Why Distance Learning?

Educators often assume that clubs, activities, and school culture must happen in person—that building belonging in virtual learning is limited or even impossible. Many imagine distance learners as isolated kids behind screens, missing the social experiences that shape identity, leadership, and community.

But what if that assumption is simply wrong?

In this conversation, Cindy Carbajal, a 20-year veteran of Pearson Virtual Schools, shows us how vibrant, student-driven communities thrive online through thoughtful structure, flexible engagement pathways, and opportunities for real agency.

Cindy oversees a global clubs and activities program serving 11,000+ students across time zones, grade levels, and cultural backgrounds. Her work demonstrates that:

1. Student-Centered Design Fuels Real Belonging
  • Clubs are built with a goal that at least 50% of live time is student talk time—not passive listening.
  • Students share, present, lead, and create—driving engagement and ownership.
  • Broad-topic clubs (like Art Club instead of Crochet Club) help students discover unexpected interests and communities.

2. Flexible Models Match Virtual Students’ Real Lives
  • Every offering includes both synchronous and asynchronous pathways, ensuring access regardless of schedules, time zones, or family obligations.
  • Live sessions build community; asynchronous challenges deepen skills and allow for self-paced exploration.

3. Clubs Quietly Reinforce Academic & Durable Skills
Cindy calls it “stealth learning”:
  • Math skills reinforced in esports strategies.
  • Reading skills strengthened through participation logistics and peer review.
  • Executive functioning, digital communication, and leadership built through planning, presenting, and collaborating.

4. Data Drives Program Evolution
Her team measures:
  • Enrollment and attendance
  • Student and caregiver satisfaction
  • Withdrawal trends
  • Overlap between global clubs and local school clubs
     These insights help fine-tune offerings and spark new opportunities—like peer tutoring, reading buddies, and esports leagues.

How Educators Can Apply These Insights Today
1. Start with the student experience—not the content.
Ask: Where can students lead? Where can they share? How can this be theirs?

2. Build broad entry points.
Instead of a niche club for each interest, create umbrellas where kids can explore together.

3. Don’t replicate in-person school—capitalize on what’s uniquely possible online.
Global reach, time-zone diversity, virtual volunteer opportunities, and student leadership that scales across schools—these are advantages brick-and-mortar can’t match.

4. Teach students how to interact online.
Cindy’s programs explicitly teach:
  • How to give feedback in writing and art clubs
  • How to share space respectfully
  • How to show kindness online (Kindness Club!)
5. Track what matters.
Attendance, satisfaction, enrollment, and student stories help shape future offerings.

Episode Links
Host Links
  1. Discover more virtual learning opportunities at CILC.org with hosts Tami Moehring and Allyson Mitchell.
  2. Seth Fleischauer’s Banyan Global Learning provides meaningful global learning experiences that prepare students across the globe for success in an interconnected world.

Creators and Guests

Host
Allyson Mitchell
SF
Host
Seth Fleischauer
TM
Host
Tami Moehring

What is Why Distance Learning??

Why Distance Learning? is a podcast about the decisions, design choices, and assumptions that determine whether live virtual learning becomes shallow and transactional—or meaningful, relational, and effective at scale.

The show is designed for education leaders, instructional designers, and system-level practitioners responsible for adopting, scaling, and sustaining virtual, hybrid, and online learning models. Each episode examines the structural conditions under which distance learning actually works—and the predictable reasons it fails when it doesn’t.

Through conversations with researchers, experienced practitioners, and field-shaping leaders, Why Distance Learning? translates research, field evidence, and lived experience into decision-relevant insight. Episodes surface real tradeoffs, near-failures, and hard-won lessons, equipping listeners with clear framing and language they can use to explain, defend, or redesign distance learning models in real organizational contexts.

Hosted by Seth Fleischauer of Banyan Global Learning, and Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring of the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, the podcast challenges outdated narratives about distance learning and explores what becomes possible when live virtual education is designed intentionally, human-centered, and grounded in evidence.