learning matters - pearsonaligning content with standards. to effectively track results of the...

79800.007_0110

Learning Matters: A New Ecosystem of Educational Resources

January 2010


Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc.or its affiliate(s). All rights reserved. 2

Thinking Differently about Instructional Resources There has never been a more exciting, dynamic, or daunting time to be in the field of education as new tools, technologies, and approaches to instruction are driving breakthroughs in teaching and learning that seemed merely theoretical just a few years ago. Although not explicitly addressed in the guidelines for Race to the Top (R2T) and Investing in Innovation (i3) funding, it’s abundantly clear that instructional resources, in general, and digital resources, in particular, will play a critical role in the ability of states to make advances in innovation and reform across the four assurance areas. Quality instructional resources—in a myriad of potential configurations—delivered in a variety of media and devices and mediated by teachers and intelligent learning technologies are all critical components to any plans to improve student performance. Today’s digital natives are open to non-linear, dynamic, and rich educational experiences. In fact, many learners today, and more so every year, have spent their entire lives in an era of immersive video games and high bandwidth online content. Instructional approaches and resources need to adapt to the sensibilities of this changing student population. At the same time, the job of the classroom teacher is more challenging than ever before. It’s unrealistic for teachers to be expected to manually score, analyze, and create lesson plans that take into account the unique needs of each student. Fortunately, we have new instructional resources to automate many of the tasks that make the teacher’s job so complex and inefficient. Breakthroughs in instructional technology are empowering teachers, allowing them to reach more students and freeing them from tasks that take time away from their most important focus: improving classroom instruction. New digital and online resources offer the opportunity for richer and more engaging educational experiences that are personalized to the learning style and level of each student. Moreover, digital curriculum can adapt to user performance, serving up the most helpful, differentiated learning materials to individual students at the optimal

The goal of this paper is to provide an overview of the emerging ecosystem for instructional resources as states consider new models and approaches for driving gains in student performance and college and workforce readiness.

Digital curriculum

can adapt to user

performance, serving

up the most helpful,

differentiated

learning materials to

individual students

at the optimal time.



time. It is now possible for each student to have his or her very own personal tutor to coach them toward dramatic improvements in learning, although that “tutor” is a really an automated homework tool.1

These new instructional resources provide educators and content producers alike with rich data about which content is truly effective with students. This concept of data-driven “two-way learning” replaces the subjectivity educators have relied on historically to assess the strengths, weaknesses, and appropriateness of educational content. Likewise, producers of digital content can now analyze usage, results, and outcomes directly and take action on that data to improve content on a perpetual basis.

Importantly, student interactions with digital content can be tracked and analyzed in ways that alert teachers, parents, and administrators to student performance in real time. This provides an early warning to address learning challenges and the means for personalized and effective interventions.

New Expectations for Instructional ContentUntil recently, most educational materials were professionally created by commercial publishers or produced locally by individuals or small teams of educators. The rise of the Internet and other new technologies has radically transformed the content development, sourcing, and assembly process for both commercial and local producers of content, blurring the boundaries between the two. There are a number of potential advantages to this new world, including but not limited to:

Potential cost savings. One of the reasons the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement has gathered steam is the belief that high quality educational content can be provided much less expensively on the Internet. This was the premise behind Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s announcement of a program that would replace traditional textbooks with free open-source digital versions. While the vision is compelling, expectations on cost savings may be unrealistic. To replace textbooks with eTextbooks would mean, among other things, that every student has access to an eReading device, Smartphone, or computer.2 Even with the advent of $300 netbooks, we are years away from every student having unrestricted access to the Internet. Digital divide issues like these are still very real and must be considered when calculating the financial benefits of digital educational resources.

