito examina la madurez de la investigación en el campo del aprendizaje en línea en K-12, con el objetivo de proporcionar a los investigadores un impacto significativo en la práctica futura

Little research has examined the critical components of successful K-12 online schools, due in part to the theoretical focus of current frameworks on higher education rather than characteristics of K-12 online learners and environments. Using K-12 online research, this paper examined teaching presence as explained by the Community of Inquiry framework and identified additional teacher roles that needed stronger emphasis. We termed the new construct teacher engagement. Teacher engagement was shown to be helpful in describing and identifying effective teacher practices at the Open High School of Utah (OHSU)-a successful online charter school. Through a series of 22 interviews with over half of OHSU faculty, it was found that teachers worked to improve student outcomes by (1) designing and organizing learning activities, (2) facilitating discourse with students and parents, (3) providing students with one-onone instruction, (4) nurturing a safe and caring learning environment, (5) motivating students to engage in learning activities, and (6) closely monitoring student behavior and learning. These six elements describe the core of teacher engagement.

K-12 online learning is growing in Canada and elsewhere in the world. However, the vast majority of literature is focused on practitioners and not on systematic inquiry. Even the limited published research has largely excluded the perspectives of students engaged in virtual schooling. This study examines secondary student perceptions of components of virtual schooling that were beneficial and challenging.
Students largely enjoyed their virtual school courses and found the synchronous classes, the technology, and the ability to control their own learning as positive aspects of their experience.
Students also found the lack of a sense of community, working during their asynchronous class time, and the asynchronous course content to be challenging; and made suggestions for improvement to each, along with advice to future virtual school students.

There is a shift occurring in education systems around the world, which could change the face of education as we have known it through blended and online learning. The purpose of this chapter is to describe the current e-learning initiatives and projects for students in secondary schools in Singapore. An overview of the Singapore education system, along with a more in depth look at the current e-Learning initiatives and how they evolved are shared. Finally, a specific look at how e-learning has been implemented within Singapore’s secondary schools is described. The research in this chapter looked at both the policy and practices happening within Singapore’s education system.

Online learning at the K-12 level is growing exponentially. Students learning in supplemental virtual schools and full-time cyber schools, using a variety of delivery models that include and sometimes combine independent, asynchronous, and synchronous instruction, in almost every state in the US. In some instances the knowledge, skills, and abilities required by teachers in this technology-mediated environment is consistent with what they learned about face-to-face teaching in their teacher education programs, while in many instances, the two are quite different. Presently the lack of empirical research into effective K-12 online teaching limits teacher education programs. However, teacher education programs still need to better prepare pre-service and in-service teachers to design, deliver, and support students engaged virtual schooling

Open and Distance learning (ODL) programs are generally designed to serve an off campus population. These programs provide access to higher education for students who cannot attend traditional courses due to employment, marital status, family responsibilities, distance, and expenses incurred with traditional education (Hannay and Newvine 2006). According to Bukaliya and Musika,(2015), ODL lies in the philosophical nature of geographical dispersion of students and the vast distances apart between the students and the ODL institution. That nature of ODL underlie in the premise that, students know on how, where, when and what to study (Keegan, 1986), as a result students face a lot of challenges resulting in low learning motivation (Bukaliya and Musika, 2015). For sustainability in Open and Distance learning, counseling service as one of the Students Support Service (SSS) is very important in academic arena (Jung, 2005). Counseling is the process of helping an individual to receive, accept his/her conception of him/herself and his/her problems, perceptions, attitudes, goals, plans and choices and use advice that can help him to understand and solve his/her problem/ disturbing issues or to cope with it successfully for a better future (Biswalo, 1996). For the counseling process to be effective the counselor should have the knowledge of counseling skills, counseling techniques on how to conduct the counseling interview. In Open and Distance Learning, a counselor has to understand the effect of distance on the choice of technology (UNESCO: 2004) by considering Accessibility, Flexibility, Cost, and Speed (COL, 2003).

