Photo by Erin Nelson
virtual learning
Drew Wilder, 10, a fourth-grade student at Riverchase Elementary, works on a Google Chromebook as he completes math assignments in the program IXL, while sitting in a hammock in his front yard on Monday, April 6, 2020. Students across the Birmingham-area began the eLearning platform from home, after schools had been closed since March 18, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo by Erin Nelson.
Eighteen percent of the parents in the Hoover school system say they aren’t comfortable with their children returning to school campuses in August, and 20% would rather do school completely virtual again, according to a survey.
Another 34 percent said they might be interested in full-time virtual instruction for the 2020-21 school year, said Ron Dodson, a central office administrator.
That’s based on a survey completed by 3,183 households the week after school let out, representing 5,460 of the school system’s 14,000 students, Dodson said.
If those survey results are representative of the entire district’s population, that could mean anywhere from 2,700 to 7,400 students might opt for full-time virtual instruction in the 2020-21 school year, he said.
“That’s a big change in a short period of time,” Dodson said. “We have 1,065 saying absolutely sign me up … This is a really big deal.”
Parents of incoming first-graders represented 43% of those who favored a virtual school experience this coming year, while only 2 percent of households with students entering grades 10-12 favored a virtual school experience, according to the survey results.
Dodson said he hopes that most students are able to start the school year face to face with teachers and their peers because having those relationships established is one reason why the virtual instruction worked this spring. The students and parents already knew the teachers, and the students in given classrooms knew one another, he said.
However, he recommends that parents be given the option for their children to take part in virtual instruction.
And the school district needs to be prepared for all students to go to virtual instruction again if a serious resurgence in the COVID-19 disease occurs or some other problem requires it, such as a transportation issue or shortage in school cleaning supplies, Dodson said.
For that reason, school officials plan to spend $1.2 million to buy Chromebooks for students in kindergarten through second grade.
Students in grades 3-12 have had Chromebooks available for their use, but the K-2 students had paper instructional packets sent home periodically as the school year ended with home-based instruction.
Superintendent Kathy Murphy said teachers discovered that many of those K-2 students were ready to have instruction supplemented by technology. Dodson said one way teachers were able to help those K-2 students advance this past spring was when they were able to use their personal device or their parents’ devices to get additional instruction.
Murphy said she doesn’t believe technology is the best way to provide instruction for K-2 students, but it could be a good supplemental tool in the event that all instruction goes virtual again.
And K-2 students can begin using those devices in the classroom on campus, Murphy said.
The school district plans to use $400,000 in federal CARES Act (COVID-19 relief) money to help pay for the new Chromebooks, plus use $800,000 that initially was to be used for new projectors in the middle schools, Murphy said. The Chromebooks for K-2 students were deemed a higher priority, and the school district can look at funding the middle school projectors the following year, she said.
MANY QUESTIONS REMAIN
There still are many questions about how students will be able to return to campus in August, Murphy said.
One of the big issues is transportation. Guidelines issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend school buses have only one student per seat and every other seat empty.
“There are not enough buses, nor enough drivers, to be able to get children to school in that sort of fashion,” Murphy said.
Other questions concern how meals will be served and how physical education, band and choir instruction will proceed, she said.
State schools Superintendent Eric Mackey is expected to release his “Roadmap to Reopening Alabama Schools” on June 19 and discuss it with superintendents during meetings June 22-24, Murphy said.
State officials are also planning to offer a statewide virtual learning program that allows students from across the state to participate, but also allows local school districts to continue to count students as being in their district for funding purposes.
However, details of that statewide program are still in development. Hoover City Schools also has its own virtual school program that already exists.
HOW DID VIRTUAL SCHOOL WORK THIS SPRING?
The survey done by the Hoover system also asked parents and teachers to evaluate how virtual instruction went this past spring.
Murphy said she was impressed how district officials and teachers redesigned their instructional plans to fit a virtual model in just 15 days.
Dodson said he believes it was as successful an endeavor as they could have hoped, but he also hopes they can learn from this past spring’s experience so they can make improvements for the future.
Parents and teachers were asked to rate their overall satisfaction with the virtual learning experience on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being not beneficial and not a good use of time and 5 being challenging but an enjoyable learning experience.
Eighty-five percent of parents and 89% of teachers rated the experience 3 or better.
Parents and teachers both agreed students probably had too much work to do from home but assessed the quality of the work being done as high.
Parents said they liked that the virtual learning experience allowed their children flexibility in time scheduling and the ability to pace themselves, and they also liked the scheduled times for students to meet with their peers and teachers via the Google Meet software, Dodson said.
Parents also thought the lessons were well-designed and engaging and liked that parents were more involved in learning and that their children were still able to learn some new material while at home.
But parents also thought the virtual learning experience did not provide enough interaction with teachers and the children’s peers and made it difficult for parents who had to teach their own children while balancing demands from their jobs.
Parents, especially those of younger students, needed more guidance, especially with math instruction because math is taught much differently than it was when many of the parents were in school.
Parents also felt grading expectations needed to be more clear, and they frequently were frustrated with having so many different communication tools and different software platforms to navigate, particularly parents who had multiple children at different grade levels, Dodson said.
"It probably would help to have a common online learning management system with all the content and communication tools in one place," he said.
One of the key takeaways from the survey is that developing a sense of community remains an essential element of successful learning, Dodson said.
"It really helped when principals and teachers sent encouraging videos to further the idea that everyone was on the same team," he said.
School officials plan to communicate more about what the coming year looks like once they learn more about mandates and guidelines coming from the state, Murphy said.
