NYSDLC Discussion Paper

In the Fall of 1994, on the initiative of the Dutchess County BOCES, a number of educators who were involved in the programmatic components of Distance Learning met informally for the first time. The agenda for that meeting included comparing notes on how each network was being utilized, what plans were envisioned for its future use, what challenges teachers and administrators were facing, what sorts of equipment were in use, etc. and how these educators might provide one another professional support through the exchange of information and ideas.

From that meeting evolved the New York State Distance Learning Consortium, now composed of administrators of more than 30 Distance Learning Networks and drawing on the ideas, expertise and support of numerous Regional Computer and Information Center staff, instructional media specialists, vendors and others who attend meetings and contribute to the group's effectiveness as a resource for its members.

Positioned as we are to witness the current explosion in the use of educational technology, we see a myriad of visions, scenarios and agendas for its expansion and exploitation. We have gradually developed a common set of observations, principles, concerns and goals relating to Distance Learning as it works now and as we envision it for the future.

Thus we offer this paper as a starting point for discussion among our colleagues in Pre K-12 and higher education, as well as among those in the State Education Department and the Legislature who will determine much of New York State's policy and planning for the new millennium.

The paper will:

1. Outline the current status of Distance Learning in New York,
2. Briefly project its future configuration, and
3. Discuss ways in which we believe Distance Learning will play a vital role in helping schools meet the challenges of excellence in the new century.

At the outset, a definition:

For the purposes of this paper, Distance Learning should be taken to mean two-way, fully interactive, voice-and-video media of instruction in real time, usually for secondary school courses. Moreover, at the time of this writing, most distance learning classrooms in New York State are organized into networks of high schools and often include nearby colleges and/or universities. A few are connected to educational television networks, museums, science centers and/or hospitals as well. The various BOCES, or - in the case of The Big Five Cities, the central office of the city school systems - serve as administrative hubs for these networks, a paradigm that our paper also assumes. At the time of this writing, there are nearly three dozen such networks for a total of approximately 300 distance learning sites statewide.

PART I - Where we are...

A. Low enrollment secondary courses

Currently, most K-12 Distance Learning takes place in high school classrooms and enables districts to offer secondary courses they might otherwise have to by-pass or eliminate due to low enrollments. As an example, the fourth and fifth years of a language sequence are often under-enrolled; natural attrition has taken its toll, and only a handful of students still wish to pursue the language to those levels. A district operating with financial constraints might be inclined not to offer such courses at all. But if that district can combine a class of, say, five students with those from one or two other districts with similarly low enrollments, a teacher can be assigned to a class of nine, 12 or 15. This more cost-effective use of human resources makes it considerably less likely that a low enrollment course or even the sequence will have to be considered for elimination.

A high percentage of current Distance Learning is based on this model or one very like it, where, for instance, a class is sought by only a handful of students, but is very important to their course of study. An example might be the Price-Chopper/Shoprite School-to-Work program that includes mentoring and other worksite-based experiences for high school students. The program requires that students be enrolled in a food industry management course, the curriculum for which was especially developed by the Cornell Cooperative Extension. Perhaps as few as three or four students in a school might wish to participate in such a program, which would make the classroom component of a school's participation quite costly. But - again - sharing the cost of the classroom segment among two or three school districts could make the difference of whether the program would be offered or not.

B. College level courses

Another sizable portion of Distance Learning classes are college level courses taught to secondary students, either from one high school classroom to another one or two, or from a Distance Learning classroom on a college campus that is networked with those in nearby high schools. The college may already have an agreement with one of the secondary schools in a given network, and the already agreed-upon course may be moved into a distance learning classroom, or the college may be a full partner - financially and programmatically -- in the network. This opportunity for a high school student to earn college credit can be the turning point for a marginal scholar to begin to see him- or herself as a potentially successful college student; it can also provide a low-risk way for a student to try out a field of study before "taking the plunge" of full-time college.

Use of Distance Learning classrooms for secondary courses or college courses being taught to high school students between 7 AM and 3 PM is a significant accomplishment. It provides enrichment in the form of specialty courses for even large districts with broad curricular offerings and it provides equity of access to programs and information for smaller and/or poorer districts.

Building on the BOCES principle of leveraging the impact of all we do by cooperating, collaborating and sharing, the typical sorts of Distance Learning activities enable schools to offer more to students for less.

