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MembersDistance Learning Offers New Solutions – Script
September 8, 2010
Lynn Bartlett, San Juan USD/OTAN Consultant
Lynn Bartlett: Let me show you why distance learning is still a very viable delivery and why there might be some solutions for your agency and also why it's easier than ever to make an application for an innovation project.
*Change to Slide 2*
Today we're going to talk a little about the realities for adult ed. We're going to spend a lot of time working on the new application because there have been some positive, I like to call them user-friendly, upgrades to the application. We also have to consider the Workforce Investment Act and some of the requirements that touch all of adult ed. and that includes distance learning. I also wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about distance learning resources and trends and if we have some time left we can go for some questions and answers.
Now I will kind of keep an eye on the chat box and also those of you that have microphones, if you have a question and the timing is right we'll open it up and let you talk. We have over an hour scheduled for this workshop so we should be able to cover everything, and anything that is kind of specific and relevant only to your agency we can take that off mic and talk about it later, but nobody should go away from the session today feeling that they didn't get their questions answered.
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So, first, what's the future of adult education? Well of course we know that the flexing of the adult education funding redefined us as one of the categorical programs to our district and our block entitlement money was given to our districts discretion for how they distribute it. Now, because you're all online here I'm assuming that your agency decided that your distance learning program and your adult ed. program still had value and so you have continued to be funded probably at a lower amount, nevertheless, you have continued to get your funds.
As I mentioned at the opening, the adult education, the ed. code itself has been suspended. That happened last year and a lot of us have adjusted to that and sort of figured out what that really means to us, but by suspended it means suspended. So many of the things that perhaps you were concerned about in the past currently are not issues. We'll delve into that a little bit more.
One of the things about the future of adult education is that in the state of change that we've been going through; one thing that became really clear is that distance learning is an established modality and should be integrated into program delivery. The days when your distance learning class maybe stood apart from your classroom and the two never got together in any way; that has changed. You will find that you have distance learning tools in the classroom and you are utilizing some classroom tools in your distance learning program and the technology has accelerated that for you. So distance learning is very clearly going to be a part of all education delivery and we think because of the 15+ years that we've done with innovation programs that adult education is really the leader in demonstrating how to use this modality.
The last point I want to make is that if you are receiving Workforce Investment Act funding you need to continue to follow the federal rules and virtually every agency is receiving that fund so we will be talking about what those federal rules are and they absolutely impact distance learning, not in negative ways, but they will impact you.
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So part of what we use to talk about was ‘can I do distance learning? Will it work for me? Can we afford it?' Lots of different issues but now in the new realities for adult education you really should be asking yourself ‘how quickly can I get involved in this?' and I say that because, first of all, research shows that by 2015 50% of all learning will be done online. Anyone that has a teenager in their home or even a 10 year-old in their home knows that the online world is a very vibrant, enticing world and young people are learning lots of stuff online. Some stuff we may not want them to learn, but they are learning it. It is out there and it is our responsibility, I think, as adult educators to make sure that we understand that world and also that we can capitalize on it and utilize that for our education because not only are our kids online but increasingly our adult audience of parents, kids, the elderly, immigrants, their online as well.
In case you have any questions or you need any research to kind of back up some of what I'm talking about, the OTAN Web site has a significant amount of what I would say is evidence. We have the assessment information, we've got CASAS data, there are lots of charts, graphs and so on that you can utilize if you need to sit down and talk with an administrator or maybe demonstrate to a board member just the value of distance learning. You've got the numbers and the figures and the charts and you can find them right at OTAN's Web site.
When I say that we have flexibility it doesn't mean that we have to relax our due diligence. It's still important for us to do good programs. It is still important for us to maintain the basic data. It is still important to maintain standards. When I said all the ed. code had been thrown out, the exception was that if you were receiving some federal funds, and that's anywhere in your agency. So obviously you're still doing CASAS tests, you're still maintaining the TOPS data, you're still asking students the same kind of questions and gathering the same kind of data that you were five years ago.
I think the last point here, and this is the note of optimism, and that is that I think that in this interim of ‘no rules' it's important for us to look at laying the groundwork and defining for ourselves what do we want adult education in general, and specifically our distance learning, what do we want that program to look like in the event, and I can be hopeful, in the event that adult education moves back to a stand-alone and we are no longer a categorical, maybe our funding changes a little bit. At any rate, when 2013 happens we want to make sure that we haven't been asleep in the process and we have been doing the work to document and establish our viability and the value to our students.
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So, don't stop now. Keep on collecting that data. We just, this summer, OTAN had Denny Porter and Dick Stiles put together the data, the CASAS data. They did an end-of-the-year distance learning evaluation, much like they did, I think the last one was like 3 years ago. So we have new information, new reports and charts. Some of them are integrated into this presentation today, but the complete report for, I think its 2008/2009 and 2009/2010, so we are up-to-date and we do it based on the data that you, the school sites, generate through your TOPS data, so it's really important.
Another thing I touched on earlier, it really is important to work with students and get them comfortable with technology because technology is not, you know, an isolated little thing. We use technology every day. We use technology when you make a purchase, when you buy gasoline. Our students need to be able to manage and successfully navigate through the world and technology is a big part of it. So why not utilize that to also give them some instruction.
Distance learning could strengthen your future funding. I think that the federal government is still in strong support of this. I think if you talk to legislators they still understand some of the values of distance learning. It's going to be increasingly the future for us.
The other thing I would like to just make a point is look inside your own agency to see if you have some logical partnerships. Maybe things that you haven't considered doing you see what the needs are and set yourself up as a solution because we all know that our districts have lots of problems. Be one of the solutions and do it using the technology and some of the curriculum that's already out there that we've already licensed and is available to you. So become a solution and an answer.
