Oregon Online Leaders

Conference Notes

Online Leaders Meeting at Crook-Deschutes ESD
December 10, 2001 

ESDs here that are not currently doing online courses: Umatilla-Morrow, Willamette, Crook-Deschutes, Region 9, and Lane. Folks from SKO, SOOS, CyberSchool, and NW Web School were also here.

 Random Morning Discussion

Marty’s Philosophy: We can look at online learning as a vehicle for traditional materials OR as a means of integrating technology into teaching and learning.

 Comments on the fact that there has been no real involvement from ODE in the Online Leaders group. Mary Bunn and Camille Cole represent interactive video interests, but there is not really anyone from ODE who has been identified as being interested in online learning. Interestingly, Ozzie Rose made two calls to Dennis Dempsey about today’s meeting—meaning that there is growing interest in online learning and the opportunities that it represents to students in rural areas. Dennis is willing to take the message forward to Kate Dixon and Clark Brodie at ODE; he is worried that lots of money will be spent recreating the wheel. Now is the time to have a statewide voice so that when some superintendent in a rural area wants to start up an online school, we can step up and say, why would you want to do that when there are already four or five online schools in the state that can serve your needs?

 After some discussion about the different distance learning methodologies, agreement was made to keep the focus of this group on online learning.

 There was some discussion about online learning being omitted from the K-12 distance learning plan (recently sent out by Mary Bunn at ODE for input). Outcome: Jack Turner and Mary Jean will draft an article for the OETC newsletter about what should have been included in the plan with respect to online learning.

 Dennis Dempsey talked about forming a statewide online school system, perhaps managed or run through ESDs. He later followed up with a statement about ESDs being brokers of online learning to the schools. He did not think that it would be cost-effective to have one statewide system. The ESDs already represent a system that is in place; ESDs also are involved in the statewide network and deal with home school population. Dennis suggested a web site with a description about the course and the teacher who teaches it; in some cases, there are teachers who will not want to sell their courses and will only offer them if they teach it. In other cases, the teacher may be willing to allow their courses to be taught be someone else.

 Interesting note…Mary Jean indicated that courses that are developed with statewide dollars really belong to the state, by state statute. Jim reminded people about the discussion from last year about open source curriculum.

 Marty said that he could potentially take on teachers from out of the region, which would open up his closed system to students outside of the Jackson service area. A Virtual High School model.

 Dennis also made the point that by doing things regionally, there is still a sense of local control.

 

Descriptions Of What Currently Exists

CyberSchool

§         Jack gave a CyberSchool history and overview; needs about 1,500 students to be economically viable. Susan then talked about where they are now. She is going out and talking to school folks to see what their course needs are. Training is one of the things that they are going to do; focus is on taking existing curriculum and training them (teachers I think is what she meant) how to use it. Also talked about how to train kids to be successful online through mentoring; she didn’t elaborate about how this would happen.

§         Jack did make a comment about tuition-based courses; they can’t give away courses to be used by other online schools because if they are shared and a student can go to SKO and take the same course at no cost, no one would enroll in CyberSchool.

§         Susan talked a little about the difference between CoolSchool and CyberSchool. I think that CoolSchool means the base model of CyberSchool plus some add-ons such as teacher training, mentoring of students, etc.

§         Dennis Dempsey brought up the fact that superintendents are asking about how online courses will be funded. He suggested that we address this now before it bites us; he has heard questions like, “Well if LBL is paying for CoolSchool, isn’t that really funded through state dollars? And if so why should I have to pay for my student to take a course?”

 

SK Online

§         Mary Jean talked about the fact that they are a district-wide program, giving them a little different set of responsibilities. They do have students from outside of their boundaries and charge $260/course. They do not advertise to try to get students from out of their district, although they do have students from Hawaii, Spain, as well as Oregon students from outside of their district.

§         Core target by next year is to provide core content to students in grades 3-12. Subjects will include: science, math, language arts, and social studies.

§         Youngest student is a second grade student who is taking honors geometry!

§         Public education should be provided at no cost to ALL kids—low end, Spanish speakers, etc.

§         Choose which battles to fight—teacher pay and class loads are things that they follow the district guidelines on.

§         Suggested a professional referral process that could be used.

§         Funding in the district is a general fund model; SKO has been well supported within the confines of a limited district budget. They are starting to track who are the students that they are bringing back into the system.

§         The question was asked about how many credits a South HS student can take online. MJ responded that there is no formal maximum, but she did indicate that each student must be referred by a counselor; they take it case by case and trust the counselors to do what’s best for the student. This is one of the benefits of being in a single school district—there is lots of communication about these things.

