A Dramatic Transformation

The Northeast Ohio Council On Higher Education

A Dramatic Transformation

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A Dramatic Transformation2

Table of Contents4 Our Solution is Different

5 What Does Personalized Adaptive Learning Really Mean Anyway and What Does It Involve?

7 How Will the NOCHE Program Work? And What Will Be Involved?

9 Education Drives Economic Development

6 Teachers Must Control Content Teachers Must Lead Classrooms Teachers Must Teach Students

8 Northeast Ohio is a Natural Because of Its History, Its Resolve and its Miles and Miles of Fiber

9 Statistics Tell The Story

3 Northeast Ohio

Designed by Steve Thomas, Visual Communication & Design Studentat Cuyahoga Community College

For information, contact:Robert W. BriggsPresidentNortheast Ohio Council on Higher [email protected]

5/5/2014

© 2014 NOCHE

3The Northeast Ohio Council On Higher Education

Northeast Ohio: A region that has already learned to think differently and collaboratively is poised to lead a dramatic transformation in education that could become a model for the rest of the nation.

Northeast Ohio, once considered part of the deindustrialized rust-belt, is experiencing a massive economic and cultural resurgence. Business leaders are now recognizing that in order for this resurgence to continue, however, the region’s educational institutions – public and private and preschool through college – must improve. More people

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from the region must acquire certificates and degrees beyond high school.

Educational attainment has long been recognized as a key driver of economic development and community vibrancy. Most approaches to increase educational attainment have employed similar strategies with only modest gains.

4 A Dramatic Transformation

Our Solution is Different:Self-Paced Adaptive Learning Guided by Teachers and Made Possible by Technology

The Northeast Ohio Council on Higher Education has adopted a bold plan to make personalized adaptive learning available to as many schools as possible in the region. This plan makes Northeast Ohio one of the nation’s first geographic areas, or possibly the first, to embrace personalized adaptive learning.



What Does Personalized Adaptive Learning Really Mean Anyway & What Does It Involve?

In simple terms, adaptive learning is a way of using computers and data to deliver personalized instruction to students to help them master material at their own pace.

For instance, let’s go and spend some time with Mary, a fourth-grader studying math and multiplication who gets stuck on how to carry numbers. Her adaptive learning companion will keep working with her until she gets it well enough to advance to the next lesson in multiplication.

If Mary was being taught in a traditional teacher-led classroom, the teacher might have some students who were ready to move on and some who were not.

Those who were ready to move on might get frustrated and disengage if the teacher waited for Mary and others.

Conversely, Mary might disengage and get frustrated if she never grasped the concept of how to carry numbers and the teacher moved onto the next lesson.

Mary could develop a lifelong problem with multiplication and possibly mathematics that could be easily addressed with adaptive learning.

This simple example addresses only a basic part of adaptive learning. There’s a lot more to it. Adaptive learning is fueled by the experiences of users. This is where that familiar term big data comes into play. So, essentially, the more people who use adaptive learning, the smarter adaptive learning gets. Put another way, adaptive learning learns too. Adaptive learning analyzes the experiences of all users and can make

meaning out of others’ experiences and then recommend ways of improving an individual’s learning experience.

This is hard to explain because it’s unlike common educational experiences and common practice. So, if you aren’t quite getting it yet, don’t beat yourself up. This is new territory. Another example may help.

We’re going to meet Marquis. He’s a sophomore in a high school chemistry class equipped with adaptive learning and he is really not understanding how to identify the table of elements.

So, the adaptive learning software knows what has helped the thousands of others who have successfully mastered the table of elements. So, the adaptive learning companion is going to look at where Marquis is struggling and flip through the big data to see what has helped the others. Within seconds, Marquis will have a personalized educational plan intended to help guide him through to success. The underlying concepts are simple and revolve around predictive patterns. The companion can develop profiles to try to help Marquis. He may be more of an auditory learner. Therefore, he can listen to more of the material. The companion is so versatile and quick that it can adjust until something clicks for Marquis and he engages and learns.

The personalized adaptive learning companion can help teachers flag students with learning issues, ranging from number or letter reversals to more serious cognitive impairments that stand between them and success.

So, let’s try another example:Meet John. He’s a first-year student

in a college Composition I class. He’s a little nervous because he’s always considered himself a poor reader and not a great writer. This class, which is mandatory for all students is all about reading and writing.

On the first day of class, John gets his syllabus, meets his professor and signs up for the adaptive learning companion that will accompany the course. That night, he spends a few hours going through the adaptive learning companion. The adaptive learning companion remembers him from the last time he had a course that was taught with such technology. It was the 10th grade and the adaptive learning companion reminds John about when they worked together in the fifth grade too. The companion remembered that John’s specific troubles were that he didn’t have quality comprehension in the 10th grade and that he would not finish exercises. He had much better comprehension in the fifth grade.

By 9 p.m. on his first night of college, John called his mother to say that he thinks he has figured out why he has had trouble reading. The adaptive learning companion has suggested to him that he slow down and reread passages, and it has offered him numerous other tips that have worked for the thousands of others who have had similar trouble gaining meaning from reading. “And it knew me, mom, from 10th grade and fifth grade when I had classes that used this technology,” he told his mom.


