Why Distance Learning?

How do you know if your virtual program is actually high quality—without reducing it to a checklist?

Dr. Chris Harrington returns to the podcast to share how he’s building the Virtual Learning Accelerator: a human-centered system that helps leaders assess program quality, translate results into priorities, and support teachers over time—without outsourcing professional judgment to AI.

What you’ll get from this episode
  • A clear way to think about quality as a system, not a tool or a single role
  • How standards-aligned self-assessment becomes useful instead of performative
  • Practical guardrails for using AI to speed up improvement without distorting it
  • A sustainable model for improving virtual programs year over year

Key moments
  • 00:01–02:05 — Why the quality question matters now
  • 02:20–07:30 — The Virtual Learning Accelerator: coaching, assessment, and PD as one system
  • 09:46–14:45 — How the needs assessment works (14 standards, ~45–60 minutes, instant report)
  • 15:45–18:45 — Why the AI launch was delayed: tightening rubrics and recommendations
  • 21:03–26:40 — Turning scores into action: why coaching is the translation layer
  • 28:30–36:10 — Supporting teachers at scale: micro-courses aligned to online teaching standards
  • 37:00–40:10 — Revisiting “Why Distance Learning?”: the shift from access to quality
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 combines live virtual field trips with international student collaborations for a unique K12 global learning experience. See https://banyangloballearning.com/global-learning-live/

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.

Seth (00:01.189)
Hello everyone and welcome to why distance learning the podcast the challenges misconceptions about live virtual education. I'm Seth Fleishauer founder and president of Banyan global learning. My co-hosts are Tammy mooring and Alison Mitchell of the center for interactive learning and collaboration. Hello ladies.

Allyson (00:16.556)
Hi!

Tami Moehring (00:16.738)
Hello.

Seth (00:18.213)
Today's episode is a follow-up with a returning guest who's been building something that lands right on a question we know is burning for many program leaders. How do we know if our virtual program is actually high quality? Since his last appearance, Dr. Chris Harrington has been developing a virtual learning accelerator, a self-assessment portal aligned to national standards, an AI-driven recommendation engine that turns results into concrete improvement actions, and

Christopher Harrington (00:31.325)
since his last appearance.

Seth (00:44.709)
coaching plus micro courses designed to raise teacher effectiveness and program outcomes over time. We'll dig into what it means to measure quality without reducing. Sorry, Lucas. We'll dig into what it means to measure quality without reducing schools to checklists, how AI can support improvement without replacing professional judgment and what cohesion looks like when a program is trying to scale. But first, Tammy, could you please introduce or reintroduce our guest?

Tami Moehring (01:14.514)
I'd be happy to, Seth. Dr. Chris Harrington is a longtime education leader and systems builder in digital learning. He's the founder of EmpowerEd Research Institute and leads multiple initiatives focused on strengthening virtual program quality through standards, aligned evaluation, accreditation, pathways, and capacity building for both leaders and teachers.

Christopher Harrington (01:30.867)
of which accreditation.

Tami Moehring (01:37.772)
In our last conversation, Chris talked about cohesion, the idea that strong virtual programs aren't built on an LMS alone, on aligned systems that connect leadership, pedagogy, family supports, policies, and training. Since then, he's been developing a virtual learning accelerator, a standard aligned self-assessment portal, an AI scoring and recommendation engine, online coaching, and microcourses for virtual educators.

That's a lot. Chris, welcome back to the program. I'm going to kick us off with the first one. is for someone hearing virtual learning accelerated for the first time. What is it? What are the components and who is it built for?

Allyson (02:05.706)
Yay!

Christopher Harrington (02:08.019)
You

Christopher Harrington (02:20.423)
Yeah, thanks for having me back. It's always a pleasure having time to chat with the three of you. So the Virtual Learning Accelerator, I think you can look at it more as a It's not a particular tool. It's not particular consulting or anything like that to help virtual programs improve. But it's more of a strategic system designed to help virtual learning leaders grow their programs. And I mean grow, I mean improve and just

increase the quality of the programs. The accelerator itself, it's really more like a three-pronged approach to quality. It's human-centered first and foremost. You did mention AI, Tammy, and that's a big piece of it. We're leveraging AI, we're leveraging it appropriately. But this is a human-centered process. And it first begins with, it's rooted in a coaching model that really helps

with the leadership development for virtual learning leaders. But there is also a needs assessment tool, and that's where we make a heavy use of the AI. And that is a tool that will help guide the actions and direction for virtual program leaders as they help develop or grow or improve their virtual program structures.