 

SOOS

§         Wanted to come up with a model that was successful for kids (non-completion rates were really high when they started talking about building a model). How do we build models within schools that will support this new way of learning? And how do we support it within the schools?

§         If a school wants to participate, they must sponsor a course ($4,000/year). This entitles them to 48 semester placements, training and school support. The preference is that the teacher that is trained is from the sponsoring school. We work with the techs to ensure that the desktops have what is needed to access the course and we work with the counselors and train them so that they know what courses are offered and what students to place. Currently there are twelve schools that are participating. It costs approximately $170/course on top of our regular ESD staff; the Instructional Technology staff has provided school technology support for years, so it is not an additional cost. They have chosen to make this a part of their work.

§         Teacher training is 20 weeks long and is offered one time each year. There are thirteen people going through the training right now.

§         Superintendents are worried about the costs. Marty points out that $4,000 is less than one ADM

§         They also have an advisory board, with members from each participating school, so there is buy in to the program. They also help to identify what is working, what needs to change and what courses need to be offered.

§         How does the technology change how we teach and make it better? This is what we believe and what we try to get across. Teachers are now using strategies that they have learned in creating and teaching online courses in their face to face courses.

§         It is more and more common for regular classroom teachers to have web sites that they use with their students. Distance education is just going to be education.

§         They have 12 classes now; 14 classes will be offered second semester. They are core curriculum courses for 9-12 students.

§         Teachers who are participating in the training are starting to develop courses not only for SOOS but for their own schools. For example one middle school has an orientation to middle school course being developed because they have such a high transient population.

§         $4,250/course is paid to each teacher. We pay employer costs and we send teachers to a conference. This includes them writing the course and teaching it for a year. The same amount is paid the second year even if though they don’t have to write the course. This is the deal for the three years. In the future, they may pay teachers just for teaching the course.

§         A whole discussion ensued on how teachers are paid, recruited, communication with students, etc.

§         Class size is limited to 24 students; courses have been as small as 3 students. Not only are the students getting the course that they need, but we are building capacity in that our teachers are learning how to teach online, the school personnel are getting the desktop computers working, and the counselors are learning about what is available.

 

NW WebSchool

§         No intention of creating online courses; they are purchasing coursework from vendors.

§         Pilot in Banks is going very well.

§         Second semester will have a bunch of courses—these will be taken by students in small districts as well as by the home school population in the urban areas.

§         Relies on counselors in the schools for intake.

§         The courses are $280/semester which was an amount that the superintendents would pay for the courses and told Bruce to make it work. The district also pays to support the people who are running the project—resolutions were approved for three years.

§         The ESD does not recruit or enroll the home school students; that is the duty of the school district.

 

Willamette ESD

§         Professional/Technical consortium is working together to produce courses. This year for the first time, they will try one of the courses online instead of busing the kids; this will start next fall.

§         The originator is the little dinky district and the districts have developed a method for dealing with costs. The ESD is just providing support (ie: purchasing blackboard to support the project).

 

Roles of Different Organizations

OPEN Marty asked Dennis Schultz about what he saw as OPEN’s role. Dennis indicated that they work on regional projects. Talked a little about the ONE database and how they might do something like that. He didn’t think that they would get into the business of brokering courses. A tool set is another thing that they may be able to provide; for instance, they have provided a number of tools for CyberSchool. They have concluded with CyberSchool that they can’t build the tools, but they can identify existing tools and then support them. Is there a way of providing tools on a statewide basis that people could use if they wanted to? After some other discussion, Dennis was asked about how much it costs OPEN to support a potential project. He said that if the costs for a project was something that OPEN could not afford, then OPEN may have to take it to the table, and ask the ESDs to all pitch in to pay for it like the ESDs do with the telecommunications connections. Dennis was asked about OPEN servers for dissemination. Dennis will talk with OPEN about the possibilities.

 

OETC Thor represented OETC and brought up the idea about OETC licensing online courses provided by people within the state. He indicated that there needs to be a uniform voice because there are superintendents all over the state that are asking a lot of questions. We need to come up with a Magna Carta of sorts for online learning. The nice thing about OETC is that there are no political ties; all we are about is making things equitable, cost effective and integrating technology into the classroom. One thing that OETC does not do is evaluation—we will not determine if a course is a good course or not. Marty brought up the OETC Resource Centers and how the directors might be able to identify teachers in their regions that might be interested in online learning. OETC has reached an agreement with Blackboard of $4,500 for a district and $6,750 for an ESD. Thor is with the Blackboard folks on how students are defined. Marty has been looking into a Linux version of the same kind of thing that is free. Perhaps OETC can research this.

 

ODE There was no representative from ODE. What can ODE do to support these efforts – funding, expertise?

