Editorial Staff

New Report Offers Case Study for Transition to Online Learning

/in , , , , , /by Editorial Staff
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on
LinkedIn
+

Virtual Schooling Pioneer Julie Young provides tips on how states should move forward during COVID-19

BOSTON – With the shift to online education in response to COVID-19 presenting a daunting challenge, a new Pioneer Institute and ASU Prep Digital policy brief offers five important considerations for schools and districts.

“As of late March, at least 124,000 public and private schools affecting a minimum of 55.1 million American children had closed,” said Julie Young, co-author of “Shifting to Online Learning in the COVID-19 Spring,” with William Donovan. “An effective transition to virtual learning is needed to avoid the loss of up to a third of the current school year.”

1. Understand the level of equipment and Internet access that families have.

School districts should conduct a survey of the families they serve to determine who needs devices and who lacks Internet access. In Illinois, Belleville Township High School District 201 deploys four school buses equipped with Wi-Fi to serve as Wi-Fi hotspots. Between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. every weekday, drivers park the buses next to seven parks throughout the town and Belleville’s downtown YMCA, depending on the day of the week.

Districts should also be aware that even families with a high-speed connection may not have enough devices for multiple children, particularly if parents are working from home.

2.    Equip schools for virtual instruction.

If they don’t already have one, districts should purchase a learning management system (LMS), the set of tools that houses course content and provides the framework for communication between students, teachers, and parents. There are more than 1,000 LMS vendors, including Agilix Labs, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Moodle, and Pearson Learning Solutions. Many districts are sticking with basic online options they already use and that teachers and staff are familiar with.

3.    Prepare your teachers.

Give teachers time to acquire some of the basic skills they need to prepare their online courses and practice teaching online.

Principals and school administrators can provide guidance to teachers as they select from the vast number of online lessons, videos, simulations, and activities. Assistance is also available from other online educators such as ASU Prep and Florida Virtual School, which was the first full-time online school in the U.S.

4.    Most special needs students can be served.

The large majority of spe­cial needs students with Individualized Education Plans, can easily be served when shifting to online instruc­tion; however, online education often is not as effective with severely disabled students.

5.    Establish daily schedules.

Clear expectations should be in place for when teachers and students are expected to be logged on. Some schools choose a morning meeting and an afternoon check-in. Others spread the school day over two days, with classes in the morning and teachers holding online office hours in the afternoon.

Consistency is also important for parents. Very young students may require parental assistance with online instruction, and parents are often managing their own work-from-home schedules.

“COVID-19 has made clear that Massachusetts and many states are decades behind providing meaningful academic online learning for K-12 students,” said Jim Stergios, executive director of Pioneer Institute. “Having a virtual schooling trailblazer like Julie Young of ASU Prep Digital map the path forward for state leaders is an invaluable resource during this national crisis.”

To facilitate the shift to online learning, states should clarify any confusion around what counts as instruction time for funding purposes and/or instructional minutes requirements. State education departments and school districts should also add pages to their websites that provide extensive information about the transition.

About the Authors

Julie E. Young is Vice President of Education Outreach at ASU and Managing Director of ASU Prep Digital. Julie is passionate about students and is focused on leveraging technology to provide them with new opportunities. Prior to joining ASU Prep Digital, she was the founding CEO and president of the Florida Virtual School, the world’s first virtual statewide school district and one of the nation’s largest and most influential K through 12 online education providers. During her tenure, the school served over 2 million students in 50 states and 68 countries.

William Donovan is a former staff writer with The Providence Journal in Rhode Island where he wrote about business and government. He has taught business journalism in the graduate programs at Boston University and Northeastern University. He received his undergraduate degree from Boston College and his master’s degree in journalism from American University in Washington, D.C.

About Pioneer

Pioneer Institute is an independent, non-partisan, privately funded research organization that seeks to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts through civic discourse and intellectually rigorous, data-driven public policy solutions based on free market principles, individual liberty and responsibility, and the ideal of effective, limited and accountable government.

Get Updates on Our Education Research

Related Content

As COVID-19 Emergencies Ease, Some Progress on Telehealth Rules

A new report from Reason Foundation, Cicero Institute and Pioneer Institute rates every state’s telehealth policy for patient access and ease of providing virtual care. The report highlights telehealth policy best practices for states.

Study Urges Massachusetts to Embrace Innovative School Models

A new policy brief from Pioneer Institute urges Massachusetts policymakers to encourage the proliferation and progress of non-traditional models that offer families creative, flexible, personalized and low-cost private education options.

KaiPod Learning’s Amar Kumar on Homeschooling Pods & Blended Education

This week on “The Learning Curve," Cara and Gerard talk with Amar Kumar, founder and CEO of KaiPod Learning, a network of in-person education centers for online learners and homeschoolers, based in Massachusetts. They discuss how the pandemic dramatically changed parents’ sentiments about their traditional public schools, opening the door to wider private school choice options, including homeschooling, micro schools, and pods.

