Mr. Jamey T Fitzpatrick, President/Owner 3101 Technology Blvd, Suite G Lansing, MI 48910 Document Generated On March 16, 2016
TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Description of the School 2 School's Purpose 5 Notable Achievements and Areas of Improvement 7 Additional Information 10
Introduction Every school has its own story to tell. The context in which teaching and learning takes place influences the processes and procedures by which the school makes decisions around curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The context also impacts the way a school stays faithful to its vision. Many factors contribute to the overall narrative such as an identification of stakeholders, a description of stakeholder engagement, the trends and issues affecting the school, and the kinds of programs and services that a school implements to support student learning. The purpose of the Executive Summary (ES) is to provide a school with an opportunity to describe in narrative form the strengths and challenges it encounters. By doing so, the public and members of the school community will have a more complete picture of how the school perceives itself and the process of self-reflection for continuous improvement. This summary is structured for the school to reflect on how it provides teaching and learning on a day to day basis. Page 1
Description of the School Describe the school's size, community/communities, location, and changes it has experienced in the last three years. Include demographic information about the students, staff, and community at large. What unique features and challenges are associated with the community/communities the school serves? Section I Description of the institution's size, community/communities, location, and changes it has experienced in the last 3 years. (Include demographic information about the students, staff, and community at large. Describe unique features and challenges associated with community/communities MVS serves.) The (MVS ), a division of the Michigan Virtual University (MVU ), was formed in 2000 to serve as the champion of online learning for K-12 students in Michigan. Currently, MVS offers over 200 courses including a broad range of core academic courses fully aligned with state standards, college level equivalent courses, enrichment courses, and seven unique world language courses. During the 2014-15 school year, MVS served over 14,000 students from over 500 different Michigan school entities. In 2015-16, MVS celebrated its 200,000th enrollment since its inception. MVU is a non-profit corporation working within a milieu dominated by for-profit companies. MVS is focused more on high quality outcomes for students and less on competing with these for-profit companies that often place their priorities on high enrollments. Students enroll in online courses for a variety of reasons including to resolve scheduling conflicts, to gain access to courses not offered by their local school, to recover credit or to accommodate student request or preference. More rigorous graduation requirements put in place a decade ago, known as the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC), have resulted in more students taking online core courses for the first time in order to resolve a schedule conflict or to allow them to participate in elective courses such as music and world languages over four years. A Michigan law passed in the last few years, Section 21f of Public Act 60 of 2013, allows students enrolled in a public local district or public school academy in grades 6-12 to enroll in up to two online courses during an academic term - or more if parents, students, and school leadership agree that more than two are in the best interest of the child. Those courses are funded by the school district in which the student is enrolled. MVS is funded through a combination of state funding, tuition and grants. The funding is used for the review, development and delivery of MVS courses and other high quality third party courses. MVS only offers courses that include an instructor that usually are certified and highly qualified. There are a few courses where MVS does not employ the instructor, like Mandarin Chinese offered in partnership with the Confucius Institute at Michigan State University and managed by a university professor. MVS does not grant credit or award diplomas independently, but works in partnership and supports local and intermediate school districts that then award credit and ultimately a diploma. This support itself can be a challenge as each local district brings to the process varying degrees of support and expertise that can greatly impact student success. It becomes the responsibility of MVS to provide training in local schools to assist them in planning for and supporting their students participating in an online course. This has been accomplished through, for example, creating special elements in the student information system to assist teachers, parents, and mentors in supporting students, and providing a responsive Help Desk and a knowledgeable Customer Service team who can walk mentors or parents through challenges like access issues with a learning management system (LMS). In addition, the state has mandated one particularly important element of support - schools must provide a face-to-face mentor for any student taking an online course. Because the assignment of staff to that role and their preparation for it varies from school to school, stakeholders have requested assistance from MVU in developing those human resources. To meet that need, resources are being developed. In 2013-14, the Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute (MVLRI), a division of MVU, staff began a qualitative research project, interviewing the mentors of 10 schools across the state who use MVS as a course provider. The result of those interviews and related work with an MVLRI fellow (non-staff working under contract) are three free resources: a guide for Page 2
