Why Distance Learning?

In this episode of Why Distance Learning, Seth and Allyson speak with Bobbie Sandberg — an educational researcher who recently completed her PhD in instructional psychology and technology at BYU — about what's actually happening in the household when a K-12 student learns online, and why most programs aren't designed for the answer. Bobbie's research, grounded in Jered Borup's Academic Communities of Engagement framework, reframes engagement as a three-dimensional challenge — cognitive, behavioral, and affective — that K-12 students can't sustain alone. When the school is online, the support system shifts to whoever is home. And most programs haven't reckoned with what that means.

Together, Seth, Allyson, and Bobbie explore how parents naturally divide the labor of support, why more involvement isn't the same as better involvement, and what happens when families arrive at virtual school not by choice but because nothing else worked. Bobbie also shares what she's learned about the critical first weeks of enrollment, why explicit role invitations from programs make a surprisingly big difference, and the underrated power of affective engagement — including a story about refugee mothers whose aspirational storytelling did what tutoring couldn't.

Key topics discussed: 
- the three dimensions of student engagement and who owns each one
- why cognitive support from parents can actually backfire
- mooring factors and why families don't always "choose" online school
- the fire hose problem in onboarding; designing for autonomy instead of dependence
- why affective engagement might be the most underestimated variable in online learning.

Links & Resources:
Guest Bio: 
Bobbie Sandberg is an educational researcher who recently completed her PhD in instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University. Her work focuses on parental roles in K-12 online education, with published research on how families navigate school choice, how parents construct their support roles, and where programs most commonly fail to design for the home environment. She holds a BA in linguistics and a TESOL master's certification from BYU.

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/global-learning-live/

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
Bobbie Sandberg —Transcript

[INTRO]
(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 Moerhing of the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration. Every episode we try to surface at least one assumption worth questioning. Today we’re talking with Bobbie Sandberg, who just completed her PhD in instructional psychology and technology at BYU, where she’s been studying something most online programs treat as background noise: what’s actually happening in the household when a K–12 student learns online. Her research — including a survey of 567 parents across eight online programs — makes a case that programs can’t keep treating parent support as a nice-to-have. It’s a structural part of the system, and when it breaks down, student engagement breaks down with it. The assumption on the table today: that engagement in online learning is a teaching problem. Bobbie’s work suggests it’s a design problem — and the design has to extend past the school and into the home.
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.