Collateral benefits

The opportunities outlined above are the most obvious benefits, but there are others:

• Distance Learning breaks down barriers and prejudices that divide our greater communities. Once students begin meeting with their peers daily and engaging in discussions with them, it's difficult to maintain the stereotypes they sometimes develop about students in a school a few miles away. No longer can they insist that "All those guys in Xtown are snobs," or "Those Yville kids are thugs," when they are engaged with one another day in and day out.
  
  
• Distance Learning allows for the mainstreaming of Special Education, Alternative Education and other At-Risk students in settings that are manageable for them. At the Orange-Ulster BOCES, for example, selected classified students from the John A. Flannery (Special Education) High School have successfully taken by means of Distance Learning such courses as American Sign Language (ASL), The Holocaust, America in Vietnam and Basic Agriculture.
  
  
• Likewise in the Dutchess County BOCES Alternative Education students have successfully participated in courses such as ASL, Oceanography and Business Law. In this way they are able to gain the enrichment of exposure to different cultures and communities, but they also are able to participate in mainstream courses with their peers elsewhere via a virtual classroom that in no way distinguishes them from any other high school students.
  
  
• Anecdotal reports indicate that a Hawthorne Effect appears to operate in these classrooms and students who are otherwise marginal often behave and perform in ways that exceed previous expectations of them.
  
  
• Distance Learning enables students to learn and operate in a setting similar to, and among the tools of, the kind of world they will live in as adults. When the young people of today teach the classes of tomorrow, when they give reports to the boards of tomorrow's corporations or argue their clients' cases in the courtrooms of tomorrow, they will be surrounded by the technologies they are becoming familiar with in state-of-the-art classrooms today.
  
  
• Distance Learning enriches student experience, enabling young people to learn from both peers and faculty members in other communities. In the Rochester area, for example, reading teachers have developed a program called "Literature Live!" Six interested students are chosen from the East Rochester district and six from the Wheatland-Chili district to participate in a Literature Circle, or discussion group. The group meets four or five times for 35-40 minutes each. During the first meeting the students introduce themselves and chat for a few minutes. Then teachers do "book talks" on four novels. Students vote on which of the four novels they want to read and discuss, and in subsequent meetings the students lead the discussion.
  
  
• Distance Learning encourages creativity and participation. In Honeoye Falls-Lima, Spanish IV students prepare for the Regents exam by creating a Jeopardy game entirely in Spanish and challenging the class at a neighboring district.

C. Distance Learning and the Community

Not withstanding all the many opportunities and advantages Distance Learning affords our schools, the New York State Distance Learning Consortium believes we have only just begun to exploit the uses of this powerful medium of communication.

We believe that Distance Learning has the potential for making life-long learners of all of us in a setting where time and distance provide no obstacles to the exchange of information and the dialogue with one another.

• Adult Education, for example, can now be readily brought into neighborhood schools during evening or weekend hours. Such accessibility has the dual advantage of bringing programs closer to the people who need them (often a population for whom transportation to a central location is a challenge) and bringing the people into the schools. Public education can only benefit from having taxpayers and voters feeling at home in the buildings they've paid for and learning first hand that good schools are a benefit to the whole community. English As a Second Language, Citizenship and Workplace Basics are just a few of the programs that are being made increasingly accessible to adult learners through Distance Learning.
  
  
• Moreover, most people now have more than one "career" in a lifetime of work. As the high-tech workplace expands and businesses restructure for an ever-changing and increasingly global economy, skill requirements for existing jobs change, new jobs are created and others disappear. These shifts are evident in the increasing demand for training and re-training in occupational and vocational skills as well as career counseling and placement services. Distance Learning can de-centralize these services and classes, taking them where they are most needed for the convenience of new or returning "customers" of education.
  
  In Dutchess County, for example, evening college courses have been offered for several years at the undergraduate, graduate and continuing education levels. The institutions providing such offerings as Training for Teaching Assistant Certification, Identification of Child Abuse and New York State Education Law include Dutchess Community College, SUNY College New Paltz and Dutchess BOCES.
  
  
• Some networks have started to explore with their local business and government officials the potential for economic and community development combining the power of Adult Education with distance learning technology. The Orange-Ulster BOCES Adult Education division recently offered a real estate salesperson's qualifying course at three different sites many miles apart, enabling trainees to chose a location most convenient to them. Three high school Distance Learning classrooms were used during the schools' Spring Break when they would otherwise have stood empty. The local Realtors' Association immediately grasped the implications of offering its members the professional development mandated by their licensing board in multiple sites, saving untold miles and hours of travel for busy business people.
  
