Why Distance Learning?

In this episode of Why Distance Learning, your hosts talk again with Michael Barbour — the most-cited researcher in K-12 online and distance learning — about what it would actually take to fix how teachers are prepared to teach online, and why thirty years of K-12 virtual learning hasn't produced that change yet. Drawing on his 2024 paper with Charles Hodges, Michael lays out six concrete steps — two focused on building the research base, four focused on teacher preparation programs — and explains why none of it happens without explicit mandates from states and accreditation bodies. The assumption under examination: that teacher prep programs will gradually incorporate online pedagogy on their own as demand grows. The evidence suggests they won't, for the same reason they never properly integrated technology in the first place.

Together, the hosts and Michael explore the structural reasons teacher preparation programs can't make room for online pedagogy without a mandate, even when they want to. They dig into a counterintuitive finding from Newfoundland and Labrador — where students with K-12 online learning experience actually performed worse in college online courses than their peers, not because online experience is harmful, but because of how that particular program's heavy synchronous structure coddled students in ways that didn't transfer. They examine what the research actually shows about online learning and mental health (short version: the modality isn't the problem, and during the pandemic, logging into school may have been the most normal part of a child's day). And they work through the affordances and tradeoffs of synchronous versus asynchronous instruction — a framework any practitioner can apply immediately. Michael closes with the two big questions currently driving his research: where is the field of K-12 online learning thirty years in, and how much of what gets regulated in the US is driven by ideology rather than evidence?

Key topics:
  • Six-step framework for reforming online teacher preparation (Barbour & Hodges, 2024)
  • Why teacher prep programs don't change without state or accreditation mandates
  • The Newfoundland counterintuitive finding: when prior online experience hurts
  • Site-based facilitators / e-deans and the role of on-site support in distance programs
  • Synchronous vs. asynchronous instruction: affordances, tradeoffs, and how to choose
  • Online learning and student mental health: what the research actually shows
  • Governance and regulation of K-12 online learning in the US vs. other jurisdictions
Links & Resources:
Guest Bio: Michael Barbour
Michael Barbour is widely cited as the most prolific researcher in K-12 online and distance learning. His work spans student success and persistence in virtual environments, teacher preparation for online instruction, and the governance and regulation of K-12 online programs across jurisdictions. He is currently focused on building a research agenda for the field and examining how political ideology shapes online learning policy in the United States compared to other countries. Barbour holds a faculty position and has previously held posts at Wayne State University, among others.

About the Hosts:
Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of Why Distance Learning. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators — building the kind of structured, human-centered distance learning the podcast explores. See https://banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts

Tami Moehring and Allyson Mitchell work with CILC, the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, to help educators implement high-quality live virtual learning experiences across grade levels. Discover more at CILC.org.

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.

# Why Distance Learning — Michael Barbour, Episode 3
# *Timestamps after first cut are approximate*

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**[INTRO — recorded separately]**
[00:00:00] Seth: Hello, and welcome to Why Distance Learning, the podcast for education leaders and practitioners who are making real decisions about how virtual learning gets designed, adopted, and sustained. I'm Seth Fleischauer, founder and president of Banyan Global Learning, and my cohosts are Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring of the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration. Every episode we try to surface at least one assumption worth questioning.

This is our third conversation with Michael Barbour — the most-cited researcher in K-12 online and distance learning. We've now logged three hours with him because two episodes weren't enough. In this one we focus on what teacher preparation programs actually need to do, why they haven't done it in thirty years of K-12 online learning, and what structural changes would have to happen first. We also get into the research on online learning and mental health, the question of when to teach synchronously versus asynchronously, and what Michael is currently trying to figure out.

The assumption on the table today: that as online learning becomes more common, teacher preparation programs will eventually catch up on their own. Michael's work suggests they won't — and that they haven't for the same reason tech integration was never properly taught either. Without an explicit mandate from states and accreditation bodies, the space just doesn't get made.

This episode is brought to you by CILC, the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, connecting students to real experts through live virtual field trips and experiences — visit cilc.org to learn more. And by Banyan Global Learning, which brings K-12 classrooms face to face with global peers and expert facilitators through live, thematic international exchange programs — find them at banyangloballearning.com.

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[00:01.682] Seth: Michael, welcome back to the podcast.

[00:03.916] Michael Barbour: Thank you, it's glad to be here.

[00:06.088] Seth: So we thought that a part one and a part two was not enough to dive into all of the things we'd like to dive into with you, the most cited researcher in our field of virtual learning. And so we wanted to dive in a little bit deeper to some of the threads that we covered in the first two episodes, but also some new things as well. And Tammy, could you please start with our first question?