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I put this down as just some cost-cutting considerations as you're looking at distance learning. I think all of us have had to make some severe cuts to our programs and here are some that are less painful than other cuts might be.
Obviously seeking partners and looking for underwriting is the kind of thing that you already do but you may find that there are people in the district looking for you now. So banding together and adult ed. working with the elementary system, and administrator's kind of talking to each other and teachers talking to teachers. There are partnerships. In my own district I have been able to form several partnerships in the last year, in large part because everybody has to cut costs.
Really make use of the curriculum that's been licensed by the state. There is low-cost and in many cases free to you curriculum out there. You may already have some of it in place but look at the proxy list that we'll be talking about later and see what else is available. Formerly through the CDLP and now through OTAN you do not have to buy expensive curriculum to be offering effective distance learning.
Also re-examine how your program operates. If you can charge a registration and materials fee that was very new for a lot of us last year, but I'm sure that you have found that you lost some students but you may have actually acquired others because people value that which they pay for. Charging a fee has not been a huge deterrent. It's a consideration but it hasn't been a huge deterrent. Consider, and distance learning happens to be kind of neatly packaged so that you can put a fee onto it.
Use technology to cut your costs by putting some of your material online and have the students do the downloads on their own and think of other ways that you can utilize technology to cut your costs. It's out there. I was able, in my own agency, to cut my printing budget about $10,000 by utilizing some of the online outlets rather than printing out materials, so you can do it.
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I alluded at the beginning, I talked a bit about how distance learning and classroom learning used to be sort of separate programs and how now they are beginning to blend and we're combining the best elements of both. This is not to say that you can't have a complete, pure distance learning program or a straight classroom program but what we have been finding when we look at the CASAS data is, and here is an example of ESL.
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This is from the 2009 data from CASAS and it shows that if you are comparing the average reading gains for students in the classroom, students in distance learning and students that are blended, and by blended that means students that are enrolled in a class and are also enrolled in distance learning. So they are in 2 separate classes but are attending both. Look at the bars. The regular students are the dark gray, or green, on the far left side, the students in the middle are the distance learning only and then the blended is the one on the far right. If you look across the line you will see that the highest level of success for students is in fact the blended model. Obviously there are lots of reasons but one thing that we've learned is that students that are in distance learning and in the classroom have the highest gains of all. And that not only do they have the highest gains but they also have the highest amount of persistence.
(Speaker checks Chat box)
Ok George, you have a question. You're saying ‘so this might work well with ASE students who need help with reading or math'. Yes there are some online programs in particular where if you have a classroom setting you could set up some computers and some students could be working in a distance learning model, and some could be in the classroom doing a classroom configuration and the distance learning students could also log on at home so they would be able to utilize both in the classroom. Yeah, OdysseyWare, I know that was something that maybe Marian can touch on that topic later. Marian I think you are online cause we were looking at whether or not we were going to offer a state-wide license and I don't know what the status of that OdysseyWare is.
The point I want to make and I want people to see is that if you want to hold on to your students and you want the highest amount of learning gains…ok…I'm sorry if I'm hesitating here. Well hold on to your questions here and we will talk about how some practitioners are using distance learning Laranda and Kathleen. Let's move a little bit further into this and then we will go back but hold on to your thoughts. We will get back to it.
* Change to Slide 9*
Ok. Let's first of all talk about what the definition of a distance learner is. According to the Workforce Investment Act Title II, a learner who receives more than 50 % of their instruction hours in a distance learning format during the program year are considered distance learners for the NRS reporting. This does not mean that the student is not also in the classroom. It just means that more than 50% of the time they are studying at a distance. We also have many students who are doing the majority of their lessons in class and less than 50% of their time is done at a distance. In California, this definition is a little harder to play with because we have more blended students than they do on a nation-wide basis and this has to do with the way that the data is reported but I put this up so that you could understand that this is what the federal government considers to be a student at a distance, more than 50%.
*Change Slide*
What's more important for you to pay attention to is that if you are offering students distance learning they must fulfill the same assessment requirements as other learners. They must be assessed in a secure and proctored environment, either at an adult ed. site or another proctored and secure location with staff trained to administer the assessment. I pulled this directly out of the report on page 8. In the past there was some belief that if you were not using your federal money to specifically fund distance learning you were not required to do CASAS testing. That is not true. If you have students anywhere that you are utilizing the federal funds for, you are responsible for assessing all of your students, including your distance learning students, so this may force you to change your model of instruction a little bit or how you work with your students, but it is really critical that you remember that to the best of your ability you want to be doing pre and post assessments on your students so that you can document learning gains, hopefully, on your TOPS.
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I include this ed. code in here because I know this seems to be ancient, ancient history right now but in January of 2009 the state legislature had enacted and it came into effect in January of 2009 that distance learning projects could go from the 5% up to the 15%. That was the really big deal and then, you know, a few weeks later we found out..oh by the way, we are now a categorical and there are no ed. code. But before that this was the legislation and these were the priorities that the legislatures felt they valued and this is why they approved the 15%. They saw distance learning as a very viable delivery for these skills and this is their high priorities and this is what they value; workforce skills for adults, ESL, at-risk or like concurrents and offerings to the rural and inner city. I say this because as you're building your distance learning, you should be thinking, and as you're adding materials, think very carefully about what the legislators saw as our core mission and look carefully at whether you are delivering to that mission.
