Category: remote learning

  • Parents Sued LAUSD Over Remote Learning. How the Settlement Will Benefit Students – The 74

    Parents Sued LAUSD Over Remote Learning. How the Settlement Will Benefit Students – The 74


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    This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

    More than 250,000 students in Los Angeles Unified will be eligible for extra tutoring, summer school and other academic help after the district settled a class-action lawsuit alleging that its remote learning practices during the pandemic were discriminatory.

    The settlement, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, was announced Wednesday by the law firm representing families who said their children fell disastrously behind during the Covid-related school shutdown in 2020-21.

    “After five years of tireless advocacy on behalf of LAUSD students and families, we are proud to have secured a historic settlement that ensures students receive the resources they need to thrive,” said Edward Hillenbrand, a partner at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis. “This critical support will help pave the way for lasting educational equity.”

    Los Angeles Unified had no comment on the case because the settlement has yet to be approved by the court. A hearing is set for December, although the settlement goes into effect immediately.

    During the COVID-19 pandemic, Los Angeles and nearly every other school district in California closed for in-person learning from March 2020 through fall 2021. Students attended classes virtually, and most fell behind academically. Test scores statewide plummeted after schools reopened. Chronic absenteeism soared.

    In fall 2020, a group of families whose children were languishing during remote learning sued Los Angeles Unified, saying the district wasn’t doing enough to ensure students were receiving an adequate education.

    One parent, Akela Wroten Jr., said that his second-grade daughter was behind before the pandemic and became even more lost during remote learning. She struggled with reading and never got the extra attention she needed because teachers weren’t assessing her progress.

    Another parent, Vicenta Martinez, said her daughter didn’t get any instruction in spring 2020, in part because she never received logon information for remote instruction and the school never followed up. When she finally did access remote classes, the lessons were short and teachers offered little feedback.

    “LAUSD’s remote learning plan fails to provide students with even a basic education and is not preparing them to succeed,” the lawsuit alleged.

    The suit singled out an agreement between the district and its teachers union that said teachers would only be required to work four hours a day, wouldn’t have to give tests and weren’t required to deliver live lessons — their lessons could be asynchronous, or recorded beforehand. In addition, the agreement said the district wouldn’t evaluate or monitor teachers during that time.

    United Teachers Los Angeles supports the settlement, saying it provides more assistance for students while leaving teachers’ “hard-won contractual rights” intact and avoiding “unwarranted judicial interference” in the district.

    The union also noted that student test scores have recovered significantly since the pandemic..

    The plaintiffs argued that the district’s policies discriminated against low-income, Black, Latino, disabled and English learner students, because those were the students least likely to have adequate support to succeed in remote learning. Those student groups also comprise the vast majority of students in the district, the nation’s second-largest.

    The settlement requires the district to offer a host of academic support, including summer school and after-school tutoring, to the 250,000 students who were enrolled in L.A. Unified during the pandemic and are still with the district. Among those students, 100,000 who are performing below grade level will be eligible for 45 hours of one-on-one tutoring every year through 2028.

    This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.


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  • Applying the Moral Intensity Framework: Ethical Decision-Making for University Reopening During COVID-19

    Applying the Moral Intensity Framework: Ethical Decision-Making for University Reopening During COVID-19

    by Scott McCoy, Jesse Pietz and Joseph H Wilck

    Overview

    In late 2020, universities faced a moral and operational crisis: Should they reopen for in-person learning amid a global pandemic? This decision held profound ethical implications, touching on public health, education, and institutional survival. Using the Moral Intensity Framework (MIF), a multidimensional ethical decision-making model, researchers analysed the reopening choices of 62 US universities to evaluate the ethical considerations and outcomes. Here’s how MIF provides critical insights into this complex scenario.

    Why the Moral Intensity Framework matters

    The Moral Intensity Framework helps assess ethical decisions based on six dimensions:

    1. Magnitude of Consequences: The severity of potential outcomes.
    2. Social Consensus: Agreement on the morality of the decision.
    3. Probability of Effect: Likelihood of outcomes occurring.
    4. Temporal Immediacy: Time between the decision and its consequences.
    5. Proximity: Emotional or social closeness to those affected.
    6. Concentration of Effect: Impact on specific groups versus broader populations.