And then the third prong would be professional development. That's something that never goes away. There's constant professional development that's needed. And that's really for the teachers, although administrators benefit as well. And that does have a component of AI built into it. It's embedded within the professional development experience.

Seth (04:06.859)
So, so I'm hearing a human centered system, you've got these different components of it. One of them is a needs assessment tool, you've got a PD tool coaching model. What was the problem you were looking to solve here with this new system? Is it that people don't have a system? Is that the system existed, but it wasn't functioning to optimize success of virtual schools? Like, what is your why? Why, why build this?

Christopher Harrington (04:35.557)
Yeah, so in, let say last 15 years or so, I've been doing consulting for school districts, helping them design, launch, or improve the virtual learning programs. And I work closely with the leaders of virtual learning programs, school superintendents, sometimes school boards, curriculum directors, technology directors. But it always comes down to that one individual that will be

responsible for overseeing the program directly. Sometimes they're called a head of school, sometimes they're a principal, sometimes they're a director or coordinator of the virtual program. So the accelerator is really designed for them. There are other folks who can benefit. There are some statewide structures and organizations that can benefit from this too. But the accelerator is really rooted in what I was doing in my consulting work because what I would do is I would take

some standards of quality. Back in the day, was the INAE call standards of quality. Now it's the national standards for quality online learning, the program standards in particular. I would work with the school leaders and teach them those standards, help them shape their programs so that it would align to those standards. And then there was always some professional development that would spur out or spawn out of that. And

Allyson (05:38.761)
You

Christopher Harrington (06:03.123)
It was really a heavy dose of coaching and mentoring that went on. So what really inspired this was there has to be a process that's way more efficient, more impactful, and certainly more affordable. Because the consulting model, and it's a general consulting model that's out there in our industry, it's very time intensive. And it can be really long and really difficult. Now that we have AI,

at our fingertips, there are some efficiencies that we can gain here. And when you start gaining efficiencies, not, I mean, the quality, I think the quality of my work is even better now using it, but the efficiencies translate into less money the schools have to spend for this. And I think that's really, really important. And I think what the accelerator does is it pulls together these three aspects.

knowing where your programs are weak and where they're strong, developing the leader. So it's a capacity building piece and then the professional development and it pulls them all together into one cohesive and synchronized approach. So it's not one-off PD or one-off coaching or, hey, let's do a quick self-assessment, see how we align. This is a sustained approach. It's a year-long approach. The accelerator is a year-long

process that can be renewed year after year after year, but it's this cohesive, sustained approach that you really start seeing results and change over time. it's not that it's brand, the concept's not brand new, it's just that the tools and resources and how we've put them together coming from the Empowered Research Institute, that's what's new. It's exciting too.

Allyson (07:53.74)
my goodness, it's so exciting. I love to hear the idea of efficiency, but also the idea of the assessment being something that can be continual and the idea that there's almost this comfort in a third party that's not attached to someone that's coming in, not knowing you, how your team works and that getting to know that as well as it being your peers. There's some type of, I went to art school, so I feel like they break you of that like your first time.

Christopher Harrington (08:03.923)
Yeah.

Allyson (08:23.446)
put your painting up and let people tell you what they think is not correct about it. But that's not always, or how it could be improved is a better way of putting that. But the idea of how you can gain that feedback and it be something that you can take in. You can find, like you said, that weakness and the strength areas. So you know where to go and it'd be something that is a cohesive experience and one that you can come back to.

And I wonder just because it does feel like it's this really deeply comprehensive resource that you have the three prongs. And I wonder how does it work? Because we know the why, but how does it work? If we go to the portal, what would the experience be? So when we're assessing, how long does that take? I know it's for a year, but what would a typical assessment be? Especially because in my background, I come from museum education. So the online experiences, we could have three new ones in a year versus

building a module or a curriculum in a school district. So I just think of it like that. And I also wonder, what does the result look like at the end? What does someone see after their assessment? Or what do they see when they're trying to put those PDs together and maximize the three prongs that are in place within the tool? Because it's truly showing technology as a tool when we put it together.

