Fear of Virtual High Schools

A reader sent this question to me today:

I was wondering if you read Clayton Christensen’s prediction that by 2019, nearly 50 percent of high school courses will be taught online.  What exactly did the author mean by this?  Did he mean that by this particular date that nearly 50 percent of high school students will be at home doing virtual schooling or that 50 pecent of the high school courses will have an “alternative online option” to the course.  I teach History, do you think there will still be a need for plenty of classroom History and Geography teachers?

This is a scary world we are living in.

I hadn’t read Clayton Christensen’s article before, but I’d heard the prediction elsewhere (Technology Seen Transforming U.S. Education System and The rise of ‘virtual schools’ divides education world, for example). I believe it means that half the courses taken will be taught online. For some students, that probably will mean they take all their courses online; for others, it will mean taking some courses face-to-face and some online. For example, a student might go to high school in the morning but take other courses online from home in the afternoon. I think we’ll also see continued growth in areas like online tutoring outside of the schools.

Online courses can give students more choices, for starters. Many schools in the US, especially rural schools, don’t have enough students to fill advanced math and science courses or to offer multiple choices for foreign languages. Online courses allow students in those schools to take subjects that simply wouldn’t be available to them otherwise.

There will absolutely continue to be a need for teachers with online schools. When we’re talking about virtual high schools, we’re talking about schools where teachers are employed. This isn’t homeschooling or completely self-paced learning; the student-teacher ratios are usually comparable to face-to-face classrooms. However, if you’re only willing to teach in a physical classroom and not willing to teach online, that may hamper your job opportunities in the future if the prediction is right. Your job prospects may depend on your willingness to learn to teach online, and it is a different set of skills than teaching in the physical classroom.

To get an idea of what a virtual high school might look like, check out the Colorado Virtual Academy. Their curriculum lists 20 different history and social sciences courses; clearly, the need for history teachers still exists.

Are we looking at a future where we’ll only need half the teachers we need now? No, I don’t think so. Are we looking at a future where the role of teachers changes, and many more people will teach online? Yes, I do believe that. I don’t think that’s scary though; I think it’s exciting. We have all these possibilities for global collaboration in education. We can provide choices for students so they can find the right environment for their individual learning.

For instructional designers and others who develop e-learning, I think the online K-12 market is definitely something to watch. Whether the prediction of 50% by 2019 is right or not, this is an area that’s going to grow. This is good news for instructional designers; it means a whole other market for jobs.

For teachers, I think this means a different set of opportunities–not necessarily more or less, just different. My guess is that teaching online will allow some teachers to do a “partial retirement”; instead of retiring from teaching entirely, they might choose to teach a few courses online while travelling or spending time on hobbies or whatever.

If you’re working in the online K-12 environment, either as a teacher or as an instructional designer, I’d appreciate hearing from you. How would you address the fears identified by this reader?

Comment Challenge Catch-Up

I’m slowly catching up on the comment challenge. I’d planned to do a bit more over the weekend. My husband and I went to the bookstore after lunch Saturday, then spent the rest of the afternoon in bed reading. I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the time offline.

Day 13: Write a Blog Post Using Comments

Although the Telecommute Instructional Design Jobs
post wasn’t actually from a standard public comment, I still think it counts. (This came from my Ask A Question page, where readers can submit questions privately, but give me the right to republish.) After all, the point of this seems to be about interacting with the readers. The Ask A Question just gives them another way to do so.

Community Size & Connection Strength is another post based on comments.

Day 14: Turn Your Blog Over to Your Readers

I just did this one today, asking for help answering a reader question in Instructional Design Training Programs. This probably isn’t the most compelling question; maybe I’ll try this one again sometime. Usually when I post a really deep question to readers, it’s after I’ve already written a full post. I do ask questions for tips and help sometimes, and I’ve been very happy with the wonderful responses from the community. I don’t usually let go of control enough to let my readers write the post in the comments though, not at the level of Chris Brogan anyway.

Day 15: Give a Comment Award

I’m copping out of this one. I just can’t imagine picking one person out of all the wonderful commenters I have here. Thank you to everyone who has ever left a non-spammy comment on my blog.

Day 16: Go Back and Catch Up on Something

I’m only three days late on my catch-up day. Not bad, huh?