(01:30)
Allyson: Bobbi is an educational researcher with a passion for improving online and blended learning experiences. She recently completed her PhD in instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University, where she also earned her master’s in instructional psychology and technology, a BA in linguistics, and a TESOL master’s certification. Her work bridges research and practice, focusing especially on K–12 online learning, parental roles in virtual education, and research-practice partnerships that strengthen student support systems. Communities that support academic engagement are central to her research. She’s especially interested in how parents and families provide engagement support in online learning contexts. Her recent publications explore why families choose online schooling and how parents support student success in virtual environments. She is driven by a desire to expand educational opportunity and improve communities of support for all learners. Welcome — we’re so happy to have you here.
Bobbie: Thank you. Thank you for getting through the mouthful of research jargon in that intro. I’m happy to be here.
Allyson: You do such wonderful things, so I’m excited to dive into all of it. We always like to jump right in. From all of the wonderful research that we got to dive into — which we’ll have linked in the show notes — one question that came up was: you came from linguistics and TESOL before moving into ed research. What made you pivot? And does the communication background change how you see online learning environments?
(02:45)
Bobbie: Yeah, that’s such a good question because honestly, my path to educational research has been different than a lot of people. I don’t fit in a typical box in that sense. I did start out with linguistics. This was years ago — I did a linguistics degree when I was in my 20s and was so passionate about accessing people through language. I was really drawn to any opportunity I could get to study other languages, to travel, to live this fun, interconnected lifestyle. But of course, as soon as I finished, I realized I needed to find a practical application for that. And so TESOL was just the perfect space for me because it gave me an educational focus for using the skills and ideas that came from my linguistics background.
I actually taught in second language classrooms for a while, but then ended up taking a break while I raised children. I always planned to go back to second language teaching as soon as I was ready to reenter the workforce. I came to this point in about 2019 where I thought, I am ready.
I had this moment that kind of changed my trajectory. We were traveling — my parents at the time were living in Hawaii, and there was going to be a celebration in the city where they were living, celebrating a historical moment. They were so invested in that community that they really wanted us to come. They wanted my kids to learn something about this community and be part of this celebration. So they paid for all of our plane tickets.
Of course, as soon as we got there, my kids had no interest in anything happening at these celebrations. They wanted to be at the beach. And so I was constantly saying, we’ll go to the beach, but you actually have to come to this event — your grandparents brought you here specifically to learn something.
In one of those events, I was fighting the battles and we got there. I was so hopeful there would be a positive outcome. And I looked down the row and I have never seen kids more bored. There was just this slew of speakers, one after another, that spoke for too long and had no sense of engagement — no sense of how to teach in a way that would pull someone in to care about what they’re learning.
I felt in that moment this real pull to say, what I care about is engagement. And I don’t think we always do it well, especially with younger learners who need some help to engage effectively. I had this moment where I was like, this is my passion. And so I decided to pivot and found this instructional psychology and technology program at BYU. It’s been such a good blend of practical applications and the theory and psychology behind these learning ideas.
(05:30)
Seth: What a fantastic story. Not too many people have such a distinct moment when they realized, this is exactly what I want to be doing. I love that.
I’m excited to dive into your work. You and I met at DLAC a few months ago. We were sitting at a table discussing educational research. A couple of other people who are going to be on the podcast were also at that table — Michael Barbour, who’s been on a couple of times, and Jered Borup, who’s going to be on our next episode. As I was sitting at this table, I realized we need to get these people on the podcast. This is valuable stuff to share with our audience, who have generally been a lot of practitioners. We’re attempting to bridge this gap between research and practice.
Your research reframes the “does online learning work” debate. Your argument — and tell me if I’m right here — is that you can’t evaluate an online K–12 program without understanding what’s happening in the household, because parents are functioning as co-teachers whether programs design for that or not. Would you say that’s a fair summary?
(06:45)
Bobbie: Yeah, actually, I think that’s a pretty good summary. If you don’t mind, I’d love to take one step back and give a little contextual framework for how I’ve been studying this. You mentioned Jered Borup. I’ve done so much of my research based on a framework he developed called the Academic Communities of Engagement framework.
Essentially, that framework talks about a couple of things that are super important. The first is that engagement is multi-dimensional. We talk about how engagement has to involve our heads, our hands, and our hearts — cognitive, behavioral, and affective engagement. In order to be successful academically, a student needs to engage in all three dimensions.
But what we also know is that most students — and this is particularly true in K–12 — are not capable of engaging at the level necessary to be successful in all three dimensions without support. There’s a gap between what they can do independently and what they have to do to succeed.
That’s why the framework talks about communities who come in to support engagement. The community we always think about is the course or school community. We’re not underestimating the value of that. But in online learning, if we don’t also talk about this personal community — parents, families, maybe a neighbor or a peer, anything outside of the classroom — that community becomes so important in an online space where students are learning from home. They don’t have a teacher present. They have to have other people filling in those engagement gaps. So yeah, absolutely — we have to talk about this home-based community as an integral part of an online program.
