Effective Practices in Online Learning
Online Courses, Offline Grades: What Some Michigan Schools Are Doing
As online learning becomes a fixture in Michigan’s K–12 landscape, Michigan Virtual was curious about how student scores in online courses are interpreted and applied locally. While state law outlines general requirements for awarding credit, districts retain significant flexibility in how those grades appear on transcripts. This brief explores how eight Michigan districts are navigating those decisions—and why their approaches vary.
Out of Order, Still Out of Reach: Navigating Assignment Sequences for Michigan Virtual World Language Courses
In online asynchronous courses, students can submit assignments anytime during the enrollment window, often in any order they like. While previous research has focused on the timing of assignment submissions, Cuccolo & DeBruler highlighted how the order of assignment submissions is associated with lower course performance in STEM courses. This study expands that research to World Language courses, highlighting that students’ final course scores decreased as deviations from the pacing guide increased.
A Look Back At 3 Years of Michigan Virtual Research
This publication synthesizes three years of original research from the Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute to further our collective understanding of topics such as effective practices, mentors, professional learning, and AI.
Starting Strong: Understanding Teacher-Student Communication in Online Courses
This study focused specifically on understanding the relationship between teacher communication and relationship-building practices in the first four weeks of an online course. Pairing communication data pulled from the student learning portal, survey data, data from focus group interviews, and a review of best practices and Michigan Virtual instructional policies gave researchers a holistic view of teacher-student communication patterns and recommendations for relationship-building in an online environment.
Key Strategies for Supporting Disengaged and Struggling Students in Virtual Learning Environments
This study delves into effective strategies used by virtual programs and teachers to support disengaged and struggling students, noting significant overlap with strategies for all students and highlighting the critical roles of parental and mentor support, intervention, and communication. The report covers strategies employed by experienced virtual teachers, programmatic supports, professional development sources, and considerations for supporting virtual learners.
Innovative Approaches to Online CTE: Lessons from Missouri, Idaho, and Arkansas
This report offers a detailed analysis of online Career and Technical Education programs in Idaho, Missouri, and Arkansas, shedding light on their goals, curriculum, instruction, and alignment with industry standards. It also highlights essential strategies to enhance success in online CTE programs, emphasizing the critical role of these programs in providing flexible learning opportunities and preparing students for the evolving job market, thus contributing to workforce development and education.
Shared Space and Time: Learning from Others on the Synchronous Virtual Courses Journey
This study explores synchronous online learning in five U.S. states (K-12, enrollments 20 to 14,000+). Key considerations include relationships, scheduling, supports, infrastructure, and data. Synchronous learning enhances structured scheduling, supports real-time interactions, streamlines infrastructure, and facilitates data-informed decision-making. Understanding these factors is critical for effective implementation in virtual education.
The First Week in An Online Course: Differences Across Schools
This report investigates online course outcomes in high free or reduced-price lunch (FRL) schools vs. others. Students in high FRL schools had lower grades, delayed access, and fewer assignments submitted. Early engagement indicators significantly influenced final grades, highlighting the need for timely interventions to promote equity in online education.
Student Engagement with Interactive Course Elements in Supplementary Online Science Courses
Instructional designers and administrators at Michigan Virtual sought to better understand student engagement with interactive course elements in their online courses, and whether those elements relate to student learning.
A Vision of Digital Learning in Michigan K-12 Schools
Schools and districts throughout Michigan continue to adopt educational technologies for the purposes of increasing student engagement and performance. This MVLRI research study explores how Michigan schools and districts are leveraging digital resources to meet the academic needs of students and their families both now and beyond pandemic learning. Specifically, the study focused on the instructional strategies schools are moving toward, what digital resources are being used, and the myriad factors that are accelerating or hindering the use of digital resources.
Key Strategies for Supporting Teachers in Virtual Learning Environments
The strategies for supporting virtual teachers discussed in this report are based on the current practices shared by 1,809 virtual educators (1,721 teachers and 88 supervising administrators) representing 17 statewide virtual schools or programs with a combined 150 years of online and blended learning experience and more than a quarter of a million virtual course enrollments annually. The expertise of these individuals is provided as a way to help school leaders of both traditional and nontraditional schools and districts that have teachers and school leaders who are developing their skills and abilities as virtual educators.
