a guide to facilitating learning online.
Goals for This Book
Technology has transformed more quickly than have our attitudes, assumptions, and instructional strategies. Many K–12 teachers still have very little experience with online learning or facilitating digital learning experiences. Furthermore, those who have begun to experiment with DEL, in many cases, do not feel entirely confident that the digital learning experience is as effective as they would like it to be (Li & Choi, 2014). This book is written with those educators in mind.
HOW POPULAR IS ONLINE LEARNING?
Five U.S. states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Michigan, and Virginia) require K–12 learners to take at least one online class or learning experience or have the online learning experience incorporated into each course of the required curriculum, and North Carolina is testing such a requirement (Watson, Pape, Murin, Gemin, & Vashaw, 2014).
To better prepare these educators for the challenges and opportunities available in teaching online, we provide two things. First, we provide a philosophical overview in relationship to what is possible with DEL and how educators need to think about applying tools within the realm of technology to support online learning. Second, we provide direct guidance on the specific steps educators must take to set up, manage, and facilitate state-of-the-art online digital learning opportunities. To accomplish this, we address the following topics.
■ Reflecting on the myriad of DEL applications available and the influences that shape our thinking about them
■ Understanding the importance of a guaranteed and viable curriculum in designing, delivering, and assessing digital learning
■ Understanding and applying best-practice strategies in setting up and initiating a digital learning experience
■ Learning and applying practical strategies for designing engaging digital lessons and keeping the learners engaged throughout the learning experience
■ Identifying best-practice recommendations in facilitating learner interactions and dealing with potentially disruptive or toxic learner interactions
In breaking down these topics into concise, manageable chunks, each chapter of this book establishes specific key questions that you will be able to answer upon completion of the chapter.
Finally, we hope this work provides a strong, philosophical framework to undergird the work of educators now and in the future—because we know that the landscape in digital learning will continue to change. We want this book to make you Monday-morning ready for these challenges and arm you with a mindset and philosophy that allow you to make good judgments as tectonic shifts in technology continue to occur.
To that end, throughout this book we offer educators a number of specific suggestions and examples related to pedagogical practices associated with digital learning. However, to ensure the material is delivered in a succinct manner, we do not necessarily differentiate these illustrations and examples by various K–12 levels of application. This is purposeful. The knowledge you gain in this book will support your instructional practices involving digital learning at whatever level you teach. Digital learning modalities are simply tools that help you deliver your own best-practice-driven, grade-level or content-specific learning opportunities.
Therefore, this book is designed to assist you in your work to develop an online presence with your students that will extend learning well beyond the confines of a traditional classroom. If you work in a traditional setting, the suggestions in this book are designed to assist you in taking your class outside the bounds of time and space, and helping learners connect to subject matter in a more dynamic and meaningful way. If you are an online teacher, this book will assist you in creating more powerful, and personalized synchronous and asynchronous interactions that will assist learners to more dynamically connect with the content.
We hope this introduction challenges some paradigms and opens your eyes to the morphing possibilities in front of you. We designed this book to be more than just a theoretical intellectual exercise; it is also a guide to help you implement DEL in a consistent and effective way in your school. So let’s break some paradigms, reframe, and get to work!
CHAPTER 1
Understanding the Modality and the Moment
There are a multitude of applications for online digital learning. This chapter is devoted to exploring some essential questions regarding the applications of this modality—this method for learning—and providing some observations that will help you put the learning in this book into the appropriate context. Let’s start with some important questions about the modality of digital learning.
KEY QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS CHAPTER
• What type of digital learning experience are you facilitating? How does it impact your approach?
• Who is planning and developing the online learning experience, and why does it matter?
• What opportunities do online tools offer, and what are the best methods for nurturing connectivity, learning growth, and innovation?
• How can technophiles and technophobes work together in facilitating online learning?
In thinking about these questions, consider the story of Nick, a fictional fourth grader at Eagle Cliffs Elementary School in Billings, Montana.
NICK AND THE SINS OF SYNCHRONIZED LEARNING
Sitting neatly in a seat in a row with his books strewn at his feet and his notebook open, Nick worked diligently to take notes on the history lesson his teacher was providing. The notes on his page looked more like an Impressionist’s painting than a well-crafted piece of prose. The edges of his papers were perpetually crumpled as his outstretched hands continued to manipulate, flatten, and perpetually rotate the paper to capture notes in some semblance of order. His head would bob up and down, trying to get closer to the paper and then pulling back. His feet nervously shuffled beneath him as looked up, down, and to the side for some inspiration as his frustration mounted. Nick was a kind and obedient boy, but he couldn’t help noticing his classmates as they kept their words so neatly on the page.
One of Nick’s greatest challenges in trying to keep up with his history lesson was the fact that all students were expected to work synchronously. Although the teacher presented the content as best she could, it was a long-standing expectation in her classroom that all the students would be able to follow all the content in a perfect synchronized moment, in the same exact way and at the same time. Nick couldn’t do that, but that didn’t mean the content was too much for him.
Learners like Nick may very well have the competency to engage this content with great depth and understanding, if they have the luxury of digesting the content at a slightly different pace or with slightly different support. Let’s think about some solutions for Nick in a DEL environment that would help him meet his needs. Consider the following.
■ The teacher might have presented the content in an audio or video format that Nick could access on his own device. This would allow Nick to pause it to reflect or take his time capturing the notes at his own pace. Or, he could go back and play a piece of the presentation again if he either didn’t hear it or understand it. This is great for learners like Nick, or any of us that simply may have lost concentration for a moment.
■ While taking the notes in a blended or fully online learning environment,