[00:27.874] Michael Barbour: Sounds good.

[00:32.179] Tami Moehring: I'd be happy to. So Michael, your twenty twenty four paper with Charl Hodges in open praxis calls for two structural interventions, more research on effective online pedagogy and mandatory integration into teacher prep programs. What would each of those actually look like in practice and who has to move first?

[00:55.372] Michael Barbour: Yeah, so that's actually it's it's been a fun line of inquiry that I've been doing with Chuck. Charles Hodges out of Georgia Southern. it actually came about originally. Rick Fertig and and a couple of his colleagues had a special issue of the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education in twenty twenty two. And what they wanted was essentially these short articles that provided concrete steps on things teacher education could do to essentially better prepare if something were to happen like had happened with COVID. And it's an interesting read throughout the journal because when you read through it you see a lot of stuff about, you know, what teachers could do. and, you know, a lot of things that, you know, using the technologies of the day. And this was the call came out right as the Gen AI was starting to come out as well. So you saw a lot around that. lot around virtual reality and augmented reality and those kind of things. But not many of the articles actually sort of focused upon, okay, T Tred programs, you have a problem and it's been a problem for a long time. and you need to do something about it. And and that's sort of the tack that we took. so we divided those two sort of two overarching goals up into six discrete steps. with respect to the research, we basically said that we needed to come up with some research-based best practices or standards, if you will. and then we needed to create instruments, validated instruments that would actually measure those. And one of the difficulties is that unfortunately within our our field of K-12 distance and online learning, you know, there's a no shortage of standards, but there's a great shortage of research-based standards, unfortunately. and there's very few instruments that are available out there. I mean, Eric Black you know, has a a remediation instrument that he created as part of his doctoral studies that has had like one or two studies done on it. Margaret Roblier probably has the most studied instrument with the educational success prediction instrument that she developed in the mid-2000s, actually early 2000s. But even that's probably only had about seven or eight studies done on it. you know, and that's sort of kind of where it stops in terms of you know, more anything more than just one-off doctoral dissertations.

yeah, so the other side of it was on the teacher ed side that basically teacher preparation programs need to do a better job at preparing teachers to be able to teach in a a range of modalities. so we needed to make sure that students had experiences as an online learner themselves. because you know, it's difficult to have empathy for someone in a situation if you've never been in that context yourself. we wanted to make sure that the methodological and and pedagogical courses that were taught included how to, you know, assess somebody in this kind of environment. which, you know, as you're looking at the developments we're seeing with Gen AI, kind of an important thing if if you know you're looking at trying to teach someone at a distance or even just in a blended modality. we wanted to make sure that folks had the opportunity to actually do teaching internships or their practicums in an online environment. Cause you know, I don't know about you guys, but I know when I went through, I always said, and and I'd say ninety percent of the teachers out there would say that they learned very little in their their teacher ed classrooms. They learned a whole hell of a lot when they were actually student teaching. you know, so we want to make sure that folks have the opportunity to at least be exposed to what teaching looks like in a distance medium. And then the fourth thing that we had for that one which rounds out the six, was that we said that state and professional accreditation bodies needed to require this because let's face it, teacher education programs universities aren't going to do it on their own unless they're actually mandated to do it. and you know, I think the difficult part is teacher programs could be doing this now and should be doing this now. but they haven't been. But by the same token, it's you know back in the 80s we told them that they should be you know, teaching how folks how to integrate technology into the classroom. And you know, all of us have gone through a Bachelor of Education program here, and I'm sure that your faculty did a you know smash bang job on preparing you to be able to integrate technology in your classrooms when you got out there. And I'm sure the folks listening are probably giggling along with the rest of you here. you know, so we teach your education programs just haven't done that and a lot of that is because they don't know how to do it themselves, to be perfectly honest with you. You know, so if you don't if you can't integrate technology beyond, you know, using a PowerPoint in the classroom and and thinking that's good technology integration, then you can't teach other people how to do it.

[05:49.214] Seth: So I I I I wanna make sure I have all these these six things. you said research-based best practices and standards, validated instruments to measure those best practices and standards. And then the next four all have to do with teacher preparation programs. they needed to do a better job teaching in a range of modalities, need experience as online learners themselves, how to assess in online environments, opportunities to do teaching internships, practicums in online environments and then the state and accreditation bodies have to mandate all this. Did I get it all? Okay, awesome. So I have a couple of questions about that. One of them is just like a a general to get your general take on like how does how do how do teacher preparation programs evolve in what they're actually providing? Because four of the solutions here come straight from the teacher preparation programs. What kinds of pressures are they responding to that result in actual movement in one direction or another around what they're preparing their teachers to do?

