Online Learning and Teacher Salary Advancement

Adapted from a Discussion Paper for a Focus Group
on August 16, 2002



Alan Warhaftig
Fairfax Magnet Center for Visual Arts
Los Angeles Unified School District
awarhaft@lausd.k12.ca.us

I. Background

During the past three years, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Point Credit Committee, which reviews and approves proposed courses for teacher salary advancement, has received a number of proposals for online courses. Some have come from District offices, some from nonprofit organizations, and some from commercial companies. These proposals have raised a variety of issues that require discussion.

The Point Credit Committee follows guidelines provided by the Collective Bargaining Agreement between LAUSD and United Teachers Los Angeles, relevant LAUSD memoranda, the committee’s own tradition and precedents, and the common sense of a group of experienced, committed teachers. The committee keenly feels a responsibility to encourage high quality professional development so that teachers will become more valuable to their students.

The Collective Bargaining Agreement (Article XV, Section 3.1) allows salary point credit for distance learning. It states:

Distance learning is defined as alternative deliveries of instruction other than strictly face-to-face contact with the instructor. Under distance learning, the definition of instructor "contact hours" is expanded to include a variety of instructional methods such as video-taped/televised lessons, electronic conferencing (e-mail, chat stations, collaborative on-line laboratories, etc.), telephone conferencing, residential conferences, etc. In all cases, the distance learning program must offer the student opportunities to interact with the instructor, either face-to-face or via an electronic mode of live communication. Distance learning programs that rely predominantly on print-based correspondence, with or without e-mail lesson options, will continue to be denied for salary point credit.

This language reflects, at best, a hazy understanding of the technologies of distance learning and is not very helpful to the committee in performing its work.

On October 18, 1999, members of the committee met with a senior administrator from Certificated Personnel. The meeting was scheduled at the committee’s request because of a desire to have more detailed guidelines for distance learning. The administrator did not provide specific guidelines but indicated that it was the committee’s prerogative to require the same rigor in online classes as it required of traditional classes.

Subsequent to this meeting, the committee received several proposals for online courses, none of which were approved.

On March 22, 2001, the committee met with a representative of a national company that offers online classes and had contracts with several LAUSD schools. The discussion led to the concept of the "wraparound model," in which an online course could be approved under specific conditions.

The concept was that a teacher would enroll in an online course that had been reviewed by the committee and approved for credit. When the teacher completed the course requirements, the vendor would verify this to the school’s principal or designee, who would serve as project leader for the purpose of salary point credit. Teachers would complete a culminating assessment at the school site – an exam or a detailed written evaluation based on material provided by the online course provider and derived from specific course content. These exams (or evaluations), along with copies of the assignments completed for the course, would be evidence that professional development has taken place. The project leader would review the body of completed work and, if acceptable, sign and submit the paperwork to LAUSD.

The committee has approved a handful of courses that follow the wraparound model. They have been sponsored by LAUSD employees known to the committee, and they have been given one-time approval with the proviso that the project leader report back about how the class turned out and what changes would be made if it were offered again.

The issue is not whether teachers can advance on the salary scale by taking online courses. Accredited colleges and universities already offer online teacher training and professional development courses, which teachers may take and file for credit. It is the responsibility of these colleges and universities to assure that their online courses are as rigorous as courses taught on campus.

Our purpose is to explore the criteria that would allow online courses given outside the context of an accredited university – by LAUSD, nonprofit organizations, or commercial companies – to qualify for LAUSD salary point credit. This is a serious matter, as it involves public funds, teacher salaries, and preparation of teachers to provide quality education to the district’s 736,000 students.

As we consider standards for granting salary point credit for online courses, it will be helpful to be aware of the issues and debates about online learning as they have emerged at universities and in the world of corporate training.(1)

II. Issues in Online Learning

Advocates of online learning (also known as "distance learning" and "distributive learning") present an optimistic vision of "anytime, anyplace" learning that places a farmer in Kansas on a level playing field with the sons and daughters of the privileged. Remoteness from a college campus should no longer preclude an eager student from having access to learning opportunities. Advocates believe that online courses will democratize education, and some characterize the traditional university, with its expensive campus and limited reach, as elitist.

Online learning has also generated considerable controversy,(2) and it is unclear at this early date whether it will revolutionize teaching and learning or whether economic factors and inherent limitations will consign it to the same dustbin as correspondence courses.(3)

While many articles have been written in academic journals, education and technology publications, and the popular press, there is not yet a persuasive body of scientific or scholarly literature about online learning, so much of what is known is based either on anecdote or analysis of small populations.