1 Young-Jin Lee, David J. Palazzo, Rasil Warnakulasooriya and David E. Pritchard, “Measuring student learning with item response theory”, http://relate.mit.edu/papers/CpLPW08SecondAttemptIRTPhysRevSTPhysEducRes3_010102.pdf

2 As Tim Ward, assistant superintendent for instruction in California’s 24,000-student Chaffey Joint Union

High School District, said in a NY Times article on eTextbooks, “A large portion of our kids don’t have computers at home, and it would be way too costly to print out the digital textbooks.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/education/09textbook.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Student interactions

with digital content

can be tracked and

analyzed in ways

that alert teachers,

parents, and

administrators to

student performance

in real time.



While it’s indisputable that the cost of distributing content resources via the Internet is less expensive than traditional models, that’s just one piece of a bigger puzzle. The more important objective is to change the learning model—the way new technologies, print, and digital resources work together—to achieve both financial and academic improvements. In today’s economic environment, achieving one improvement without the other is unsustainable.

The power of collaboration. Blogs, micro-blogs, forums, user groups, podcasts, wikis, and social networks all demonstrate that the right technologies can dramatically enhance our ability to engage with peers and spread the word about best practices. There is a tremendous opportunity to exploit these collaboration and communication tools and technologies to the benefit of teachers and learners, enabling users to upload their own material, “mash it up” with content from other sources, and otherwise share best practices. These new tools are expanding the boundaries of education by breaking down the traditional barriers of location, time, and access to resources, putting more power into the hands of educators, families, and students.

Aligning content with standards. To effectively track results of the learning process, it is important to align outcomes to the agreed-upon academic standards and competencies for a given curriculum. Tying content to standards gives teachers and learners the mechanism to find the content they need, and it gives producers of content meaningful ways of assessing the efficacy of that content. As the sources of content become more diverse, it will be challenging to ensure that content is properly tagged and correlated to standards so users can track and measure results against the standards.

Improving content quality and efficacy. Accuracy, timeliness, and clarity of instructional content all have a dramatic impact on teaching and learning. New technologies have the potential to help improve the quality of content, but we need more than informal mechanisms to track quality and efficacy. Educational materials should correlate to the results they produce. Without formal evidence of improved results, we cannot demonstrate true gains in education.

Educational

materials should

correlate to the

results they produce.

Without formal

evidence of improved

results, we cannot

demonstrate true

gains in education.



Online content delivery systems can collect results data reflecting the learning efficacy of instructional materials. These systems can provide teachers and parents with a “dashboard” providing insight into students’ daily work at a level of detail far beyond just grades.

The expansion of online delivery of educational materials introduces the need for significant investment to ensure reliability and scalability of systems for teachers and students. Quality is not just about producing effective learning experiences; it’s also about creating highly available and highly performing learning systems.

Accessibility. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) legislates how states and public agencies ensure early intervention and special education for children with disabilities, while Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires “federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities.” The technology to support accessibility requirements is getting more advanced. Via screen readers, UI adjustments, and other accessibility mechanisms, smart technology means students with disabilities will have access to the educational materials they need to succeed.

Standards for Content Packaging and Portability. Instructional materials need to interoperate with a broad range of academic technologies and systems. Local Education Agencies (LEAs) and states are adopting learning management system (LMS), content management systems, instructor improvement systems, and formative assessment systems, to name just a few. The form of content creation and packaging is also important to how it is ultimately delivered--whether via a computer, mobile device, eReader, or another device.

Fortunately, industry standards are emerging that address the packaging and portability of content. By employing industry standards, significant benefits accrue by reducing the efforts needed to adjust content to work within different systems. Standards infrastructure aims to maximize the opportunity for reuse, and pave the way for faster, richer adoption.

There are two important standards organizations helping the industry address these problems, and their work is coordinated to create the best possible environment for technology to flourish: Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) within the Department of Defense, developers of SCORM® (Sharable Content Object Reference Model), and the IMS Global Learning Consortium, sponsors of the Common Cartridge framework and Question & Test Interoperability (QTI) specification.

Quality is not just

about producing

effective learning

experiences; it’s

also about creating

highly available and

highly performing

learning systems.



