Creating the Anywhere, Anytime Classroom. Casey Reason
title Creating the Anywhere, Anytime Classroom because, over the last several years, it has become clear to us that distance learning approaches have created viable alternatives to many traditional classrooms. Perhaps even more important is that we realize the benefits and opportunities associated with distance learning for transforming the traditional classroom in dynamic ways. Indeed, the master craftsmen who are teaching our students today have the tools to create viable learning experiences anywhere and anytime. To help put these amorphous new learning opportunities in context, let’s examine what we mean by traditional learning, online learning, and blended learning.
Traditional Learning, Online Learning, and Blended Learning—A Monstrous Mash
There are some simple definitions that will help you understand the similarities and differences between the following instructional archetypes.
■ Traditional learning: For the purposes of this book, traditional learning refers to flesh-and-bone, face-to-face teaching and learning experiences that most of us grew up with in K–12 education. They are synchronous in that everyone has to be in the same room at the same time to make the learning experience happen for everyone (Al-Qahtani & Higgins, 2012).
■ Online learning: Online learning refers to learning experiences that are hosted on a digital platform (Al-Qahtani & Higgins, 2012). If you attend Stanford Online High School (https://ohs.stanford.edu), all of your classes are hosted in a digital platform. Much of your interaction is asynchronous, meaning that interactions don’t have to occur all at the same place or at the same time. The teacher posts content, video lectures, and so on, and learners engage with one another in asynchronous, threaded discussion questions. This high school also has synchronous meetings wherein teachers and students all connect on Skype at an agreed-on time each day and hold class, with the teachers leading synchronous conversations and activities. The differentiator is that the learning experiences are online.
■ Blended learning: A blended learning approach is one wherein teachers deliver instruction in a traditional setting with ongoing, robust learning opportunities simultaneously taking place, with the same group of students, in a digital, online environment. Stanford Online High School holds weeklong, in-person seminars throughout the year. Although the main element of instruction is delivered online, technically the inclusion of these face-to-face learning opportunities makes it a blended learning experience (Picciano & Seaman, 2009).
As you think about your own teaching and learning situation you may recognize that the lines between traditional and online learning are increasingly blurry. Many traditional classrooms today have established parallel, digital learning spaces that allow teachers to post content, stay connected, ask questions, and even create a dialogue with students. The significant advancements in video capacity allow even the most asynchronous digital learning experiences to use a camera to make a personal connection and host an online learning event.
What does this mean for teachers? What does it mean for the profession? In a word—opportunity! The strategies we discuss in this book are designed to meet this wonderfully exciting, amorphous mash of opportunity at our fingertips, and to learn to better understand and harness this amazing power. To do so, we use this book to put these opportunities into an appropriate context. Let’s begin by defining digitally enhanced learning.
Digitally Enhanced Learning
There has been quite an evolution in the verbiage educators and students use regarding digital learning. Unfortunately, many of the past phrases don’t help us to ascend to our highest aspirations. The phrase teaching online speaks to the actions of the instructor and references a ubiquitous teaching platform. Distance learning is a phrase that correctly puts the focus on learning, but by emphasizing the word distance, it suggests that this is a method of learning that exists only as a simple, convenient alternative to traditional live classroom instruction. It also has the side effect of leaving blended classrooms out of the equation.
Digital learning, an increasingly accepted term in the teaching community, represents the strategic application of an endless array of technological tools to support the learning process (Selwyn, 2011). This could include online platforms, apps, and other web-based assets (Kong et al., 2014). Note that although there are assistive digital tools, including a variety of learning apps, designed to function offline in a physical classroom, in this book we focus specifically on digital tools that help facilitate learning while online.
Throughout this book, we use the term digitally enhanced learning (DEL) to describe the strategic use of digital tools and various virtual learning platforms to support and enhance the online learning process. We use this term in our work because we need to take this evolution in our thinking about the online learning process one step further. Digitizing the learning experience is of little value if educators aren’t first and foremost using digital tools to pursue significant pedagogical advancements. Some well-intended technophiles salivate over the latest innovation online, or on their smartphones, without focusing on the added effectiveness they intend to create. This is like handing a gardener a better shovel and focusing on the shovel rather than how it helps the gardener make the garden flourish. Focusing on that flourishing garden of using digital technology to enhance the online learning of K–12 students is the true intention of this book. To help flesh out what DEL is all about, let’s address some essential observations about this concept.
Eliminate Physical Distance as a Barrier to Learning
Contrary to the old perceptions regarding distance learning, DEL is not just about overcoming the inability to meet face to face. In many cases, it is about the ability to make distance either irrelevant or at least less important to the learning process. It is about connecting students with previously unavailable learning opportunities, thoughtful instructors, dynamic resources, and engaging classmates in a platform of connectivity that produces a morphing cauldron of creative, new learning. It also creates more opportunities for classroom-based teachers and students to connect with each other outside of the classroom. To that end, the modern web-connected laptop has the power to bring learners the richest, most dynamic, and diverse learning experiences in human history.
Signal the Emergence of Learning- and Learner-Centered Facilitation
In a webinar, we invited Louisville, Kentucky, professor and pedagogy expert, Terrence M. Scott, to address an audience of teachers regarding approaches to creating highly engaging learning environments. During this live session, he presented several recommended classroom configurations designed to strategically maximize student engagement. Interestingly, each of his recommended configurations was designed to maximize learner-to-learner interaction and to try to create conditions where the teacher is the facilitator with learning at the center of what he or she does.
What we have found in a digital learning environment is that the platform itself serves to challenge the entire teacher-centric approach to education. Where traditional classrooms setups, with seats facing the instructor, are based on the premise of the class hinging on the facilitator’s actions, modern-day learning platforms are constructed primarily around the content. Furthermore, although learning platforms aren’t all the same, we have found that most of these learning platforms offer easy access for opportunities to dialogue with fellow classmates, encouraging connections.
Additionally, with powerful online platforms, educators can facilitate learning experiences by demanding much higher levels of learner engagement. These platforms and approaches to distance learning allow for greater degrees of personalization and opportunities for a teacher to intervene when the learner is struggling (Huang, Liang, Su, & Chen, 2012). They also allow for advanced levels of study once a student reaches basic competency. Using Khan Academy as an example, a mathematics teacher could provide virtual observations and interventions with a class full of students, each of them accessing different digital tutorials. While each student either seeks to reinforce learning by achieving prescribed competencies, or seeks advanced applications to promote even deeper learning, the teacher emerges as a facilitator for this process. As such, the teacher can use multiple tools to formatively assess students on a continuous basis to prescribe practice,