    This framework offers a structured approach to evaluate ethical trade-offs, especially in high-stakes, uncertain scenarios like the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Universities’ dilemma: in-person -v- remote learning

    The reopening debate boiled down to two primary considerations:

    1. Educational and Financial Pressures: Universities needed to deliver on their educational mission while addressing steep revenue losses from tuition, housing, and auxiliary services. Remote learning threatened educational quality and the financial viability of institutions, especially those with limited endowments.
    2. Public Health Risks: Reopening campuses risked COVID-19 outbreaks, jeopardising the health of students, staff, and surrounding communities. Universities also faced backlash for potential spread to vulnerable populations.

    Critical Findings Through the Moral Intensity Lens

    Magnitude of Consequences

    Reopening for in-person learning presented stark risks: potential illness or death among students, staff, and the community. However, keeping campuses closed threatened jobs, reduced education quality, and caused financial strain. The scale of harm from reopening was considered higher, particularly in densely populated campus settings.

    Social Consensus

    Public opinion and government policies influence decisions. States with stringent public health mandates leaned toward remote learning, while those with lenient regulations often pursued in-person or hybrid models. Administrators balanced community sentiment with institutional needs, highlighting the importance of localized consensus.

    Temporal Immediacy

    Health risks from in-person learning manifested quickly, while financial and educational setbacks from remote learning had longer timelines. This immediacy added ethical weight to public health considerations in reopening decisions.

    Probability of Effect

    The uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 transmission and mitigation complicated ethical judgments. Universities needed more data on the effectiveness of safety protocols, making probability assessments challenging.

    Proximity and Concentration of Effect

    Campus communities are close-knit, amplifying the emotional weight of decisions. Both reopening and remaining remote affected broad populations similarly, lessening these dimensions’ influence.

    Ethical Outcomes and Practical Mitigation Strategies

    Many universities implemented extensive safety measures to align reopening decisions with ethical standards:

    • Testing and Tracing: Pre-arrival testing, on-campus surveillance, and contact tracing reduced outbreak risks.
    • Modified Learning Environments: Hybrid and remote options ensured flexibility, accommodating vulnerable populations.
    • Health Protocols: Social distancing, mask mandates, and enhanced cleaning protocols were widely adopted.

    Despite risks, universities that reopened often avoided large-scale outbreaks, demonstrating the effectiveness of these measures.

    Lessons for Crisis Management

    The COVID-19 reopening experience offers valuable lessons for future crises:

    1. Use Multidimensional Ethical Frameworks: Applying tools like MIF provides structure to navigate complex moral dilemmas.
    2. Prioritize Stakeholder Engagement: Balancing diverse perspectives helps bridge gaps between perceived and actual risks.
    3. Adapt Quickly: Flexibility in implementing mitigation strategies can mitigate harm while achieving core objectives.
    4. Build Resilience: Strengthening financial reserves and digital infrastructure can reduce future vulnerabilities.

    Global Implications

    While this analysis focused on U.S. universities, the findings have worldwide relevance. Institutions globally grappled with similar decisions, balancing public health and education amid diverse cultural and political contexts. The Moral Intensity Framework offers a universal lens to evaluate ethical challenges in higher education and beyond.

    Conclusion

    The reopening decisions of universities during COVID-19 exemplify the intricate balance of ethical, financial, and operational considerations in crisis management. The Moral Intensity Framework provided a robust tool for understanding these complexities, highlighting the need for structured ethical decision-making in future global challenges.

    This blog is based on an article published in Policy Reviews in Higher Education (online 20 September 2024) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23322969.2024.2404864.

    Scott McCoy is the Vice Dean for Faculty & Academic Affairs and the Richard S. Reynolds, Jr. Professor of Business at William & Mary’s Raymond A. Mason School of Business.  His research interests include human computer interaction, social media, online advertising, and teaching assessment.