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ιεθνείς εφαρμογές εναλλακτικών μορφών εκπαίδευσης σε μαθητές
πρωτοβάθμιας εκπαίδευσης
International implementations of alternatives in education for primary
education students
Στην εποχή της πολυπλοκότητας και της ραγδαίας ανάπτυξης των
Τεχνολογιών της Πληροφορίας και Επικοινωνίας, η μελέτη και παρουσίαση διαφόρων εναλλακτικών συστημάτων και μορφών εκπαίδευσης είναι μια πρόκληση, καθώς ανοίγουν νέους ορίζοντες και προοπτικές για τη διεύρυνση ενός διαλόγου
σχετικού με τις εναλλακτικές μορφές εκπαίδευσης, τα πλεονεκτήματα και τα μειονεκτήματα τους, αλλά και τις δυνατότητες εφαρμογής τους σε μια σύγχρονη και δημοκρατική κοινωνία. Το άρθρο αυτό επικεντρώνεται σε μια συγκεκριμένη εναλλακτική μορφή εκπαίδευσης, την κατ’ οίκον εκπαίδευση (homeschooling), η οποία είναι διαδεδομένη στις Η.Π.Α., Καναδά, Αυστραλία, Γαλλία κ.α.
Θα παρουσιαστούν ορισμένα συνοπτικά στατιστικά στοιχεία για τον αριθμό των μαθητών που εκπαιδεύονται με αυτό τον τρόπο, για τους λόγους, τους οποίους επιλέγεται αυτή η μορφή  εκπαίδευσης, για τους τρόπους με τους οποίους
εφαρμόζεται, ο αντίλογος και οι προβληματισμοί που υπάρχουν και γενικότερες σκέψεις και απόψεις σχετικές με αυτό το θέμα. Στόχος του κειμένου είναι η δημιουργία ενός επιστημονικού και μεθοδολογικού διαλόγου για τις δυνατότητες και τις διαστάσεις αυτής της μορφής εκπαίδευσης.

While the use of online learning at the K-12 level of growing exponentially, the availability of empirical evidence to help guide this growth is severely lacking. The author of this chapter provides an overview of the nature of K-12 online learning today and a critical examination of the literature and -lack of research -supporting its use. The author further describes some of the methodological issues surround the limited among of existing research, and calls for researchers in this field to adopt of a new paradigm of design research to address the individual problems experienced by K-12 online learning providers.

While the use of distance and online learning at the K-12 level of growing exponentially, the availability of empirical evidence to help guide this growth is severely lacking. The author of this chapter provides an overview of the nature of K-12 distance and online learning today and a critical examination of the literature and – lack of research – supporting its use. The author further describes some of the methodological issues surround the limited among of existing research, and calls for researchers in this field to adopt practices that have been employed by their colleagues investigating adult populations over the past decades.

Drawing on current literacy research, the goals of this chapter are to examine and synthesize the relevant research and best practices associated with literacy learning and teaching in virtual, blended and hybrid environments in K-12 settings. While the research base for literacy education in virtual schools, blended, and hybrid learning environments is significantly limited, it is supported by research done in the field of literacy education investigating reading and writing in online spaces. This chapter provides specific recommendations and implications for writing instruction and reading instruction in online education spaces, and in addition, implications for future research are provided.

This paper presents a synthesis of reports and research on K-12 blended teaching competencies compared with K-12 online teaching competencies. The skills needed to teach in online and blended environments are distinct from traditional teaching, but teacher education programs often do not equip preservice teachers for the new modes of instruction. Additionally, there is a dearth of research on blended teaching competencies. This review synthesizes 8 blended teaching documents and 10 online teaching documents. Seven global themes identified in both competency domains are: (1) pedagogy, (2) management, (3) assessment, (4) technology, (5) instructional design, (6) dispositions, and (7) improvement. The top twenty blended teaching skills include: flexibility and personalization, mastery-based learning, data usage and interpretation, learning management system usage, online discussion facilitation, and software management. The authors recommend that researchers collect more methodologically transparent data about blended teaching, and that teacher education programs include the identified skills in curriculum.

Due to tremendous explorations in internet the entire teaching learning methodologies have been changed. In the old days the education system mainly followed the " gurukul " system. Slowly the people shifted from those classical methods and adopted postal coaching in early 70-s. After innovations of internet a further changes have been made in teaching learning process. Now a new concept has come up. Education for all and anywhere and anytime. In the present study the author will make systematic study on new innovative teaching learning methodologies and also its importance in coming days. In the present paper the authors have tried to explore a comparative study among e-learning, distance learning, on-line learning methodologies. The authors have also made a study on how ARM technology can improve the teaching learning methods by reducing the H/W cost.

Labrador secondary education. The primary goals of this research were to investigate the virtual school learning experience for students in the Centre for Distance Learning and Innovation (CDLI) including the kinds of support and assistance most frequently used and most valued by students learning in a virtual environment.

