Abstract
Collecting and analyzing data for continuous improvement of student learning has been a staple of the United States education system for the past two decades, but K-12 education is experiencing a paradigm shift to online learning. Teachers in face-to-face environments have experience monitoring student learning and collecting data through formative assessment. Assessment strategies implemented in face-to-face classrooms can be modified for an online learning environment. Additionally, higher education has utilized online platforms far longer than K-12 education and have extensive knowledge on data collection in an online learning environment. K-12 pre-service and in-service teachers can learn from the trials and tribulations of higher education in online learning. Lastly, teacher educators need to respond to this change in the instructional environment by altering their current curriculum to prepare preservice teachers to teach in an online environment. This chapter addresses these issues and provides practical examples and strategies for data collection in K-12 online learning environments.
TopIntroduction
Online and distance learning experienced a surge during the COVID-19 Pandemic. The United States Census Bureau reported 93% of households with school-age children (McElrath, 2020) and 1.2 billion children globally learned (Li & Lalani, 2020) in an online learning environment in 2020. Online learning environments have been slow to develop but are now becoming more prominent in K-12 education, but online learning has been a consistent entity in higher education for over two decades. The first completely online course was offered in 1984 by the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Sarkar, 2020). In 2003, the popular learning management system, Blackboard, reported that 40,000 instructors taught 150,000 online courses to more than six million students in 55 countries (“The History of Online Schooling”, 2022). Costa et al. (2021) reported that by the fall of 2018, one third of almost 19.7 million students enrolled at degree-granting post-secondary institutions had taken online courses.
Unfortunately, most K-12 educators are still attempting to acclimate to online learning environments and effectively instructing and engaging their students. This is due to K-12 education still developing the infrastructure and culture of online learning for their student population. One of the numerous obstacles in this transition is ensuring the continuous improvement of student learning. Middleton (2020) describes continuous improvement as “the process of making a value judgment about the merit of the student’s academic accomplishment to aid in the improvement of future student learning” (p.1). Traditionally, during face-to-face instruction, teachers rely on in-the-moment observations, written and verbal formative assessment, summative assessment data, student interactions, and a variety of other data sources to make judgments about student learning. Online instruction does not afford the same experiences and therefore attention is required to address this crucial aspect of teaching and learning. Many questions exist for ensuring the continuous improvement of student learning in an online environment, such as:
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What strategies and tools are available to online instructors to ensure their students are learning and demonstrating continual improvement?
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What data is accessible and how is it best used?
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What can the K-12 sector learn from higher education about monitoring continuous improvement?
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How can teacher education programs revise their curriculum and instruction to ensure pre-service teachers are prepared for online and face-to-face methods of assessment?
These questions will be addressed along with strategies and examples for K-12 pre-service and in-service teachers throughout this chapter. As well as recommendations for teacher educators for altering their curriculum.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Online Formative Assessment: Formative assessments embedded in online learning environments utilizing technology platforms for implementation
Learning Management System: The online or digital platform that is used to deliver materials, resources, and instruction and serves as the location for digital interactions between students and instructor.
Face-to-Face Learning Environment: Traditional in-seat instructional environment. Also referred to as brick-and-mortar school.
Continuous Improvement: An iterative cycle of evaluation/assessment, analysis, and change to ensure progress towards mastery.
Online Learning Environment: Web-based platform/classroom that provides instructional and educational experiences for students and teachers. This is meant to provide a learning environment in which students and instructors/teachers are located in separate physical spaces.
Formative Assessment: Written, oral, or visual assessments that inform learning. These assessments can be in the moment assessments or preplanned assessments. The intent of these assessments is the learning about student understanding.
Educational Data: Any quantitative or qualitative metric collected about students to be referenced for educational, classroom, or instructional analysis and decision making.
Data-Driven Decision-Making: The systematic, preplanned use of assessments by instructors/teachers to collect, organize, and analyze data on student learning followed by the implementation of instructional changes.