[06:20.449] Michael Barbour: Yeah. Those are the six, yeah.

[06:59.297] Michael Barbour: I mean, in terms of what they actually include in their teacher preparation programs right now are based upon two two aspects. What the state tells them that they have to do, and then what their professional accreditor, usually it's CAPE or whatever CAPE has become now and there's a new competing one against CAPE, even though CAPE was designed to combine the two that were competing against each other, TAC and NCAPE together, but there's still another. But whatever that one is, you know, that's the other one. And you know, so if they have these six standards that say you have to do these specific things, that's what teacher preparation programs do. If your state says that you need to have like a standalone course on assessment, which some states actually require for their pre-service teachers. Many provinces in Canada require for their pro pre-service teachers. There's a course on assessment. you know, so when you look through the specific things that are there. In most cases, you can almost go hour by hour to line up. These are the things that the state requires, these are the things that the professional creditor requires, and I can maybe jam 15 to 18 credits in in a semester. I might have them, depending upon how your teacher ed program is set up, for two or three devoted semesters. And then we've got to find time to have a semester of student teaching, maybe a couple of practicums along the way, which then take time away from my 15 to 18 credits. so I and this is why that last point is so important because one of the reasons teacher preparation programs haven't done this is because they just don't have the space within their programming to do all of the things that they have to do and then do something that they should do.

[08:44.712] Seth: So then the question remains, like, how how do we how do we do I mean you're basically talking about like political lobbying, right? Like like getting states to do it, although I'm not really sure how accreditors operate in terms of what kinds of pressures they are experiencing in order to make the decisions that they do. I assume research is a part of this, right? Like being able to say, Hey, here's the here's the evidence. And I guess that's the part that you have control over. But essentially you're talking about lobbying. Like, are there people lobbying governments on behalf of our industry?

[09:20.321] Michael Barbour: Not well, there are a lot of people lobbying on behalf of our industry. Not necessarily things we would want them to be lobbying in favor of to be. but I mean so with the state accredit or with the professional accreditation agencies, in some cases it is based upon research, in some cases it's based upon the community that they're serving and reacting to things they're seeing. in some cases just the proclivities of the individual governors who sit on that particular association. in the case of states, and there's a lot of politics involved there. you know, so when you have at one point in time we had actually almost a I think it was sixteen states in the US that required some kind of form of online learning to graduate from high school, but yet none of those states actually cared whether or not the teachers were prepared to implement those. There are still four states that require it. one of which has been requiring it now for twenty years since they first announced it in the state of Michigan. It was 2006 when they announced it. It was the class of twenty nine was the first ones that well, the class that started as freshmen in 2009. so I don't know what that would be on but anyway, so the the the freshmen in 2009 were the first class that were mandated to it. So this graduating class this year would be like the sixteenth graduating class that's needed to have this. but yet it's not required in the state of Michigan. In fact, they used to have an ed tech endorsement, which was an optional post you know, in-service endorsement that you could get, that's really been sort of pushed to the wayside, even though three of the six standards in that were focused specifically upon online learning. And those changes actually were made in the late two thousands and early two thousand knots.

[11:11.868] Allyson: That was a question that I was thinking about with the teacher preparation. Have you found the idea of continuing education courses, the same needs that you're finding with the teacher preparation experiences, that they are lacking certain opportunities to build their online learning teaching abilities?

[11:35.157] Michael Barbour: at the in-service level is probably where we see most of the activity happening. So it's not uncommon to see a graduate certificate in online teaching or a graduate certificate in technology enhanced learning or something like that in a college of education. So for folks that you know want to go on, and in many cases, they usually package these with say there's four courses in the certificate, two or three of those four can be used towards your master's. So usually people are doing a master's program and realize, hey, I only need to do one extra course and I can get this graduate certificate. So, you know, they they work on that. there are probably about a dozen universities that I say do a good job of having a K-12 focus in that. so even those graduate certificates and online teaching in many cases, you know, it's a higher ed or adult learning focus that they take, which is a bit unfortunate, but it's it's the reality. It's largely in part because there's so few of us in the field that are working in higher ed. So, you know, unless you're at Arizona State where you've got Leanna Archambo or at George Mason University where you've got you know Jared Borup or when I was at Wayne State University, you know, unless you happen to luck into that and there's someone there that actually has a real focus on K twelve online learning and either has adapted their course for it, or maybe in the case like I know with Wayne State, we built the entire program around a specific focus upon K twelve online learning. And but we're few and far between unfortunately.