They also talked a lot about efficiency and accountability and the diversity, equity and quality. This is a guide post. (Speaker checks Chat box) Ok Joan, the question about approved. I'm not sure. I shouldn't talk about things that maybe are new to people or are not familiar with the nuts and bolts of distance learning but I'll briefly explain that up until 2 years ago the majority of us could spend no more than 5% of our total apportionment on distance learning instruction and that was very limiting for many agencies, many of whom were generating well in excess of that 5% and it also, for smaller agencies, 5% was a very small amount of their budget and they really couldn't effectively deliver the kind of distance learning that they would have liked to. So we had a several year push to lift that cap and finally they lifted it to 15% which meant we could devote up to 15% of our total apportionment. That was a really wonderful thing and we were all looking forward to it when the budget changed everything. The whole talk of percentages is no longer really a valid part of it but you will hear often people talking about the 5% projects. That's what this was. We use to be known as the 5% project. I don't think when we get reregulated, if we get reregulated and if our budget changes in 2013, we'll go back to the 15% maybe. It never really was implemented because they threw out the ed. code so soon. That is why I also said this is our time to build the program we want. I'm not sure that they're going to pay much attention to what the percentages are some day in the future. What they are going to pay attention to is are we meeting the high priorities that they put into the legislation that they thought had the value? So that's why I included this slide and I want people to understand that we have to look to fulfill that which the public thinks is our obligation and responsibility and this is what our legislators say it is.
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So how do we get started?
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Someone asked earlier, at the end of this workshop there will be all of these, the PowerPoint will be downloaded and I've got some other documents that I'm going to be referring to. You'll be able to download all of those. I will be sharing all of those and that includes the whole PowerPoint so don't be concerned about that. Also, this workshop will be accessible online so you can go back and listen to it again or share it with others. So you don't need to worry about this Web site right now but this is the address that takes you to the application and those of you that have done the program, have had innovation programs in the past, you're very familiar with this. The reason why we're going to talk about it today is that there have been a lot of kind of interesting changes.
* Change to Slide 13*
Just for a little history, currently, or last year I should say, 134 agencies offered distance learning in the state. When you go to the Web page you will see that there is a PDF listing of all of the agencies and many of their applications and their end of the year evaluations are listed on the right-hand side in the column. This is really interesting and helpful information if you're looking to build a new distance learning program, you're wondering what agencies in your area are offering programs, whether there's the ability to maybe collaborate with another agency, lots of different sources of information. If nothing else you might be able to find the contact name of the person that's offering the distance learning program and the next city or county over. Interesting page, worth looking at.
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When I talked about things that had changed when the ed. code was suspended, some things hadn't changed. I've talked about this a couple of times. I threw in the quote from Deborah Jones because I thought it was really wisdom on her part. And she said this fairly soon after the ed. code was suspended and I've just kind of held on to it. "Without the documented information about services provided, it will be a challenge to justify our programs and explain the key role we play in the state's economy." And that's probably one of the best arguments that I've come up with for why you should continue to collect data, continue to do all the things that you were comfortable doing and familiar with in the past that currently seem not important. They're still important.
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If you're not getting federal money your ed. code no longer applies. However, as I mentioned earlier, virtually everybody collects some federal funds.
It is important to track your learning activities and student outcomes, and to reinforce what Deborah said, we need to demonstrate that this is effective and the best way to demonstrate that is to read our applications and our evaluations and look at the data that's been collected and see that it's a comprehensive program and it's been going on for years.
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If you were using federal funds for distance learning, nothing changed. There is no legal limit to the percentage of your budget which goes back to the conversation about the 15%. You now can spend as much or as little on distance learning as you chose.
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New Agency Applications – I am not sure whether we have any new agencies here but if this is the first time you've done distance learning there's a couple of things I would recommend. 1: Probably you should let me or our state consultant know so that you get a little more training in just the nuts and bolts of distance learning and some of the practices and some of the programs that have been effective and why. That's not part of the workshop today but there is a lot of information that we can give you. Second of all, if you are a new agency you should definitely be talking to Sheila Bollenbach who is the state consultant that manages the contract for the distance learning. Her name is on the page that I will be taking to you soon and her email and phone number and if you are thinking about putting in an application, you absolutely have to talk to her in the next couple of weeks, before the deadline. We welcome anyone new but we want to make sure you have the best experience possible.
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Application - everything is due on the 30th and it's pretty self-explanatory. When we go to the Web page you will see that.
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Now I want to talk about actually looking at the application.
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When you go to the application the first thing you are going to see is the page that has a lot of information about the program and about the various dates and so on. So what I'm going to do right now is take us actually to the application.
*Presenter opens Web page*
This is the first page that you would enter. You see up at the top of the page the address I gave you on the handout. I'm going to sign in for my own agency just for now because once you've signed in you actually have access to more data than you do in the public page. I'm going to select the top, the Innovation Program. This is the page that I was talking about with everyone. The left side of the page you have the dates, how you make a copy of it and here's the contact information for Sheila that I referenced earlier.
Now the part that's really interesting is we have spent a lot of time giving you more information, more support and more guidance about doing the application than about distance learning in general. That first page that I referenced is all of the other adult programs that I talked about. I won't open it up right now.
The second one, Instructions for Completing the Application, everyone that's doing an application this year you should open up this document and print out a copy for yourself. Because of all the applications changes that we did, we decided it would be most helpful to give you complete instructions for filling it out because there are some new considerations and some new things that you have to pay attention to.
It's very helpful. It talks a little bit about the federal policy. Right here, this is key. This is new on the application. You will be surprised if you have done them in the past and you haven't gone to the application yet. The Contact and Authorized Agency Information Page, this is a little bit different than what we've done in the past. Both this contact page and also the administration, and all still part of Section I, the Program Area Contacts.
In the past the Program Area Contacts were separated from the Distance Learning Application. This year they are all combined together. This is very helpful so that the Department of Education knows who is responsible for what in your agency. So I won't go through this whole page but I just want everyone to recognize that this is a really helpful document.
Other things on here that I'm going to share, in the information about the program we've got, again, the federal guidelines and take you directly to CASAS Web site. We also have frequently asked questions. Last year I think we started assembling advantages of distance learning because a lot of people were confronted with having to justify their programs because of all the budget cuts. So we came up with a lot of reasons why distance learning has value to an agency and just give you some support to talk about distance learning. So that's a good document.