The Emerging Instructional Ecosystem

This is the environment in which educators and commercial providers come together to source, construct, and deliver educational resources to improve education and drive student success. Let’s look at the four main components of this ecosystem.

1. Educational Content SourcesThere is a diverse, seemingly infinite array of content available for education, which we’ve segmented into three types of repositories:

User-Generated Content Repositories – Educators are creating their •own resources all the time and the new ecosystem must provide a means to ingest and assist in managing this content.

Commercial Asset Repositories – Publishers like Pearson provide •access to both supplemental and primary resources in a variety of formats.

Open Educational Resource Repositories – As exemplified by Curriki •or OER Commons.

User GeneratedResources

Open Educational Resources

CommercialResources

Search and Retrieval Content Sources Solutions for Learning Delivery Options

PC/Netbooks

Print InteractiveWhiteboards

Search Services

Captures user behavior such asratings (number of “stars”), personal tags, number of timesviewed, downloaded, shared withothers, used in a homework, etc.

eReaders/Mobile Devices

Searches learning objectrepositories based on metadatasuch as state standards, titles, descriptions, keywords.

Learning Resources(print and digital)

• Lesson plans• Assignments (for class or home)• Class Presentation Materials• Formative and Interim Assessments• Virtual Courses• Group/Collaborative Activities• Books and eBooks• Custom books and course packs• Reference Libraries

Online Learning Systems• Online Homework Systems• Open or Commercial LMS• Instructor Improvement Systems• Portals/Collaboration Sites• Student/Teacher Portfolio Systems• Assessment Management Systems• Gradebook Systems

CONNECTED LEARNINGENVIRONMENT

User GeneratedResources

Open Educational Resources

CommercialResources

Content Sources



It is useful to identify the form that the educational content takes in these repositories:

Simple Content: the most basic form is simple, disaggregated pieces of content in •the form of images, text, videos, assessment items, documents, etc.

Learning Objects/Assessments: Simple content can be assembled to form learning• objects, as well as assessments (collections of questions that make up quizzes and tests).

Specialized Content: This includes Flash objects that export data and assessments •with special behaviors (e.g., adaptive assessment, Lesson Plans).

2. Search ServicesThe overwhelming amount of content on the Internet is at once amazing and frustrating. Fortunately, powerful search engines have been developed to help users sift through the tremendous amount of content.

Although powerful search is helpful, it does not necessarily identify quality content that directly answers a question or addresses a specific need. This is especially true for teachers and students. The typical Google search result containing page after page of text links is not the

only way, nor the most efficient way, to find needed content. Because of this, many new and innovative ways of searching the web have emerged. These new engines allow users to ask a specific question, provide a thumbnail image of the content they point to, place results into “collections,” or rank results based on user behavior.

There are also new tools being used by teachers and students that help to ascertain quality. Tools that originated to support non-educational “social media” (e.g. wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, etc) can help identify quality educational assets such as well written lesson plans, engaging educational videos, or powerful classroom

activities. These tools report on the:

Number of times an asset is viewed (by teachers or students)•

User rating (usually indicated by number of stars)•

Number of times an asset is “favorited”•

Number of times an asset is shared with others•

Number of times an asset is assigned to students as homework•

Qualifications of person creating and/or editing the asset (e.g., Wikipedia model)•

Many content databases, especially open-source databases such as those managed by Curriki and OER Commons, require content providers to add essential information (metadata) about the resource they are uploading. Title, description and keywords are typical, but information such as grade level, intended use, intended user, level of difficulty, or relation to a state standard is even more helpful. This metadata,

The overwhelming

amount of content

on the Internet is

at once amazing and

frustrating.

Search and Retrieval

Search Services

Captures user behavior such asratings (number of “stars”), personal tags, number of timesviewed, downloaded, shared withothers, used in a homework, etc.

Searches learning objectrepositories based on metadatasuch as state standards, titles, descriptions, keywords.



combined with the above indicators of quality, puts us on the road to developing a search engine truly useful to teachers and students.