Day 17: Five in Five

I’m putting this one off for tonight; I’ll come back to it later.

Day 18: Analyze the Comments on Your Own Blog

I wrote up this task partly because I was interested in doing it myself.

Which of your posts have generated the most comments?

I’ve had nine posts which generated 10 comments or more:

# of Comments	Post	Date
18	Do Instructional Designers Really Need Technology Skills?	06/05/07
16	Social Networking as LMS: Problems and Opportunities	08/18/07
13	Technology Skills for Instructional Designers	06/04/07
12	Diigo or Delicious for Beginners?	03/29/08
12	Is instructional design the right career?	06/20/07
11	Facebook as LMS?	08/16/07
11	Atmosphere for Commenting	05/17/08
11	First Experience with Usability Testing	03/11/08
10	Firefox Extensions	08/21/07

Dates in the table above are American style (MM/DD/YY).

Which has generated the best conversation? (The last question is about quantity; this one is about quality.)

I loved the debate about whether instructional designers need technology skills or not. I am so happy that Cammy Bean came here and disagreed with me. First of all, it meant that I found another instructional designer and blogger who I’ve learned lots from over the last year. But the conversation was great because she was able to share a perspective and experience that were quite different from my own. Her initial comments led me to write two other posts, one of which is at the top of the list above. I’ve had other good conversations, but I still think this one was the best. It certainly was very eye-opening for me.

Are there any patterns to the commenting on your own blog? Do certain types of posts generate more comments than others?

I see a couple of trends:

• Three of these posts were from my series on instructional design careers in June 2007.
• My two posts about Facebook and other social networking sites as LMS (Learning Management Systems) were also popular.
• Two are about the tools I use: Diigo and Firefox.
• Posts that have gotten the most views aren’t necessarily the ones with the most discussion. For example, the post with the most comments has only gotten 500 views total. My all-time top post, Instructional Design Skills, is approaching 2000 views, but doesn’t have a single comment. That post gets lots of search engine traffic, hence a high number of views, but has never started a discussion.

Information about instructional design careers does seem to be a popular topic. In fact, that’s part of why I chose to do the posts on telecommute jobs and training programs; people are looking for this information.

The best discussions were posts where I took a stand on something a bit controversial: the need for technology skills and Facebook/social networking as LMS. When I can find that balance where I make a statement that not everyone agrees with but still make it open for people to discuss and debate, I get great conversations.

If you do see a pattern or commonality between posts that generate good comments, what can you do to increase those qualities in other posts?

Even after doing all this analysis, I’m not sure what to do to increase these qualities in other posts. Certainly, I’ll continue to write more about instructional design careers and just about instructional design in general. The topics that I’m passionate about are more likely to be interesting reads and therefore generate more comments.

Do you see a pattern in what generates good conversation, either on your own blog or here? What makes you not just comment once, but come back to comment again?

Technorati Tags: comment08, comment+challenge, Cammy+Bean

Instructional Design Training Programs

G. Sunanda commented on my Is Instructional Design the Right Career? post last week:

I would like to know about training programmes in ID given by Indian institutes.

Unfortunately, I have no idea about training for instructional designers outside the US. On Tony Karrer’s blog, there’s a nice collection online degrees, certificates, and training programs in the comments. These are all in the US, Canada, or UK.

Could anyone from India or elsewhere outside the US shed some light on training available in your areas? Master’s programs, certificates, training, or whatever would be fine. I’ve had occasional questions from elsewhere in the world too; I remember a question from Singapore a while back. Surprisingly, nothing in the comments for Tony’s post mentioned Australia or NZ. What do you folks do for training there?

Any links would be appreciated. I’d like to collect a list of resources to share with people when I receive those types of questions.

Technorati Tags: instructionaldesign, training, education

Telecommute Instructional Design Jobs

About six weeks ago, I added a new feature to my sidebar: an Ask A Question button. This idea was mentioned on Problogger as a way to promote your blog, find out what content is actually relevant to your readers, and improve interaction and community. Since I was already getting a number of questions in comments, I thought I’d try this out to see what kind of questions I received.

Last week, I got a great question from Robert K.:

So my question is, are there instructional design companies that will let you work remotely to some degree or do most require you to be in office to interact with SME’s or other office staff?