The other documents here are a new element that we've added to the application and that is, we spent about a year, maybe a year and a half, we had participants from agencies around the state and what we did is looked at all of the curriculum that's out there. All of the video series and the online series and television classes…this is not coming up as fast as I want. I think what I'm going to do, rather than….I'll go back to the PowerPoint for a while. My computer was freezing up a little bit.
(Presenter closes Web page)
This is the list that I've been talking to you about. I want to go ahead because I did a screen shot. I'm going to go back to it.
* Change to Slide 22*
This is what I was taking you to in the public site. We put together the list of materials and we also, as a group, collaborated to come up with what we thought were reasonable proxy hours for each of the video and the online and the other series based on our collective wisdom. Some of you may have participated in this. It did take a while. We did a couple of things. Branka, one of our OTAN people, went through all of the applications. She made this giant, enormous spreadsheet of all of the different hours, of all of the different video series that agencies were claiming around the state. We came up with what we thought was a consensus amount of hours. We talked about it. If we had any questions we contacted the various agencies that didn't seem to fall in the band that everyone else seemed comfortable with and this is the recommended number of hours for the series. It is very helpful. It's a great guide. Every series that we could identify is listed in this document and it's in a PDF form at the application Web site that we just left.
This doesn't mean that you can't have hours that you are claiming for a series that might vary from this. When we go back to the application I will show you that there is the ability to put in the local exception that will allow you to explain just why you've chosen to give a different number of hours than the recommended.
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Now I'm going to go back because I skipped over this. I just want to remind everyone that the Outcome-based learner mastery model is primarily what's used in distance learning. It has evolved and it is this model that is in the grids that we are talking about. It promotes an outcome-based with a designated benchmark levels and the teacher has to verify or there is another testing that would verify that performance.
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This is kind of the guts of the changes in the application. We have put in suggested curriculum in the pull-down menu that I'll show you. That was looked at by CDE and by the field group that I referenced, and also the number of proxy hours. Again this definition you will be able to download and get to this later.
*Multiple Changes of Slides/Screens*
I do want to get back into the application if possible so just hang on there. Let's see if I can go back. Ok for some reason it's not coming up the way I want it to.
*Change back to Slide 21*
In the application, what I wanted to share with you is that we have made the application a lot easier to use. There are pull-down menus and it's a step-by-step direction that will kind of walk you through the application and help you to answer the questions. If you have done applications in the past you are familiar with the fact that a lot of your data will default from last year. This year you are going to have to re-enter the data in the new areas where you're talking about curriculum and hours and so on. It's a one-time thing. It actually is fairly simple to do. It shouldn't take you a long time but it will take a little bit of concentration. Some of the other data, of course, is going to remain. If I can get the application up again I will but in the mean time I want to continue with the PowerPoint.
The accountability, remember, everyone that does the TOPS, remember that under box 13 make sure that you're checking Distance Learning. If it's not checked then the data will not pull properly for CASAS, so make sure that you've done that for students in the distance learning classes.
* Change to Slide 28*
Now there are some conversations about what's out there. First of all I've put this graphic in to show you that there has been, even in the last year or two when things have been a little challenging for us, there has been a very steady line upward for Innovation Program enrollment and that's based just on the numbers of students that are documented through the TOPS data. Now there may be some more but you can see it's a pretty high trending upward line. Distance learning continues to draw in more and more students.
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Program Benefits – I think that some things that distance learning can do...it will increase access. I just had this happen at my own agency today. We had to reduce the number of classes but that didn't mean that the students have stopped coming. We just can't offer as many classes so we have some waiting lists again. Any of the students that are enrolled in a traditional class that are on the waiting list can immediately come to the distance learning office and we will start them in distance learning immediately. So nobody gets turned away. Once they move off the waiting list they can decide whether they want to stay with us. They can continue that and also be in the classroom or they can stop distance learning and just do the classroom. Our experience has been that once they start they really want to keep on with distance learning as well as in the classroom. So it has been a very effective way to not turn people away.
You can contain some costs, some of the obvious ones, utilize online resources.
You can enhance and accelerate learning gains. I've seen this dramatically in our sites where students that are in both classes. Their learning seems to accelerate if you add a distance learning component because they're taking the work home, they're sharing it with their families, they're watching it when they have time and they tend to get very engaged and it seems to kind of kick up their motivation. It's a nice thing.
Distance learning also improves the community visibility and offers value. I have programs at some of my elementary sites now and the first day of school the parents were already in the office wondering when the distance learning library was coming back. They love it and you could create a demand and you could also, remember I mentioned earlier, help your elementary schools, your middle schools, help them solve some problems. One of the problems they have, they have children that are learning the language the parents do not speak English. How can you mitigate that for them or with them; bring your libraries to those sites. Be their partners and they will not only be your partner, they will be your advocate at the district level and we need all the friends we can get at the district level.
* Change to Slide 30*
I mentioned earlier if you improve persistence with the distance learning you will also encourage retention, both in the site classes as well as in distance learning and you will increase your benchmarks. This is really important. One of the running themes is that our students, that you're using federal funds or your getting federal funds through the Workforce Investment, you are reliant upon benchmarks and learning gains and a way to enhance those benchmarks and to kick up the learning gains is to throw a distance learning component into it. You will get more and higher scores. Distance learning; it's a proven track record that you can generate more federal dollars.
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I've put in a list of just some of the video mainstays and workbooks. When I mentioned earlier ways to contain costs, some of these materials, many of these materials are available to you at low cost or no cost. Some of them you already have. Nothing new has come up lately except USA Learns Web site which I think is here.
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Here are some of the resources that you can go to and see whether you can build some programs utilizing that. USA Learns is one that is managed through OTAN and has been very effective.