mentoring online learners, a report of case studies, and a training module for mentors. In 2015, Mentors Matter was put into place. The intent of this initiative is for dedicated staff to work directly with mentors throughout the state to strengthen their practice and help improve outcomes of online learners. Mentors Matter will be providing on-site training, workshops, and technical assistance and be the repository of the online resources mentioned above and those currently being developed. Not only are MVS students scattered throughout Michigan, MVS full time and part-time instructors supporting these students are widely distributed across the state, including instances now and in the past when the instructors have resided out of state. In the last few years, MVS transitioned from 100% part-time consultant instructors to a mix that includes full-time instructors, ieducators (defined below) and parttime instructors. In order to provide continuous professional development and training for these instructors, MVS uses a variety of professional development approaches. Within the first month all instructors take part in MVS Onboarding program. A report by the MVLRI written in 2015, Recruiting, Training, Supporting and Evaluating Online Teachers, revealed that MVS instructors were highly prepared in teaching with 84% of the instructors having a Masters' degree or higher. The ethnic breakdown showed that the instructors were mostly white (93.6%) and a slight majority was female (67.7%). The transition from consultant instructors to part-time staff this year showed a more equal gender distribution of 58% female, 42% male instructors. With a high reliance on part-time instructors that usually teach in a traditional school setting it is expected that a high percentage (86.2%) taught at the secondary level and had an average of 4.9 years teaching for MVS. The MVS Onboarding Program introduces new instructors to MVS policies and procedures and develops the instructors understanding of online and blended learning, introduces effective teaching strategies to engage online learners, and develops skills in using MVS LMS, BlackBoard. This first experience provides the fundamental training in content, course management systems, support, and protocols and ends with a rigorous assessment of each instructor's level of readiness to be assigned their first MVS teaching assignment. Instructors participate in monthly synergy sessions designed to address more complex issues such as pedagogy and differentiation or training on new functions within our operating systems. Training is provided each August at a two-day workshop providing training on technology upgrades, addressing issues at a departmental level and providing a sense of camaraderie. An optional face-to-face professional development day is held the day before the annual Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning conference held each March. A final professional development effort involves the use of MVS lead instructors. Each lead observes each of his/her department sections and instructors in a virtual environment to ensure that all expectations placed on individual instructors are being delivered to students. When a lead encounters a minor deficiency he/she works directly with the instructor to remedy the matter. Though rare, more serious breaches are referred to administration or HR for resolution. Public and private schools across the state of Michigan faced with annual reductions in funding are struggling to maintain comprehensive curricular offerings. In the past where it might have been possible to retain an AP calculus teacher who only had 6-10 students, or a French IV teacher with the same numbers, districts now find it difficult, if not impossible, to do so. In response, schools increasingly turn to MVS, to maintain these offerings in their catalog. This is most often the case in smaller suburban or rural districts that fear losing students to larger districts through school of choice opportunities if students and parents are not able to enroll in all the courses they want. Recent research by the MVLRI indicates that MVS delivers a high percentage of Michigan online Advance Placement and world language courses. Local schools are also struggling with where and how this new and engaging content and delivery system fits into the bigger picture at their schools. Students are eager to use digital content and engaging online activities. Most local teachers are not trained to find and acquire quality online content much less understand where and how it can be used in their classrooms to provide an enhanced student experience. MVS works with the Instructional Product Development (ipd) group to determine the priority for development of new courses, revisions and updates to existing courses, and the acquisition of high quality third-party courses. These two work groups systematically examine emerging needs and assess the priorities for course revisions. MVS brings subject matter experts together with instructional designers from ipd. Both groups are trained in online course reviews through Quality Matters and also use the standards established by the International Association for K12 Online Learning (inacol). In addition to using this training to develop and revise courses MVS is working toward having its courses reviewed by independent sources, including Quality Matters. Local schools who do commit to increased use of online resources for whatever reason are often overwhelmed by the variety of options available to them and the many unique and complex ways in which they can acquire and use such content. MVS strongly believes that it has the capacity and the responsibility as the state sponsored virtual school to meet districts where they are and to help them to navigate these Page 3
changes, to provide them with quality online content and courses, and to work in partnership to increase their capacity to utilize online learning to improve student learning. Page 4