Christopher Harrington (09:46.95)
Absolutely, it's a great question. So again, this being a human centered process, the very first interaction that a school leader would have with EmpowerEd Research Institute and the accelerator in general would be the kickoff session with their coach. And what the coach does is it kind of walks them through the whole process, reinforcing the fact that it's human centered, but then actually showing

the school leader or their team, because sometimes it's more than just one person who's engaged with this. The more the better. The more brains around the table, the better. they show them how to log in, set up their account, and they guide them through the self-assessment. Now, what that looks like is there are 14 standards across the national standards for quality online programs. And this self-assessment tool, we really call it a needs assessment tool.

because it shows where the needs are, but it is through self-assessment. But because there are 14 standards in the national standards, what we have are 14 pages of questions. Now, it seems like a lot, but it's really not a lot, and it goes really fast. OK, so it's going to take probably about 45 to 60 minutes if you really know your program and you know what you do and what you don't do and you answer the questions. Each page of standards is

around four to five questions, okay? Through multiple selection, multiple choice, and there are places where you can put some open-ended answers. But basically, like I said, the national standards, there's 14 standards, and underneath all of those standards, there's 14 in total, there's a total of 65 indicators. So what these questions are that the school leader answers, they are questions that will help capture to how.

to what extent does the virtual program align to the national standards for quality online programs? So by answering this, that information signals to the AI scoring engine what to do, okay, and how to interpret that. So they go through that process. They can do it with their coach. They can do it on their own. They can do it with their team. But again, it doesn't have to be a very long and cumbersome process.

Christopher Harrington (12:12.317)
to do it. So what ends up happening then, the virtual program leader goes through, submits their self-assessment after about 45 minutes to an hour, and then immediately, shouldn't say immediately, it's about 30 seconds. There's a report that crunches all of their responses, and it gives those responses to the virtual program leader.

And their coach, who's also in that self-assessment system, has immediate access to that as well. So of course, everyone's notified through email and it's all right there. It comes way faster than people expect because it's just like, oh, wow, I just submitted a form. I'll probably hear back about this next week. But no, it's instant. And what it does, it actually will give you a, will give the virtual program leader a breakdown by standard.

Allyson (12:59.392)
Hahaha

Christopher Harrington (13:10.291)
what their strengths are, some areas for improvement. It's color coded. I mean, it's super easy and graphical to understand. It will give...

It'll give specific recommendations for each standard on how to improve and better align your program based on how the virtual learning leader answered the questions. It'll also spell out, hey, as you start working down this road of improvement, definitely don't do this. Sometimes we need to see that boundary, right? What do you definitely not want to do? So we have that in there.

Allyson (13:40.492)
Hmm?

Christopher Harrington (13:54.996)
And the way we've built this self-assessment tool and the way the report comes out, it's not anything for improvement. We'll help guide you to being perfect. There's no such thing. All programs are different. But it gives you a pathway to get to being amazing. But it's also realistic. So if you score as beginning or developing,

in a particular standard to get to the next level, it'll tell you what to work on. Since it's AI, it's not a human, it's not a perfect expert, but this is where the virtual program leader and the coach get together then. And they talk about those, that score and what it really means. Okay. Cause it's self assessment too. have to understand self assessments can be inherently flawed because I mean, as educators,

Seth (14:45.765)
And it.

Christopher Harrington (14:53.843)
What we like to do is like, oh, taking a quiz. You want to get the best score possible. That's not going to help you if you lie to yourself, right? So there's that element of coaching. if everything comes back that it's like, hey, this is amazing, all my ratings are exemplary, that's when the coach and the virtual programming might say, let's talk about this. And maybe we take the assessment again. And you can do it in an unlimited amount of times.

Allyson (14:57.43)
Yes.

Yeah.

Seth (15:17.605)
Yeah, if only all of our lives to ourself were actually conscious, right? And I guess that's why you keep the human in the loop, right? Is because, and to like give that check on it. I know that, cause you and I have been in touch. I know that as you were working on this, there were some delays in, in executing the, the, deploying, should say the AI component of this. What

Christopher Harrington (15:23.837)
day.