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These are some of the resources that were licensed through the state, through the years. Many of them are still in your inventory and if you're new to distance learning, talk with OTAN afterwards because some of these might still be available to you. Some of these unfortunately are VHS and you may have to go back to the producer and get the DVD rights because in many cases the licensing was done before DVDs were being widely used. All of these programs you will find in the proxy list that I referred to. It's all very familiar and widely used curriculum.
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I wanted to just touch on emerging tools as a way of communicating, creating content, networking, creating virtual environments, things like that. And also as a way to tap into what the students have at their disposal. One thing many if not, almost without exception, your students probably have a cell phone. Look at the way you can utilize this cell phone. Can you do mass communication? Can you send out text messages? Can you do podcasting? Those are all distance learning deliveries. That's utilizing the technology and I'm trying it with my own agency.
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I just put up a distance learning project Facebook page and as I say, 350 million people can't be wrong. That's how many people, when they go on the internet, that's how many people are pulling down Facebook. Enormous audience out there. I started to give this Web site address out to students to get them to become friends and come back and check our page and see what we've added. I've got my television courses are listed, the scheduling is listed. Names of the video series we have in our video libraries are listed. You can use this social networking tool to communicate with your students and communicate with other staff members. It's been kind of fun. I was surprised, it hasn't been up for very long and I was surprised in just a couple of days when I first put it up I had already had 147 hits. So nobody knew about it but people were already looking at it. The internet is an amazing place. Use it to your advantage.
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So, another thing that I want to emphasize is that OTAN is the source of so much information. You found out about this workshop this way. You have found about other trainings. If you want to get data about what distance learning has done in this state, all of the reports that we did are up there. CDLP Web page is still up there. There is an enormous amount of material. This is the first place, this should be on your favorites list when you open up the Web page and you are looking for something, you should make this your home page. This is a great source for you all.
If you are kind of new to distance learning or you feel like maybe you're not getting all the information that you'd like, one other way is to go to our listserv.
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Marian Thacher is the host on it. It is a group list. We do not spam or hit you with too many things. It's a great way to communicate with each other if you have a question and we could certainly throw questions out there if something occurs to you in the field that you would like to find out something more about. I think this summer the listserv was being used to talk about some of the some specific question relating to curriculum and a lot of people jumped in and had really valuable things to say. It's a closed list. It's not for the whole world. It's distance learning providers for the most part. Ok, with that I'm going to see…Penny maybe you can come back in and set up the download and I also now would like to hear if people have questions.
Penny Pearson: Ok Lynn, I'll bring up that File Share pod.
*File Share pod opened over slide*
If everyone would just take a look at this pod, it's up in the middle of the screen. Select the file you wish to save and then click the button that says 'Save To My Computer'. You do need to be careful that sometimes in your browser it will open up another window or another pop-up box so watch your computer screen, like your task bar and it should help you find that document. If you have any trouble just give a chat in the chat pod and we can try to help you out.
Of course if you have any other questions, I believe there was a hand raised. Lynn, do you know who that was?
Lynn Bartlett: Joan
Penny: Joan. Go ahead and approve her and then she can ask her question.
Joan Prigian: I have several questions but I'll just ask this one right now. I don't understand what this file share thing is that we have up.
Lynn: I'm sorry I couldn't hear that.
Penny: I got it. She had a question about the file share.
Lynn: Ok
Penny: The different files listed here Joan are just some of the things that Lynn had gone over, including a copy of this slide show and that's the last file in the list named Distance Learning New Solutions and it's dated today. If you'd wish to download any of these documents to use yourself, simply click on the name of the file and then at the bottom of this little box here there's a button that says Save To My Computer and you can save a copy of it to your desktop or where ever you can find that file later. So if you had more of a question you can go ahead and direct that to Lynn.
Joan: Yeah I do. Thank you very much for that. My question is; I'd like some examples of how people are implementing distance learning. We've had our ESL classes cut to two hours, two times a week so the in-class time is really valuable and I'd just like some real-life examples of how people are doing distance learning.
Lynn: Ok. Well I can tell you what I'm doing today. It actually happened today. I'm at San Juan, in suburban Sacramento. We've had a distance learning program for many years and we have a library located at each of our adult sites with video packets and the teacher. We, like your agency, we use to have more classroom hours, now we have 10 hours a week. Typically our students expect at least 15 so what we've done is, the students sign up for a classroom and then if they would like to be in distance learning, they also pay a second smaller fee for the distance learning class. They come down to the library once a week. They are assigned a packet. They take it home. It has a DVD with 2 episodes. There's workbooks. They fill out the workbooks. They do unit tests on each of those. They bring them back, the teacher corrects the work and then they are given the next assignment. This is work that they do separate from their classroom but it's done, it's kind of geared for the same level so if they're in an intermediate/low we would assign them to curriculum that's in the intermediate/low class that's complimentary. It's not going to be the same that they learn in class, but it will be couched at the same level.
So that's one way. So instead of getting 10 hours a week, that student's getting 20 hours a week in instruction and they have 2 separate teachers for that.
Jane: Can I just ask how long that library is open? How many hours do you pay a teacher to be in that library?
Lynn: The library itself we have open, we're sort of expanding our function. We are doing some CASAS testing and stuff there. So we are open about 4 hours a day during the day and then we're open 1 night a week for about 5 five hours so the students can come in before and after their classes and then we also, they can come in after the library closes we just don't publicize the after-hours but we're still available to them for a few hours after the posted hours. So they have quite a bit of access to the library and the librarian. Then the evening class is open for an hour or 2 before the school starts and students can and do come in before then.
Jane: Thank you.
Lynn; Ok. Has everyone had a chance to do the file share? My computer caught up and I did want to show you one of the things in the application if that is ok?
Penny: Lynn, this is Penny. We need to just make sure everybody has downloaded the files cause otherwise they won't be able to see part of that page.
