New Ed Models Require New Staffing Models

New K-12 educational approaches that encourage personalized and blended learning—the latter replacing a portion of traditional face-to-face instruction with web-based learning—are running afoul of the typical one-teacher-one-classroom structure. The new models pile additional tasks onto teachers already burdened by an overwhelming workload, in most cases handled solo.

Effectively implementing these new learning strategies will require adopting equally new staffing strategies, according to a new report, Innovative Staffing to Personalize Learning, compiled by the Clayton Christensen Institute and Public Impact.

The report’s authors examined how eight district, private, and charter schools and school networks used a variety of new arrangements to better support personalized and blended learning. They identified a number of elements key to the success of these endeavors:

• New roles for educators, including teacher-leaders heading small instructional teams, collaborative teams of teachers, support staff who tutored or mentored students to increase one-on-one or small-group interaction, and teachers in training who taught as part of their on-the-job learning.

• Intensive collaboration on small teaching teams to develop instructional skills faster and gain broader insights into the needs of individual students.

• Intensive coaching that involved weekly or even daily observation and feedback.

• Paid fellowships and residencies that allowed schools to establish their own pipeline of future instructors.

Increasing teachers’ pay was often needed to gain buy-in for their taking on added work and new responsibilities. Some schools stretched their student-to-teacher ratios to make teachers eligible for higher pay, while others brought lower-paid support staffers, trainee teachers, and volunteer tutors into the classroom to shoulder some of the duties.

“The organizational inertia of traditional staffing arrangements may take some time to change,” the report noted. “But as schools like these produce strong results and then refine and codify their practices, more schools across the country will have the will and the means to follow in their footsteps.”

Study Tracks When Students Zone Out

Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder have developed a way to detect when students using personalized learning software start to daydream. By using machine-learning algorithms on recordings of student eye movement, the researchers were able to figure out which eye patterns were associated with the mind wandering.

The study found that when students’ eyes matched “zoning out” patterns, they were less focused on the work than those students who showed “not zoning out” patterns. It also noted that when students were paying attention, their eyes bounced around the screen more.

“When you’re zoning out, you’re just fixating,” explained Sidney D’Mello, leader of the University of Colorado research team. “You’re not moving on.”

The study could lead to instructional software that monitors mind wandering in real time. That troubles Jill Barshay, a contributing editor for The Hechinger Report who writes about education research and data.

“Do we really want to curb mind wandering?” she asked. “It’s associated with creativity, and perhaps a bit of mind wandering is needed to come up with big thoughts.”

Barshay suggested the result might be used better to point out the places where the computerized learning bores students, instead of creating prompts to keep them on track.

“But what I find fascinating about this research is how data scientists have come to a conclusion that contradicts human intuition,” she wrote. “You often hear teachers say that they don’t need data to tell them what their students know. Well, this research points out that it’s hard for teachers to know when students are really absorbing something just by looking at their faces.”

Students Want a Tech-Savvy Campus

Almost 90% of college students stated it’s important that the institutions to which they apply be technologically savvy, according to a survey of 1,000 students by educational software and services provider Ellucian Co.

However, the report also found that 58% of respondents said their college, of all the companies and organizations with which they’re involved, was furthest behind in providing a personalized digital experience. That sentiment was even stronger for students on two-year campuses (71%) than for their counterparts at four-year schools (53%).

The experience they’re looking for extends beyond edtech, with 97% adding that campus technologies to support them outside the classroom are equally important.

Almost all students (94%) said they believe that connecting with fellow students, faculty, course suggestions, deadline reminders, and event calendars based on their interests and academic performance would be conducive to fostering a greater emotional attachment to their institution. Such stronger connections could lead to higher retention, as well as increased likelihood of future giving as alumni.

New Year, New Talk on Personalized Education

The start of another academic year is prompting new discussion on personalized education and the role of technology in it.

An Associated Press article noted that “some form of personalized learning” has been incorporated into the curriculum at up to 10% of K-12 public schools in the U.S., a growing trend. However, the same article pointed out that a Rand Corp. study discovered personalized programs only improved students’ math scores by three percentage points, while reading skills showed no change.

