Blended learning competencies and standards

This post continues my effort to examine guidance offered should teacher training and professional development efforts focus more specifically on preparing educators to teach online. An observation I made when reviewing the National Standards for Quality Online Teaching was that those responsible for developing these standards emphasized the individualization of instruction to include what I would describe as “mastery learning” concepts such as competency-based progress in a way not apparent in standards more typically used to guide the preparation of future teachers to use technology (e.g., ISTE Standards). The blended learning competencies make similar goals very apparent.

Blended Learning Teacher Competency Framework

As I have continued my search for guidance in this area I have discovered the iNACOL Blended Learning Teacher Competency Framework (note iNACOL is now the Aurora Institute) which offers a similar, but more general perspective. Their use of the description “blended learning” does not assume all instruction will occur online, but does assume a similar focus on differentiated and personalized instruction which they contrast with “time-based” approaches to instruction. Again, the expectation of an instructional approach that is differentiated and personalized emphasizes different capabilities of technology as core in the development of teaching thinking and skills.

The organization responsible for authoring this guidance explain their preference for educator “competencies” in contrast to standards to expand needed teacher characteristics to include habits of mind and I would say values rather than limiting their guidance to what I would describe as knowledge and skills. They identify four areas – mindsets, qualities, adaptive skills, and technical skills – as competencies. The technical skills category is most similar to what I see as most similar to what I have described as standards and what for the sake of brevity I will emphasize here. The document I reference does offer details on these other areas and how they might be developed. I found the effort to explain competency development to be very interesting with a greater emphasis on modeling, coaching, and reflection for the areas other than “technical skills”. The full document is well worth a thorough examination.

Technical Skills

Competency – Data Practices

Standard A: Use qualitative and quantitative data to understand individual skills, gaps, interests, and use this information to personalize learner experiences.

Standard B: Continually assess student progress toward specific goals to identify when individual students need additional support. 

Standard C: Use data from multiple sources including data systems to inform individual instruction and grouping.

Standard D: Help students consider their own data to promote independence.

Standard E: Evaluate instructional strategies to determine effectiveness.

Competency – Instructional Strategies

Standard A: Provide resources to enable independent and group work.

Standard B: Provide resources to generate evidence of skill and knowledge.

Standard C&D: With students, create customized learning pathways linking goals and experiences.

Standard E: Create learning experiences that promote content-area relevant problem solving and collaboration.

Standard F: Develop valid assessments, projects, and assignments that meet standards criteria and allow evaluation of the mastery of learning goals.

Competency – Management of Learning Experiences

Standard A: Manage face-to-face and online components of lesson planning

Standard B: Provide student opportunities for asynchronous and synchronous interaction

Standard C: Develop, model, and practice respective behaviors

Standard D: Demonstrate and model technology troubleshooting

Competency – Instructional Tools

Standard A:  Use learning management systems and collaboration tools to organize learning environment

Standard B: Demonstrate skill in the selection and use of instructional materials, tools, and strategies and engage students in such processes.

Standard C: Provide assistive technologies

I have shortened and interpreted these standards for the sake of brevity. For serious consideration, please refer to the original document.

The authors include a section of this document to expand and explain the standards associated with each competency. A snippet of this section is included here to give an idea of what the authors have made available.

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Unique standards for online teachers?

This post is a follow up to the previous post asking there should be specific skills taught to preservice or inservice teachers involved in online teaching. 

The Covid Emergency forced many face-to-face educators into teaching at a distance (e.g., online teaching). The challenges for these educators and for their students (and parents) were many and the lack of training and time for preparation were among the difficulties the educators faced. The issue I raised in my original post was that if aspects of online education for K12 students continues after COVID should there be different expectations for the training and certification of educators emphasizing remote experiences. I would like to use remote experiences in a more general way than some might assume as online credit recovery and speciality course experiences may be experienced by students within a school facility even when the educator is located elsewhere. 

In a way this is a question of the importance of the specificity of preparation. Most students coming out of colleges and universities into the teaching profession have experienced a “technology for teachers” course and perhaps other experiences based on standards that were developed to define expected expertise in the understanding and use of technology in instruction. The ISTE standards are likely the most common example. By specificity, I am asking whether the ISTE standards are necessary given the training of K12 teachers are already guided by standards emphasizing content area knowledge and pedagogical skills. Given the ubiquity of technology in education, why haven’t the existing bodies responsible for teacher skills and knowledge already incorporated the topics ISTE addresses. Moving to the present question of more specific standards, one might ask a similar question. Are the ISTE standards specific enough to cover the skills and knowledge for teaching remotely? I am really asking the questions – who is responsible for making the adjustment to address new circumstances of instruction and what roles do they have in mind for those they prepare?