[13:04.89] Allyson: Yeah, it's just, it's so interesting. And then I'm also starting to think about on the school level, when you brought up the state, is there anything, there are certain states like here in Pennsylvania or here in the Philadelphia area, it's Act 48 credits that you have to continue to get, to stay up to date with whatever they need that year. As you said, whatever mandates are provided or requirements. So I just, ever, is there ever a model where you see any of that working together, like a school and a state working together?

[13:34.861] Michael Barbour: haven't seen it combined like that. So there are a lot of states where yes, you have to have so many CEUs to maintain your certain, you know, your teaching credentials. And oftentimes it's either an annual thing or X number over so many years. So that way you can sort of front load them, get them all in your first six months and then not have to worry about it for the next two and a half years or you know, spread them out and do a couple of every three years. and in some states or in some districts they will have a thematic focus that they want their staff to to look at. I've never heard of an instance where it's been on online learn. Not to say that it hasn't been, but I think I've got my finger on the pulse of of what's happening out there fairly well. So I'd be surprised if it did happen and and you know folks like myself or the folks I talk to haven't heard it. And because we're such a small group, if one of us hears it, we all hear it.

[14:28.139] Tami Moehring: Michael, it it's when you're talking about what it takes for, you know, a teacher credit, you know, going into college and all that, I'm just thinking now, you know, less people are going for a four year degree. The big thing is a push to get it done as fast as you can, because we don't want people in debt as much. So that push to are do you see in the future this continuing to be a smaller and smaller focus, or do you hope maybe with more and more people requesting online that it it it is able to push back a little bit, you know, when it comes to education.

[15:04.329] Michael Barbour: I would hope that as you get more and more individuals that have gone through the K twelve system and for that matter, even necessarily in jurisdictions where the education degree is a second degree program, which is about probably half of them, that you're gonna have enough folks that have had online experiences in those environments that eventually become faculty members, so it's just second nature for them to do that. Now we've been saying that for 50 years when it comes to technology integration. And I know I sat in on a a technology integration class from a different state for pre-service teachers probably about three months ago and it looked like something that could have been taught in the late 1980s to be perfectly honest with you. in terms of both the tools and the pedagogy that was being implemented. And from someone who was of roughly my age, so you know, I'm fifty one right now. So, you know, someone who would have grown up, you know, with technology likely had an online class as part of at least one of their university degrees, if not more.

[16:23.212] Seth: Let's dig into those people because it's one of your six things right here is that people need online experiences as learners in order to be better teachers. Yet also in our last podcast episode, you surfaced this subgroup of people, this very tiny little bit of research about people who'd had experience learning online in high school and whether or not that was a predictor of success for them as being learners in online in college. And what you found was something actually counterintuitive that it actually hurt them, didn't help them. how do you square that with this idea that you think teachers should have experience as online learners before they become online teachers?

[17:06.936] Michael Barbour: Well, the the study that we were talking about last time was one that my colleague Dale Kirby and I'm trying to remember who our other co-author was on it now. they were the ones that actually conducted the study and I just came in to do their lip review for them and help them with the discussion section. the program that they were looking at was a very particular one. It's the Center for Distance Learning Innovation in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. And the way in which that program offers their online learning is quite unique in the North American context. so they are probably the only North American school that has a at predominantly synchronous model of instruction. Depending upon the nature of the or the subject area, it could be as low as forty percent of the time devoted to synchronous instruction or as high as eighty percent. And it's usually sp specific to Continary. So French is a second language is eighty percent, usually math and science are sixty percent, social studies and English are fifty percent, a lot of the electives are fifty or forty percent. what usually happens in that environment is that the teachers, because in many cases they haven't been taught how to teach online. So if you think about online teaching what is the most carryover way from what I do in the classroom to what I can do online? Well it's synchronous instruction and I can do that and I know how to, you know, get up in front of the folks and do all that. so that's where I'm gonna try to do all of my class. so if I've got a science class that has sixty percent of the time that's synchronous, I'm gonna try to do one hundred percent of the content in that sixty percent of the time. And then the forty percent that in theory I should actually be assigning like asynchronous learning to on topics that you know could be done in an asynchronous environment. I'm just gonna basically assign seat work and homework and project work during that time, things that, you know, you would give the the students 10 minutes at the end of class to work on these things. well now I'm gonna give them 40% of the course to work on these things. the other thing that I think that happens there, because they have such an established program there and they've been doing this for so long, In addition to the online teacher, each of the schools has either a mediating teacher or a mediating team. So someone at the local school level that's responsible for sort of that in local apprentice kind of of responsibility that we've got for our kids. Facilitators are another term you often hear.