This chapter provides an overview of the state of K-12 online, blended and distance education, or e-learning, in Canada. A summary of the history of K-12 e-learning and research is provided along with enrolment, current policy and legislation. A description of programs is provided along with an overview of practitioner-based organizations and consortia that have evolved to support e-learning programs in the country. A discussion of issues in K-12 e-learning and research are included and the chapter’s conclusion calls for more research and sharing of innovative practices emerging in Canada.

This paper describes the Adolescent Community of Engagement (ACE) framework as a guide to research and design in adolescent online learning environments. Several online learning frameworks have emerged from higher education contexts, but these frameworks do not explicitly address the unique student and environmental characteristics of the adolescent online learning environment. The ACE framework consists of four main constructs that make up an adolescent online learning community. The first three (student engagement, teacher engagement, and peer engagement) build on frameworks originally established from higher education contexts. The ACE framework additionally recognizes the role of parents in their children's learning and introduces a fourth construct, parent engagement, which builds on two previously established face-to-face frameworks.

While the use of distance and online learning had been used for over a century in the K-12 setting (including in isolated ways during previous pandemics and natural disasters), the complete worldwide closure of schools focused attention on the use of distance and online tools and content to provide continuity of learning in a remote context. The way in which both practitioners and scholars make sense of what has occurred over the past 18 months, and what is likely to continue into the future, will impact both regular schooling and how we prepare for future crisis. This article explores this pandemic pedagogy, with a goal of situating the events since March 2020 within the broader field and providing guidance on a path forward.

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed virtual schooling to the forefront of the national educational landscape. Long-time proponents of this technology quickly positioned digital programs and platforms as the obvious solution for schools that had to close buildings to avoid transmitting the virus.

The pandemic exacerbated a trend that NEPC virtual schools’ reports have documented since 2013. While it is clear that virtual schools—particularly for-profit virtual schools—are expanding rapidly, there remains little research evidence to support or justify the expansion. Moreover, there is little policymaking at the state level adequate to the task of ensuring the quality of education that virtual school students receive.

Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2021 provides scholarly analyses of the characteristics and performance of full-time, publicly funded K-12 virtual schools; reviews the relevant available research related to virtual school practices; provides an overview of recent state legislative efforts to craft virtual school policy; and offers policy recommendations based on the available evidence.

Many involved with the practice or study of K-12 online and blended learning are familiar with the American context. It surrounds us in the media and published research. However, online and blended learning is occurring in meaningful ways to address specific K-12 student needs all around the globe. There are several areas where the international practice is consistent with what we know about the United States (e.g., similar evolutions, early initiatives were government-funded, many of the labels are similar). At the same time, there are some key differences internationally. While far less is known about K-12 online and blended learning in international contexts, programs in these jurisdictions are just as keen to tell their own success stories and undertake cyclic research to improve the design, delivery, and facilitation of their programs. As American-based researchers, it is incumbent upon us to ensure that these research-based lessons are known to our various stakeholders.

This issue of the State of the Nation: K-12 E-Learning in Canada report marks its 10th year, and the fifth year of the Canadian eLearning Network’s (CANeLearn) support of this research. The report continues to be Canada’s own benchmark for the expanding use of technology-supported blended and online learning in Canada. The anniversary report continues the traditional incisive analysis of the state of K-12 e-learning in Canada as well as an expanded collection of research briefs and a description of several vignettes providing considerable insight about innovation and new approaches emerging in online and blended practices in K-12 programs across Canada. Full results of the research and work undertaken in this study, including all annual reports and associated papers, are published on the State of the Nation: K-12 E-Learning in Canada project website (http://k12sotn.ca/). This document provides a synopsis and overview of the published work on the comprehensive website.

Canada provides an interesting exemplar for the rest of the world, given its widely varying population and geography fostering comparisons with other countries/regions of similar population. With two official languages and a growing immigrant population combined with a rich indigenous population, Canadian schools offer online and blended learning programs in English, French, and in some cases Aboriginal languages, leading to comparisons with other English and French-speaking countries and those with significant indigenous populations.

The ‘Brief Issue Papers’ and ‘Vignettes’ published on the website capture some of this diversity of program and populations served. They make for particularly topical reading about the challenges and innovations underway in many places across the country, featuring some of the personalities of the online educators who are blending practice, creating learning programs and environments with a varied mix of classroom and online learning methodologies that increase flexibility and access to learning for students.