Christopher Harrington (15:29.523)
Exactly.

Seth (15:44.824)
What were you struggling with as you went through that and how do you know you're being successful when in this component, the AI component of it? Because I mean, this is like a difference maker for you, right? Like this is the increased efficiency. But obviously we don't want to increase efficiency if it's leading to worse outcomes. So what does success look like there and how did you get there?

Christopher Harrington (16:06.087)
Right.

Christopher Harrington (16:09.687)
We don't want people to lie to themselves and we don't want to lie to people, right? So we got to get this right. So, you know, we, I really wanted to launch this in August of 2025, but we pushed it back until December 17th of 25. So, you know, we launched it right before the holidays, but the issue was it's not that anything was broken.

Seth (16:13.421)
You

Christopher Harrington (16:37.299)
But we'd be doing testing, have different school leaders go in there and do some testing. And it's like, you know, it just seems like there needs to be tighter mapping from the questions to the rubrics that we have built into the AI scoring engine. Because it just seemed like there was a little bit of distance, some gap. And it's just like, I think we might be making up some things here.

with the scoring engine and some of those recommendations. So what we wanted to do is we wanted to take some time and deconstruct the rubrics and deconstruct the questionnaire itself. And with improvement in mind, we went and rebuilt. And so we were able to tighten that up a lot. And then in addition to that, then not only the scoring, but the alignment

So those different categories of beginning, developing, accomplished, exemplary, those are the four different categories. We made those tighter and more accurate based on what we believe are some of the heavier and those components within a standard, those elements within a standard that are more important and more impactful and affect quality to a greater extent. So we went and we adjusted that as well.

And then I think the biggest thing that took the time that pushed us all the way back to December was the fact that the recommendations were coming out and they weren't, I didn't think they were good enough. So we put our team at EmpowerEd into doing a lot of research and we went into every single standard, every single indicator and said, okay, well, what does a really good program do?

Okay, in relation to these areas. So then we just went some recoding and worked on that scoring engine and now the recommendations are much tighter, much more specific and much more direct to give some of that guidance. So that's kind of where it is. But again, when we think about AI, do you just believe AI wholesale? I don't.

Seth (18:52.14)
Yeah, all the time. Yeah, that's great.

Allyson (18:53.256)
No, no, it's ask the follow up questions, right?

Seth (18:55.865)
What? But the internet said so, so...

Christopher Harrington (18:58.437)
Yeah, right.

Allyson (19:01.96)
But I do think that that does bring up a good point, right? The trust that you have to have in AI and the trust you have to have in yourself to give the self recommendation, but also the idea to think to yourself, does the AI have, do I have to ask it more questions? Is there something else that I can look at this for and it be a starting place, thinking about you as a user of AI? Because I can put an equation in a calculator and get the right answer, but it's not necessarily the answer in which I'm seeking.

So, and it's also interesting with AI because that's math, that's equation, that's numbers, and that's awesome because yay, fun for math. But in thinking about how AI can talk to us, talk back to us now, and the idea of turning scores into action, especially, and maybe I'm drawing on my own experience, my previous position at, I worked at a university museum and we used to have to do a self.

a self-assessment that we would have to turn in to our superiors and then our superiors would sit down with us and give us their assessment. And I will say that is a very intense process when it was no AI, it was just us doing it on the portal that we had to sign into. But I did have a really wonderful leader who was really about motivating and putting the right people into the right place and really focusing on the idea of how

you can turn something into action, even if you didn't hit your goal. Why was that and how does that turn around? So I wonder what the mechanism that you have set up, especially with that human center focus, how does it look when you have your recommendations? So you're not just thinking, this is my score. Like you said, I really always wanted to get an A, but then you're filling it out the right way in the specific nature. But how do you turn that into

the achievable steps to get you to the larger goal or to get you to the metric that has been decided is best for you growing your program to the best of its ability.

Christopher Harrington (21:03.747)
Yeah, that's a good and very important question, Allison. So one of the guardrails that we have set up to avoid people using this needs assessment purely by themselves and relying on just buying what AI says wholesale, because there are some desperate leaders out there. They're starving for some help and guidance. This is where the coach comes in.