A. Instructor-Led vs. Self-Paced

The two basic categories of online courses are "instructor-led" and "self-paced." An instructor-led course begins and ends on specific dates, similar to a semester, and students follow the timelines of the course and complete assignments and exams. Self-paced classes allow students to proceed as quickly or slowly as they like. An example is traffic school, which allows motorists to remove violations from their driving record. California law requires traffic school to last eight hours, and that is how long violators must attend a face-to-face session, but it is possible to complete a self-paced course on the web in less than three hours.

B. Cost

Contrary to popular impression, online learning is expensive.

Universities have found that it is extremely costly to produce an engaging course and that the features that make a course engaging – particularly streaming video – limit access to only those students with a broadband internet connection. This would render the course inaccessible to students in places where broadband is not available; where broadband is available, it would discriminate against students who cannot afford it. This places universities in the uncomfortable position of having to decide how much instructional quality they can provide without limiting the market of potential students.

Another challenge for universities has been to find quality software (known variously as e-learning platforms, course management software or online delivery software) to provide the interface between the teacher and student. Several dozen packages have been available, and university faculty and students have found many of them to be inadequate.(4) Two of the leading programs, BlackBoard and WebCT, have announced steep price increases in recent months.(5)

University faculty have discovered that teaching an online course requires significantly more time than teaching a traditional course – both because of the need to adapt material to a new instructional medium, or "delivery system," and because of the number of asynchronous messages (e-mail, threaded discussion boards) that require response. Writing these responses is the only way to establish the instructor’s presence, which is crucial to the success of an online class. One solution has been to have professors develop course content while interaction is handled by graduate students or adjunct faculty, leading to concern that online courses, which appeal to single parents and working people, offer a lesser educational experience than the campus-based university.(6)

The labor intensive nature of course development and online instruction have led to tuition for online courses being higher, not lower, than for traditional courses. In effect, the online student pays a premium for convenience – an interesting interpretation of democratization.

Universities began online education enterprises for a variety of reasons. Some thought it might be profitable, a way to subsidize their traditional campus-based programs. Some genuinely felt that it was the beginning of a revolution in teaching and learning. Some were concerned that if they did not enter the fray, entrepreneurs without expensive campuses would take students away, rendering them land-poor and irrelevant. Some state institutions viewed online education as a less expensive alternative to building new campuses to accommodate demand due to population growth.(7)

The corporate world is understandably enamored of distance learning because it is less expensive than sending employees for training at remote locations. Online courses save travel costs (airlines, airport transfers, hotels and meals) for both employees and trainers. The other cost of corporate training is lost productivity – employees cannot do their work while they are in another city for training. If distance learning allows employees to learn "anytime, anyplace," training can occur outside normal working hours – with or without compensation.(8)

These arguments, which are significant to the corporate world, seem largely irrelevant to K-12 education. Professional development in LAUSD rarely involves travel expenses, as most training takes place in the Los Angeles area and the trainers are either from within LAUSD or from local institutions or companies. In addition, most training occurs during paid time – or outside of paid time for teachers who wish to advance on the salary scale and/or are eager to improve their practice through professional development.

C. Efficacy

An online class is successful if it covers the same academic content as a face-to-face class and the students have equivalent or better learning outcomes. In practice, online courses are of variable quality. It is certainly possible to create an excellent online course if the instructor, content, and e-learning platform are of high quality. If these conditions exist, the key is the interaction between instructor and students.

Two types of interaction are possible in online courses: asynchronous (e-mail and threaded discussion boards) and synchronous (chat, webcasts and video conferencing). Asynchronous communication requires instructors to spend a tremendous amount of time responding to e-mail and discussion board messages; synchronous communication (other than chat) requires higher production expense and broadband connections for students. Class size is significant for both types of interaction. While each additional student generates revenue, he or she also increases the volume of e-mails and discussion posts to which the instructor must respond. With synchronous communication, experienced instructors feel that a chat room should not have more than 25-30 participants.

A recent commentary in Education Week discussed the effectiveness of asynchronous discussions:

As a substitute for face-to-face discussion, asynchronous threads appear to be inherently less efficient. The primary way to participate in an online class is to post messages. If a student logs on to a class with 30 participants, a large number of messages are likely to have been posted since he or she last logged on. If the fifth message prompts agreement, the options are to either immediately post a response or continue to read messages before coming back to that fifth message. It is far easier to reply immediately. Unfortunately, by the time the student has read the rest of the messages, there might be many messages that echo the same sentiment but add little substance. This duplication does not occur in face-to-face discussions, because everyone in a room can readily assess—from nodding heads – whether or not there is agreement.(9)