Lynn: Right
Penny: So if anybody is still downloading can you just give us a little chat in the chat pod and we'll wait before we close that file share pod. And there is another question posted there.
Lynn: Ok Neil. Oh, the question about the library. This is done by a certificated teacher. We have a classified staff person that's in there as an ICT but she is not doing any instruction. Â Ok, I'm getting…let me just go back. No, if you are a librarian you are a teacher. The thing to keep in mind is that the librarian functions more as a facilitator. The actual instructional content is in the distance learning packages itself. The teacher and the lessons and the workbooks and everything are in that package that they check out. The only thing that my instructional aide would do is she could take in a packet and check out a new packet but all of the correcting and the conversations with the librarian and stuff would have to be done with the teacher. So it's really very much student and teacher relationship. But the teacher that runs the library is not conducting classes or spending a lot of time. She'll do some one-on-one instruction where there are questions, but the majority of their instruction is within the content that they, the student, has checked out.
It is like distance learning, but it's not exactly. I mean distance learning is like independent study but not exactly. In independent study the relationship with the teacher is a little different. Distance learning students are not capped at 15 hours a week the way an independent study student is and there is more instruction content available in distance learning, typically. It's not homework.
Let's see…somebody else had a question here. Do we maintain…? Yeah we absolutely maintain files. We have complete files. We know when the student checked out the materials. We give them a grade for the workbook that they completed. We give them, they can't take the same unit out again, they have to go to the next unit, they have to get a passing grade. All of that stuff is part of the way that we monitor the student work.
I just want to check to see whether everybody…Penny maybe you can tell me.
Penny: I think we have one person that's still trying to download the file. So let's give that a minute or so.
Lynn: Ok. I just want to let everybody know that the workshop can continue for another 10 or 15 minutes for anyone that wants to actually go into the application again I am able to open it up. But I want to make sure everybody get's the things downloaded first.
Another way that we're implanting distance learning is using online, the students are given a password into a Web site, they go in, they do the work, it's on the computer, they get grades and scores and so on based on the work that they do.
Ok, Joan. You had a question?
Joan: I forgot to hold it down. Sorry. I'm interested in just now what you're saying too about using a computer lab setting for distance learning. We're trying to figure out what to do with our very small budget and our very few hours. One question I had before you started talking about the computer lab was, you know processing all of those DVD's and making them and getting the materials ready requires paying someone hours to do that.
Lynn: Yes
Joan: What if a teacher showed the DVD in class and then sent the packets home? Is that considered distance learning or does the DVD or CD have to go home with them?
Lynn: You know it can be done that way. We use to say you couldn't do it that way but remember the ed. code has changed and we're trying to combine them. The problem with the students not taking the work video's home and watching them at home is that they've lost control over looking at the video part and one of the things that distance learning students in that scenario that I was talking about, they typically watch that DVD more than once. They will stop, they'll take notes; they'll do a lot of things. If the teacher is showing it in the classroom it's more of a teacher led delivery and distance learning is noteworthy because it's student controlled so if you had the ability to show it in the classroom but you also had the ability to send some of the DVD's home with students, cause not every student is going to get it in one pass and I think that's why it's more effective to let them take it home. I know if you're looking at costs, that may be prohibitive but you may want to consider more than one viewing session.
Jane: Thank you.
Penny: Lynn this is Penny. I went ahead and closed the pod. It looked like everyone was finished downloading so if you want to share the application page now it's no problem.
Lynn: Ok. Great. Thank you.
*Share Pod closes and Application Opens in window*
Ok. This was the part that I wanted everybody to see. I've gone into my own application and the reimbursement and accountability; we've probably made the most changes in this page. We spent a lot of time making it more user friendly for you.
So first of all you'll see that Section A is the same. Section B is the Delivery Mode and we use to have kind of a mish-mash of stuff but now basically you have to select one from each column. You have to select the technology on the left and one of the supplemental instructional materials because there is the assumption that if you are using technology you have to have some kind of paperwork support. The only thing that might vary that a little bit could be if you're using strictly an online but you could explain that by checking ‘Other' and then explain how you're looking at student work.
The Student Contacts, the Teacher and Student Contacts are still the same. We still have to do the intake. Those things are pretty much the same and if you've done the application you know that.
Here's the part that's interesting and this is where we are adding the instructional materials. I already have partially done this application. This looks fairly familiar to you but it actually has changed quite a bit. You list your instructional materials, the number of units, your accountability, the general topics, how you evaluate it, what mastery you require and whether you've actually completed that section or not. That's what's spread across the page.
I'm going to show you how you actually enter this which is different. You're not typing it in the body any longer. You go up to I need to add new Instruction Materials and this is what comes up. This whole new page. And it really will kind of guide you through.
So starting at the top for the beginning literacy these are some of the series that are suggested. I'm not going to pick one of those. I'm going to put in a local option because I've already put some of my pre-produced materials. I'm going to put in something that we developed at our district and its called hello kitty. Ok? So that's my locals option. Now I click ‘update' and you can see that hello kitty has been entered under instructional materials. Now I have to just put in the number of units and I'm going to say it's 5 units and for each unit I'm going to, it's a really comprehensive series so I'm going to give it, we've determined that we give the students 10 hours per unit. Topics – I'm just going to say hello kitty's is all about snacks. I'm just being silly. How do we evaluate the students? We actually give them a unit test and our students have to be at let's just say 70%. Local material – Where did we get this? We got this from hello kitty international.
Ok so I've filled out all these boxes. Let's save and review my changes. Now I got back to the page we were at before and there we have it. My instructional material is hello kitty, 5 units, 10 hours, it's all about snacks, we give a test, they have to mastery it at 70%. That's how you enter the data. You can see it's fairly fast. The reason why you have to tell us where the material came from is if you put in something that's what you would call the local exception, and I'll go back to that page again. Down at the bottom, this description of supplemental materials, make sure that if this is something you've developed within your agency you've got the contact name, you know the teacher or the team or whoever is responsible so when CDE calls you and says we'd really like to talk to you about your hello kitty series, you know that you're going to have to talk to me.