Key Strategies for Engaging Students in Virtual Learning Environments
The student engagement and relationship-building strategies discussed in this report are based on the current practices provided by the 1,721 virtual teachers participating in this study. These individuals currently work within the school structures of 17 statewide virtual schools or programs, in which providing virtual education to students is their primary focus. The expertise of these individuals is provided as a way to aid teachers and administrators of both traditional and nontraditional schools and districts that have teachers and school leaders who are developing their skills and abilities as virtual educators.
MVLRI Research in Review: K-12 Online Best Practices
While context remains unique and unquestionably important for online learning, research suggests best practices such as consistent learner progression, teacher-learner communication, and the value of project-based learning may positively impact student learning outcomes. Similarly research also suggests elements such as registration timing and time spent in the online course do not contribute significantly to learner success.
MVLRI Research in Review: Michigan K-12 Online Learning Demographics and Effectiveness
Online learning enrollments in Michigan have grown significantly in the last decade, with a majority of enrollments at the high-school level and matching national online enrollment demographics. Pass rates from online courses have fallen as enrollments have grown, and students tend to be most successful when they take only a couple virtual courses.
Flexible Start for K-12 Online Courses: Michigan Virtual Case Study
Exploring ways in which online learning can meet the unique needs of all students in Michigan schools, a team of Michigan Virtual staff investigated how online learning programs are structured to accommodate flexible start and end dates for students taking online courses. Interviews with several virtual programs in Michigan and a look at virtual schools in other states provided a sense of how some schools enabled flexible enrollment options.
Auto-grading versus Instructor Grading in Online English Courses
Automatic grading is commonly used as a pedagogical tool, and has become even more prevalent due to the growing popularity of Massive Open Online Courses. However, its effects on students’ learning outcomes in online high-school courses are not yet clear. This study therefore examined 738 enrollment records in high-school English Language Arts courses using hierarchical linear modeling, and found no effect of the quantity or proportion of auto-graded work on final grades. In addition, the results of decision-tree analyses suggested that, in the case of instructor-graded work, the ratio of points attempted to points earned emerged as a useful means of dividing student pass rates into three clusters.
Communicative Interactions with Teachers in K-12 Online Courses: From the Student Perspective
This study examined student-teacher communication practice in online courses from the student perspective. The present study provides the field with empirical evidence on the importance of student-teacher interactions through examining more varied outcome variables and relevant factors than what was often included in existing studies, and also exploring multiple sources of data.
Learning Trajectories in Online Mathematics Courses
Present research has devoted attention to a long-standing problem: how to better serve students who take K-12 online mathematics courses by investigating learner subgroups based on their semester-long learning trajectories. Mixture growth modeling was used to examine month-by-month scores students earned by completing assignments. The best-fitting model suggested four distinct subgroups representing (1) nearly linear growth, (2) exponential growth, (3) hardly any growth, (4) and early rapid growth. Follow-up analyses demonstrated that two different types of successful trajectories were more likely associated with advanced level courses, such as AP or Calculus courses, and foundation courses, such as Algebra and Geometry, were with the unpromising trajectory. Given those results, implications for practitioners and researchers were discussed from the perspective of self-regulated online learning and evidence-based mathematics instructional practices.
Exploring the Impact of Student-, Instructor-, and Course-level Factors on Student Learning in Online English Language and Literature Courses
The number of K-12 students taking online courses has increased tremendously over the past few years. However, while most current research in online learning focuses either on comparing its overall effectiveness with traditional learning or examining perceptions or interactions using self-reported data, scant research has looked into online design elements and students’ learning outcome in K-12 settings. This report seeks to explore how the combination of three main online education components—student, instructor, and course design—contribute to students’ online learning success in high school English language and literature courses.
Course Engagement Patterns in Mathematics and Non-Mathematics Courses
MVLRI® has launched a series of quantitative research reports exploring characteristics of students in state virtual school courses, specifically focused on those who took courses for credit recovery (CR). The final report of this series was to extend the work exploring learning profiles to other subject areas most frequently taken by credit recovery (CR) students: Algebra 1, English Language & Literature 9, and U.S. History & Geography 1. We discussed clustering results as a way of providing data-driven benchmarks for the optimal course behavior patterns, which may be used by instructors and course mentors for guidance in monitoring students’ progress.
Categories
- Ai (4)
- Blended Teaching & Learning (14)
- Effective Practices in Online Learning (22)
- Effectiveness Reports (13)
- Mentoring (7)
- Michigan (44)
- Motivation & Social Emotional Learning (6)
- Online Teaching and Professional Development (21)
- Program Evaluation / Quality / Policy (27)
- Research in Review (11)
- Special Populations (13)
- Student Centered Learning (10)
- Student Pacing (10)