  Dutchess County BOCES Continuing Education has offered courses such as Small Business Planning and Financial Strategies for Retirement on its Infinet 2000 network during evening hours at various sites throughout the county.
  
  
• Dutchess BOCES also conducts its Annual Board Meetings using Infinet 2000. A "conference board" allows participants in all 15 remote sites to view the presentation and a facilitator retrieves questions from each site at the push of a button, enabling community and school board members to receive important information and seek explanations without leaving their home districts.
  
  Having Distance Learning technology is a little like having a telephone: it's ready any time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The members of the New York State Distance Learning Consortium see this vast resource as a sleeping giant: our schools and to some extent our business community have begun to tap its potential - but only just begun.
  
  
• In Broome County "distance diagnosis" has enabled some infants - with their mothers and a BOCES teacher assisting via the Broome-Tioga BOCES Luminet system -- to be seen by specialists for evaluations of suspected physical disabilities without having to travel long distances to unfamiliar new places.
  
  
• In New York City, world-class performers from the stages and orchestra pits of Lincoln Center interact with aspiring student performers and appreciative student audiences.

PART II - The future is now...

These activities hint at what we can look forward to in a future where distance learning technology is exactly as ubiquitous, as far-reaching and as "friendly" as the telephone is today.

In the very near future it should be possible to import the model now in operation in Western New York to existing and growing networks elsewhere in the state. In Allegheny, Erie, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Genesee, Orleans and Niagara counties, six discreet Distance Learning networks cooperate to share programming and to provide communications infrastructure through interconnectivity.

As of Fall 1998, the interconnective Distance Learning networks of Western New York (WNY) comprise approximately 75 sites, with growth projected to include expansion of current networks as well as the addition of other networks. The first six member networks in the WNY group include: Project Connect (Erie 1 BOCES) and RealNet (Cattaraugus-Allegany BOCES), The JUNCTION, (Erie 2-Chautauqua-Cattaraugus BOCES), On-Net (Orleans-Niagara BOCES), GREATNet (Genessee Valley BOCES) and CityNet (the city of Buffalo).

Most WNY networks also provide members with access to compressed video may as a means of connecting to sites beyond the fiber networks. Such compressed video connections are regularly shared among sites on the WNY interconnective networks, considerably expanding the range and scope of resource sharing.

Apart from the technological challenges of connecting Distance Learning networks to their neighbors and beyond, the policy, procedural and programming components of such interactivity are daunting. To facilitate the process of meeting these challenges, monthly online meetings of WNY network administrators are scheduled. These meetings of Distance Learning partners provide a forum for lively discussion of issues as well as for developing management policies.

In theory, a student could pick up a course catalog in the Guidance Office of his high school on Long Island and find just the social studies elective he wants being offered in Buffalo. "Fine," says his guidance counselor, "I'll register you for that class for spring semester."

What sorts of questions need to be anticipated and answered to make this scenario possible? Among the most obvious might be:

• How does the student register for the course?
  
  
• Must there be a certain minimum number of interested students at a given site for that school to become a remote site for a course?
  
  
• If the student(s) home school bell schedule is a poor match for that of the host (i.e. teacher's) site, how much flexibility is it reasonable to allow in terms of attendance? Can missed time be compensated for with different or supplemental educational activities?
  
  
• If, say, seven schools have students wishing to enroll in a course and it's only possible for three or four sites to fully interact at a time, how will decisions be made about who can take a given course this semester or this year?
  
  
• How will the financial compensation be handled for sites that are not a part of the network where the host teacher is located?
  
  
• How will we handle the challenge to a grade from a hundred miles away?
  
  
• How will differences in teachers' contractual responsibilities for Back-to-School Nights or Parent-Teacher conferences be managed at great distances?

PART III - Meeting the Learning Standards

We believe that Distance Learning is potentially one of New York's most powerful tools in the challenge to meet higher learning standards.

A. Instruction

Distance Learning environments, enriched as they are with various media and connected as they are to multiple sources of information, allow students and teachers to bring into the room itself what was once only available by leaving the room, the schoolhouse - or perhaps even the community.

• A Middletown City School District course in International Politics now enables students in that district -- and two other districts on the Network any given semester -- to study and discuss current events as they occur with the guidance of their instructor on the Internet. They have access to reporting from various sources as well as commentary and analysis from around the globe.
  