(08:45)
Seth: So how does that work? There are these three different types of engagement — heads, hands, and hearts. Does a parent need to work on all three? Is there one realm where it’s more important for a parent to support?
Bobbie: That’s such a good question. A lot of times parents, when they first start supporting a student in online learning, think they have to do everything. There’s this overwhelming feeling of, oh my goodness, I better brush up on all my math skills, now I have to learn French. But actually, what the research shows is that as long as there is a sufficient amount of support, it doesn’t matter which community it comes from. As long as we’re getting the right amount, it can come from either community.
What we’re learning is that certain communities are better equipped to fulfill certain roles. In one study, I asked parents: when you think about affective engagement — who’s going to help them feel interested or excited or passionate about what they’re learning — do you think that’s your role or the teacher’s role? I did that with each type of engagement.
The results aren’t very surprising. With behavioral engagement, they all said this is probably me. I’m the one that’s home. I’m going to help them set up a space, manage a schedule, set timers so they know when they have a live lesson, help them figure out how to submit an assignment through the LMS. Those felt like a natural place for parents.
With affective engagement, they wanted joint responsibility. They felt the teacher should bring something inspiring and fun to the content, but they also saw a role for themselves — asking about what their kids are learning, maybe taking them to see something that reinforces it. And they definitely play a role on the negative side, when students are struggling emotionally to stay motivated or not get discouraged.
But when it comes to cognitive engagement, the parents want nothing to do with it if possible. They would love to just say, please don’t put that on me. I don’t speak French. I don’t remember calculus. I need a school to step in and provide that support.
As long as students are getting enough support, it’s totally appropriate to divvy that out based on who’s capable of providing what.
(11:30)
Seth: It feels like from the teacher perspective, that breakdown makes sense too. I’m thinking about math and how there’s this huge disconnect between what parents were taught and the way we teach math now. The confusion that can arise from being taught in multiple ways. There’s probably some version of that for most subjects, where teachers are prepared to meet certain standards and things might get cloudy if the parent is delivering content outside the context of an organized curriculum.
Bobbie: The research backs you up. There are studies showing that teachers love to have parents help with some things, but they actually prefer parents stay out of the way on cognitive things because they don’t have subject matter expertise. There was even one study that found negative outcomes when parents stepped in to provide cognitive support — it actually created problems. As opposed to affective support, where they saw positive academic outcomes from parental support. So absolutely agree with what you’re saying.
(12:45)
Seth: I’m wondering where trust comes into this relationship. In order for the parent to back up, they have to trust that what’s being taught is something they want taught to their kid.
Allyson: And on that same note, in one of your studies there was the conversation about families feeling like they aren’t really choosing virtual school. I wonder what you found about what pushed them there.
(13:15)
Bobbie: These are such good topics. Let me talk about trust first. There are some really interesting dynamics in online learning around trust and even privacy. When you think about a typical classroom — many parents are listening in because the student is learning at home. That’s a completely different dynamic than a traditional classroom.
I would talk to parents and sometimes have them say things like, I didn’t agree with how a teacher taught my student about this particular topic — a historical event or a political thing. All of a sudden you’ve got parents wanting to participate in the lesson in a different way. There are some really interesting dynamics when you think about how parents are involved in what’s happening in the classroom. It’s very different in an online space.
Allyson: It makes me think of field trips I used to teach — when parents were there as chaperones, there was always excitement to be involved in what they saw. It’s fun to hear that come out in your research.
(14:30)
Bobbie: Yeah, it’s super interesting. When I started this research, I felt like the answer was more parental involvement — that the more they were involved, the better it would be. But there’s actually research showing that sometimes involvement can be detrimental. So what I’m feeling now is that what we need is improved, not just increased, involvement. What does that look like? How could an online program influence a parent to develop that kind of role construction?
Let me come back to your question, Allyson, about school choice. This is a super interesting topic. In reality, no student comes to online learning without a story. Everybody has a reason. And typically — not always — a lot of them are a negative selection, where they feel that for one reason or another they’ve been pushed out of a traditional school. They look for an alternative that could meet their child’s needs better.
What my research showed is that the biggest deciding factor for why a student left traditional school and moved to online school were almost always mooring factors — personal or cultural issues that aren’t institutionally controlled. Things happening outside of the institution that push the student to come. The institution is left responding to that, even though it’s outside their control. It makes for some interesting dynamics for online programs trying to meet such a diverse student body.
(16:15)
Seth: Can I ask a clarifying question? You talked about mooring factors, personal cultural factors outside the control of the school. As someone who runs their own company and thinks about building culture — I’ve maintained the idea that if you don’t build it, it will build itself, which suggests agency on the part of leadership. Is that the type of culture you’re talking about, or larger community-wide culture?
Bobbie: Let me clarify. The mooring factors that came up most frequently were things like health concerns or social concerns — something happening within a person’s individual life. We lived through the COVID pandemic, and when I was doing this research post-COVID, there were a lot of people who felt uncomfortable returning to a traditional classroom. There are also so many times people choose online programs given social concerns — bullying, worrying about what’s going to happen to their child in secondary grades.