The short answer to his question is yes, it is possible. It can take more work to find the right fit, but you absolutely can work from home.

I work 100% from home, although I will admit that it’s rare to find salaried positions that are 100% telecommute. But yes, some companies will let you work from home all the time, and many more will let you do so some of the time. For example, during one contract, I worked from home 3 days a week. One of my friends at that job worked most days from home; she even got permission to work only half days, all of it from home, for several weeks when her daughter was sick and needed extra care.

A Google search for “‘instructional designer’ telecommute” returns over 18,000 hits, so there are things out there. You do have to hunt a bit more though, especially if you want to work completely from home. I’ve been recruited in the past for jobs that required travel at the beginning and end of a project, plus perhaps occasionally during, but otherwise you could work from home. I’m not sure whether you can do any travel in your situation or if limited travel would be acceptable.

Dice and Craigslist both let you restrict your search to telecommute positions, also there isn’t a good way to do a national search on Craigslit. WAHM does a pretty good job of compiling new telecommute jobs from multiple sources, even if it isn’t the easiest site to navigate. You can use the Find command on your browser to search for “instructional” on the page with their job listings.

Especially for someone looking for telecommute positions, I would suggest looking at online schools and publishing companies.

• Online colleges and universities, including community colleges, may be more likely to have telecommute opportunities. These are organizations who are used to having instructors work virtually, which makes it easier for other employees to telecommute too.
• Research the online K-12 environment. This is an area with a lot of projected growth, so those companies will be hiring. The same goes for K-12 schools as higher ed; if other employees are already telecommuting, the infrastructure, policies, and organizational culture already support it.
• Check out publishing companies; they are all doing a lot of e-learning now. Publishing companies should be more accustomed to telecommute work; after all, they don’t have all their authors working in cubicles.

General Job Searching

For all that the big job boards (i.e., Monster & Careerbuilder) get dinged, I personally found them to be helpful. I’ve gotten jobs through both Monster and Careerbuilder, as well as the eLearning Guild’s job board. Certainly networking is still important and online job boards shouldn’t be your only strategy, but there seemed to be a lot of recruiters looking for IDs on Careerbuilder two years ago. Posting your resume wouldn’t take too much time, and it would make you more visible.

Curt Bonk assembled a terrific list of resources for finding instructional technology jobs.

I think anyone who is looking for a job should be on LinkedIn. It lets you build your network and see how you’re connected to companies you might like to work for. Although the author of Linked Intelligence isn’t updating much anymore, the archives of this blog have great information on how to use LinkedIn.

Your Suggestions

What advice would you give to someone looking for a telecommute instructional design job? Are there resources I should have suggested but left off my list? I know my list is fairly US-centric; I’m just not at all familiar with what else is out there in the world.

What have your experiences been finding instructional design jobs where telecommuting is an option?

Update: Read all my posts about Instructional Design Careers.

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Technorati Tags: instructionaldesign, telecommute, career, job

Image: ‘Day 2: Now THIS is what I call telecommuting…‘
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TCC08: Making Distance Learning Courses Accessible

Making Distance Learning Courses Accessible to Students with Disabilities

Presenters:

• Adam Tanners, Doctoral Student in Exceptionalities, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI
• Kavita Rao, Educational Technology Specialist, Pacific Resources for Education and Learning, Honolulu HI

Overview

• Background
• Legal Mandates
• Four Scenarios
• Conclusion

Four student profiles

• Matthew: Blind
• Marlee: Deaf
• Albert: Learning disability–difficulty reading large blocks of text, overwhelmed by too much info
• Steven: physical disability–unable to use standard mouse or keyboard, voice is soft & hard to understand

Assistive Technology = anything that increases, maintains, or improves “functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities”

Universal Design

Tools:

• Many built into computers
• More available specialized

Instructional Methods

• Address diverse learning styles–multimodal materials
• Alternate methods of presentation & evaluation

Laws

• IDEA: K-12 setting, “least restrictive environment”
• ADA, Title II
• Rehabilitation Act Section 504 & 508

Issue isn’t just whether students have access, but whether the communication is actually as effective as that provided to others. It’s not just whether it’s possible, but how usable it is.

