Something that struck me to be important, but not exactly in the context of virtual schools, but research in general... as we read many research reports for the past 2 weeks, I start to wonder
- what motivates the research? Before the research objectives, what motivates the funding agency to spend on research on the set research objectives?
- which audience group do they serve? Have the research outcomes actually benefitted students?
- have the studies really helped inform policies at national and schools level?
I also learnt that researching in a brand new field (online learning) is extremely challenging as seen in many of the reports, where a primary challenge is a limited research base in the K-12 space. Thus, researchers have to be creative and use many different to research on the set topics - meta-analysis, comparative studies, systems dynamics and discourse analysis, content analysis, quasi-experimental study, etc.
And, one other theme that recurs is that objective of comparative studies between f2f and online learning is getting obselete. As this mode of delivery is gaining momentum, stakeholders are no longer interested in just seeing how effective it is in comparison to traditional delivery, especially in view of blended learning. In fact, in this part of the world, blended learning is more common than to have full virtual schools. Thus, I learn that maybe research studies need to be done in a visionary manner, as in, the objectives need to serve a current and potentially future purposes, and these studies will be more valuable if their outcomes can be easily used by educators, parents, students and stakeholders to benefit them.
For example, in my opinion, research that develops prediction instrcutions that help identify successful learner attributes or research that helps identify factors associated with instructional quality and effectiveness, thus helping to inform and improve my teaching practices are all useful researches.
On the whole, I am very impressed by the massive amount of research works done in the US, for education as a whole, not only in virtual schools. While many of such works can be referenced to by many people in various countries, I do think that many education ministries require more resources and focus in local researches as diverse context would likely limit the significance of the results.
Now, turning to what struck me as important, in the context of virtual schools, is the evaluation of many aspects of virtual schools, right from academic performance, to performance of critical components in teaching and learning. Given the limited research base and diverse research techniques to evaluate the programs of virtual schools, i wonder how transferable are the results? How conclusive they are to be applied to policy decision for the whole nation? Given the good performance at VHS, would replicating its model be helping other virtual schools in other context and in other countries perform as well?
Given various standards and benchmarks developed by SREB, NEA, iNacol, etc. are very US-context driven, I wonder if such benchmarks, when applied in other countries, would have any signicant meaning?
On the whole, similar to last week, I do find the discussion around cognitive and affective aspects of distance education, and inspecting the validity and reliability of tools for interactive qualities in course design and instruction of online course very informative and would certainly be useful considerations , should i one day be in the position to run a virtual school / course.