Now I just flipped through it very quickly. I'm not actually going to offer hello kitty. Oh it's not going to let me go back. I'm muttering to myself, excuse me.
Penny: Lynn, this is Penny. You have a question here from Heather about how did you get to this page that you're on right now?
Lynn: Ok. I will show you. When I went into my application, this is section 4, well, let me keep going back. We'll go back to the program application. I want to fill out and submit. This is the first page that you will be taken to; Application Section. Here's all the background materials, that first batch of stuff. As you can see the status is Information Only. Section I: Program Contacts and this is the part that I addressed where we're talking about who the agent is, who the administrator is and what your area contacts are for your district. I'll open mine up so I can show you. As you see it talks about who your director is, the assistant director, who does fiscal, who's doing attendance, who does the course approvals, who's the TOPS person, your ABE coordinator and so on, all the way down the line. All of that data, some if it will be automatically plugged in for your agency, but some, make sure the names are still correct. There may have been some changes and this is your chance to pay attention to that.
That will take you next to your budget. And I'm going to go back up to my application again. So you'll go through Section I, Section II. And you can pick any of these and you can kind of navigate around. I've done the program contacts. I haven't finished my budget yet. My narratives I've completed and now I'm just adding my course reimbursement and accountability. This is where I found the ESL Beginning Literacy page that I showed you. You can see it's incomplete. I've done some of the work but I haven't done all of it. You can go this way or you can also go to the bottom of the page, you know, and do the work and enter save, complete, next page and it will take you through page by page. This is a nice way of getting in and just working on the section at a time that you need to work on.
As I said earlier, once, let's see, I'll go to my narrative here. Here is the narrative for my agency. Some of this I think defaulted in from prior year's applications. If you have not ever done the narrative before I encourage you to do it in Word and then cut and paste it into this template. Don't try and type on this document. It does not spell check and you can't determine what your word limit is. You'll see that you've got word limits, but if you do it in a Word document, that's something you can check. It will come out as kind of a straight box as you see it and when you actually print out your application the questions will sort of disappear but your….
Penny: Lynn?
Lynn: Yeah!
Penny: You have a question from Joan and she was going to use her mic so standby a second.
Lynn: Ok. Ok Joan.
Joan: Sorry to be asking so many questions. I am new. There was that one section on, this is a really dumb question for people that know what they are doing, but it said something about accountability and reimbursements. What does the reimbursement part mean? I was on the understanding that we're using part of our grant for distance learning but are we reimbursed in some way? I don't understand that part.
Lynn: You're not using a grant, you're using some of what use to be known as apportionment. It's your own money. It's not a grant. We're talking about the course reimbursement and, let's go to that page right here. This is what you were asking about, the reimbursement and accountability?
Joan: Right.
Lynn: Really what you're talking about here is; what is the course that you are offering and how are you claiming and supporting those hours? What video series or online are you using? How many hours are you claiming for it? In the old days we use to claim a certain number of hours converted into formulas. That's how we claimed how much ADA we had earned. That's currently suspended as a way of claiming reimbursement. We are not doing it. We're given a fixed amount now from your district each year. This language is kind of the old-time language and it's helpful for agencies to try and figure out how much money they want to devote to distance learning, what kind of student activity can they generate and what kind of student outcomes can they expect based on the courses that you've added in here.
So if you say, you say you are going to go to a, let me go back to this one again. If, for instance, you are going to be offering a beginning ESL Literacy and you were going to have your students do Putting English to Work - Level I, there's 20 units, 10 hours per unit, so you would be offering students about 200 hours of instruction and your agency could look at the cost of what seat-time 200 hours is versus 200 hours through distance learning where the students would be mostly at home using their own equipment to watch that instruction.
This just gives you some ballpark language for understanding it. Does that make sense to you?
*Web page window closes and goes back to slide*
Joan: Yeah. Thank you. So actually we are not talking about any kind of reimbursements?
Lynn: Not currently, no. We use to because we got reimbursed for the students that we served. We haven't come up with the new vocabulary I guess.
Joan: Thank you.
Lynn: Melissa, yes. You should update your A22 if you're going to offer levels if it's something you're offering that's not currently on your approved list. And there is an approval list on the application, so you can see whether you already fit, you might be able to fit your course that you want to offer into your existing list. That is something that you should be updating every fall.
Joan did you have another question?
Joan: Yes, yet another question. In the budget, I noted earlier that it said just to estimate the amount of money you were going to spend.
Lynn: Correct.
Joan: If it turns out that once we really figure out what we are doing do we need to amend this document in anyway?
Lynn: No. It's just a budget estimate. At the end of the year in the report you'll say how much you actually spent. It used to be a little more elaborate than that but no, you don't have to.
Joan: And then you said there's an evaluation report also so there's an application and an evaluation that's due in September.
Lynn: That's right.
Joan: Is it in the same document?
Lynn: The evaluation is a fairly simple document. You just talk about the number of people you actually serve, the amount of money you actually spent, what programs you delivered and 1 or 2 other questions. It's fairly short but it is valuable for us as we're looking at how successful the year has been. It helps you to..
Joan: (inaudible)
Lynn: Pardon?
Joan: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Is that a part of the application? Is that a part of the application?
Lynn: Yes. When you go to the innovation Web site the end of the year evaluation will be there, yeah. I could go back to it but I can't read my chat box. I've got my window too big I guess. Before I go back to that page Vicki asked about the 70% passing level. That's the minimum that agencies use. Some agencies go higher, it's really kind of what you want as Marian answered at 80%, but it's really up to you. And if you want it to be  at 70% you could do it, 80% is fine too. Again, you kind of get into some local decisions about this.