  
• When Dr. Jim Bell, a planetary scientist and member of the Mars Pathfinder Imaging Team, visited Rochester to deliver a lecture as part of the Rochester Museum and Science Center's Distinguished Scholars Series, he agreed to present a special program for students via RAITN, the Distance Learning Network. Students prepared for the opportunity to talk with a scientist engaged in current research by doing some research of their own: They visited seven different World Wide Web sites recommended by Dr. Bell as places to learn about Mars and they prepared questions in advance that they sent by email to Dr. Bell. This electronic interactivity that is part of the Distance Learning environment enabled the visiting guest to address the specific interests of the students and the students to do the kind of advance preparation that made the "virtual visit" over the network more meaningful.
  
  
• Fourth, fifth and sixth grade students from Millbrook and Dover in Dutchess County have been utilizing Distance Learning technology condensed onto rolling carts that can move from classroom to classroom. Teachers develop programs among schools and set aside time for group projects. For one study of the planet Mars, satellite downlinks enabled students to view live photos of the Pathfinder from the surface of Mars.
  
  Students actively engaged in learning activities, not the passive recipients of knowledge imparted by someone else, are the competent citizens of the future - and both their reach and their effectiveness as constructors of knowledge are enhanced by connection to one another and the world at large.
  
  Creativity and spontaneity are also encouraged on the part of both students and teachers. Discussion of the myth of the unicorn in a literature class, for example, may suggest that the moment is ripe to introduce students to the medieval Unicorn Tapestries housed at The Cloisters. That moment can be seized and exploited with the Internet at the teacher's fingertips and networked to classrooms at a distance.

B. Assessment

Evaluation and assessment are also supported, expanded and refined by the tools and practices of Distance Learning sites. Recognition of the need for more authentic assessment of students' understanding and abilities is pervasive in the literature and repeatedly reflected in the Learning Standards adopted by the Board of Regents in 1997.

"Students will demonstrate…"

"Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate…"

"Students will apply…"

"Students will access, generate, process and transfer information…".

• In the closing weeks of a course in Famous Trials in Literature, students at one classroom become the prosecuting team and those at another 10 miles away become the defense team in a trial of Brutus for the murder of Julius Caesar. The protocols of jurisprudence must be followed and students' ability to apply what they have learned is demonstrated; it is also videotaped for the instructor to review more than once if he wishes and for the students to study for self-evaluation. Finally, the videotape can become a permanent part of a portfolio the student can carry with him throughout his school career and beyond, if appropriate.
  
  
• American Sign Language students sign dialogue across the miles and the authenticity of this activity as a demonstration of mastery is both evident and, if desired, preserveable. That is, the student at the remote site either understands it or doesn't (which also provides a means of evaluating him or her) and the ability of either site to videotape the exchange provides a record for both student and teacher to assess, re-do or retain.
  
  Every tool that makes the Distance Learning classroom a model setting for research, collaboration, examination, demonstration, getting and giving feedback, and broadening the community of contributors to a discussion or a project is also a tool to be put to use in authentic assessment of student understanding. With video cameras, document cameras, video and audio tape recorders and players, fax machines and computers, students have unprecedented means to demonstrate their knowledge and abilities while developing their presentation skills using 21^st century modalities.

C. Building capacity

The recently adopted new Learning Standards and new graduation requirements have wide-ranging implications for every school district. The challenge to build in each school community the capacity to help young people reach higher levels of learning and performance will create new pressures on time and space in buildings and programs that, in many cases, are already straining to deal with student population growth.

• More remediation will be needed for more students
  
  
• Drop-out rate may increase
  
  
• Many students may need a fifth year of high school
  
  
• There may be an increase in the number of applicants for the GED
  
  
• Massive staff and curriculum development will be needed
  
  
• The public will need to be informed and public support must be enlisted for the inevitable changes and costs associated with school improvement.

Distance Learning networks can help districts meet these challenges by increasing a school's options for sharing resources with nearby or more remote districts with similar needs. Low enrollment courses for students or staff can be pooled. Ad hoc workshops can be put together quickly, spontaneously. Meetings and classes can be held among widely scattered people and institutions during evenings or on weekends.

The ease with which teachers and administrators can meet together without the time and expense of travel will make the sharing of information, brainstorming, planning and decision-making more efficient and cost-effective.