Scenario

Online course with asynchronous (LMS) & synchronous (Web conferencing)

• Text-based files
• Threaded discussions
• Video files & audio podcasts
• Interactive online class meetings

Matthew (Blind)

• Limitations
  • Reading & inputting text on screen
  • Seeing graphics & video
• Accommodations
  • Screen reader
  • Refreshable Braille display
  • Braille textbook

Tips for Matthew

• Alt text for all graphical content
• Create textual content in HTML, text, or accessible PDF (PDF needs to have the meta information with the text, not just an image of the text)
• Create descriptive audio for videos (i.e., have someone describe the video)

Question: How accessible is Sakai?
Answer: Not sure yet–he hasn’t tested it

Marlee: Deaf

Limitations

• Hearing audio content
• Hearing and speaking during synchronous meetings

Accommodations

• Captioning
• Alternative text for audio (i.e., transcript)
• Video conferencing

Tips for Marlee

• Elluminate has real-time captioning available (I’ve never seen anyone use this in a presentation before–very nicely done. It requires someone to type it out, but it’s possible.)
• Can use a relay system with video interpreter
• Select pre-made videos with captioning
• Caption videos that you create for the course
• Provide the script for narrated presentations & podcasts
• If you use a script for your presentations, you have a transcript already for accessibility

Albert: LD

Limitations

• Large blocks of text
• Dense information

Accomodations

• Text-to-speech software

Tips

• Create textual content in HTML, text, or accessible PDF (same as Matthew)
• Course design–good use of white space, good design principles

Steven: Physical

Limitations

• Keyboard & mouse
• Turning pages in printed text

Accommodations

• Alternative computer input (too much to go into in this session–lots of options)
• Electronic text

Tips

• Course design (including big icons to make better “targets” for less accurate input devices)
• Electronic version of all reading materials, including textbook

Conclusion

Tips often overlap–things that help one student often help others too

PowerPoint slides–don’t JUST read them, but if you read them it, then that content is available via audio

Not every instructor can do all of these–students should be proactive about asking for which parts they need. Know your audience.

Question: If you could only do 1 or 2 of these tips, which would have the most impact?
Answer:

• Captioning videos–even people who don’t have hearing disabilities may use it.
• Electronic text–give people ability to access it

Read the other liveblogged posts from this conference.

Technorati Tags: tcc08, tcc2008, accessibility, online+learning, universal+design

TCC08: Extreme Makeover: Course Edition

This is another liveblogged post from the TCC 2008 conference. The presenter is Robin Bartoletti, Texas Women’s University, Denton, Texas , USA.

She does course redesigns–has done over 80 of them

Goal is to make courses easier to look at and navigate

Mix it up

• More than just text
• Multimedia–you can find things online
• Many instructors rely overly on PowerPoint

Agenda

• Users
• Redesign
• Navigation = curb appeal
• Resources
• Information Basics
• Testing & Evaluation
• Examples

Users

• Who are your users?
• Traditional or nontraditional students?
• Experienced or not?

Redesign Rules

• Get small
  • Small steps–don’t need to do everything at once or use every Web 2.0 tool available
  • Small chunks–chop content into bite-sized pieces, make it more readable
  • Small links–focused research with refined searches, use existing directories instead of creating your own

Navigation

• Includes a “Start here” link in the navigation I think this might be a good thing for us to copy when we switch to the new LMS
• Submenus have instructional goals explicitly visible
• Checklists of content–if you do everything on this list, you have finished this module

Blog has examples of resources, data visualization, favorite tools (most free, some paid)

Information Basics

• This is the “Start here” info
• Syllabus, calendar, course map, policies
• Where to get help

Testing & Evaluation

• Usability testing
• Student satisfaction
• Faculty satisfaction

Tips

• Fun
• Simple
• Small steps
• Conversational–course evaluations are better for courses with a conversational tone
• Interactivity–more than just reading and discussion
• No lecture pages–no big long text
• Online is different
• No “books”–”Don’t put War and Peace online.” They won’t read it.
  She gave an example of a course where you could watch 170+ slides, or you could watch the slides while listening to the audio of the instructor reading the 170+ slides. Her choice? Neither!
• Check Teaching Naked
• This is all stuff we’re already working on with PLS courses–nice to see that we’re on the right track

Examples

• Visual test with maps–created in WebCT, can be done elsewhere too
• Zip files for Blackboard course available on blog

Read the other liveblogged posts from this conference.