The rational for using 70% - no Marian I don't have an answer right now. I'd have to go back and look at my application. It may have something to do with the different levels, the multi levels.
CASAS questions, sure. You have to request.
Penny: Laranda don't forget you have to hold down that Talk button and speak and you should see the little green lights underneath the talk button letting you know that you're broadcasting ok.
Lynn: Yeah, Thank you Neil. Neil just points out that your regional CDE consultant can also assist you with your applications. That's an excellent…Your regional consultant should be someone you talk with in addition to Sheila, absolutely.
Laranda Marr & Kathleen Jan: Hi Lynn. Can you hear us now?
Lynn: Yes.
Laranda & Kathleen: This is Laranda and Kathleen.
Lynn: Hi.
Laranda & Kathleen: Hi. At Berkeley Adult School. We had a question about if a students in a hybrid model in a regular ESL class and also in a distance learning class do we fill out a separate TOPSpro and do they duplicate CASAS tests or does one CASAS test get sent to both programs. How do you handle CASAS?
Lynn: One CASAS test is going to be submitted regardless because you only have one test per student ID. You're not claiming more than one.
Laranda & Kathleen: Right. That's true.
Lynn: You can certainly share the scores in more than one class so that, are you saying that your distance learning class and your site class are in one room?
Laranda & Kathleen: No. They are separate classrooms and either the students take the CASAS test in their ESL classroom or in the DL classroom if it's distance learning only. But we are wondering, in terms of collecting data and reporting it to…
Lynn: CASAS or TOPS
Laranda & Kathleen: Yeah, CASAS. Is it reported under the ESL class or is it noted that the student has been taking distance learning ESL as well as the regular ESL classroom?
Lynn: Remember that early form, or one of the early pages when I talked about NRS and that you have to be in distance learning more than 50% of the time for it to pop up as a distance learning predominant time for students. I would say that as a practice you probably would do the majority of your CASAS testing in the ESL classrooms and that if students are only doing distance learning then on their TOPS it would check box 13 and that would be a distance learning only student and their numbers would be reported to CASAS as a pure distance learning student. But the majority of your students are not going to be classified as a distance learning student because they are in a blended model. They are going to be whatever the 50% is and most of them are going to be in the classroom more than in distance learning.
Laranda & Kathleen: Ok, Thank you.
Lynn: So the numbers get a little weird to chop up but having the teachers talk to each other so you know that the progress is happening in the classroom is helpful.
Laranda & Kathleen: Ok, thank you.
Lynn: Heather, I'm not sure…
Marian Thacher: Lynn can you hear me?
Lynn: Yeah
Marian: This is Marian.
Lynn: Hi.
Marian: Hi. I'm stealing Penny's mic. Well I think Heather's question is about most programs use multi-level ESL in their distance learning application…
Lynn: They do.
Marian: …rather than filling out one for each level of ESL. Can you speak to that? Why is that?
Lynn: Well in terms of your distance learning application you are only saying, on your reimbursement sheet you're only putting it is as a multi-level rather than breaking it out? Is that what the question is?
Marian: I mean you have the option to do either one. You can break it out or you can have one multi-level class so I guess the thing is you could register a lot of students in a multi-level class and it's more manageable than having, you know, five….
Lynn: True and I think in a distance learning, say video library, I think it will almost without exception be a multi-level. But now as she's asking the question, it is possible that the way that the application is broken down we have to do it by the low and the intermediate and above. It may be that we can't do it in a multi-level form. I have to go back and look at the application again. That's a good question. But the short answer is yes, your libraries will probably be multi-level and all of the series would be available in there. But I have to say that I've always done it broken out more by level, intermediate/low and beginning. But the class itself could be basically a single class.
*Presenter is checking Chat pod*
Yeah, we don't offer quite that many levels at our district but that's not unusual. The regular distance learning library Heather, yeah, it probably is just a single multi-level ESL.
Marian: Before everyone leaves, this is Marian Thacher. I just wanted to, first of all, to thank Lynn very much for her great experience and expertise in distance learning and also to let you know that we have a number of different initiatives and opportunities related to online instruction this year. Some of them are new this year and many programs, in response to budget cuts, have been moving some of their classes online using Moodle, which is the course management system that we host and offer to you if you are in adult education. That's a whole workshop in itself but we've been talking with several programs that are making a major push to move things online, as students also are more and more having their own internet access.
We are initiating an online teaching academy this year. The application is on OTAN now and is due September 30th. There are 12 spots only in that program so I encourage you to take a look at that if you are interested in that or somebody in your program is interested in that. And also we will have a number of distance learning webinars this fall and spring. They are announced on the distance learning list which is the slide that you are looking at right now. I think that you had the option to download the instructions to join. I just encourage you to get on that list if you're not on it because all of these things are announced there. Thanks.
Lynn: Marian I wanted to address a question that Melissa Calvero asked. She wanted to know if the combined hours from your classroom and your distance learning would show up on your TOPS report so you would know when you should retest and the chances are no. Your TOPS, you will have a separate TOPS and the databases may not merge the way you would like them to so this is where collaborating with the teachers is helpful. The only way that your hours would appear is your distance learning hours when you are logging in, those would appear but they would not be merged with the classroom hours. Is that what your question was Melissa?
Marian, people are asking some really good questions that kind of go to the heart of topics, kind of beyond the scope of today's workshop. I would like to just encourage people if they want to ask more questions, talk to your regional consultant, talk to Sheila and you're also free to email me and ask me questions cause I would be happy, I've been doing distance learning for 15 years and some of the questions you're asking me are questions I haven't heard for a while so that's telling me that there are new people coming into the field and I would certainly like to give you some assistance if I can.