As someone who is expected to use standards and benchmarks to guide my work, I must admit I often find standards frustratingly vague. I have a version of this same reaction when I review online activities and lessons that are tagged as satisfying specific standards. Often, I can kind of see a relationship, but wonder whether the connection to the standard is specific enough. It often feels like an educational Rorschach test – what do you see in this example and what does this say about your motives and personal understanding of knowledge and skill goals. 

Anyway, I have been exploring whether standards specific to teaching at a distance exist and how these standards might compare to what I see as the more general ISTE standards. I pick the ISTE standards because when our book was sold through a commercial publisher I was expected to mark in the margins of pages the standards that applied to the content in our book. Maybe the application of standards works like that old joke describing the response when a baseball umpire is asked about the basis for calling a pitch a ball or a strike and he responds that the pitch is nothing until I call it. 

Below, I identify two sources for standards that address the use of technology in education – ISTE and the National Standards for Quality Online Teaching. I think of standards as a hierarchy that moves from general to specific. Personally, I have to move several layers down in this hierarchy before I feel comfortable with my own level of comprehension. I am not going to get into attempting to differentiate standards, benchmarks and assessment methods as those who get deep into this model of guidance do, but I like to at least see attempts to explain concepts and give examples. You should get a sense for this hierarchy in my attempts to use snippets of the hierarchies from the two sources for teacher technology proficiencies I am using. You should find a very general area of competence, an effort to break this area down (as indicated by the identification of “substandards), a short effort to provide a description, and then perhaps a few examples. I have tried to identify an area in which the skill/knowledge covered would at some level seem very similar. For full appreciation of these efforts, you will have to use the links I provide to the online content provided by the responsible organization. 

ISTE Standards for Educators

1 Learner – Educators continually improve their practice by learning from and with others and exploring proven and promising practices that leverage technology to improve student learning. 

2 Leader – Educators seek out opportunities for leadership to support student empowerment and success and to improve teaching and learning. 

3 Citizen – Educators inspire students to positively contribute to and responsibly participate in the digital world. 

4 Collaborator – Educators dedicate time to collaborate with both colleagues and students to improve practice, discover and share resources and ideas, and solve problems. 

5 Designer – Educators design authentic, learner-driven activities and environments that recognize and accommodate learner variability. 

5.1 Use technology to create, adapt, and personalize learning experiences that foster independent learning and accommodate learner differences and needs.

  • Personalized learning – Capitalize on technology’s efficiencies and functionality to meet students’ individual learning needs, for example, scaled tests and quizzes; adaptability tools and features; software data that can capture when students are struggling or spending the bulk of their time; competency-based learning resources; ….

6 Facilitator Educators facilitate learning with technology to support student achievement of the ISTE Standards for Students. 

7 Analyst Educators understand and use data to drive their instruction and support students in achieving their learning goals. 

National Standards for Quality Online Teaching (Quality Matters and the Virtual Learning Leadership Alliance) 

Standard A: Professional Responsibilities The online teacher demonstrates professional responsibilities in keeping with the best practices of online instruction.

Standard B: Digital Pedagogy The online teacher supports learning and facilitates presence (teacher, social, and learner) with digital pedagogy.

Standard C: Community Building The online teacher facilitates interactions and collaboration to build a supportive online community that fosters active learning.

Standard D: Learner Engagement The online teacher promotes learner success through interactions with learners and other stakeholders and by facilitating meaningful learner engagement in learning activities.

D.1 – The online teacher uses digital tools to identify patterns in learner engagement and performance that will inform improvements to achieve individual learner growth.

Explanation – The online teacher needs to be able to analyze and interpret a wide range of activity and performance-level data provided in LMSs, adaptive software, and other digital tools. Further, the online teacher needs to be able to identify patterns in the data that can inform interventions geared towards maximizing each learner’s growth.

Examples:

The online teacher uses a mastery dashboard to keep track of whether learners need remediation, are near mastery, or have achieved mastery (as well as what defines an individual’s level of mastery based on growth). Data from the dashboard are used to determine who needs 1-1 sessions with the instructor, learner grouping, etc.

The online teacher uses activity data with the course LMS or dashboard to identify how often a learner logs into the system and what areas/objectives the learner is spending instructional time on. This data helps the teacher in a goal-setting consultation with the learner.

Standard E: Digital Citizenship The online teacher models, guides, and encourages legal, ethical, and safe behavior related to technology use.

Standard F: Diverse Instruction The online teacher personalizes instruction based on the learner’s diverse academic, social, and emotional needs.

Standard G: Assessment and Measurement Assessment and Measurement – The online teacher creates and/or implements assessments in online learning environments in ways that ensure the validity and reliability of the instruments and procedures. The teacher measures learner progress through assessments, projects, and assignments that meet standards-based learning goals, and evaluates learner understanding of how these assessments measure achievement of the learning objectives.