Allyson (21:25.9)
You

Christopher Harrington (21:33.274)
OK, the coach is the human being who is that guardrail and it's the person that's going to help the virtual program leader understand the results and the recommendations coming from that report. And collaboratively, they figure out those next actions. And it's going to be different everywhere for every program. See, the one the one thing that's it's interesting about standards.

standards, when there's a set of standards hanging out there, you're just assuming one size fits all. That is absolutely not the case with virtual learning programs. They're like, it's changing every day and there's different flavors coming about all the time, virtual learning. So if we're going to take the standards and apply them as a way to improve nuanced, unique virtual learning programs,

there has to be some sort of translation that goes on in there. And that's what the coach does. Our coaches are people who have either led virtual learning programs or have been in the thick of virtual learning and running programs to some extent or another. I'm not talking only having teaching experience, but I'm talking about leading because this needs assessment and these national standards are about the program structure and operation.

not about teaching kids specifically. So that's kind of where we are with that. And you kind of have to look at these reports. If I'm a coach and you're a virtual program leader and we're looking at your report, we'll sit there and say, do you think this applies to you? Is this like real for you? And then we'll talk about how it is and how it's not. Okay. But it's that direction, that starting point. And you're going to have at least 14 points of areas for growth and improvement.

Allyson (23:00.812)
Mm.

Allyson (23:15.51)
Yeah.

Christopher Harrington (23:27.463)
And you don't do them all at once either. You to be realistic. Like between the coach and the virtual program leader, where are our acute needs right now? Where are our priority focus areas? And let's start working towards that.

Allyson (23:29.47)
Yeah.

Seth (23:42.75)
I have a question about other types of data. I also love it. Just get on the record there. you said this about program structure and operation, less so about student activities. To what extent does additional data sources come into this evaluation other than the self-assessment of the virtual program leader? Because I imagine that within the coaching model,

Allyson (23:43.787)
I love it.

Allyson (23:47.422)
Yeah.

Seth (24:10.873)
There's going to be some, you know, of those 14 things that they can work on. It's like, I'm working on number three and you know, good coach is going to be like, well, this is how you will know if you are succeed or how will you know if you are succeeding? Okay, cool. How are we going to measure that? to what extent does that additional measurement come into this system?

Christopher Harrington (24:31.347)
in the next.

Christopher Harrington (24:35.527)
Yeah, so in the national standards for quality online programs, one of the standards goes deeply into metrics and program evaluation and the different data sources that you use to evaluate the progress of growth or improvement in your program or just the level of quality. This needs assessment stays restricted

to just those national standards. So it is kind of wrapped into that particular piece to an extent. But here's where the coaching becomes super customized. The coach isn't there just to help you align to the national standards for quality. The coach is there to help you. Like again, if I'm the coach and you're the virtual program leader, we might get on a session and say, hey, we're going talk about our

our transparency, data transparency today. But really, there's a major issue with a family and they need to know how to deal with that. That's what I'm going to talk to you about as a coach. so just know that the coaching piece and the it covers way more than just what this needs assessment will do. But in the needs assessment, there are places there's open ended questions that every in every single standard where you can.

the program leader can go in and add other data. And that's really just for coaching purposes, not necessarily factored into the AI scoring. But anything that's relevant and important for that particular program, there are places to capture that. And when we talk about some longitudinal data analysis of program growth and quality improvement, you can take these needs assessments over time as often as you want.

and some changes, do another one. It's all captured there. So from a sustainability standpoint also, as program leaders come and go, you can have like a massive record of where you've been and where you're heading.

Allyson (26:43.724)
Hmm.

Seth (26:47.109)
and I'm going to toss the crystal ball question to you.

Allyson (26:49.158)
I was going to say, I looked like you were going to say something. I was getting really excited in my mind. So, okay, right. I forgot. Sorry, Lucas. Okay.

Christopher Harrington (26:54.301)
You

Seth (26:54.605)
So just so, so pop pause for a second and then, and then start again so that Lucas can cut it. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks.

Christopher Harrington (27:01.08)
Hold on, Lucas, hold on one second. Are we going to talk about Pyra? That's the one.

Seth (27:06.851)
Yes. Yeah. yeah. Thank you. let me, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why don't you do the pirate? Thanks.

Christopher Harrington (27:07.55)
So until then, all right. Gotcha.