Multi-media presentations for the public can be held in Distance Learning rooms, bringing them into neighborhoods, and can be videotaped for repeated use on local television stations or at PTA or civic association meetings. Informational sessions can also be centralized - originating, say at a BOCES -- and made available on a countywide or broader basis. Likewise, satellite teleconferences from SED or other sources can be brought to neighborhood schools through Distance Learning.

The technology itself supports and expands capacity.

PART IV - Professional development

In addition to the infusion of staff and curriculum development necessitated by the new Learning Standards and graduation requirements, the newly-adopted mandate for teachers certified after September 1, 2000 to complete at least 175 hours of professional development every five years to maintain certification will undoubtedly impact schools' capacity. Constraints of time will create pressure on schools to offer professional development opportunities on site, rather than expecting teachers to travel to college campuses or Teacher Centers for continuing education. Again, distance technologies can help meet these needs.

Furthermore, use of these technologies creates new communities of educators-as-learners where professionals can model for one another in both structured and informal ways. They can engage in the sort of collaboration and dialogue they wish to encourage in their students; they can build relationships and collegial networks.

A Superintendents' Development Program sponsored by the BOCES and SUNY Oswego provides Western New York school administrators with regular after school and evening classes and mentoring sessions. Designed to prepare participants for positions as Superintendents of Schools, the program links students and faculty at sites within three Distance Learning Networks and frequently adds a SUNY Oswego site via compressed video.

On Long Island, a group of teachers and administrators representing three school districts recently began a series of meetings using distance learning technologies. Coming from East Meadow and Valley Stream Central High School District in Nassau County and Patchogue-Medford in Suffolk County, they gathered to address the challenge of how to integrate middle school programs into a network that is designed essentially for high school courses. An article in the journal of the New York State Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development details the success of this working group in addressing their original mission and, in the process, learning much about group process, problem-solving and building meaningful solutions on the basis of shared understandings gained over great distances.

According to Dr. Elsie M. Szecsy, Distance Learning Administrator for the Nassau BOCES:

The distance learning environment shows exquisite promise as a commodious space where many perspectives can come together in reflective dialogue, and where, through authentic discourse, professionals can arrive at new understandings about teaching and learning and create new approaches to Standards-based teaching. Further research into the relationship among distance learning, professional development and standards-based pedagogy with student achievement will clarify exactly how the interaction between people and technology work to carry out the promise.

Satellite Teleconferencing

The New York State Department of Education is now using satellite teleconferences as its primary means of communicating new standards, resource guides, graduation requirements and exemplary practices to the hundreds of school districts in New York that answer to the department, the Regents and the Commissioner of Education. Video teleconferences enable practitioners to interact with presenters or panelists via telephone during the live downlinks. Question and answers, requests for more information, examples and discussions can flesh out and enliven the dissemination of policy and expectations. Schools and BOCES can also videotape these sessions and archive them for use by colleagues who were unable to be present for the live teleconference.

This sort of variation on fully-interactive Distance Learning -- where any number of sites can receive the same program content and interaction is limited to a single site at a time via telephone -- has individual schools or BOCES downlinking programs and then re-transmitting them to other sites in the same network. The implications for conveying policy to practitioners and re-designing professional development opportunities are profound.

The College Board and the New York State Department of Health have established similar protocols for disseminating information and providing professional development. PBS and private educational development firms have established forums for the very best of our culture's visionaries and educational reform leaders to have a presence in the classrooms, conference rooms, auditoriums or faculty lounges of any school in the nation.

Conclusion…

The New York State Distance Learning Consortium herewith commends these versatile technologies to the policy makers, planners, educators and students of New York for all the uses we have outlined here and the many others to be discovered: classes, special events, guest lectures, training, research and development, community involvement, links to state and worldwide networking, professional development, teacher-to-teacher links, peer-to-peer conferencing, curriculum workshops, school organization meetings or conferences, study skills workshops, debate sessions, mentoring, mock trials, Regents review sessions, grade level meetings, distribution of satellite-delivered teleconferences, student government or club meetings, career awareness presentations, budget presentations, adult education courses, presentations to joint boards of education, government agency meetings, SAT preparation, college information sessions, OSHA workshops, SETRC workshops, video production workshops, multimedia presentation workshops, GED programs, and so on.

Distance Learning is doing much, but it can and must do more. The New York State Distance Learning Consortium hopes to see these networks operating in support of schools and the communities they serve 24 hours a day, seven days a week.