    Jesse Pietz is a faculty lead for the OMSBA program at William & Mary’s Raymond A. Mason School of Business.  He has been teaching analytics, operations research, and management since 2013.  His most recent faculty position prior to William & Mary was at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 

    Joseph Wilck is Associate Professor of the Practice and Business Analytics Capstone Director
    Kenneth W. Freeman College of Management, Bucknell University He has been teaching analytics, operations research, data science, and engineering since 2006. His research is in the area of applied optimization and analytics.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • Taking Intermittent Quizzes Reduces Achievement Gaps & Enhances Online Learning – The 74

    Taking Intermittent Quizzes Reduces Achievement Gaps & Enhances Online Learning – The 74

    Inserting brief quiz questions into an online lecture can boost learning and may reduce racial achievement gaps, even when students are tuning in remotely in a distracting environment.

    That’s a main finding of our recent research published in Communications Psychology. With co-authors Dahwi Ahn, Hymnjyot Gill and Karl Szpunar, we present evidence that adding mini-quizzes into an online lecture in science, technology, engineering or mathematics – collectively known as STEM – can boost learning, especially for Black students.

    In our study, we included over 700 students from two large public universities and five two-year community colleges across the U.S. and Canada. All the students watched a 20-minute video lecture on a STEM topic. Each lecture was divided into four 5-minute segments, and following each segment, the students either answered four brief quiz questions or viewed four slides reviewing the content they’d just seen.

    This procedure was designed to mimic two kinds of instructions: those in which students must answer in-lecture questions and those in which the instructor regularly goes over recently covered content in class.

    All students were tested on the lecture content both at the end of the lecture and a day later.

    When Black students in our study watched a lecture without intermittent quizzes, they underperformed Asian, white and Latino students by about 17%. This achievement gap was reduced to a statistically nonsignificant 3% when students answered intermittent quiz questions. We believe this is because the intermittent quizzes help students stay engaged with the lecture.

    To simulate the real-world environments that students face during online classes, we manipulated distractions by having some participants watch just the lecture; the rest watched the lecture with either distracting memes on the side or with TikTok videos playing next to it.

    Surprisingly, the TikTok videos enhanced learning for students who received review slides. They performed about 8% better on the end-of-day tests than those who were not shown any memes or videos, and similar to the students who answered intermittent quiz questions. Our data further showed that this unexpected finding occurred because the TikTok videos encouraged participants to keep watching the lecture.

    For educators interested in using these tactics, it is important to know that the intermittent quizzing intervention only works if students must answer the questions. This is different from asking questions in a class and waiting for a volunteer to answer. As many teachers know, most students never answer questions in class. If students’ minds are wandering, the requirement of answering questions at regular intervals brings students’ attention back to the lecture.

    This intervention is also different from just giving students breaks during which they engage in other activities, such as doodling, answering brain teaser questions or playing a video game.

    Why it matters

    Online education has grown dramatically since the pandemic. Between 2004 and 2016, the percentage of college students enrolling in fully online degrees rose from 5% to 10%. But by 2022, that number nearly tripled to 27%.

    Relative to in-person classes, online classes are often associated with lower student engagement and higher failure and withdrawal rates.

    Research also finds that the racial achievement gaps documented in regular classroom learning are magnified in remote settings, likely due to unequal access to technology.

    Our study therefore offers a scalable, cost-effective way for schools to increase the effectiveness of online education for all students.

    What’s next?

    We are now exploring how to further refine this intervention through experimental work among both university and community college students.

    As opposed to observational studies, in which researchers track student behaviors and are subject to confounding and extraneous influences, our randomized-controlled study allows us to ascertain the effectiveness of the in-class intervention.

    Our ongoing research examines the optimal timing and frequency of in-lecture quizzes. We want to ensure that very frequent quizzes will not hinder student engagement or learning.

    The results of this study may help provide guidance to educators for optimal implementation of in-lecture quizzes.

    The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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