time and pace meets their individual needs (Davis, 2015).
5. Resolution to scheduling conflicts or curriculum supplements: Many schools across the United States are investigating or using digital learning options as a mechanism for saving money on staffing and enriching their curriculum (Clark & Barbour, 2015). If, for example, a group of learners at a school is interested in the pursuit of fluency in a foreign language, it may be significantly cheaper, more efficient, and often more effective to join a virtual learning cohort where these options are available to learners without necessarily hiring a facilitator who must commit to living in the area.
6. International connections: Many emerging international digital schools offer a very interesting value proposition (Clark & Barbour, 2015). They provide a highly competitive, totally digital learning experience, which includes a steady diet of synchronous learning experiences (via Google Hangouts, as an example) that allow participants access to a highly rigorous curriculum, taught by an international cadre of teachers who bring unique expertise to the field. Furthermore, students in these international schools enjoy studying with classmates who come together from all over the world. These highly competitive digital learning environments are often appealing to students with an interest in the international business community because of the opportunity to establish international business connections at a very early age.
7. Preparation for higher education and career training: The number of college students who take at least one online course is increasing every year. For example, 26 percent of 2013 undergraduate students were enrolled in at least one online course, and that number grew to 28 percent in 2014. Thirty-three percent of graduate students were enrolled in at least one online class in 2014 (Kena, Hussar, McFarland, de Brey, & Musu-Gillette, 2016). Therefore, preparing students for a more virtual orientation for future career preparation and training is important.
8. Flipped schools with an asynchronous digital enhancement: At their core, the digital learning phenomenon and the flipped school concept (where students view lectures at home and devote in-class time to discussions and activities) have both emerged with several interesting learning similarities. Both flipped schools and DEL platforms provide learners with control over how they access opportunities for direct instruction. In a flipped school, a middle-level science teacher may conduct an experiment, videotape it, and then post it online with some summative comments and perhaps a link to an additional resource for further study. Flipped schools follow this format to give learners who need more time an opportunity to reflect on what they’re learning and to revisit key elements of the modality of direct instruction. This allows students to come to school and apply the learning with one-to-one, guide-on-the-side assistance from their teacher. This is the exact formula we use in most DEL experiences and it is one that teachers can use for their classrooms. This interesting, innovative similarity speaks to our evolution as a profession. Whether you’re flipping your classroom or using DEL approaches in an almost totally virtual learning experience, we’re keeping in context that it’s all about the learning and finding strategic ways to bring students toward the desired learning goals. In the future, it’s likely that many flipped classrooms will apply much of what we discuss in this book.
In reflecting on these different options, think about how wonderfully diverse each of these learning opportunities is from the others. Think about the types of students each opportunity likely serves. Technology gives us the ability to serve and support learners in a way that, before now, was just not possible.
Although this is just a part of what makes these such exciting times, you should also be mindful of the inevitable digital learning scams that complicate the online learning landscape.
Digital Learning Scams
We would be remiss if we did not speak to some of the unscrupulous vendors who take unseemly shortcuts en route to the allure of profiting from the scalability of digital learning environments. What these entrepreneurs have figured out is that digital learning offers unique scalability due to reduction in overhead. Let’s assume that a state provides $10,000 per student for public, K–12 education. If the state has a voucher program and a family elects to take its $10,000 voucher and spend it on a school that delivers its education 100 percent online, an opportunity for unique profitability emerges. In this case, with the state allocation in hand, the absence of a brick-and-mortar schoolhouse to support the learning process creates remarkable savings. Delivering learning online also saves money on things like electric bills, custodial and support costs, sports programs, and so on.
In this kind of scenario for delivering online education, it would seem logical that the money saved could be reinvested in providing superior resources and potentially hiring state-of-the-art content facilitators. Sadly, this is often not the case. In fact, when it comes to instructors many of these for-profit seeking entrepreneurs hire poorly compensated adjuncts who ultimately work for a fraction per hour of their traditional K–12 counterparts—thus increasing an already robust bottom line (Desroches, 2016; Strauss, 2016). There have been several well-documented news stories over the years highlighting digital learning opportunities wherein students were placed in unusually large classes and taught by part-time instructors while collecting the full, state per-pupil allocation. Although these poorly conceived and poorly executed learning opportunities may look attractive to the economic bottom line, they hurt the cause of learning at a distance by sending the message that this modality is about profit. A quality digitally enhanced education makes this modality about advancing human potential, not profit.
How can you tell if an online learning entity is doing it right? Here are a few questions that will help you get at the truth.
■ Does the school’s goals or mission incorporate student focus?
■ Does the school’s strategic plan include personalized learning?
■ Does the school hold relationships with quality organizations such as the International Association for K–12 Online Learning or Quality Matters?
■ Is the school accredited? If so, what type of accreditation does it have, and how does that compare to other regional schools?
■ What do employee comments on sites like Glassdoor (www.glassdoor.com) say about working conditions and administrative focus on students?
In addition to answering these questions, check to see if the instructors are full time or working in a largely adjunct capacity. For the most part we believe entities that commit full-time instructors to this work are more comprehensively engaged in supporting an appropriate model.
Also, try to determine the teacher salary range at that school. In some cases, less-than-admirable digital learning entities try to get away with paying faculty members a fraction of their potential salary in an equivalent face-to-face environment, attempting to trade convenience and flexible working conditions for salary. We, again, don’t see this as a reasonable transaction. Working in your pajamas is a wonderful benefit, but it shouldn’t be the driving force for saving money on high-quality instructors.
These are, unfortunatley, not the only issues you must consider when conducting your course online. Social media also has a big role to play.
Some Thoughts on Social Media
Despite its many benefits, social media has contributed to a great deal of bullying, unattributed ranting, predators, and countless scams and distractions. In some cases, it has probably contributed to the degradation of writing skills and critical thinking. Conversely, some of the most thoughtful educators we know utilize social media to enhance their instruction and as a mechanism for building resources and connecting with other innovative educators. We believe that social media will continue to evolve and will be a significant component in developing highly competitive