[19:35.988] Seth: I think Jared Borup called them a mentor. Is that the same kind of role?

[19:51.212] Michael Barbour: site-based facilitators. but it's that person at the local level that might not be the content expert, but is there to, you know, make sure they're on task to help them with those, you know, s those soft learning skills, to maybe work out any tech issues that they've got in there. you know, which let's face it, I mean I I've never, you know, I I'm a social studies guy in myself, but if I had to sit down with someone who's doing, you know, a grade eleven math problem. I can, you know, it's been forty years since I've had to do that, but I could probably, you know, between the textbook and maybe a worked example that might be, you know, there, I could probably muddle my way through helping them. And that process is actually important for teaching a student because, you know, when think about when you would do that kind of thing, say with your own kids. I and I don't have kids, but I've got a niece and a nephew who I've done this with. You know, you start talking to yourself and you start actually sort of thinking aloud as you're going through. And that helps illustrate for the person you're working with that that that cognitive thinking, that that metacognition that you're engaging in, that problem solving that you're doing to try to figure out each of those steps along the way. And that's actually quite valuable. But if you've got somebody there doing that, plus you've got a content based teacher that's helping you, and if most of the content's being taught synchronously in less time than what you would Like those are sort of the perfect storm for having an environment where these kids are really coddled in that online environment. So when they go off to university and start, you know, their you know, English 101 or or math 101 or some elective that they're taking in their second year and it's online, and the instructor basically just posts a bunch of readings and posts some notes online and maybe posts a video that they've got to watch and they've got to do. All of this independent work and unless they actually engage with the instructor first, they're not getting any help at all. That's very different than you know the person that comes in every single day into the distance learning lab and says, Anyone got any problems here, guys? Are are you stuck? you know, is there anything you need from me? Like that's like night and day. And and I think that's one of the reasons why we saw that. It's more because of the nature of that program. but Unfortunately it's the only research out there on the topic, so that's the only thing we can cite is that counterintuitive finding.

[22:14.708] Seth: Yeah, I mean, I it sounds like there's a little bit of chicken or egg here where yes, you want teachers to have experienced online learning as students before they go into it, but you also want them to have experienced good online learning as students. and so there's like how how do we how do we get that to happen without them having experienced good online teaching as students?

[22:38.172] Allyson: We don't

[22:38.327] Michael Barbour: Not necessarily good online learning, but online learning that at least looks consistent with what they're likely going to go into. And to be honest with you, if this study had happened in any province other than New Falanta Labrador or any of the 50 states, it would have been much closer. You know, because all of those programs, for the most part, are primarily asynchronous programs where the students log into a learning management system where the only real-time interaction that they have with the teacher is usually student driven. You know, I'm having trouble with this. Can I set up a time to meet with you? even the the the asynchronous interaction oftentimes is student driven, which is really kind of what we find in the higher ed environment. You know, so it's it really was due to this jurisdiction. Although in all honesty if we had done this study in New Zealand we probably would have found very much the same thing that we found in Newfoundland because New Zealand Is set up in that largely synchronous model that that Newfoundland is set up as well. So it's more of a geographic thing than than I think the experience thing. And let's face it, I mean, you don't necessarily need to have a good experience to have a good understanding and empathy from that experience. You know, I think everyone here and everyone listening will probably be able to point to. instances where they've had a teacher at some point in their life that they thought was absolutely horrible. And when you think about the things that you do as a teacher, you do as an instructor, you are consciously making sure that you do not replicate behaviors. You know, I'd like I had some great teachers, I had some horrible teachers. And I would say that when I look at my own teaching style, the horrible ones probably impacted it more than the great ones. because the horrible ones taught me all the things that I never wanted to subject my students to. whereas the good ones, I mean, in order to replicate them, you've also got to be good at what they do. Right. And it takes some time to get to that. The novice teacher is not gonna be there. So it's easier to avoid the bad than it is to try to replicate the excellence.

[24:47.366] Allyson: I wonder when you mentioned the class that you recently sat in on, when you were looking at the coursework there, did that focus a lot more on the asynchronous experience and the synchronous teaching experience?

