So, I'm sitting at The National Research Center on Rural Education Support's Supporting Rural Schools and Communities Research Conference (see program here). The only session today that focused upon K-12 distance education is:

1:30 - 2:15
EROL Presentation
Wallace Hannum and Matthew Irvin
Overview of the Enhancing Rural Online Learning Project

The session began with Wally providing an overview of the five years worth of work that has gone into this project. Wally felt that distance education at the K-12 level was particularly well placed to address many of the issues related to rural education (e.g., geographic isolation, fewer numbers of students, difficulties in recruiting and retaining teachers in certified advanced courses, rural school's ability to provide advanced/AP courses).

Their distance learning administrator survey was sent to 400 randomly selected superintendents of rural school districts (95% rate of return). Some of their main findings

• 74% offered some form of distance education
• online or web-based formats were the most common
• technology requirements not a barrier
• administrators felt students were prepared in academic and computer skills, but less so in study skills
• most wanted more distance education

One one of Wally's slides, there was a bullet that read:

• online courses are as effective as traditional courses, but
  
  • greater drop-out
  • less engagement
  • feelings of isolation
  • research rarely involved high schools or rural youth

From the beginning of the project, the researchers viewed the results through the lens that the presence of a local facilitator is key. The local facilitator:

• must provide "human component" of teaching that is largely missing when teacher not present
• must establish and maintain on-going relationships
• must provide support, guidance, help with self- regulation and study skills, etc.

And also through the lens of the APA Learner Centered Principles. Based on the results on an initial survey, the researchers developed a professional development program that taught local facilitators on how to use the learner centered principles. Using data from an initial pilot study, the researchers moved from a direct instruction PD program that focused on the learner centered principles to a more constructivist program that utilized various scenarios based upon actual examples that local facilitators reported experiencing during that pilot year.

Much of this earlier work was described in this following article (I'm pretty sure):

Hannum, W. H., Irvin, M. J., Banks, J. B., & Farmer, T. W. (2009). Distance education use in rural schools. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 24(3). Retrieved 17 April 2009 from http://jrre.psu.edu/articles/24-3.pdf

Next Matt took over and began to describe a cluster randomized experimental design study that they completed with the local facilitators during the final two years of the project. Matt provided a detailed background into the design of the study and the nature of the sample that they had over the two year period. Matt then turned it over to one of his colleagues, who's name I didn't catch, to describe the method of data analysis and eventually the results.

In looking at the results, there were several statistically significant (and I missed many of these, as the speaker went through them very quickly):

• the control group had more AP courses
• the treatment group (i.e., those that had local facilitators) had spent more time [doing something or other]
• there was a higher dropout rate in the control group (i.e., those that did not hve local facilitators) of about 10% - but both numbers were high (more than a third for the treatment group and almost half for the control group)
• males has lower AP scores
• those who are on free or reduced lunch were less likely to score high on the AP exam
• and again I missed about two thirds of these due to an inability to understand the statistical tables presented and the speed of the presenter

Matt ended with a brief discussion of future directions. At present, they still have a lot of data that they can analyze and analyze in new ways. The researchers also want to continue to develop and refine the professional development program for the local facilitators.

Crossposted at Virtual High School Meanderings.

Labels: AERA, conferences, cyber school, education, high school, National Research Center on Rural Education Support, research, rural, rural education, small schools, virtual school