SPOKANE, Wash. – Sarah, a hyperactive student with learning disabilities, was so disruptive in fifth grade that she routinely was pulled from school and fell behind in her studies. Now in seventh grade, she has a great relationship with her teacher and is catching up.
The difference? Sarah is getting her public school instruction online, away from the hubbub of the classroom, with her grandmother as a learning coach.
Washington State University doctoral candidate Kimberly Coy said more parents are seeking online education for many reasons, sometimes to meet their children’s special needs. Coy’s goal is to make sure those online students succeed.
To that end, she has devised a research-based questionnaire that elementary school teachers can use to evaluate and improve the lessons they give online. Her approach, which has won national recognition, focuses on student engagement. In other words: Are students fired up and absorbing knowledge, or just sitting there?
“The trick is to provide teachers and students with the tools for collaborative, constructive learning, so students can engage at their own pace and level,” said Coy. “Often the tools are there but aren’t being used: videos, Web chat, small-group breakout rooms, cameras, microphones.”
Coy’s findings apply to all elementary students, although she has a particular interest in what works for students with disabilities. An experienced classroom and online teacher, she is close to earning a Ph.D. from the WSU Special Education Program based in Pullman and Spokane. She also teaches an online class in special education for WSU.
Lessons guided by brain research
Coy’s graduate research was honored this fall with an award from the Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children. It is timely work. School districts are scrambling to master Web-based instruction – or to contract with competent online schools – as families increasingly seek Web-based instruction.
“Some parents are looking for a way to meet their kids’ learning needs and styles on an individual level,” Coy said. “Some have kids in middle school who are starting to have difficulties on a social level. Some live in rural, isolated places. Some of the families are highly mobile – the parents are in the military or are athletes or actors.”
The underpinning of Coy’s research is the Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a set of principles for curriculum development. UDL is based on the idea, confirmed by brain research, that ways of learning are as unique as fingerprints.
To individualize learning as much as possible, UDL encourages teachers to present information in different forms – say, via video as well as written and spoken lessons. Students should also be given alternate ways to show what they’ve learned and ask for more information.
For her research, Coy watched video recordings of online lessons delivered by 51 teachers at a public virtual school. Based on her observations, she devised a series of questions about how synchronous (real-time) online lessons are presented and how the students respond.
Teachers at one online school are already talking to Coy about using her method to improve instruction for students in kindergarten through eighth grade.
Professor Darcy Miller, coordinator of the Special Education Program at WSU, described Coy’s research as a significant addition to knowledge about which teaching methods work best.
“With the increase in online learning opportunities, the issue of how to reach a wide variety of students is going to become ever more pressing,” Miller said.
Looming questions
Coy is continuing her research through a partnership with the year-old Center for Online Learning and Students with Disabilities. The federal grant that funds the center at the University of Kansas is recognition of the interest in online learning, said Associate Professor Sean Smith, co-principal investigator there.
Smith said that looming questions include: What must online schools provide to make learning accessible to students with disabilities? What is the role of parents, and what kind of training do they need? Are online schools even obligated to serve students with special needs?
“There’s been a segment of online schools that said ‘Oh, you have a disability. The brick-and-mortar schools can handle you,’” he said.
An estimated 2 million elementary and secondary students nationally take at least one class online, according to the International Association for K-12 Online Learning. Between 200,000 and 300,000 students in kindergarten through high school study exclusively online. There are no estimates available for the number of students with disabilities among those, Smith said.
Concerns and excitement
Coy’s biggest concern about online education for children is the view, sometimes held by lawmakers who control education budgets, “that it’s not robust, that it’s not real education.”
Some educators have reservations, too. The National Education Policy Center has recommended that growth of virtual full-time schools stop, or at least slow down, until more is known about the effects of teaching online.
But it’s too late for that, Coy said. With parents demanding online education, she thinks the only answer is to forge ahead.
“Every teacher is going to have to teach online at one point or another; it’s just the way the world is,” she said. “I like the idea of having high-quality public school options for families. And the better alternative education is, the better traditional education will be.”
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Contacts:
Kimberly Coy, WSU College of Education, kimberly.coy@email.wsu.edu, 206-601-9578
Julie Titone, Director of Communications, WSU College of Education, jtitone@wsu.edu, 509-335-6850