[25:00.963] Michael Barbour: Well, it was a it was a face to face scheduled class in technology integration. Actually I I think it was Teaching with Technology was the name of the course. which is you know, ninety percent of the universities out there have or at least education programs out there, have that course in their curriculum. And I mean it was well it it was basically a narrated PowerPoint is what we went through. and you know, they some of the things that he did have in that narrative PowerPoint were useful. So he actually did have some tips on if you are going to do this, like here's how to design the slides and stuff like that. So actually some reasonable ADA stuff like, you know, try to have, you know, a white background as opposed to a dark background and white lettering. you know, try not to have like a lot of universities do, we'll have like the logo up top and some other like images behind the stuff. Not necessarily over it, but like as a footer or header, you know, that again also distracts from so he did have some lessons about how to design better PowerPoints and, you know, things like use point form, don't read from the things and which he didn't, you know, so but I mean he was teaching them how to do a narrative PowerPoint. I mean, which let's face it, in in in twenty twenty six, that's not what I want to see in a technology integration class. Or at least not three months into a technology integration class. Maybe on day one, it's okay.

[26:30.852] Allyson: Yeah. One other question. Sorry. Sorry, Seth. I'm sorry. One other question, because you said that if you did the study in New Finland and in New Zealand, there would be similarities because of the structure and the heavy use of synchronous. Does the model in New Zealand also utilize that on-site facilitator or that coach or mentor? Because that's come up a couple of times in recent conversation, that kind of third party individual that's not the teacher isn't necessarily the parent or the family that's connected to the student, but it's like a support system. Is that also in that model? And do you see that being successful?

[27:12.867] Michael Barbour: Yeah, they call them E-deans there's the term that they use. so every single school has an e-dean that's responsible for everything from enrollment to tech issues to supervision. I use air quotes with that because it's usually a person that has a full teaching load. So the amount of supervision usually is at the beginning of the hour or at the end of the hour, just popping your head in for 30 seconds. To make sure there's still six kids in there and no one's lying on the floor, you know, blood coming out of their ears and making sure that, you know, okay, the technology work today. now one of the things that they have that is a little bit different than the Newfoundland example is they don't have quite the amount of synchronous. usually it's between twenty to forty percent in their models. and the rest is is asynchronous, although in all honesty it's very much like the Newfoundland model. The the rest is seat work and homework.

[28:10.66] Seth: One of the things that we've been kind of dancing around here is this issue of asynchronous versus synchronous learning in the online environments. And I'm wondering what the research says, if anything, about what should be done asynchronously and what should be done synchronously. I are there best practices in general here? Does it depend on the subject area, on the teacher, on the students, on everything? What does the research show?

[28:37.165] Michael Barbour: Yes. it depends on all those things. So yeah, I mean the reality is is the modality is just the delivery mechanism. And you know, so to say that it's easier to teach science synchronously than it is asynchronously is like saying it's easier to teach science with a red marker and whiteboard as opposed to a green marker with my whiteboard. So what you want to do and and and this is something that you know my colleagues in Newfoundland really haven't taken to heart when you look at it is when I look through both the content and the specific students that I'm working with that year, what affordances and challenges am I going to have with that particular medium, with that, you know, with the next lesson, if you will? Right? Like The example I often use is is, you know, when I think about a class discussion. When I have a discussion in real time, regardless if I'm standing in the room or we're doing it synchronously, there are some affordances that I have. Right? I'm going to get sort of immediate feedback from you. I'm going to get a good sense as to what you know about the topic without having to do any additional work because you don't have the time to go out and look something up or to double check things. but I'm also going to run into the problem that if I've got 30 of you in here and I've got a 60 minute class, I'm not going to hear much from each of you. And if I'm hoping to hear something from each of you at least once, most likely that's going to be the response to my initial question, which really isn't a discussion. It's basically an interview. You know, I ask a question and each of you give me an answer. That's not a discussion. That's a group interview. you know, so when you look at those types of things, that's some of the affordances and challenges. Where if I move into an asynchronous environment now, I don't get that immediate response. You have the ability to see the question and what I want from you first, and then go and look for that information and only that information. So you haven't had to prepare for all of the other things that might have been with that content. But by the same token, I can expect a more in-depth response from you. I can expect a response that has a greater level of coherence when you're looking at sort of how you've developed your points. It's much easier to get you guys talking to each other in the asynchronous environment, both because you're not you don't have to, you know, you've got the time built in for it because it doesn't matter if you're both commenting on someone else's post at the same time. Whereas You both can't comment on someone else's statement at the same time in a synchronous environment. You know, so you look at what do I want to achieve with this particular topic, and then you pick that medium that's best for it. you know, mo even novice teachers, when they look through the content, can look at something and say, Yes, I think the students should be able to understand this relatively easily if I explain it this way, this way, and this way. So maybe I create an instructional video that I put up on the learning management system and get them. To do that through the LMS. You know, get them to do that in an asynchronous fashion. I get to a piece of content and I think, geez, you know, when I did this when I was in high school, like nobody got it the first time around. You know, maybe that's something I choose to do synchronously because I know that there's going to be a lot of questions and I know folks are going to struggle and I know I'm going to have to do it many times in many different ways for people to understand it. And even novice teachers can make those assessments. And then as we get more experience, we get much better at making those kinds of assessments. You know, and the the New Flyn example is actually a quite a good one because they have the entire course developed asynchronously. They actually pay teachers to go in and design the content in there and to update it every five or six years. So they've got the full course developed asynchronously. So then they can just go through and say, okay, which are the difficult parts or which are the parts that I like the specific activities that we can do live? And those are the ones I'm going to do on the 60% of the time that I've got them synchronously. All of the other parts, I'm going to use what's already built into the LMS because it's really well-designed, multimedia-based content that we've paid a lot of money for as a school to get done.