Those concerns happening within their individual lives but influenced by outside culture are the primary driving force for leaving traditional school. An online program has no control over that. They can control how they deliver content, the environment they provide, the resources — but they have no control over those decisions that are driving families toward them.
(17:45)
Seth: Do you have any information about what the expectations are of these families? What do they believe will be different about virtual school versus in-person? And is there a gap between those expectations and what they actually experience?
Bobbie: That’s one of the challenges in this population — there is so much variation. Anyone working in an online program will tell you that the varied needs of their students can be daunting. One of the things I feel strongly about is that we need more transparency in what an online program is. Parents need more education on how to choose a program so they can match their needs with the right one.
There’s so much variation in students and in programs. If you find the right match, you’re going to be so much happier. I talked to one parent who moved her child out of traditional school because she needed IEP accommodations and the school wasn’t willing to recognize that. They moved to an online program and immediately got the testing and accommodations set up. But they were actually still in the wrong online program. They tried three different schools before finding the right one. Now she says they’re so happy — it’s the right fit for her daughter.
But parents often don’t know their options. One mom said she just saw an ad on TV and jumped in. I feel strongly that parents need to be active consumers — actively looking into all the potential options and finding what matches their needs.
(19:30)
One of the things I did is I built a little website with a parent guide for online learning. It has an extensive list of questions parents could ask an online program — either as a self-assessment or to talk to the program directly.
The questions are organized by category: questions about the school itself, about how student support is given, about expectations for parental involvement, about curriculum, assessments, technology use, and whether the program will be a fit for your family. That makes them more digestible than my initial dump of questions.
Particularly on issues of synchronicity — traditionally, online K–12 schools delivered content asynchronously. But post-COVID, we’re seeing more schools offering synchronous components. If you’re a parent who wants additional school-based support, synchronous learning is one way schools can offer that. So you may want to actively look for a program that offers that kind of experience.
(21:00)
Allyson: I’m excited to hear about that list. Could you give us some examples of the questions, and how did you come up with them?
Bobbie: The list definitely grew from the research. In my initial master’s thesis research, I realized there was so much discussion about school choice issues that I ended up writing a separate paper about it. After that paper, I started thinking about what the most frequent issues were, what the pain points were, and whether we could come up with a list of questions.
I generated my own ideas, but then started running it through other parents for feedback. The best feedback I got was from a friend who said, this list is jumbled, it’s huge, and it’s not organized. She was the one who said, could you divide this up? So now it’s organized into those categories, which makes it much more digestible.
(22:00)
Seth: You mentioned before you wanted to talk about parental role construction and the ways schools could help create circumstances where a parent is optimizing their support. What have you found?
Bobbie: This is such an interesting dynamic, because most of us grew up attending traditional school. There weren’t that many options for online learning for those of us who are parents now. So we don’t have a role model or experience to fall back on. We’re forging our own path.
One of the things research says — and it’s so simple — is that programs can offer direct invitations saying, this is what we would like you to do as parents. Be very explicit. Eliminate the guessing game. Don’t make it opaque. Be specific: we hope this is what you will contribute, and this is how we will also contribute.
I read one study about digital invitations — one school had a program that would send little reminders to parents saying, don’t forget that at this stage of the course, we’re hoping you’ll help by doing these specific things. So simple and so powerful.
(23:15)
The other thing that’s really key — not only for role construction but for the whole experience — is that we cannot overestimate the importance of the first couple of months. The onboarding experience, the orientation, those first couple of months. I have a friend who’s an administrator for an online school. She said everyone starts out feeling like they’re getting hit by a fire hose. Everyone’s overwhelmed — managing the technology, the apps, the logins, the passwords.
Those very beginning moments are so key for an online program to think intentionally about how to help parents construct their roles and help students prepare.
I saw a great example at a school here in Utah. They decided their orientation had to be in person. When students came in small groups, they would immediately meet someone from the school. Every booth was staffed by school people. They got a school picture, school swag. They went to a technology station where they actually logged into their portal with someone from the school — practiced uploading assignments, logging into a one-on-one with a teacher. They met their counselor, their contact person.
It was such a beautiful way to say, right from the start, we’re going to make sure some of these things are established so we can smooth over some of the difficult challenges and make sure you know who to contact and what your role will be. I think those kinds of things make a huge difference for both the student and the family.
(25:30)
Allyson: I love hearing about that. The idea that the parent portal gets involved, that parents are part of it — it’s a learning and partnership model. But I wonder about the questions you think virtual program leaders could be asking themselves to improve that parent experience. Is the in-person orientation model something you see developing more? Or are there questions leaders should be asking when evaluating their programs?
Seth: And to piggyback on that — how does a school know what they want their parents to do?
(26:00)