3. Constructing Solutions for LearningOnce discovered and retrieved, these educational assets need to be incorporated into useable learning resources by the teacher, student, parent, curriculum director, or others.

At times, the content objects will be used in a “standalone” manner and sent directly to one of numerous delivery options. The simplest example might be a text doc that is sent to a printer to hand out to students.

More often though, the learning objects are assembled and combined with other learning content, linked to assessments, placed in a class assignment, included in an online course (or an online part of a hybrid course), and, if the user has the rights, content may be edited or otherwise modified to meet their particular teaching and learning needs.

Types of learning resources include:

Lesson plans: Lesson plans guide the instruction. Good lesson plans must tie to •curriculum standards, as well as other online content that will be used in the lesson, and provide a high degree of detail to be implemented successfully.

Assignments: A learning task for students includes instructions, learning objects, •and references to other materials. Assignments are usually graded and tracked in a gradebook system, and the work can be completed in the classroom, lab, or at home, either online or on paper.

Classroom presentation materials: It takes special design and planning for •educational materials to take advantage of white boards, smart boards, and other classroom technology.

Formative assessments: The collection of questions that are embedded in •instruction can be used by teachers to create tests, including a variety of content and different formats (e.g., multiple choice, true false, essay, performance-based, etc.). Online assessments offer the opportunity to introduce multi-media, and unique question types. Scoring is completed by the teacher, or can be automated for online assessments.

The Six Trends to Watch

1:1 Computing•

Learning •

Management Systems

Online Assessment•

Student Devices•

Interactive Whiteboards•

Internet Bandwidth•

The six topics were

identified from discussions

with school districts,

legislators and business

partners.

Sponsored by ten

organizations including

Pearson.



Interim assessments: These assessments given at specified intervals throughout •the school year are designed to evaluate students’ knowledge and skills relative to a specific set of academic standards, and produce results that can be aggregated (e.g., by course, grade level, school, or LEA) in order to inform teachers and administrators at the student, classroom, school, and LEA levels.

Virtual courses: A collection of different learning resources organized and produced •to form the curriculum for an entire online class. Students use the Internet to access the prescribed educational resources, complete their assignments, interact with their teacher and their peers on a regular and frequent basis, and take assessments to validate learning.

Group/collaborative activities: Group activities bring students together to focus •on problems assigned by the teacher. Virtual activities leverage message boards, online chats, synchronous whiteboards, video, etc.

Books and eBooks: Whether they are open-source or commercial, books and •eBooks are produced to be a reference to a course of study and standards-based to ensure alignment with curriculum.

Custom books and course packs: Publishing technology has advanced to make it •feasible to create unique versions of any textbook (adding or subtracting chapters, changing content, etc). Course packs aggregate materials from a variety of commercial and open sources.

Reference libraries – Stores of information that are available in print or digital are •built to be authoritative sources of accurate information.

The variety of learning resources and applications above can be combined with Online Learning Systems to manage a wide range of learning experiences. The learning systems listed below represent different categories of solutions or applications that institutions can adopt independent of one another. The availability of all of these systems presents both opportunities and challenges. One major challenge is managing data from disparate systems to get a more helpful, real-time view of the learner’s progress. This challenge is addressed by what we call a Connected Learning Environment, which ties multiple systems together into manageable experiences across districts and states. This provides teachers, learners, parents and administrators with a way to manage experiences across the panoply of online learning systems.

One major challenge

is managing data

from disparate

systems to

get a more helpful,

real-time view of the

learner’s progress.



Online Homework Systems: These systems• 3 capture extensive real-time usage data across a large population of students and this data can be used to personalize the learning experience for each student, (e.g. delivery of the content adapts to the student), provide detailed diagnostics to the instructor of each individual student as well as against similar cohorts in other institutions, and finally to provide to the instructor and to the content creator (publisher) data that can be analyzed to determine the quality or efficacy of the content. These kinds of systems tend to be “closed” in that the system itself requires a tight linkage between the content and the metrics captured, and hence may need to limit the introduction of outside content, or the editing of content, in order to preserve the integrity of the cause/effect relationships. Still, the data can be exported and exchanged with some of the following systems.