Reliance on asynchronous communication can result in both students and instructor feeling isolated, and this is one of the reasons for the high attrition rate in online courses. A survey of one international online class revealed that students ignore discussion boards. While 61% of students accessed the course web site at least three to five times a week, only 7% accessed the discussion section at least once a week and 23% indicated that they had never looked at that section of the course.(10)

Two experienced online instructors at the University of Central Florida are convinced that a quality online course requires synchronous communication:

Didactic conversation requires both the instructor and student to be equally engaged in two-way communication. Now consider Web-based courses that rely solely on asynchronous communication. Information that is delivered solely by asynchronous means flows in only one direction at any given time: primarily from the instructor to the student. In effect, didactic communication becomes all but impossible and the learner is rendered a passive recipient of information. We also argue that the extent to which your students obtain information solely by reading the content on your course Web site is the extent to which you have not taken advantage of computer assisted communication. Thus, having your students merely download materials for your Web class is to regress to an earlier stage in the history of distance education: the mail-correspondence course. Instead, we recommend that instructors use chat room technology to facilitate meaningful interaction with their students. In this view, using chat rooms on a regular basis takes the "distance" out of distance education. (11)

Chat rooms can also be problematical. A professor from Kent State University observes:

On those occasions when chat was tried, there were inevitably many tangential comments, and the discussion tended to veer off in unexpected directions. The delays associated with keyboarding resulted in many contributions appearing on screen after the topic had already changed direction. In addition, with this chat feature, I did not have built-in control over who contributed as I did with the videoconferencing, so my ability to lead the discussions was limited.(12)

While it is possible – though expensive – to create an online course with a reasonable class size and high-quality synchronous and asynchronous interaction, some corporations, including IBM and PeopleSoft, have determined that purely online courses are inadequate to achieve their training goals. Instead, they mix online and in-person training, using the online portion to get everyone to the same level of knowledge before the in-person component, which involves more sophisticated thinking, begins.(13)

D. Downsides

Online learning is not suited to every individual. There are no conversations before or after class or wide-ranging discussions at lunch. There are no visual or aural cues – a twinkle or sadness in the eyes, an unusual accent, an ironic tone – to provide a human dimension to the collective learning experience.

Designers of online courses labor to create a simulacrum of community, through the use of "ice-breaking" activities, but community has more dimensions than software can emulate, so many participants find they are not engaged and conclude that online learning is not for them. The investment in building community, which detracts from time available for course content, is lost as students drop out.

The attrition rate for online courses can be very high, especially when technological obstacles become a frustration. Two experienced instructors have developed a profile for "at-risk" cyber-students, urging early intervention because "the usual cues associated with student anxiety, inattentiveness or apathy are not present in the virtual classroom." They identify several predictors of success for online learning, including number of previous online classes completed, comfort with the course’s content and technological demands, and the number of logins and posts during the first week of the course.(14)

Experienced instructors have discovered that they must frequently test students in online courses to assure that they do not slack off. Testing in an online course raises the thorny issue of verification of identity – to assure that the person claiming credit has in fact mastered the material and is the same person who has been completing the assignments and taking the tests. To address this problem, many online university courses require an in-person final exam, with presentation of photo ID.

III. LAUSD and Online Professional Development

LAUSD needs to reform both professional development and its practice of granting credit for as many units as a teacher can present from any accredited college or university. Many teachers have done the math, discovering that they can move a step on the salary scale for less than $1,200 in tuition, which they earn back in less than a year. An industry has sprung up to sell "professional development" to LAUSD teachers, and some of these "colleges" and "universities" require very little work for three semester units of credit. Aside from being an improper use of public funds, it is tragic that teachers can reach the top of the salary scale without having professional development experiences that make them more effective in the classroom – and then have no incentive to ever take another class.

Unfortunately, LAUSD has minimal in-house capacity to create professional development for its 40,000 teachers. Rather than develop this capacity, the district’s practice has been to contract for services with companies in the private sector – in some instances, companies owned and operated by former LAUSD employees. While politicians and administrators pay lip service to the importance of professional development, it remains a black box whose contents few have examined.

Online professional development will have a place in LAUSD, but it should add quality rather than further debase the currency. When LAUSD offices submit online courses, a vendor is invariably involved. If LAUSD has not chosen wisely, and has contracted for second-rate product, the result will inevitably be mediocre. The situation has the potential to be even worse when online courses are submitted by outside entities, especially commercial companies, because LAUSD has no means to control quality.

Until standards for online learning are firmly established, and its value proven by proper studies, it would be prudent for LAUSD to limit the number of courses (and units) a teacher can earn online – whether from an accredited college or through salary point projects.

