UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Pennsylvania School Study Council (PSSC), a partnership between Penn State and member school districts, Intermediate Units, and career and technology centers, has been awarded a two-year grant by the Pennsylvania Department of Education (DOE) to develop a Distance Learning Network comprising educators across the commonwealth to develop, implement and share effective strategies for distance learning in the K-12 system.
Founded in 1947, PSSC is dedicated to improving public education in Pennsylvania by providing up-to-date research information, professional development activities and technical assistance that will enable its members to provide top-quality educational services to students.
“This particular project is really aligned with our mission to bring evidence-based practices into the field,” said Peggy Schooling, professor of practice of education (educational leadership) and executive director of PSSC.
The DOE grant award for the first year of the Distance Learning Network project is $200,000, with $101,500 awarded in the second year. The grant is in conjunction with the PAsmart initiative, launched by Gov. Tom Wolf in 2018 to support local education agencies (LEAs) across the commonwealth in the development of 21st-century science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), and computer science skills. This work includes updating the science, technology, engineering, environment and ecology standards; building the capacity of STEM and computer science educators; and establishing STEM teaching and learning leadership networks.
PSSC will collaborate on the project with Pennsylvania’s 29 regional educational service agencies known as Intermediate Units (IUs).
Riverside Intermediate Unit IU 6 will be the lead support on the project. PSSC, along with partners WestEd, NextGenScience, Penn State College of Education, National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, Bright Now, IUs and LEAs will provide professional learning and technical assistance to design and implement opportunities that support distance education at the intersection of STEM and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).
Rebecca Heiser, a former instructional designer and applied research coordinator for Penn State World Campus and a doctoral student in distance education at Athabasca University, is leading the Distance Learning Network project with Schooling. She also worked on a distance education initiative last year with Schooling and William Diehl, associate teaching professor of education (lifelong learning and adult education) and coordinator of online graduate programs. Heiser said the new project continues that effort and has a much broader scope.
“This year, we will begin to extend and expand our work to form a network of educators across the commonwealth who will be engaging and thinking about technology-enhanced learning through blended or distance learning capacities,” she said.
According to Schooling, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced school districts nationwide to switch to remote learning in spring 2020, it exposed a lot of shortcomings in the distance learning models that were in place in Pennsylvania. For one, many schools didn’t have a learning management system — which is used by learning institutions, educators and students to access and manage online course learning materials and communicate about skill development and learning achievement. In addition, a lack of broadband internet access and connectivity in many areas in the commonwealth has been and continues to be a barrier in delivering effective online instruction.
“(Educators) had to ‘build the plane while flying it’ and didn’t necessarily understand the elements of effective practices in modalities such as blended or asynchronous learning,” Schooling said.
“When COVID hit, I reached out to the Pennsylvania Department of Education to offer assistance,” she said. “That led to working with the Department of Education on a series of (five) webinars available to everyone in the state. (However), we recognized this wasn’t enough. It wasn’t sufficient to really change practice across the state.”
According to Heiser, the revamped project will address the systemic challenges and barriers to implementing high-quality distance learning by first conducting a statewide survey collecting insights from K-12 educators and school leaders and then implementing them into microlearning course modules. The purpose of the modules is to chunk content into a smaller, more easily adaptable format. The culminating artifact, Heiser said, is a catalog or library of educational tools and resources that other educators can pick up for free and adopt and adjust to meet their unique needs.
One of the biggest challenges in building a distance learning infrastructure, Schooling and Heiser said, is challenging the deeply entrenched view that in-person learning is the most effective model for all students. For example, said Schooling, students who have social-emotional learning difficulties, those who need academic enrichment beyond their prescribed curriculum and students with special learning needs all may benefit from remote learning.
“We have to acknowledge the system we had in place before the global pandemic was not equitable for all students,” Heiser said. “Having choice provides a greater chance of equity for everyone. This is the innovative disrupter for education.”
While the transition to more diverse, flexible learning models in the K-12 system may present challenges, Schooling and Heiser said, they are not starting from scratch. Distance education has a long history that goes back hundreds of years, said Heiser, and is well-established to inform effective practice and implementation. The goal of the Distance Learning Network project is to cultivate the existing knowledge and apply it to the K-12 context in Pennsylvania.
“Penn State has been a leader in higher education distance learning for many years,” said Schooling. “We have both a responsibility and an opportunity to take that knowledge and disseminate it in the field.”
“This is an opportunity to reposition Pennsylvania as a leader in K-12 distance learning,” Heiser added. “We’ve been reactive; now we’ve been given an opportunity to be proactive.”
While the two-year program will end in June 2023, Schooling and Heiser said they see opportunities for future funding.
“We’re putting a foundation and its components in place so our work can scale and all stakeholders can continue our efforts,” Heiser said. “Our focus last year was to think about post-pandemic: what will be the new normal? Our belief is that distance learning and blended learning is the new normal.”