[33:11.26] Seth: Wanna switch gears a little bit here and talk about student mental health. students find online learning for all sorts of reasons. one of them, one common one though, is that they're struggling in their traditional school in in whatever school they happen to be in. And online school post-pandemic, we understand that it's an option. And so for people for whom their current schooling is at work, they might look towards online schooling. you co-authored a 2023 paper. with Stephanie Moore and George Velicianos. I hope I'm saying that right.

[33:45.954] Michael Barbour: Also enough.

[33:49.492] Michael Barbour: I would always say Velitanos, but I'm also, you know, I'm a Newfoundlander with a a a thick, you know, brogue accent, so I'll he's Greek. So whatever the Greek way of saying it would be.

[33:58.889] Seth: Well, sure. George, thank you for your work and apologies. so this was that that's okay. so the study was on online or remote learning and mental health. wondering what does the research actually show there? And does it hold up when you distinguish between pandemic emergency remote teaching and intentionally designed online programs?

[34:04.356] Michael Barbour: And he's in your neck of the woods up in Minnesota now, I believe.

[34:25.262] Michael Barbour: Yeah, so that particular study was an interesting one. actually I I'll credit Stephanie for her leadership on it because she was the one that sort of had the idea. we were seeing a lot of things in the media and a lot of folks that were so called experts in online learning that were coming out and and blaming the emergency remote learning that was happening in during the pandemic for a lot of the mental health issues that students were having. And you know, Stephanie is has been a longtime advocate and involvement with online learning at the higher ed level and she reached out to myself and George because George at the time was Canada research chair for emerging technologies at Royal Roads University. and you know with my background in K twelve online learning because we sort of knew that wasn't the case. so we wanted to go out and actually take a look at the research that was out there that looked at online learning in any fashion and had its impact upon mental health. So the research we actually looked at came from both pre-pandemic stuff as well as pandemic related stuff. And it's the same across the board. I mean, you know, the the modality in which the instruction is delivered doesn't impact someone's mental health. You know, it's it's almost as absurd to say that, you know, because I listen to the news on the radio instead of on TV. That impacts my mental health. actually it might because let's face it, you don't have the gruesome images at the radio than you do on TV. But I mean that's really what we're talking about here. You know, I enjoy this program more because it's it's on TV as opposed to in a book. And while there's a personal preference for that maybe, there isn't actually a mental one that's happening. and when we started looking at the research, there was a lot of of correlation equals causality that we saw occurring, which was one of the main things that we pointed out. you know, when it came to the pandemic, I'll I'll say that while the vast majority, I would say almost all of the online learning that we saw or the remote learning that we saw during the pandemic was bad online learning. and there's a number of reasons for that. everything from we failed to actually engage with those folks that had been doing this in some cases for decades to rely upon them to help folks to just realistic or I won't say realistic the actual problems that we have in society around socioeconomic status and the digital divide. But I would argue that the reality is when kids actually logged into their schools, even if it was bad online learning, that was probably the most normal thing that they did after March of 2020. Right. When you think about what a child's day looks like on average, you know, attending school, whatever that might look like in in May of twenty twenty, or for that matter, September of twenty twenty, was the most normal part of their day. the ability to see their classmates or interact with their classmates was the most normal part of their life and probably actually had an improvement to their mental health compared to everything else that was going on. So that was sort of what we were trying to get at with that study to look at actually what the research said compared to what was the narrative that was being put out by policymakers, politicians, and in some cases so called researchers or experts in K twelve online learner online learning in general.