Standard H: Instructional Design These standards are considered optional, as instructional design does not always fall under online teaching responsibilities. 

So, are these two sources unique enough and important enough to both be applied in the preparation and certification of educators intending to teach at a distance? Because I study and write about these topics I do see some uniqueness. I find the standards for online educators more focused on individualization (some might say personalization). When I hit the example mentioning mastery dashboards, I immediately think of the Kahn Academy dashboard and the potential for an individualized mastery approach the Kahn dashboard, mastery structure, and assessment system makes available. It is not that mastery, individual progress, and assessment systems could not be used in face-to-face classrooms, it is that this model is rare and I think present goals for online instruction (e.g., credit recovery) make consideration of such approaches more likely. Our present book does discuss the potential of individualization, but I would probably expect those preparing to work entirely online would be more likely to encounter such tactics if intended to work for an organization with an online mission. The decision is how many of these areas could I identify and what number would encourage consideration of a separate course and practical experiences (e.g., student teaching). 

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Preparation for online teaching

I am trying to make a decision. I am beginning work on a revision of our textbook (Integrating technology for meaningful learning) and I am trying to decide how much to include about teaching online (remotely if you prefer). This decision has ramifications for how I spend time and whether the content produced is deemed relevant by those who make decisions regarding what textbook they assign in their classes. Clearly, nearly all k12 educators have now had a taste of teaching at a distance. Most had no preparation for working this way and neither did the students and families they served. The timing of my decision is awkward. Will the future bring a complete return to normal or will some of what is now the new normal carry over? Hard to say isn’t it? K12 education is very traditional as a rule, but so many say many aspects of normal (e.g., shopping, office work, entertainment) will likely be altered so why not K12 teaching and learning? Anyway, this is what I am thinking about.

It is not that I am inexperienced in teaching online. Working in higher education engaged with preservice and inservice teachers, I worked at a distance a lot. Often I went to where teachers were or at least near where they were. This was mostly a function of teaching grad students in education or providing professional development workshops. Mostly I drove, but because I worked most of my career at a university with a leading aviation program sometimes I flew. When I was lucky, we took a jet. Technology changed this approach and from specialized television to the personal computer approaches we now all use, we met from wherever we were. I have had no experiences teaching young learners in any of these experiences and while my experiences may have focused on preparing educators to use technology, little involved preparing educators themselves to teach at a distance. In evaluating the content I explored with educators that might be relevant, the one topic that seems relevant might be the recent interest in “flipping the classroom”.

I have been exploring traditional sources to see what others have done. There are some sources and the anecdotal accounts collected from recent experiences. Too many of the recent anecdotes seem to be negative – too much work, lack of engagement, problems with equality of access, etc. Organizations one might expected to have offered guidance to the preparation of future and practicing teachers seem to be scrambling just as I am. For example, ISTE seems to have little existing guidance when it comes to the standards that might be expected to guide teacher preparation focused on this situation. There just hasn’t been enough need with general instruction and niche topics – credit recovery, access to unique courses, home schooling, etc., providing the areas with the most development and guidance. What of this can be used to guide a possible new normal? I wonder what other textbook authors are considering at this point. Will they stick with traditional topics or will they make an effort to incorporate new themes?

Anyway, I likely will write about this topic more as I decide what I will do.

I have been exploring a bit and I thought I would offer one resource I found interesting. When I made the transition in my own experience going from driving or flying to workng with educators online, I read a couple of books to get some ideas. 

Kearsley, G. (2000). Learning and teaching in cyberspace. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. 

Ko, S., & Rossen, S. (2001) Teaching online: A practical guide. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. McKenzie, J. (2001, March). How teachers

I list these references only because in searching for work on the preparation of K12 educators to teach at a distance, I encountered one of these authors/researchers again.

Kearsley, G., & Blomeyer, R. (2004). Preparing K—12 Teachers to Teach Online. Educational Technology, 44(1), 49-52.

Reading this article (the journal no longer exists, but university libraries likely can provide access), I found the advice and predictions quite enlightening. I find what could be described as futurists’ recommendations to be quite interesting when examined in hindsight. Here are a few things I thought others might enjoy.

The authors examined who might be suited to distance education and the skills and attributes that would be important. The authors commented on the likely workload of content preparation and 24/7 availability. They warned that educators interested in this approach be prepared to sit at a computer for several hours at a time. Keyboarding skills should be well developed.

The strategies likely to be successful online included: student-centered activities; problem-based learning; collaborative learning; and  peer evaluation.

The authors also recommended that educators should have experiences themselves learning at a distance as part of their preparation. This is a recommendation I have seen many times in the literature predicting whether K12 educators would make much use of technology with their students leading to questions about how educators involved in preservice teacher training made use of technology themselves. 