School's Purpose Provide the school's purpose statement and ancillary content such as mission, vision, values, and/or beliefs. Describe how the school embodies its purpose through its program offerings and expectations for students. Section II. Provide the institution's purpose statement and ancillary content such as mission, vision, values, and/or beliefs. Describe how the institution embodies its purpose through its program offerings and expectations for students. Mission, Vision, and Purpose MVU is somewhat unique in that it was strategically incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation (governed by an independent board of directors comprised of individuals representing business, industry, higher education, K-12 education and state government) rather than as a Michigan school or as part of a higher education institution or state agency. MVU's mission is to advance K-12 education through digital learning, research, innovation, policy, and partnerships. MVU's vision is to be Michigan's digital learning leader advancing personalized education for all learners. As a supplemental online course provider MVS, a division of MVU, has more than 15 years of experience developing sound policies and support practices that promote effective digital education. MVS serves to augment what local schools offer, not replace them. MVS works in partnership with local school districts and does not independently award credit or determine grades for its online courses. By operating MVS, offering online professional development for K-12 educators, staff, and administrators in the state through Michigan LearnPort and conducting research through its MVLRI, MVU has become a state-recognized expert in K-12 online learning policy and practice and a capacity building organization for Michigan's public education system. Values For more than ten years the leadership of MVU has established a priority of building a strong culture across divisions based on six core values that serve as the foundation for the organization's vision and mission statements, including: 1) put people first; 2) commit to excellence; 3) act with integrity; 4) embrace innovation; 5) serve with passion; and 6) succeed through teamwork. These values have helped to foster a workplace culture that is focused on changing the landscape of public education in Michigan. MVU believes in and works toward a high level of commitment to these shared values and teaching. Embodiment of purpose through MVS program offerings Several years ago, MVU commissioned an independent study and report by two of Michigan's leading policy companies: Public Sector Consultants (PSC) and Citizens Research Council (CRC). In the spring of 2013, MVU released "Moving Michigan Farther, Faster: Personalized Learning and the Transformation of Learning in Michigan." The report findings are clear -- Michigan needs to design an education system that includes tools and support to provide an individualized education for all students as well as increased support for classroom teachers to lead this effort. MVU determined after a series of meetings with key stakeholders that a comprehensive approach was needed to help focus the company and set a shared framework for decision making, thus the research project served as an important foundation for our strategic planning process and has helped shape our program decisions. Page 5
MVU leadership believes that encouraging and providing for growth among our instructors will promote success among the students we serve. Thus the annual Collaboration of the Minds brings the entire instructor staff together for professional development; lead instructors offer a monthly team meeting to the part-time instructor staff; the full-time instructors are brought together in weekly Synergy Sessions for collaborative learning about exciting new teaching and learning strategies; and the ieducators meet weekly with the full-time instructors via learning webinars. MVU Customer Service group closely follows student progress, especially in the first four weeks, and supports instructors in re-engaging these students. Research indicates that students that fail to make adequate progress in the beginning of a course are likely to perform poorly. The Customer Service Team contacts local school-based mentors and administrators to alert them of any failure to make progress so that the school might employ additional resources to assist the student or withdraw the student for placement in a more suitable learning environment. Embodiment of purpose through expectations for students MVS policy is to make every effort to see that a student has great potential to succeed. On-going monitoring of student progress is done through weekly progress entries. Through automated processes, each Monday the number of course points earned, points attempted, and points possible in the course are written to CEMS (MVS's student information system). This student progress data is made available to mentors, parents, instructors, and MVS staff, to better track and support students during the course. The primary student performance data used by MVS for decision making revolves around student final scores made up of a variety of instructor-graded and computer-graded assignments. To ensure that those final scores are valid, reliable, and unbiased, MVS instructional designers employ a variety of methods and work closely with experienced content experts (in many cases, MVS instructors) to develop assignments and assessments. MVS monitors these data points, as well as existing research, to establish benchmarks and measure improvement. The data points also help identify key trends that are useful in counseling schools about enrollments. Using the data to identify best practices and drive decisionmaking is a core function of the data monitoring practices of MVS. Page 6
Notable Achievements and Areas of Improvement Describe the school's notable achievements and areas of improvement in the last three years. Additionally, describe areas for improvement that the school is striving to achieve in the next three years. Section III. Describe the institution's notable achievements and areas of improvement in the last three years. Additionally, describe areas for improvement that the institution is striving to achieve in the next three years. Notable Achievements Full time instructors, part time staff, and ieducators During the past five years, MVS transitioned from using independent contractors as instructors to a teaching staff employed by MVU. The first four full-time instructors started in 2012. A year later, an additional nine were hired. In 2015, transitioning some of the former independent instructors to part-time employees completed the final phase. MVU also created an innovative opportunity for new graduates of instructor preparation institutions to work at MVU as online and blended instructors for MVS, developing skills typically not addressed