[38:15.038] Seth: Sorry, g Ali, did you want to go?

[38:42.298] *(approx)* Allyson: no, was just thinking about that being the most normal part of their day. sorry. I was just thinking about that being the most normal part of their day at that time. Just having a daughter that was six at the time and getting her ready to end first grade and start second grade and how that was really, I think a big part of our topic of conversation was like that feeling as normal as possible in a, in a setup that looked a little different. Now, of course, I was like, and we can put your background here so we can hide this because I like virtual learning, but it is interesting to think about that. And then also just the schooling or the preparation that you want to put in place for anything, anyone that went through that, especially if they were younger learners, everything you talked about that is across fields. You want them to feel comfortable with this digital communication and ability to interact using this medium. So maybe we'll see some hopeful. Hopefully in the future we can see them being real advocates for this medium.

[39:19.662] Michael Barbour: Well, I at the very least they've experienced it at its worst, so if they end up having to teach in that environment they know what not to do.

[39:23.508] Seth: Yeah, yeah, to your earlier point. typically we ask the question why distance learning at the end of the podcast? We've asked you that before. I have a different question for you. What big questions are you currently pursuing?

[39:26.53] Allyson: Yes, yes.

[39:39.002] Michael Barbour: Ooh, that's a good one. A lot of the the research that I've been doing in the last few years has been focused upon sort of what to do next. depending upon where you peg it, the first online courses could be taught anywhere from 1990 or at the K-12 level anyway, from 1991 to 1996, depending upon who you peg as the first. but regardless if we use ninety-six the later date as that time, you know, this is thirty years now that we've been doing this. And while we've got some research and some things that we can say with some confidence, there's still a lot of work to do, but we really haven't done a a good job at looking at sort of what, you know, where are we as a field? and where do we need to go. so when I look at a lot of the things that I've been writing lately, it has focused around those types of things. you know, as an example, we just actually a couple of months ago finished doing the digital learning research agenda for the community f They used to be the Digital Learning Collaborative. They're now the community for advancing digital learning, I think. they still call themselves DLOC, but all the letters are mixed up. It's like an alphabet soup. but you know, so I worked with I I led a team of there's about thirty of us that, you know, looked at you know, what practitioners wanted from the research. And developed nine themes around that. And we released it as a report for DLAC and then had a special issue of the Journal of Online Learning Research where each the folks involved with each of the themes sort of wrote a full article on each saying this is sort of what we know about this topic right now, and this is where folks are saying we should go. the other thing that I I'm spending a lot of time on is is looking at governance and regulation. Unfortunately in the US, and it's starting to creep into some other jurisdictions, how what we do and how we regulate online learning has been largely political in nature, with a lot of ideological undertones. when you leave the United States, that becomes less and less prevalent. so you can start to look at, you know, why governments make decisions when they're not based upon a specific ideology or they're because this company has been lobbying them in a specific way. and do those regulations and that governance positively or negatively impact online learning in that jurisdiction?

[42:25.14] Seth: Well, great questions. Michael, thank you so much for coming on the podcast again. You are a wealth of information about this. We encourage our listeners to pursue your work online. Where can they do that?

[42:39.344] *(approx)* Michael Barbour: probably the easiest thing is on my website, it's just Michael Barber dot com.

[43:03] *(approx)* Seth: Well, we will definitely link that in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here again.

[43:06.764] Michael Barbour: It's a been a pleasure. the hour goes really quick.

[43:09.628] Allyson: Thank you.

[43:10.173] Seth: Yeah.

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**[OUTRO — recorded separately]**
[43:12] *(approx)* Seth: That's a wrap on our conversation with Michael Barbour.

The parallel he draws between tech integration and online pedagogy is hard to shake: we've been telling teacher prep programs to include technology integration for forty years, and most still aren't doing it well. Online pedagogy is in exactly the same position — and expecting it to improve on its own, without a mandate, is the same bet that didn't pay off the first time.

The mental health finding is also worth sitting with: the research doesn't support the narrative that remote learning caused the mental health crisis of 2020. What it suggests instead is that even bad online learning may have been the most normal part of a student's day when everything else fell apart.

We'll link to Michael's website and his work in the show notes. Thanks for listening to Why Distance Learning, and we'll see you next time.