A. The Collective Bargaining Agreement

Article XV, Section 3.1 the Collective Bargaining Agreement fails to comprehend the technology of distance learning. The end of the paragraph clearly indicates that "old-style" distance learning, the correspondence course, is not acceptable, even if it includes interaction by e-mail.

In a correspondence course, printed materials are mailed to the student, who reads them, then completes and returns various assignments. How is this different from many online courses offered today? What is the difference between reading text on paper and reading text on a computer screen? Is delivery of the text via the World Wide Web and return of the assignments via e-mail inherently superior to the service offered by the post office? It is interesting that this section validates e-mail as a form of electronic interaction between student and instructor yet states that it is insufficient to make a traditional correspondence course acceptable.

The emphasis in this section is on interaction with the instructor, whether face-to-face or via electronic means, and that electronic interaction can be a substitute for traditional contact hours. The methods of electronic interaction mentioned in this section are e-mail, "chat stations," and "collaborative on-line laboratories." It is not clear what is meant by the last two terms.

The language of this section raises more questions than it answers. No distinction is made between synchronous and asynchronous interaction, nor are discussion boards, the most common form of interaction, mentioned. The language emphasizes interaction between student and teacher, but these technologies seem to promote an exponentially greater interaction among the students – not a bad thing, but is it what the framers envisioned?

One of the practical difficulties the Point Credit Committee has faced in evaluating online courses is that the distinction between contact hours and hours of outside preparation blurs. In a traditional class, reading of texts is not generally part of contact hours: it is part of outside preparation. In many online courses, reading of the class content can account for a significant percentage of the contact hours.

Article XV cries out to be rewritten.

B. Appropriate Uses of Distance Learning

As is the case with many issues of technology in education, common sense suggests that appropriate uses for distance learning should be identified prior to broad implementation. Sadly, the standard is closer to "Ready! Fire! Aim!"

An excellent example of distance learning is the online engineering courses offered by Stanford University. These courses are not offered for credit towards a degree but appeal to motivated professionals who need the advanced and highly specific knowledge they offer. These professionals are located around the globe, and such an advanced course would not be available at nearby universities.

Distance Learning is most appropriate when geography precludes gathering interested parties in a single room. For example, there are not enough teachers of Advanced Placement German in LAUSD to organize professional development courses. Perhaps there are enough in California, but geography becomes an insurmountable and costly barrier if the professional development comprises more than a short conference.

While an online course for teachers of A.P. German makes sense, are online courses on classroom management, teaching reading, or teaching algebra equally sensible? Thousands of teachers in the Los Angeles area could benefit from courses on these topics – enough so that such courses could be offered at multiple sites so that no teacher would have to drive more than 20 minutes from home or work in order to participate.

C. Verification of Participation

The fundamental obstacle to granting salary credit for online professional development is verification that professional development actually occurred. Organizers of traditional salary point classes have always been challenged to engage the attention of participants, but participants needed to at least be in a room for sixteen hours (and complete an outside assignment) to qualify for a salary point. At a minimal level, salary point credit was justified by inconvenience, if not benefit, to the participant.

With online classes, there is no assurance that the teacher claiming credit actually participated, let alone developed professionally. A teenage child might have been at the computer while the parent was officially logged on, or the participant might have been reading a mystery novel or watching a basketball game and only occasionally clicked the mouse.

The software used by online providers can tell whether someone is logged on and how many messages he or she has posted, but it cannot verify the identity of the person at the computer, or whether a person is even at the computer while logged on. Traditional point credit classes also offer potential for fraud, and those who have led large salary point classes have stories to tell, but online courses promise a brave new world of mischief.

D. Equivalence of Hours

With online courses, the distinction between contact hours and hours of outside preparation is often difficult to recognize. A significant percentage of the class can be devoted to non-content activities, including icebreaking, community building, and teaching participants how to take an online class. If LAUSD adopts the principle that an online class should teach the same content as a face-to-face class on the same subject, then hours spent on anything other than course content should not count on a one-to-one basis.

Self-paced classes (traffic school on the web) should not be eligible for salary credit.

Classes where most, if not all, the interaction is through asynchronous threaded discussions, are inherently inefficient, so an hour of that kind of interaction might not be equivalent to a contact hour in a face-to-face course. Is it worth 50 minutes? 45? How many contact hours should be required to qualify for one unit of salary credit?

IV. Online Professional Development and the Point Credit Committee

The committee hopes that, in addition to the "wraparound" model, other models will emerge that satisfy the committee’s concerns. If LAUSD is to assure quality online learning, the committee will need to consider several criteria in evaluating the viability of proposed courses:

A. E-Learning Platforms

The committee needs to develop expertise in this area and create a list of acceptable course management software. This will help eliminate low quality classes presented by vendors who are trying to save money by licensing mediocre software.