Allyson (27:11.852)
Do you want me to do Pyra before crystal ball?

Allyson (27:19.98)
Okay, yay. Well, it's always fun to think a little bit about metrics and how all of the assessment works. And it's also so fun, well, standards always so fun to jump in, but it's great when you do have a standard that already sets you up to ensure assessment is in place and that you were able just to kind of grow and put, really center that specific standard. And I wonder if we could jump in, since we are talking in that aspect a little bit more about the teacher experience as opposed to the student experience, if we can kind of

pull that apart a little bit more in thinking about the teacher skills and then the program systems. And we're wondering if you could tell us a little bit about Prya and what the micro courses like the time.

Seth (28:01.03)
Sorry, Alison, I'm gonna stop you there. It's Pyra. So can you stop? Yeah, you said Prya. So yeah, yeah, just start that over again. Thanks.

Allyson (28:03.734)
Did I say Pyra? did I? Okay, Pyra. Sorry. Okay. If you could tell us, okay. I'm so sorry, Lucas. Okay. If you could tell us a little more about Pyra, what are the micro courses like, the time, the format, the evidence of completion, and how do you balance that with the teacher?

pedagogy and the admin side of structure that makes good teaching possible.

Christopher Harrington (28:29.971)
And as inside.

Christopher Harrington (28:36.295)
You have the biggest questions, Allison. I appreciate that.

Allyson (28:38.476)
I know, I'm so… I like to put it all in there, you know, just as many opportunities to answer as possible.

Christopher Harrington (28:44.563)
Yeah, mean, the PIRA is that third dimension. It's the professional development. It's that third dimension. We have the coaching and that's supported by the needs assessment tool. And that's really all about program structure rooted in national standards for quality online programs. PIRA is all about the teachers and helping them with their practice. And that is rooted in the national standards for quality online teaching. So when we look at this as this cohesive

set. While the virtual program leaders are working on the program structure, it's going to include what do we do with our teachers? How do we help support them? How do we help them support the parents and the kids in our program? So what we've developed is a learning platform. It's like a learning management system, but it's not the full blown clunky kind that you would use for your online courses.

That's not necessary for this. This is for teacher professional development. Like we're not linking to a grade book or anything like that. This is designed specifically to get the teachers what they need just to do better and give the supervisors of those teachers a place where they can go and monitor where their teachers are in their professional learning journey. And when they complete their courses, they get a certificate of completion that the school leader has directly access to where they're supervising.

But here's what it is. I've been a virtual program leader in the past, and it seems like everything is a la carte and everything you have to, this is an upcharge if you want this, an upcharge if you want that. Do you want five courses or do you want enough for 20 teachers? And it gets all confusing. So the virtual learning accelerator by design,

gives all members, all staff members, teachers, administrators, support staff, unlimited access to all micro courses in the platform. And this is really, really important because different virtual programs and different leaders manage teacher growth, supervision, and evaluation differently. So we want to give them absolute complete flexibility.

Christopher Harrington (31:11.795)
without the nickel and diming going on with, you so it's just, you just get everything. And so what these micro courses look like, I mentioned that they're all aligned to the national standards for quality online teaching. What we've done at the research Institute is we've identified, well, we broke the micro courses down into three bands. So there's the pre-K through five, there's the six through eight, and there's the nine through 12. They're just natural.

grade level bands that everyone's familiar with. So we did that. And for each band, there are eight learning paths. And they're the same for every band. These learning paths are logically distilled themes or buckets, if you will, that tie directly to the national standards for quality online teaching. And inside each learning path, there are three micro courses. So for every grade band,

There are 24 micro courses. That's just right now. We're going to be continually developing. It's going to take a long time for people to burn through 24 micro courses. So we have 24 at the PK through five level, 24 at the six through eight, 24 at the nine through 12. And the content of what's covered is the same, but the context and the examples and the strategies are all age appropriate based on that grade band.

That's a game changer for a lot of schools already. And the way these work, they're asynchronous, unfacilitated courses, meaning teachers can jump in any time they want. They can consume that information as fast or as slowly as they want. They can always go back and revisit and review. And it's unfacilitated, but this is where something great is coming. It's not available yet, but it's on the...

in the near horizon.

Allyson (33:11.116)
Stay tuned.