Online Learning Conference

Hold the conference on the Saturday following the COSA conference June 22. The purpose is two-fold: share key concepts with administrators and to target teachers from around the state. Thor, Jennifer, Mary Jean, Jim, Tina and Dennis Dempsey will work on this.

Topics for Afternoon Discussion

What is the big picture? What is a model that can work for everyone based on the things that we talked about this morning?

§         Jim: From the student point of view: the student cannot take a f2f course for some reason. They go to their local building, the local point of contact, stating that they need the course to graduate. Counselor then offers a hierarchy of online options—if the student is in SK Public Schools, SKO is offered. If the regional service cannot fill the need, the counselor can use an online directory, perhaps created by OPEN, to locate a course. The student then has a course to take. The funding must take place in the background; the kid shouldn’t have to deal with it. Again, if the local provider can’t help, then they are referred to other online providers.

§         Tom: I am a person at the local district and log on to a computer and there is a list of all of the web based asynchronous courses that are available in the state. Some are taught by my own teachers, some are from SKO, SOOS, etc. Some are open source, some are course and teacher, some are course with a local teacher. The list of courses can be checked by the school person who can identify what they want their students to have access to. They are then put out there on the district web site and funding is taken care of behind the scenes.

§         Marty: OPEN provides the services and servers for providing courses around the state. Training can happen all kinds of ways (in person, online) with fees to break even. ODE would be involved, put up money for training and curriculum development. Materials would be online and then would be available in part or in their entirety for anyone to use in the state. I would like for there to be an organization that looks at the quality of the courses; all policies and forms would be available online. Perhaps we can start working on coursework that can be shared (some previously done courses may not be shareable). If we don’t have to pay for course development or technology, then we are to the point of just having to pay for the support (mentoring, training, etc) and teachers.  The only way to reduce costs is to share in the things that we can (curriculum, servers, software, etc).

§         Dennis Dempsey’s drawing…

§         Provide a service to K-12 students and teachers: courses, coursework, procedures, infrastructure (servers), marketing, training.

§         How do students get access to it without paying for it?

§         Identify $ sources: home school, private school.

§         Some group has to be the $ collector.

§         The discussion that followed was an explanation of how funding would occur. Marty waved red flags about sending money away for those students who want to take an online course in addition to their other courses…districts will not want to do this. Tom indicated that the little tiny districts have figured out how to do it. Dennis D. indicated that they are forced to use online courses because they don’t have the teachers to teach the courses. Mary Jean indicated that districts are so willing to do an inter-district transfer, but they are not willing to pay the $260/class, even though it is more money. She followed up that it is due to the year delay in funding (which is based on the previous year’s enrollment); the credit card vs cash philosophy. Mary Jean also asked why her district would want to pay the ESD a brokering fee as described in Dennis’ drawing.

§         The ESD could be the organization that couples teachers and courses, training, etc.

§         Tom is completely convinced that there needs to be open source curriculum and that can be one option.

§         Dennis D. is concerned that all courses won’t be available to all kids due to funding issues. There needs to be a structurally organization so that this flows smoothly.

§         There was a long discussion on how to deal with funding structures.

Outcomes of the Day (Goal Statements)

§         We agree that one of our goals is to create an enrollment model that would benefit all of the students in the state of Oregon.

§         Training: A goal is to create an opportunity for statewide training—a course for teachers focusing on how to teach effectively in the online environment. Tom indicated that it would be nice for all teacher trainees to be able to see what the (student) courses look like.

§         Infrastructure: The goal is to create a central repository of all online coursework, links, and resources that are available to all teachers and to provide the infrastructure for those teachers who want to create their own online courses. Keep the open source materials on the OPEN server; teachers could download this stuff, create their own course, and then upload the course to the OPEN server. Online schools could also have their own servers if they want. Registration materials, etc. would also be stored in a central area. There was some discussion about confidentiality issues and how a statewide registration process would work. Perhaps a database model is what could be shared.

§         Cost: The goal is to create a cost infrastructure and delivery model that is common and consistent. We need to come to a decision about what it costs to offer an online course. This needs to include a discussion about how teachers are paid.

§         Policies and Procedures: A goal to create a set of recommended policies for implementation of online courses/schools. These could then be enacted and that if people want to play, then they need to follow the policies. Provide this to OSBA and then they can also spread the word.

§         Mentors: We will create a dissemination model to make courses available to all children.

§         Communication: We will create a dissemination model to train site mentors, counselors, and school support.

§         Marketing: Create a joint marketing plan for public-based online learning.

§         Standards:  Create a set of standards that reflect Oregon Content Standards, identify the technological tools that students will need, and instruction.