A key element of the Digital Learning Collaborative is our willingness to consider views and data different than our own. That doesn’t mean that we take new information at face value, but that we consider the data, and check our own sources, experiences, and assumptions.

Sometimes what is being said is less important than who is saying it.

A recent report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) falls into this category. Why? Because while CRPE has in the past been somewhat negative towards online learning, a report it issued in January is fairly positive. In fact, it sounds very much like what Digital Learning Collaborative members have been saying. This latest study suggests that perhaps the pandemic has changed some minds at CRPE. (To be clear, I don’t mean that as a negative comment. When facts change, as they have in the past two years, a change of opinion is often appropriate.)

It’s jarring to leave the 1500+ educators taking part in DLAC—nearly all of whom believe in the promise of digital learning—and be thrust back into the larger world where so many people believe that online learning is inherently inferior. It feels, however, that there are more quotes like the one above, suggesting that even as pandemic-induced remote schooling wanes, more people recognize that online learning can work well. As explored below, this example comes from post-secondary education. Although some people might question the relevance to K-12, arguably a post-secondary perspective is especially important, because of the implications of the educational world we are preparing students for.

It’s been a busy week at DLAC in Atlanta and online!

The entire DLAC team is incredibly grateful for the support and energy of the DLC community. We had more than 1,000 DLAC attendees in Atlanta and just under an additional 500 online. Attendees joined from 47 states and eight countries, and from mainstream districts, charter schools, intermediate units, private schools, state agencies, non-profit organizations, and companies—representing all of the types of organizations coming together to create new options for students.

As we are heading into the main DLAC days in Atlanta and online next week, we are thrilled to announce the release of the 2022 Digital Learning Snapshot.

The Snapshot both informs and is informed by our work with the DLC and DLAC, and as such readers who are joining us in Atlanta will see some key Snapshot themes reflected in the conference. Here we give a few main points.

The last two years have given policymakers across the nation an opportunity to examine, identify, and consider possible policy changes for online learning options. Too many education leaders at the state level (before the arrival of COVID-19) were convinced by influential entities that online learning was not really a needed option, and often that online learning was a less than ideal way to teach and learn. (Interestingly enough, over the course of the pandemic, many of these entities became the strongest advocates of keeping schools closed and advocating for remote options.)

The last blog post ended with this observation:

Too much of public education is clinging to practices that don’t serve students. Instead, we need to create more spaces, for more students, to learn in the ways they learn best.

The examples exist.

Two additions to that final line: 1) the examples are often in schools that are using technology to eliminate time and space barriers, and 2) many mainstream observers are apparently unaware of these online and hybrid schools.

The last post suggested that we might be a bit more straightforward and even critical about what we’re seeing in digital learning, and education more broadly, than we have been in the past.

A good starting point comes from a recent podcast titled “Our Workplaces Think We’re Computers. We’re Not.” The podcast conversation is between host Ezra Klein and guest Annie Murphy Paul, author of a new book, “The Extended Mind.” As the podcast title suggests, the conversation is mostly focused on work, not school. But the concepts apply to schools as much as to work—hence adapting the title to this blog post—and the conversation even touches on education.

Recently I’ve been asked quite a few times for my predictions about what’s going to happen with digital learning in 2022, in particular as the effects of the pandemic wane. Beyond my usual stock answer—I’m not good at predictions, particularly about the future—I’ve come to believe that we as a Digital Learning Collaborative should be taking a stronger stance.

The following is a lightly edited excerpt from our forthcoming Digital Learning Annual Snapshot 2022

In the early stages of the pandemic, seemingly every publication and website declared that “COVID-19 changes everything.”

Whether or not the pandemic will have long-lasting effects on K–12 instruction remains to be seen. What is clear, as of late 2021, is that the pandemic had limited effects on policy, aside from the large amount of funding provided from the federal government to states and in turn to school districts.

Are learning pods likely to have a real impact on education, or are they over-hyped? My conclusions, after digging through quite a bit of information and interviewing two key people at Prenda:

• Learning pods and microschools are not the same thing, although they are often conflated and overlap in some ways.

• Learning pods, by most definitions, are over-hyped and unlikely to have major impacts on education (notwithstanding that they may be very helpful to relatively small numbers of students and families).

• The jury is still out on microschools. They are both interesting and very early stage.

That’s the SparkNotes version. If you’re interested in more detail, read on.

We’ve been working on our latest Digital Learning Snapshot (see previous Snapshots here), and have some preliminary findings to report.

Online school enrollment numbers in school year 2020-21
As long-time readers of the Snapshot and the prior Keeping Pace reports may recognize, for many years we have been reporting on how many students are enrolled in fully online schools which enroll students from across entire states. We choose this data point for two reasons. First, it’s a valuable number that reflects the status of the highest-impact form of digital learning, from a student perspective. Second, we can get these numbers within a reasonable time frame from state agencies.

High-achieving students who choose a virtual learning program are often seeking both flexibility and a rigorous academic program that emphasizes the importance of learning as they prepare for their future. Recently, I spoke with a select group of high school students who attended a virtual learning program prior to the pandemic and continued in a virtual learning program through their graduation last spring or even now as they enter their senior year. These students were identified as high-achieving students by their teachers; several students were also student athletes. Through these conversations, my goal was to learn from them what it takes to be successful in a virtual learning environment. While this sample size was small, the depth of the conversations was highly valuable, consistent from student to student, and aligned with what we have heard from other sources.

According to Educause, 40% of college students report spending between three to four hours a day working online - whether that’s homework or research. Additionally, while 2020 may be considered the year of “remote work,” it is just the beginning as Global Workplace Analytics estimates that 70% of the workforce will be working remotely at least five days a month by 2025.

A recent post looked at some issues in digital learning versus ed tech. That post argued that traditional ed tech is based on and in traditional schools and physical classrooms, and as such is not transformative in the ways that online and hybrid instruction are, because online/hybrid programs eliminate time and space constraints.

Digital learning—in the forms of online and hybrid instruction—is a subset of education technology that also transcends ed tech.

This is a simple observation that quite a few educators, policymakers, researchers, and advocates miss. Or, perhaps they would agree, but they don’t think about it very much.

We often discuss the reasons that students choose online or hybrid schools: flexibility to pursue a variety of interests, catching up on courses or getting ahead, physical and mental health issues, and so on.

Another reason, although less discussed, is that high school students who have taken at least one course online may be better equipped to handle college, where an ever-increasing number of students are taking one or more online courses.

A recent post looked at results from a survey sponsored by the Christensen Institute, finding that “room and Zoom” hybrid instruction was common but not popular, and a substantial number of districts plan to continue with some form of online learning.

We have reported that much of the hybrid learning that has taken place during the pandemic was of the “room and Zoom” variety, in which a teacher instructed students both in the physical classroom, and online, at the same time. Our sources have been the districts and other organizations that we work with, and consistent media reports (see here and here, for example.) We have been confident that our view is likely accurate, but it’s still valuable to see a study that digs further into these issues using a survey of teachers and district administrators.

Last week we announced the release of the Digital Learning Collaborative’s latest study, exploring “The Intersection of Career Readiness and Digital Learning.” In a related blog post, I explained the first two of three reasons I found this study so engaging. First, the innovative work being done by so many of our DLC members was amazing to see in print. Second, the study lays out the intersection between digital learning and career learning really nicely—a topic that we will discuss on next week’s DLC webinar.

That column ended with the comment that I would explain the third reason I found the study gratifying in a future post—this one.