Seth (33:13.487)
Holograms you're going to make it holograms.

Allyson (33:15.632)
please say telegrams. That's my life mission.

Christopher Harrington (33:18.251)
It's a step before holograms. It's an interactive chatbot called Eddie. So you can ask Eddie. And what you can do is, as you're working your way through your micro course, and you might have some questions, or if it sparks some ideas, you can have a conversation with the chatbot. And this is for the teachers. I mean, administrators can use it too. But the...

In the needs assessment and the coaching model, that's for the leaders. But if you want to start working with larger numbers of folks at scale supporting them like teachers, we built this to be able to support that. But the experience in the micro courses is you go in and just with a click, you can enroll in any course you want. And then it's right there for you you can start. The courses will take probably about two hours to complete. Super, super bite size.

My experience has been when I'm supporting a school or a program and I'm providing coaching, but then professional development days come and say, hey, Chris, can you give us some time between one o'clock and three o'clock? And it's just like, well, they really have this because I have to talk about ladder safety and bloodborne pathogens as part of our professional development and other compliance kinds of things. I get it. Okay. So what we did was we broke these

Seth (34:36.547)
Hehehehehe

Christopher Harrington (34:43.319)
micro courses down into two hour chunks so that you can get what you need right away and it can fit in different kinds of schedules that school leaders have. And if you want to make a whole day of it, well, you just knock out a whole learning path and take three of the micro courses, you know, and there's your six hours if that's a requirement for you. But

we do have embedded in each course these reflection questions and it's more, hey, if you want to grow some more, consider doing this. So it might be something, hey, based on what you learned, try this, practice doing this, jot down how you might do something like this. And this is a great opportunity for the coach to work with the supervisor of teachers and maybe what the supervisor wants to do. It's like, we actually want to take

this micro course and have teachers complete this reflection activity. And now it's going to be three hours or four hours. And it's embedded into teacher observations, post observation follow ups, even be involved with goal setting. You know, so again, this is where the coach really comes in and, creates this cohesion. And, and again, like I mentioned before, the supervisor has access to all of this inside the, the Pyra system. So it's all at their fingertips.

Allyson (35:52.844)
Hmm.

Christopher Harrington (36:07.507)
24-7.

Seth (36:08.837)
Yeah, it's interesting. I love it. I love hearing, uh, programs, products that are created by people who've been there. Right. And it's like that your perspective is, all over the design of this, right? The understanding, not just from a, from the consulting work that you did in terms of what people need from the outside, but also having been a virtual program leader yourself and understanding all the limitations that exists, the, you know, what needs to be true in order for something to be effective and implementable.

Christopher Harrington (36:34.326)
what needs to be true in order for something to be you.

Seth (36:38.845)
it's, it's, it's great work. we have a segment on why distance learning where we bring in, old quotes from old, former guests. We also have a segment that is called why distance learning. It's the name of the podcast and we're combining those segments and I'm going to throw it to Tammy.

Christopher Harrington (36:41.917)
Thanks.

Christopher Harrington (37:00.999)
You

Tami Moehring (37:02.218)
A great way to set it up, Seth, because Chris is a return guest. We're going to mash them all together. So last time you answered for the wide distance learning question by saying that it's no longer optional, that it's already mainstream across higher ed and industry, that it's become a life skill for students and that real life shift we're going now is a growing demand for quality rather than access.

Christopher Harrington (37:08.743)
Okay.

Tami Moehring (37:30.252)
Sitting here now after building the virtual learning accelerator and working much more directly on how quality actually gets measured and approved, is there anything in that answer you want to redefine, clarify, or even push back on what looks different to you now?

Christopher Harrington (37:49.971)
I put my own words back in front of me.

Tami Moehring (37:53.674)
I know, that's the first time we've ever thrown it back at someone like, take that Chris.

Allyson (37:54.54)
Yeah

Seth (37:57.03)
Hey, hey, your tool is all about self reflection. So here we go.

Christopher Harrington (37:59.156)
I stand by those words.

Allyson (38:03.072)
Yes! Yes!