The State of the Nation: K-12 E-Learning in Canada report, and its accompanying publications on its project website, provides critical information and insight into how Canadian educational authorities and governments are integrating technology-supported approaches to prepare students for today’s economy and a future society in which the use of technology will be ubiquitous. This anniversary report and website provide a benchmark for educators and offers background, guidance, and ideas for the improvement of policy and practice in online and blended learning.

n the five years since the first NEPC Annual Report on Virtual Education was released in 2013, virtual education has continued to be a focal point for policymakers. Proponents argue that virtual education can expand student choices and improve the efficiency of public edu-cation. In particular, full-time virtual schools (also sometimes referred to as virtual charter schools,  virtual  academies,  online  schools  or  cyber  schools)  have  attracted  a  great  deal  of  attention. Many believe that online curriculum can be tailored to individual students more effectively  than  curriculum  in  traditional  classrooms,  giving  it  the  potential  to  promote  greater student achievement than can be realized in traditional brick-and-mortar schools. Further,  the  promise  of  lower  costs—primarily  for  instructional  personnel  and  facilities—makes virtual schools financially appealing to both policymakers and for-profit providers.

The assumption that virtual schools are cost effective and educationally sound, coupled with policies  expanding  school  choice  and  providing  market  incentives  attractive  to  for-profit  companies, continue to help fuel virtual school growth in the U.S. There is, however, little high-quality systematic evidence that the rapid expansion of the past several years is wise. Indeed,  evidence  presented  in  the  NEPC  annual  reports  argues  for  caution.  Nevertheless,  the  movement  toward  virtual  schools  continues  to  gather  steam,  often  supported  by  weak  or even dishonest data. For example, as a part of the confirmation hearings for the current Secretary of Education, National Public Radio reported that Secretary Betsy DeVos respond-ed  to  a  written  question  from  Senator  Patty  Murray  using  performance  data  provided  by  a  for-profit  corporation  that  inflated  the  four-year  graduation  rates  of  virtual  schools—in  some cases by as much as 300%.1

The 2017 NEPC Annual Report contributes to the existing evidence related to virtual edu-cation, and so to debates surrounding it. It provides objective analysis of the characteristics and  performance  of  full-time,  publicly  funded  K-12  virtual  schools;  available  research  on  virtual school practices and policy; and an overview of recent state efforts to craft new policy.

In Section I—Full-Time Virtual and Blended Schools: Enrollment, Student Characteristics, and Performance, Gary Miron, Charisse Gulosino, Christopher Shank, and Caryn Davidson focus  on  two  specific  types  of  K-12  online  and  blended  learning:  full-time  virtual  schools  and  blended  schools.  The  authors  assigned  schools  in  their  study  a  unique  identification  code that allowed them to gather complete data about each school from a variety of sources (the National Center for Educational Statistics, individual Departments of Education, and so on). The authors use the terms “full-time virtual school” and “full-term blended school” because they want to link these school types to data sets on school characteristics, student demographics, and school outcomes.

In Section II—Still No Evidence, Increased Call for Regulation: Research to Guide Virtual School Policy, Michael Barbour focuses on all forms of K-12 virtual and blended learning. Barbour  distinguishes  among  the  different  forms  of  virtual  schooling—both  supplemental  and full-time—and describes the limited reliable research on blended learning programs and blended learning schools.

In Section III—Key Policy Issues in Virtual Schools: Finance and Governance, Instruction-al Quality, and Teacher Quality, Luis Huerta, Sheryl Rankin Shafer, Jennifer King Rice, and David Nitkin use the general term “virtual school” as an umbrella term including all forms of K-12 online learning. When the National Education Policy Center first began this annual ex-amination in 2013, the distinctions among K-12 online learning, virtual schooling and cyber schooling were not as prominent within the academic literature. Additionally, many of the K-12 online learning programs sponsored or supported by State Departments of Education were  referred  to  as  virtual  schools.  Similarly,  much  of  the  legislation  and  policy  language  used  the  term  virtual  (for  example,  virtual  charter  school).  For  these  reasons,  this  annual  report was and will continue to use the term Virtual Schools in its title. Therefore, unless they are quoting specific language from a given piece of legislation or policy, the authors of this third section will continue to use the term “virtual schools.

This study examined existing K-12 online teacher preparation programs in the United States to ascertain the degree to which teachers are prepared to function in online/blended classroom learning environments. This study used a content analysis approach. Research specifically targeted online teacher preparation programs implemented in institutions of higher education. The researcher collected data from state offices of education and institution deans through email surveys inquiring about the existence and capacity of K-12 online teaching endorsements, course descriptions, and other course documents.