Technorati Tags: interactivity, multimedia, usability, navigation, coursedesign, tcc08

My Goal: Better E-Learning Interactivity

The Learning Circuits Big Question for April is

What would you like to do better as a Learning Professional?

My overarching professional development goal right now is to improve the interactivity in the courses I develop. Because we’re a small company and a small team, any interactivity needs to be something I can do myself—there’s no Flash developer to pass it off to. I’ve done a few things in the courses I’ve done so far, but I know this is an area where I have huge room for improvement.

How am I planning to reach this goal?

• More Captivate: I’ve done some small-scale branching exercises and some short scenarios and cases. I know I can integrate more of those with these graduate courses.
• Learning Flash: I’ve been veeery slowly trying to learn Flash for months. I put it aside for a while, but I’m trying to pick it up again now. I see Flash as something I’d probably integrate with Captivate activities when I can’t quite do what I want in Captivate. I don’t expect to be a great Action Script programmer, but knowing some of that animation would help give me more options in Captivate.
• Reading: All the blog reading I do is certainly part of my personal learning, and I do look for information on effective interactivity. I’ve been doing my research and saving my links. Dead tree format is still helpful too; I really enjoy Michael Allen’s books. I’m reading William Horton now and expecting to get more ideas.
• Games & Simulations: I haven’t done any games for this job, but I think there’s some possibilities. We have a course on classroom management that I’m hoping to spend time improving later this year. Right now, the course includes pages and pages of snippets of research findings on classroom management. It’s great info, but it’s so boring that I couldn’t even finish reading it myself. I’d love to see what I can do for a low-tech game that gives learners a chance to apply that research in a simulated classroom and have consequences for their actions.

Not a big philosophical goal, I know, but this question seemed to lend itself to the practical goal and how I’m hoping to work to improve.

What do you want to do better as a learning professional?

Technorati Tags: interactivity, goal, Learning+Circuits, LCBQ, Captivate, Flash

Observations on If, When, & How Much Instructional Design

Image citation
Really Random? from
Dan Morelle’s photostream.

OK, I know I’ve been a slacker. It’s March 6, and I’m finally getting my thoughts together on the February Learning Circuits Big Question. I’d started this a while back and had hoped to spend more time analyzing and trying to bring the trends together, but it just hasn’t happened. Hopefully my observations will still be beneficial even without a complete analysis.

It Depends

One of the most common responses to the question “Instructional Design: If, When, & How Much” was “it depends.” As Benjamin Hamilton noted, that’s the obvious answer. Several people talked about different types of instructional design for different needs.

• Cammy Bean used the great image of ID as a spectrum.
• Mick Leyden differentiated between traditional instructional design and ID consulting
• Clark Quinn separated typical instructional design from the “enlightened” variety.

I think this balance of multiple variables may be part of why however was one of the top 50 words used in the posts, as shown in the tag cloud.

Analysis

One word that didn’t show up in the tag cloud that surprised me was analysis. Several people mentioned the value of instructional designers in analyzing situations, even if the ultimate solution doesn’t involve an ID. For example, Don Clark argued that part of our value as IDs is recognizing when a project is simple enough to pass onto a SME. Tony Karrer’s response to Jay Cross discusses how instructional designers break down learning tasks; I think that’s analysis even if he never uses that exact word. Bill Brandon offered several questions to help analyze whether a project actually needs an ID or whether a less costly solution would be “good enough.” A definition of instructional design from Jeffrey Keefer says we “systematically determine learning needs and create learning interventions to meet them,” which to me sounds like analysis is the first half of the definition.

Focus on the Project

In both of the above themes I saw a focus on the needs of a specific project. By “project” here, I’m including the content, audience, and the instructional designers as variables.

• Looking at the content, Karl Kapp said “The real value of an instructional designer is knowing when to apply what instructional strategies to what type of content.”
• Tony Karrer described a situation where the audience is already familiar with the content but hasn’t changed their behavior, looking at that angle of a project.
• Cammy Bean mentions the specific experience of the ID as one of the variables in a project.