Christopher Harrington (38:03.537)
Right, that's right. No, I totally stand by those words. And I think the further I go in this, the more committed I am to those words. Literally just today, I had a conversation with two folks. One was at a Department of Education for one of the states here. Another was a person who wants to work with the Department of Education. They're in a program in their state.

they want to work because quality assurance is a big deal right now. we've been coming, quality assurance was important before the pandemic, but the pandemic really painted a picture that, you know, for a lot of us, we're not really good at this virtual thing. And now it's starting to come to light and not come to light, but people are starting to do something about it. So there's rumblings across the country coming from state departments of education and other

Allyson (38:50.316)
you

Christopher Harrington (39:02.287)
you know, governing entities and offices within departments about this need for quality. And I think it's that that that is only going to grow more and more now having conversations with these folks about this. So I think it's it's really important that we really understand and accept the fact that this is a legit way to learn and is the way

the best way for some families and some kids to go through their education. Now, because of that, quality is essential and we need to do everything that we can to help them improve. I mean, the fact of the matter is families and kids are choosing virtual learning regardless of whether a school is, their local school is ready for it or not. They're doing it. So then what are we gonna do? Give them a...

Allyson (39:57.418)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Harrington (40:00.072)
a subpar education experience. I've seen it where there are people leaving virtual programs to go to other virtual programs because the quality is just not there. So I think society is telling us that this is legit and it's a must have part of your educational program and we need to make sure the quality is there.

Seth (40:23.011)
You would hope that that, freedom of mobility that is available to virtual school learners would kind of have the industry or individual players within the industry, pushing each other to have that quality, to make sure that there aren't people in that situation who are leaving one school for the other. Cause cause they can, right? Like they can very easily do that even within your state of Florida, right? Like you don't have to be in the district in order to go to that district's virtual school. can go to any of the.

Christopher Harrington (40:32.595)
players would assume each other.

Allyson (40:42.432)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Harrington (40:50.387)
That's right.

Seth (40:52.005)
40, whatever counties that are, that are in the state.

Christopher Harrington (40:57.619)
Exactly.

Seth (40:57.93)
well, well, Chris, thank you so much for being here again. Our last question is where on the internet can our listeners find your work?

Allyson (40:59.82)
Hmm.

Christopher Harrington (41:08.111)
right. So if you want direct information about the Virtual Learning Accelerator, the best place to go is digitallearningworks.org. It'll pop up right in front of your face as soon as you go there. Digitallearningworks.org.

Allyson (41:20.876)
You

Seth (41:22.009)
Awesome.

Seth (41:27.813)
Excellent. well, thank you so much again for being here again. we are understand deeply how important your work is, how important quality is anyone who's not only designed, but sustained a program understands that at some point you have to know if what you're doing is good and you have to have a system for how to make sure it's still good. so thank you for doing that work, for making it accessible to so many people.

and for, know, especially when you were talking about making accessible to all the stakeholders within a community, that's one thing, but also making it affordable to make sure that anybody can do this if they want to, you know, really, really appreciate that work. for our listeners, if you've ever wished that there was a clear path from we're running a virtual program to we're running a high quality virtual program.

Chris is building a standards aligned practical improvement engine to help leaders and teachers get there. Check the show notes for links to his work through empower ed research Institute, digital learning works and cred bed, written and produced by me, Seth Fleishauer, Tammy mooring and Alison Mitchell. Sorry. I just said the name of my other podcast. I'm going to start over. Yeah. Yeah. Did we say something wrong?

Christopher Harrington (42:30.067)
It works incredibly.

Christopher Harrington (42:41.043)
Can I have you back up a little bit more, Seth? We just don't want to mention a cred vid, because that's a whole different kind of entity, that's more of like, accreditation piece is just different.

Allyson (42:41.132)
You

Seth (42:51.333)
Thank you. Yep.

Okay. Uh, and power ed research Institute and digital learning works. Okay. Okay. Check the show notes for links to Chris's work through empower ed research Institute and digital learning works. This episode was written, been produced by me, Seth Flesher and Taming mooring and Alison Mitchell is edited by Lucas Salazar. If this episode sparked a new way of thinking, please share it with a colleague, follow the show or leave a review. helps more educators discover these conversations.

Christopher Harrington (42:58.855)
Yep, that's great.

Allyson (43:14.262)
Thank you.

Seth (43:23.737)
Why distance learning? Because when it's done with cohesion and quality, it changes outcomes and lives. We'll see you next time.