Open or Commercial Learning Management Systems: Web-based software •application designed to support teaching and learning in an educational setting.

Instructor Improvement Systems: Technology-based tools and other strategies that •provide teachers, principals, and administrators with support and data to manage continuous instructional improvement.

Portals/Collaboration Sites: Internet sites for information sharing and publishing •as well as collaboration and exchange from peer-to-peer, and among teachers, students, parents and administrators.

Student/Teacher Portfolio Systems: These are systems to collect, present, track, •and assess learning artifacts for purposes of evaluation by learning institutions or potential employers.

Assessment Management Systems: A system to create, track, manage, report on •formative and summative assessments. Ultimately, teachers need to diagnose learning challenges and good assessment systems provide the teacher with critical information on how, when, and where to target instruction.

Gradebook Systems: A gradebook system simplifies the tasks teachers perform daily •by creating a central repository for taking attendance and entering grades. Advanced systems promote progressive grading methods, easy creation of assignments, automated performance alerts, and multiple measures of progress. They are designed to allow educators to assess students from many different angles in order to maximize student achievement.

3 A Pearson example would be the “Mastering” online tutoring platform used extensively in college science classes in the U.S. (see http://www.masteringphysics.com)



4. Flexible Delivery OptionsOne of the promises of using modern technologies to create and store content in new ways is that content made once can be used, reused and delivered through multiple devices. Modern technologies are fundamentally changing the way we think about and use content. This provides educators with greater flexibility to choose just the right content to best meet the needs of the learner, including choosing the mode of delivery, e.g. whether to have the identical content delivered in print, on screen, or through an accessible device.

Print: Even in today’s digital learning environment, printed books continue to be the prevailing method of content is delivery. But now the printed book can be delivered in new exciting ways. The mass produced textbook can give way to printed materials that can be

personalized for individual users based on their specific needs.

Computer: The computer allows printed words to be brought to life through animations or interactive activities, simultaneously providing students with a dynamic learning experience and instructors with the opportunity to track student success and intercede. This allows students to work toward mastery through practice and assessment, guided by personalized learning plans.

Mobile: Content delivered through mobile devices provides the opportunity for ubiquitous and location-based learning, bringing the resources of the classroom to wherever the mobile device is being used.

eBook devices: Consumer-oriented “readers” such as the Kindle, the Nook, and the Sony Reader hold great promise, but are not currently designed to facilitate full-color content, full search, end user customizations, such as note taking and sharing. New eBook technologies, however, are emerging that can present electronic content to students in ways that they will embrace, with many of the critical features that will ultimately make them more useful learning tools.

Smart Boards/White Boards: These presentation tools allow educators to pace the delivery of content and to understand how the delivery is being received by each member of the class; synchronizing the speed and agility of the teaching process with the learners.

Modern technologies

are fundamentally

changing the way

we think about and

use content. This

provides educators

with greater

flexibility to choose

just the right content

to best meet the

needs of the learner,

including choosing

the mode of delivery.

Delivery Options

Print InteractiveWhiteboards

eReaders/Mobile Devices

PC/Netbooks



Summary At Pearson, we believe the new instructional ecosystem will present the states with many opportunities to better address the President’s education agenda. Instructional resources always have been an important part of the learning process and will continue to play a much more diverse role in the future. Because educational content is becoming richer, more interactive, more personalizable, and more data-driven, and because there are now systems in place to help educators make more effective use of content, we believe there are more reasons to “think differently” about instruction than ever before.

As the world’s leading content provider, Pearson has the benefit of scale and investments in technology and services to anticipate and develop many of the other components, capabilities, and platforms that support this new ecosystem. In order to help states realize their R2T goals, we are eager to be flexible and creative partner, adapting our capabilities to work effectively in this exciting new era in American education.

For more information on how we can work together, contact [email protected].

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