Bobbie: There’s so much variation in programs, so what they have to offer will be different. But the more they can outline specifically what their expectations are, the more they can clarify that for both themselves and for parents. One of the research studies shows that one of the downfalls of this model is that parents and teachers both expect the other to do more — probably subconsciously. The school thinks, I have no way of knowing that without being present with the student, that has to be the parent’s role. And the parent thinks the opposite.
There are always going to be tensions, so the more clearly we can define and articulate what we want expectation-wise out of parental roles, the better for everyone.
(27:00)
Seth: You clearly have such passion for this. I’m wondering — what are some questions you’re currently wrestling with that you haven’t been able to answer yet? What’s feeding your curiosity?
Bobbie: As a researcher, we always have a list of questions that just grows instead of shrinking. One thing I’m really trying to understand is this idea of not just increased support but improved support. Connected to that is the idea that the ultimate goal of providing support isn’t necessarily that they’ll get a good grade. What we’re trying to do is teach them how to be a learner — how to be independent.
I would love to understand better how both communities could offer support in ways that lead to autonomy, to independence, instead of greater dependence. One article I read used the term “autonomy-focused support” or “autonomy-focused parenting.”
I saw this in my interviews. There was one mom — she probably didn’t think of it in terms of autonomy, but you could feel she gets this. Her student didn’t turn in an assignment, and he was really upset. Her reaction was to say, did the other students in the class know they had an assignment due today? He said yeah. So she said, well, that means you probably weren’t listening well enough when the teacher gave that assignment. You should go to your teacher and explain that you missed something and figure out how to make it up.
I thought about that after — how many parents would instead think, I should have known that assignment was due, or blame the child, or blame the teacher? Sometimes our instincts lead us to a space where we’re not providing support that leads to the autonomy we’re hoping they develop.
(29:30)
Seth: My gut take is that it has more to do with the emotional way the information is delivered than what the information is. In that story, the mother didn’t have any resentment toward the kid, didn’t feel guilt or defensiveness. Just came in very steady. At that point, it probably doesn’t even matter what she says — just showing up that way gives room for safe exploration of what’s next.
Bobbie: That actually makes me think of one of the other topics I’d love to research more — affective engagement. When I started this research, I saw that as a little bit of the feel-good part. The behavioral and cognitive parts felt more solid, more meaty.
Seth: That’s why they call them soft skills.
Bobbie: Right. But the more I learn, the more I feel like you can almost do anything academically when you feel affective engagement for a topic. I read this fascinating article about refugee mothers — families who had moved to Canada from the Horn of Africa. Because they were in an environment where they had nothing, they couldn’t support their students the way they had previously. What they had was this ability to provide affective engagement.
They would tell their students aspirational stories about where they had come from and how education was going to open doors of opportunity their families hadn’t had. And somehow, just with those aspirational stories as the backdrop, the students were able to overcome obstacles and be successful academically when you’d think they would have needed other kinds of support. I just think that’s an area of research that would be super interesting to probe more into.
(31:30)
Seth: You clearly bring such passion to this work. I’m curious about your answer to our titular question — the name of the podcast. Why distance learning, for you personally? What keeps you in this work?
Bobbie: This is interesting because I’m not your typical person for this field. My children have all attended traditional schools. They’ve done some supplemental online learning, but I’ve never had a child in a full-time online program.
What really happened is somewhat based on the pandemic. I think our idea of what a learning environment is has fundamentally changed. We all went through the pandemic and for the most part hated our online experiences. But what happened is we had this increased realization of what’s possible through distance learning.
As a student, I remember one semester I got a sinus infection and had a crazy reaction where my eye got totally swollen shut. I reached out to my professor and said, there’s no way I can be in class today — can you please just turn on the Zoom? I’d love to listen in. Surprisingly, he said no. It was such a shocking experience. I thought, how would you ever — now that we know this is an option — you can’t take that away from me. I know it’s not that hard, I want to be there, I want this experience, and I know it’s possible.
I think that’s representative of where we are and where we’re going to be more and more. Distance learning and traditional learning are just going to continue to blend because we want the affordances from both environments. If we really want to deliver education in the most effective way, we’re going to have to learn how to do it through both mediums and figure out where they intersect in the most powerful ways.
(33:30)
Seth: Preach, Bobbie Sandberg. You are amazing. Where can our listeners find your work?
Bobbie: At this point, mostly just unfortunately behind paywalls in research journal articles. But I have created a website and I’d be happy to share that. One of the other projects we’ve worked on is a parental assessment survey where parents can take it as a self-assessment, or programs can use it for assessing parental preparation to support online learners. Those are both resources that are more readily available that I could provide links for.
Seth: We will definitely put those in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here.
Bobbie: Thank you.
Allyson: Thank you.
(34:00)

[OUTRO]
(34:00)
Seth: That’s a wrap on our conversation with Bobbie Sandberg. The line that keeps sticking with me: not more involvement, but improved involvement. It’s easy to say “get parents more engaged” — Bobbie’s research shows that’s actually the wrong target. The question for program leaders isn’t how much parents are doing, it’s whether the program has designed for what parents should be doing — and told them. If you run an online program, her parental assessment survey and parent guide are both worth checking out — we’ll have links in the show notes. Thanks for listening to Why Distance Learning, and we’ll see you next time.