One final issue that I admit I had not considered involved certification. What exactly should be experiences/skills involved in the certification of educators teaching at a distance and what should be done to assure that there was some commonality in these expectations from one state to the next. Commonality was more critical than with more traditional instruction because students would often be from different states. 

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Read the Methods section

This citation has been circulated widely in the past week:

Urry, H. L., Crittle, C. S., Floerke, V. A., Leonard, M. Z., Perry III, C. S., Akdilek, N., … & Zarrow, J. E. (2019). Don’t Ditch the Laptop Just Yet: A Direct Replication of Mueller and Oppenheimer’s (2014) Study 1 Plus Mini Meta-Analyses Across Similar Studies. Psychological Science, 0956797620965541.

You get the idea from the title. The replication of a previous study showing that taking notes with pencil and notebook is not superior to taking notes using your laptop. This study challenged the results of an earlier study that was often cited by using a notebook and pencil while taking notes.

OK – it is now OK for tech folks to argue students can use their laptops during class to take notes.

I am not impressed by either study for this reason. Neither study offers a good model for note-taking as the first step in studying which is really what students are doing when taking notes.

Here is a key couple of sentences from the Abstract that explain the method used in this research:

participants watched a lecture while taking notes with a laptop (n = 74) or longhand (n = 68). After a brief distraction and without the opportunity to study, they took a quiz

This is really a method that would be appropriate to the generative function of taking notes. Do you understand better while taking notes and in this case do you understand better when taking notes longhand versus using a laptop. The results do not indicate that it matters, but this is not why you take notes anyway. You don’t take notes and then take a test. You take notes over a period of time, study your notes, and then take a test. The delay and the amount of material are the reality faced by students.

My recommendation goes further and involves a combination of recording and note-taking only available on a digital device (see my description of SoundNote). This app allows the taking of notes, but records the audio in the background and time stamps each note to a location in the audio. This combination makes it easy to listen to sections of the audio when the notes that exist are not adequate. This would work would also benefit from the research finding that laptop users take more notes.

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Garden Update

I started my hydroponic garden in early December and decided it was time for an update. The garden is 96 days old and just starting to provide cherry tomatoes. We have been eating the lettuce for some time now and I decided it was time to replant the side of the garden dedicated to lettuce. I am preparing my own lettuce “plugs” this time as I continue to experiment with modifying various components of the stock system. I decided I will keep a tally of the number of cherry tomatoes I harvest and I added a meter to measure the amount of power consumed. I am not under an impression that growing your own vegetables indoors is cost-effective, but some estimate of the on-going cost would be interesting.

The following images show the lettuce/herb side of the garden before replacement, the new setup, and the first cherry tomatoes.

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Create a YouTube Playlist

Educators may want to assign a collection of YouTube videos to students for a project or study assignment. This tutorial will explain how this is done and relies mostly on a series of images.

I see this process in three stages – create a playlist, add videos to the playlist, share the playlist with a specific audience. The process works a little differently depending on whether you want to use videos you have created or videos created by others.

Stages 1 and 2 using videos created by others.

Beneath a video from another source, you will find this save icon. The save icon brings up the option of adding to an existing playlist or creating a new playlist. You would first create a new playlist with a video you wanted to use and then continue to add additional videos. The order of selection can be modified at a later stage so you don’t have to worry about the order when first creating the list.

Working with your own videos or a mix of content from your own creations and existing videos seems to work a little differently. To create the list and add your own creations, work through the YouTube Studio.

Within the Studio, you can then identify a video you have created to be added, open the video as if to edit, and then use the playlist feature to add to an existing playlist.

The final step is to share the list with students. Note in this image the share button (left) and the list of selected videos on the right. A key feature of this list of videos is the opportunity to reorder the videos. You drag the video with the small parallel lines icon to change the position. The share icon offers the opportunity to share to various outlets or allows the copying of the URL for sharing with specific individuals.

A sample playlist focused on my own efforts to explain Layering services was created using this process.

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Thinking of a warmer place

This has been a very different winter for us. Since retirement, we have traveled during the worst months of the Minnesota winter and that is not possible this year. Temperatures that have reached -20+ this past week have eliminated most of our outdoor activity and being confined to the house gets old very quickly. I have decided to think warm even if I can’t experience warm.

In the summer of 2019, we were able to travel to southern Africa and among all of our opportunities to travel this had to be the most unique. We were familiar with the political history of South Africa because we have a good friend from there we have known for years. I have long been a fan of the music and incorporate the unique sounds into my regular playlists. Being there was all that we had imagined and more.

One of the things we did for ourselves and for others was to share some of the stories and pictures. On this cold day in Minnesota, I decided I would offer access to my annotated collection of African wildlife. I created a free to use collection of images as a Flickr album. The images are identified and a link to Wikipedia or some other source is provided for each image should you or a student additional information.

Images from southern Africa 


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