Khan Academy’s Sal Khan & ASU Prep Digital’s Amy McGrath on the Khan World School @ ASU Prep

This week on “The Learning Curve," Cara Candal and Gerard Robinson talk with Sal Khan, founder and CEO of Khan Academy, and Amy McGrath, the Chief Operating Officer of ASU Prep and Deputy Vice President of ASU Educational Outreach.

Pandemic Dead Reckoning: Unseen Casualties of Public Health Interventions

Hubwonk host Host Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer Institute’s Senior Fellow Dr. Bill Smith about new evidence that during the past two years of the pandemic, there were as many unseen excess deaths from non-Covid-related diseases as seen from Covid. They discuss the need for public health leaders to pivot their messaging to address this hidden mortality.

Why the jump in non-COVID deaths?

The Wall Street Journal echoes our warning about the rise of non-COVID-related deaths.

Mandate’s Constitutional Collision: Court Offers Civics Lesson with Vaccine Rulings

Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with Cato Institute Vice President Ilya Shapiro about the recent Supreme Court vaccine mandate rulings and what they tell us about the limits of executive branch power and the sitting justices’ views on the guidance of the U.S. Constitution.

How did COVID impact Massachusetts’ long-term care facilities?

Pioneer Institute has filed a Public Records Act request related to COVID's impact on Massachusetts’ long-term care facilities because the Institute believes this is a matter of obvious importance, both on principle (the public has a right to know the facts), and for purposes of evaluating – and where possible improving – public policy. 

Massachusetts Telehealth Report Card: Are We Embracing Disruption for Better Quality of Care?

Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer Senior Fellow in Healthcare Josh Archambault about his newest research paper, produced with the Cicero Institute and the Reason Foundation, on states' success in implementing telehealth to improve healthcare outcomes. They discuss how Massachusetts has used remote medicine to better reach patients and serve their needs.

Am I Contagious? Divining Covid’s Community Conundrum

Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with Alva10 CEO and precision medicine expert Hannah Mamuszka about which tests are best for determining who is contagious and the implications for the CDC’s new isolation recommendations.

Virtual Learning Grows During COVID

Virtual learning in K-12 education continues to grow due to the health threat caused by coronavirus variants and the assistance this learning model can provide to at-risk students, according to two papers released today by Pioneer Institute.

COVID Tracker for Long-Term Care Facilities

0 Comments
/
Long Term Care Facilities With 2+ Known COVID Cases and Facility-Reported Deaths in Massachuetts

Face Masks Lifted: Scientists Weigh In With Comprehensive Efficacy Studies

Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with Harvard Medical School professor, Dr. Jonathan Darrow, about the observations of his recent paper, Evidence for Community Cloth Face Masking to Limit the Spread of SARS-CoV-2: A Critical Review, in which he examines the range, quality, and scientific observations of mask wearing efficacy studies.

Urban Institute’s Dr. Matthew Chingos on the Year of School Choice & the Student Loan Debt Crisis

This week on “The Learning Curve," co-hosts Gerard Robinson and Cara Candal talk with Dr. Matthew Chingos, who directs the Center on Education Data and Policy at the Urban Institute. They discuss the “Year of School Choice,” the welcome 2021 trend of states across America expanding or establishing private school choice programs; as well as the student debt crisis in higher education.

COVID’s Unintended Victims: Traditional Diseases Overlooked at the Public’s Peril

This week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer Institute’s Visiting Fellow in Life Sciences, Dr. Bill Smith, about his newest research paper, “An “Impending Tsunami” in Mortality from Traditional Diseases,” which sounds the alarm that the public health community’s focus on COVID-19 has caused many to avoid seeking medical attention for other illnesses. As a result, more Americans are dying from fear of COVID than from the disease itself.

Vaccine Development Renaissance: Pandemic Brings Niche Industry into Mainstream

This week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks with virologist, Dr. Peter Kolchinsky, about the explosion of vaccine technologies and innovations brought into the spotlight by the massive investment to fight the pandemic, and dives deeply into the exciting promise of vaccines to combat an ever-widening range of disease.

Shifting COVID-19 Goalposts: Moving from Zero Infections to Zero Deaths

This week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks with surgeon and author Dr. Marty Makary about the power and durability of vaccines, natural immunity and clinical therapies, that are overshadowed by the public health community's continued target of zero COVID-19 infections.

Study: Decline in Cardiovascular Health Screenings During COVID-19 Pandemic Poses New Public Health Threat

Pioneer Institute today released a new analysis focused on cardiovascular disease, An “Impending Tsunami” in Mortality from Traditional Diseases?, that examines how the COVID-19 pandemic has created another unrelated public health crisis. The Pioneer analysis examines how a single-minded public health focus on COVID-19, social distancing, and lockdowns drove reductions in screenings, diagnoses, and early treatment for complex conditions such as heart disease.