At the same time, the article offered examples where personalized programs have made a difference. In one, students took computerized tests to assess their reading skills; poor readers were then assigned to use digital materials providing extra help with vocabulary. In another, teachers developed customized, self-paced learning plans to aid students with low math abilities.

An article in eSchool News explained how personalization is not the same as differentiation (teaching a group of similar students) or individualization (teaching geared to one student’s needs), although they’re related.

“Personalization is an incredibly powerful model because it creates a continual feedback loop between the teacher and student and empowers students to take charge of their education,” wrote Amanda Stedke. She emphasized that technology tools aren’t necessary for personalized learning but “recent advances in ed-tech have made these approaches significantly more scalable.”

Kenneth Klau, director of digital learning at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, shared similar views in an opinion piece onEdSurge, but stressed personalized learning should “address well-defined needs and achieve unambiguous goals.”

“When we hear about schools that are making the shift to personalized learning, we should not hesitate to ask why and what it will look like,” he wrote. “Otherwise, personalized learning becomes the answer in search of a question.”

Concerns about Personalized Learning

Many have jumped on the personalized-learning bandwagon because of its potential to tailor instruction to each student’s strengths and weaknesses. While the promise—and substantial funding from groups such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—is there, the results aren’t quite livingup to the hype.

A recent RAND Corp. study of 40 K-12 schools found that customized instruction does produce gains in test scores in math and reading, but those gains were just 3% better than average scores in a more traditional school setting. The study also noted students in personalized-learning schools who started the year academically behind did slightly better than their counterparts in traditional programs.

However, there are challenges. Finding time to develop customized lessons for each student was the most significant issue for instructors, who also had trouble finding high-quality digital resources.

“There’s a growing acknowledgement of the reality of how personalized learning actually plays out,” said Benjamin Riley, executive director of Deans for Impact, a nonprofit that focuses on teacher preparation. “Even if it were a good idea, developing a personalized-learning path for every student, in a system that has to educate tens of millions of children, might not be realistic.”

A Different Approach to Higher Ed

The traditional model of higher education just wasn’t working for students of Paul Quinn College, Dallas, TX. The school’s solution was to incorporate flexibility, experiential learning, and entrepreneurial thought.

Under the New Urban College Model, the first federally recognized urban work college, participating students are employed for 10-20 hours a week and earn an annual stipend of up to $2,000 each academic year. Since nearly half of Paul Quinn students live at or near the poverty level, the institution uses open-sourced course materials so students don’t have choose between helping their families financially or buying textbooks. Varsity football was also eliminated and the field turned into an organic farm, providing hands-on learning and helping to feed the surrounding community.

The effort has driven down the cost to attend Paul Quinn College from nearly $24,000 annually to just under $15,000 for residential students. In addition, four-year loan debt averages are now less than $10,000.

“It is irresponsible to tell students from poverty that the way out of poverty is massive amounts of student loan debt,” said Paul Quinn President Michael J. Sorrell, during his presentation at the ASU + GSV Education Technology summit. “That is not right. We refuse to buy into that culture.”

The model has worked for Paul Quinn, which has been called an emerging national leader by The New York Times. Sorrell also earned a 2017 Social Innovator award from the Lewis Institute at Babson College for his efforts.

AI to Take Higher Ed Out of ‘the Dark Ages’

The artificial-intelligence (AI) wave isn’t on the horizon; it’s already here, according to Joseph Qualls, a clinical assistant professor at the Coeur d’Alene branch of the University of Idaho’s College of Engineering. “You are either going to surf that wave or it’s going to crash on you,” he told EdTech Magazine: Focus on Higher Education in a recent Q&A.

Qualls is also CEO and president of RenderMatrix Inc., a research-and-development engineering company, and co-founder of Avid Intelligence, which researches and prototypes AI-focused products for the defense and private sectors.

He predicts AI applications will cause “massive change” from K-12 to higher ed, creating a highly personalized, interactive, and faster path forward for each student. The notion of massive lecture courses and having students all learning the same material may someday be viewed as “education out of the Dark Ages,” Qualls said.

In the long term, “having large universities and large faculties teaching students is probably going to go away,” he added. Until then—for the next 20 years in Qualls’ estimation—instructors will continue to step in when the AI isn’t ready for the task at hand. After that, he noted, professors’ roles might change “from educating a student to educating an AI.”