Teachers Must Control Content Teachers Must Lead Classrooms Teachers Must Teach Students

Technology has accelerated to where it is now possible to meet individualized student learning needs without losing the creativity and direction offered by classroom teachers.

Classroom teachers can decide how to use personalized learning and they can control content. They can personalize it for the needs of students and educational goals they seek to accomplish. With this powerful tool, they are free to focus on the needs of their students that can’t be addressed by the technology, such as more abstract conversations about countless issues that have often separated good students from great students or disengaged from

engaged.Research has shown learning and deep

learning requires a variety of activities, including periods of reflection and application of concepts. Linda Hammond and her co-authors, who have studied learning, suggest that “reinforcement and practice play a role in the development of skills, and so do cognitive intent, effort, and reasoning.” Their research, which has been affirmed by others, supports the adaptive learning classroom where a teacher can reinforce and discuss concepts and ideas that are introduced during the paced sessions.

The personalized-learning tools will also free teachers from many of

*Hammond, Linda, Kim Austin, Suzanne Orcutt, and Jim Rosso. How People Learn. Stanford University. 2001.

the burdens of “teaching to tests,” documenting student progress and other mundane tasks that have taken away much of the art of teaching. The software will automatically do many of these task-type jobs and allow teachers to once again think about the total development of their students. The software will never replace the teacher. Instead, it is a tool to make the teacher more effective and to get back to educating students. It has been years since classroom teachers had the “luxury” of time for discussing issues with their students and thinking about their development as whole beings.



How Will the NOCHE Program Work? And What Will Be Involved?

Details are being developed about how the NOCHE adaptive learning program will operate and a monumental effort is underway to raise funds that will be offered in various forms to schools. The basic concept is that NOCHE wants to support schools that want to make personalized learning available to as many students as possible.

The research is clear. Students and teachers do well with this system of learning.

It may not work for all subject areas or for all schools or teachers. NOCHE will be gathering and disseminating research on best practices and working with classroom teachers and school leaders to help determine what works.

Efforts are underway to secure Phase I funding for the following programs:

• Last-mile high-speed fiber hook-ups to and within schools located in high poverty areas.

• Computers, iPads and other devices for high-poverty schools.

• Educational software for high-poverty area schools.

• Educational training for high-poverty area schools.

• Computers for high-poverty area homes.

• Matching grants for last-mile high-speed fiber hook-ups.

• Matching grants for iPads, computers, or other devices and software for schools.

• Matching grants for training.

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Northeast Ohio is a Natural Because of Its History, Its Resolve and it’s Miles and Miles of Fiber

Personalized adaptive learning holds great promise for the Northeast Ohio region and schools, from preschool through college, for many reasons, including:

• Northeast Ohio has a strong history of collaboration. Regional governmental, business, philanthropic, arts and cultural organizations have learned to put aside parochial differences and work together for the good of the region.In 2004, the region launched The Fund for Our Economic Future, a Northeast Ohio collaboration of business, industry, government, non-profit and philanthropic organizations working together to stimulate economic development in the region. To date, it has raised

about $100 million for economic development initiatives.Other successful regional ventures have involved organizations putting aside individual interests for the collective good of the area.

• Our region includes some of the nation’s most economically devastated areas. Despite a tough economy, the people of our region have a resolve and a determination to keep pushing for more. In Youngstown, for instance, one of the nation’s hardest hit areas, the community is supporting a business incubator which has been recognized as one of the leading incubators in the world. We can take advantage of thousands of miles of high-speed fiber that has already been laid to help make the region one of the nation’s leaders for innovation in education.

This high-speed fiber is important. We need the fastest connection speeds and the most bandwidth to transfer huge amounts of information needed for this data-driven endeavor.Fortunately, Northeast Ohio is home to OneCommunity, a stellar and forward-thinking organization that has already spent more than $100 million laying about 2,800 miles of high-speed broadband fiber in our region. We can partner with OneCommunity and take advantage of the fine work that it has already done. This region is one of few in the nation with as much high-speed fiber already laid, again making us the ideal area for such an educational endeavor.

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Education Drives Economic Development

Statistics Tell The Story:The Digital Divide is Growing as is the Gap Between Rich and Poor While the Middle Class Is Shrinking at an Alarming Pace.

Education Positively Impacts Communities and Economic Development in Many Ways:

(2) Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, 2011-2012. (3) American Community Survey, 2012. (4) Ohio Board of Education Report Cards, 2012-2013. (5) Ohio Board of Education Report Cards, 2012-2013. (6) Ohio Board of Education Report Cards, 2012-2013.

52% 12%88% 81% 79%

It gives people better tools to understand new and emerging technologies and

therefore be better consumers and users of new products and ideas.

It helps give companies and organizations a talent pool

from which to hire.

It increases the capacity for innovation in the community and therefore the likelihood of economic development.

of students who enroll in Ohio’s public and private colleges

fail to graduate within 6 years for bachelor’s degree seekers and 3 years for associate

degree seekers. 2

of the students who started high school in 2008

failed to graduate in 2012 or 2013 and are expected

to quit before graduating. 4

of Ohio’s adults 18 & over hold at least a high

school degree or equivalent. 3

of the state’s third-graders were meeting the bare

minimum standards for reading during

the 2012-2013 academic year. 5

of the state’s third-graders were meeting the minimum mathematics

requirements during the 2012-2013 academic year. 6

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A Dramatic Transformation

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