in most traditional colleges and universities. This program, ieducators, hired its first cohort of 13 instructors under a two-year contract in July 2015. ieducators MVU IEducator Digital Learning Corp is an outstanding opportunity for recent graduates of Michigan's teacher preparation programs who have become certified teachers. Designed to be a career and life-changing experience, similar to the Peace Corps, a post-doctorate, or paid internship, selected IEducators will participate in a two-year program involving extensive training, mentoring, and online teaching experience. Additionally, teachers who complete the full 2-year commitment will become graduates of the MVU IEducator Digital Learning Corps, designed to enhance teaching credentials. Research from Barbour, M. K., Siko, J., Gross, E., & Waddell, K. (2012), indicated that there are very few teacher education programs in the United States that provide for the preparation of teachers for online teaching environment. As the demand for online and blended learning options continue to increase, the need for teachers trained in online and blended instruction will also skyrocket. K-12 student success in an online learning environment will requires support from highly-skilled, effective teachers. The IEducator Digital Learning Corps is designed for a select group of recent graduates who want to jump start their career with paid online and blended learning teaching experience. MVU selected and trained newly certified secondary educators in the summer of 2015 in multiple certification areas. The experience began with a 4-week onboarding process, during which time IEducators received blended professional learning experiences focused on understanding online learning and preparing them for online instruction, as well as MVU new employee training. Participants physically report three times to the MVU office, with the remaining training/professional learning done virtually. Data MVS staff has recently developed a data reporting system to provide online instructors and school administrators with ongoing, current and trend data on course enrollments, student progress and completion rates, and teacher/course assignment progress. This data is being used to project enrollments, monitor instructor and student progress, project certification areas in which online instructors will need to be hired, and Page 7
to plan for instructor course assignments. MVLRI has developed a series of analytic reporting tools that allow MVS staff to monitor and evaluate a variety of data points tied to student logins, engagement activity and completion results. Increasingly this information is being used to guide future course development/revision work, online instructor professional development, and local mentor support. Course Rigor and Quality MVS aligns its course content to state and national content standards and uses both inacol and Quality Matters (QM) (https://www.qualitymatters.org/) standards for quality course design. MVU has also worked closely with QM to promote research-based standards by providing professional development and course reviews focused on continuous improvement for MVU staff and ISDs across the state. Security Over the past five years, the IT team has overseen a transformation of MVU systems making it a world-class and highly reliable set of systems with multiple duplicative safeguards. A complete re-coding and update of the student information system, Customer Enrollment and Management System (CEMS), was accomplished in a relatively short time by engaging in a Request for Proposal (RFP) from recognized software design firms. After the original launch of the new CEMS in 2012, the system has been periodically updated to meet the growing needs of customers and the increase in the reliance on data to produce quality decisions. Student Success Our data shows a positive trend in MVS course pass rate over the past three years, increasing from 79.6% in the 2012-13 school year to 83.3% in 2014-15. The College Board exam pass rate has also had a positive trend over the same period, increasing from 67.2% in 2013 to 70.4% in 2015, higher than the statewide average. A consistent trend for MVS is that students who take online courses either because of a scheduling conflict or because the course is not available locally tend to pass their courses about 85% of the time. Mentors Matter In 2015, new staff was hired to focus on supporting the building-level personnel - mentors - required by law for online students. Drawing on staff from across the organization, a team has coalesced to build a formal network to connect, educate and support the important work mentors do to help online learners in their schools maximize their online learning experiences. Areas of improvement through 2018-19 Data collection The performance data that MVS has available is produced as part of its online courses. MVU recognizes the need to develop a more systematic and interrelated data information storage and retrieval process. MVS leadership has engaged representatives from all work groups at MVU to define the data needed for decision-making, identify where the data may exist and who is responsible for that data, establish protocols for storage and retrieval of data and provide for consistent and reliable updates to the data. Parent, Student, and Other Stakeholders Because MVS is a supplementary provider, staff does not have access to student or parents in the same way that a full-time provider might. MVS endeavors to meet the physical, social and emotional needs of students by collaborating with staff at the students' school of record, parents, and often in response to issues brought to the attention of the Customer Service Team who work to help schools, mentors and students with enrollment and course related problems. MVU also contracts for help desk resources to expand help beyond the workday and during limited times on weekends. A study is currently underway to develop MVU's internal capacity to offer the help desk assistance to Page 8