Does any of this help clarify your thoughts about March’s question, the scope of our responsibility as learning professionals, or does it just muddy the waters?

Technorati Tags: learning+circuits, lcbq, analysis

Patterns in Instructional Design Responses

I’ve been reviewing the responses to February’s Learning Circuits Big Question: “Instructional Design: If, When, and How Much?” Because this has generated so many responses, there’s just a lot of content to absorb. To help me see the patterns, I created this tag cloud using TagCrowd. I excluded the words instructional, designer, design, learning, and e-learning, which were very common but I felt didn’t help me see the trends in the responses.

I’m still processing all this information myself, but I thought I’d share the tag cloud now. What stands out to you in the patterns? Are there any surprises?

Technorati Tags: tbq, lcbq, learning+circuits, tags, visualization

Formal or Informal Masters for Instructional Designers?

In his recent post We Need a Degree in Instructional Design, Karl Kapp argues that simply practicing instructional design isn’t enough; anyone who calls themselves an instructional designer should have a degree in it. He’s added a great image from Kathy Sierra that says “I’d make a good brain surgeon, because I HAD brain surgery.”

Karl makes several points that I agree with (this is my summary, not his):

• There’s too much bad instructional design out there.
• Instructional designers should be able to apply multiple instructional strategies, according to the needs of the situation.
• Instructional designers should be able to articulate why they make the decisions they make, backing it up with research.
• Understanding the theories and the research will help improve instructional design.
• Everyone can always learn more about learning and instructional design.

Although I agree with all these points, I’m not convinced by the conclusion he draws from these points:

I have to say that in my extremely biased opinion…a degree is not only needed, it should be required!

I don’t see graduate school as the only way for individuals to meet the goal of becoming better instructional designers. Shouldn’t people who design learning for others also be able to design their own learning paths? Is formal education the only option, or is it possible to do an “informal masters” on your own?

This is not to say that there’s no value in a masters degree; I’ve certainly heard from lots of people who have found it to be very beneficial. I have every reason to believe that I personally would learn a great deal in a well-designed program. I’m also not claiming that people who have that formal education can’t and don’t gain from the informal methods too. Karl’s a great example of this. He’s out there learning in public even though he has his terminal degree; he clearly sees learning as a lifelong process.

My disagreement is with these formulas.

• Masters Degree = Good Instructional Design
• No Masters Degree = Bad Instructional Design

It isn’t that simple. I’ve seen atrocious design from people with the credentials, and I’ve seen people like Cammy Bean and Cathy Moore who do fabulous work but don’t have the degrees.

Clark Quinn’s explanation falls more in the middle, rather than having an either/or formula. Being a “reflective practitioner” can give motivated people the background and knowledge of that “informal masters” and achieve many of the goals from Karl’s post.

The benefit of the Master’s is the chance to get to know the theories (depending on the program and instructor). The pedagogy for the course should include applying the theories to pragmatic design, not just reciting back the contents (I used to use RFP’s asking for designs or redesigns using the theories). It’s not the only way, but being familiar enough with the underlying principles to be able to adapt the design to match the circumstances is important…

Note that Cammy is a ‘reflective practitioner’ to use Schön’s term, as she reads and reflects on what she does. That’s why she’s effectively done her own ‘masters’ in learning/ISD. So, I’m not comfortable with trusting experience over time to yield competent results, I think it takes someone being an ongoing learner. That’s easier in a well-designed program, though the caveat is that all programs are not necessarily well-designed.

The above image is from Kathy Sierra’s post Does College Matter? but the quote I want to close with is from her Ten Tips for Trainers.

But with that out of the way, nobody needs a PhD (or in most cases — any degree at all) in education or learning theory to be a good teacher. Just as there are plenty of great software developers and programmers without a CompSci degree. People can be self-taught, and do a fabulous job, for a fraction of the cost of a formal education, but they have to be motivated and they have to appreciate why it’s important.

Let the debate continue!

Update: Read all my posts about Instructional Design Careers here.

Technorati Tags: Karl+Kapp, Clark+Quinn, Kathy+Sierra, Cammy+Bean, Cathy+Moore, instructionaldesign, masters, education, informal