B. Modes of Interaction

Online course proposals should specify the amounts of synchronous and asynchronous interaction the course will involve. How many hours of synchronous interaction are provided? What is the promised turnaround time for e-mails sent to the instructor?

C. Instructors

Courses should be instructor-led rather than self-paced. What are the qualifications of the instructors? Are they fulltime employees, or are they teachers moonlighting after their school day?

D. Class Size

What is the maximum class size? It probably should not be more than 30 if the chat sessions are to be effective and the instructor not overwhelmed by the volume of asynchronous communications.

E. Assessment and Verification

How will the organizers assure that participants master the content of the course? What specific assignments will be required? How will participation in synchronous and asynchronous interaction be assessed? How will the leader of the course determine that the person claiming credit actually completed the course?

F. Course Access

The point project sponsor should provide members of the committee access to the course to evaluate its design and verify that it matches the course described in the point project proposal.

G. Vendor Identification

If the course is being provided by anyone other than the project leader, the source/vendor should be identified.

H. Report to the Committee

A mandatory, open-ended evaluation form should be developed for leaders of salary point projects, so that the benefit of their experience can be collected.

V. Conclusion

While the reader has no doubt noticed conclusions sprinkled liberally throughout this paper, they derive not from skepticism about online learning but from the conviction that LAUSD must gain control of professional development and that the challenges presented by online learning offer an excellent opportunity.

As a district, we lack common purpose, an understanding of what qualities, skills and knowledge an accomplished person must possess, of why we teach what we teach. It would be absurd to expect children to respect what we, ourselves, cannot articulate.

Years of reaction to crisis after crisis have left many parts of our enterprise overgrown with weeds. One of these is professional development, which should provide touchstones to remind us why the work we do is meaningful and important. It should be the wellspring of our academic culture.

Not everyone will agree with this analysis, but powerful economic forces are promoting online learning, and LAUSD relies on vendors for its vision of how we should develop as educators, hardly questioning whether we need the products and services they sell. LAUSD does not have a policy, and the collective bargaining agreement does not contain language, that are adequate to the challenges that are at our doorstep.

The purpose of this focus group is to identify the salient issues pertaining to online professional development and begin to envision standards of which professional educators will be proud.

 

Notes:

1 A useful index of articles (see appendix) about distance learning is at: http://www.magportal.com/c/edu/dist/

2 Press, Eyal and Washburn, Jennifer, "Digital Diplomas." Mother Jones, February 2001. http://motherjones.com/mother_jones/JF01/diplomas.html

3 Heerema, Douglas L. and Rogers, Richard L., "Avoiding the Quality/Quantity Trade-Off in Distance Education." T.H.E. Journal, December 2001. http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A3753.cfm

4 A comparison of 56 e-learning platforms is at: http://www.c2t2.ca/landonline/

5 Young, Jeffrey R, "Pricing Changes by Blackboard and WebCT Cost Some Colleges More -- Much More." The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 19, 2002. http://chronicle.com/free/2002/03/2002031901u.htm

6 Smith, Glenn Gordon, Ferguson, David and Caris, Mieke, "Teaching College Courses Online vs. Face-to-Face." T.H.E. Journal, April 2001. http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A3407.cfm

7 Woody, Todd, "Ivy Online." The Industry Standard, November 1, 1999.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1449,7122,00.html

8 Myers, Randy, "E-Learning: The Absent Professors." eCFO, December 15, 2000.
http://www.cfo.com/Article?article=5376

9 Warhaftig, Alan, "But the Prom Will Not Be Webcast." Education Week, May 29, 2002.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/newstory.cfm?slug=38warhaftig.h21

10 Cerny, Melinda G. and Heines, Jesse M., "Evaluating Distance Learning Across Twelve Time Zones." T.H.E. Journal, February 2001. http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A3296.cfm

11 Wang, Alvin Y. and Newlin, Michael H., "Online Lectures: Benefits for the Virtual Classroom." T.H.E. Journal, August 2001. http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A3562.cfm

12 Tiene, Drew, "Digital Multimedia & Distance Education: Can They be Effectively Combined?" T.H.E. Journal, April 2002. http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A3962B.cfm

13 Schwartz, Karen D., "Learning is Mandatory; Presence is Optional." Mobile Computing, July 2001. http://www.mobilecomputing.com/showarchives.cgi?145

14 Wang, Alvin Y. and Newlin, Michael H., "Predictors of Performance in the Virtual Classroom." T.H.E. Journal, May 2002. http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A4023.cfm

 

 

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