increase responsiveness. MVS has put into place additional plans and training to address student needs. MVS Onboarding Program for new instructors provides mandatory guidelines and guidance for instructors to address student needs when they become aware of them. For the first 14 years of MVS's existence, MVU leadership operated an advisory council as a vehicle to share important information about online learning and to gather input and feedback. In early 2016, MVU took steps to reconstitute a formal advisory group for MVS that is smaller and comprised of more MVS school customer representatives than the original advisory group. As envisioned, the new advisory group will have more opportunities to shape programmatic decisions for MVS. Student Support While our school personnel are current in most cases with research related to learning strategies, identifying and coordinating services without being the primary provider of education has shown to be challenging. We have developed a guide to inform districts of our abilities to support students' unique learning needs within our courses; however, there is still room for growth. One method is to continue to facilitate positive and productive communication with the school districts we work with and encourage the communication of data and information regarding students we work with that will allow us to provide and coordinate services. We would also like to evaluate the need for consultation or adding additional personnel to support this area and better meet unique learning needs. An MVLRI fellow is also working on a guide for those who work with students with disabilities in online learning environments. Funding MVS has relied on a combination of tuition, state grants and foundation support since its inception in 2000. Last year the Executive Leadership Team established a priority to bring the cost of developing and delivering a course more in line to the tuition generated by enrollments. Through a multi-year approach the goal is to increase enrollments, lower delivery costs and lower tuition. By increasing enrollments the fixed costs of MVS can be spread over more enrollments thus lowering the delivery costs. By exploring new instructional approaches and development processes it is hoped to further reduce these delivery costs. Page 9
Additional Information Provide any additional information you would like to share with the public and community that were not prompted in the previous sections. Section IV. Provide any additional information you would like to share with the public and community that were not prompted in the previous sections. Management With the decision to incorporate the former part-time consultant instructors into part-time staff MVS needed to evaluate its ability to properly evaluate and provide training to approximately 175 full and part-time instructors. MVS hired a second Instructional Manager this year to assist with the supervision and direction of the large instructional staff of full-time (17) and part-time instructors (138) as well as the ieducator program (13). MVS is continuing to evaluate administrative support needs and has recently hired a curriculum support professional. New Partners Although not under MVS, the company is promoting the Career Online High School, a program developed by Smart Horizons Career Online High School and offered through a partnership with Cengage Learning and MVU. The Virtual Learning Solutions, a program of MVU, offers the program to address the needs of young adults beyond high school age in the areas of for workforce development and preparation to earn a high school diploma. Collaboration among Divisions MVU divisions collaborate to support online learner success. - In addition to the contributions mentioned previously, the ipd group has a unique understanding of instructional design and uses a variety of internally developed and third party collections of media and information resources like Discovery Learning and Gizmos in the courses they create. - MVLRI is not only interested in MVS student achievement but also the progress of all students in an environment of expanded online learning and resources and has conducted extensive research on student achievement in online learning along with exploring factors aimed at increasing our understanding of online and blended teaching and learning that are needed to increase student achievement. MVLRI prepares a comprehensive annual report about MVU and MVS for the Michigan legislature and engages in research projects and prepares publications on a variety of subjects pertinent to online and blended learning, including a study on the effectiveness of online learning in Michigan that MVLRI has produced annually since 2013. IN addition, MVLRI fellows work on a diverse range of research topics related to the effectiveness of online teaching and learning, public awareness and perceptions of online learning, and online student performance. MVLRI has also published Mentor Fundamentals: A Guide for Mentoring Online Learners, Supporting Online Learners: Michigan Mentor Program Case Studies, and Mentoring Basics: A Training Module for Mentoring Online Learners to address continued development of district mentors, the face-to-face support required by Michigan law for all students taking courses online. - The IT team has developed and is currently developing data reports that gather information for decision-makers from the delivery software systems, specifically BlackBoard and the Customer Enrollment and Management System (CEMS), MVU's basic student information system. Page 10
Stakeholder Relationships MVU has regularly communicated with various stakeholder groups for many years at the national, state, and local levels, including the Governor's office, the Michigan Legislature, the Michigan Department of Education, statewide professional organizations, teacher unions, principals, school board members and district superintendents, parents, inacol, and the Virtual School Leadership Alliance (VSLA - http://www.virtualschoolalliance.org/ ), an association of virtual schools that provides collegial support and collaborative opportunities to the individual members and member organizations. MVU annually communicates to state and local policy leaders as well as school building level staff through a variety of reports, including research findings about all online learning in Michigan; offers executive briefings to school personnel and statewide educational associations; conducts training programs for educators; and facilitates a statewide public opinion survey. Page 11