Michael K. Barbour

Touro University California · College of Education and Health Sciences

The Full Issue of the Journal. This is also available from the following link as individual articles. https://www.learntechlib.org/c/JOLR/

Despite repeated warnings from K–12 online learning scholars, media, and U.S. government bodies about the need for teacher readiness in the face of school disruptions like COVID-19, teacher education programs have largely fallen short in preparing educators for effective online and blended teaching during extended school closures. In this paper, th...

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Online learning should—and must—be part of the educational portfolio. In Online By Choice, Stephanie Moore and Michael Barbour argue persuasively that online learning is a precious source of resilience and flexibility for schools now and going forward—an important feature of a robust ecosystem along with face-to-face and blended instruction—and th...

In light of current or future pandemics, natural disasters, war, or personal preferences, remote or online learning is becoming increasingly common. This reality means that teachers need to be equipped with the skills necessary to effectively teach online. In this paper the authors highlight the importance of preparing teachers with effective onlin...

A principal theme in this issue of the Journal of Online Learning Research is Experience. Each of the articles focuses on how a group reports on and thinks about experience. For those who participated in the studies that lead to these articles, experiences seemed to be important; and the participants seemed to do their own framing of what makes a s...

The COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to move to online and blended learning. The abrupt change was a challenge for many teachers, particularly those that lacked professional development and experience in these modes and environments. The COVID-19 pandemic is beginning to end, but there are probable future circumstances where teachers and students w...

Full Issue

While there has been a great deal of debate over the impact of online and remote learning on mental health and well-being, there has been no systematic syntheses or reviews of the research on this particular issue. In this session, we will present a review of research on mental health / well-being and online or remote learning. Our preliminary anal...

We believe that the future will increasingly rely on system log data, machine learning and AI to further inform engagement theory (Bond et al., submitted), and we advocate that these changes include the strong and sound inclusion of engagement theory so as to support a more fine-grained understanding of engagement and, in-deed, disengagement. The a...

While there has been a lot of debate over the impact of online and remote learning on mental health and well-being, there has been no systematic syntheses or reviews of the research on this particular issue. In this paper, we review the research on the relationship between mental health/well-being and online or remote learning. Our review shows tha...

En avril 2020, la pandémie de COVID-19 a contraint toutes les écoles du Canada à mettre en place un enseignement d'urgence à distance pour leurs apprenants de la maternelle à la 12e année. Au cours des deux dernières années et demie, le Réseau canadien d'apprentissage en ligne (CANeLearn) a documenté l'impact de la pandémie sur l'enseignement de la...

In April 2020 of the COVID-19 pandemic forced all of Canada’s schools to begin emergency remote teaching for their K-12 learners. Over the past two and a half years the Canadian eLearning Network (CANeLearn) has documented the impact of the pandemic on K-12 schooling. For each of the past two school years (i.e., 2020-21 and 2021-22), most schools w...

In this paper the authors present a vision that by 2025 all teacher education programs will prepare teacher candidates with the knowledge, skills, and experience necessary to be successful teaching in online and blended modalities. The authors present evidence that all teachers need to be proficient in online and blended teaching, and they provide...

Thanks again for the wonderful class yesterday," the note from the classroom teacher read. "The students loved it and felt that it helped them reflect on where their writing comes from." This creative writing class of high school juniors was operating as a HyFlex-sometimes called concurrent , co-seating, or co-located learning space (Barbour, 2022;...

While the use of distance and online learning had been used for over a century in the K-12 setting (including in isolated ways during previous pandemics and natural disasters), the complete worldwide closure of schools focused attention on the use of distance and online tools and content to provide continuity of learning in a remote context. The wa...

Please visit https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/j/JOLR/v/8/n/1/ for this issue; and https://www.aace.org/pubs/jolr/ for additional issues

The current pandemic closed schools worldwide, tasking teachers to engage learners remotely without time to prepare. This study focuses on a professional development webinar series for English language teachers worldwide. Access to geographically dispersed English language teachers created an opportunity to gain international perspectives on teache...

Similar to previous iterations, this action research study examined student perceptions of K-12 online learning as part of an action research project working to improve a graduate course on using internet-based instruction in the classroom. Additionally, since the data were collected prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, additional analysis of the qualit...

Full-time K-12 online learners faced little impact when schools had to rapidly transition to remote learning in March 2020. Essentially, everyone found themselves in the same position that full-time K-12 online learners had been prior to the pandemic. It is the experiences of supplemental K-12 online learners, those students who normally have schoo...

In March and April 2020, a series of interviews with veteran classroom and online teachers, independent evaluators, online school leaders, change agents, government officials, university faculty, and/or researchers were posted to the Virtual School Meanderings blog. Entitled “5 Minutes On K-12 Online Learning With…” the series was designed to provi...

Chapter available at https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/transitiontodistanceandonlinelearning/chapter/chapter-2-transforming-perspectives-regarding-the-teaching-and-learning-paradigm/ Full book available at https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/transitiontodistanceandonlinelearning/

Barbour, M. K., LaBonte, R., & Nagle J. (2022). State of the nation study: K-12 e-learning in Canada. Canadian E-Learning Network. https://k12sotn.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/StateNation22.pdf Executive Summary - The 15th issue of the annual State of the Nation: K-12 e-Learning in Canada study describes the changes that have occurred in relation...

Journal of Online Learning Research http://www.learntechlib.org/c/JOLR/

While the number of K-12 students learning online continues to increase, the focus on online teaching is still absent in most teacher education programs. In this article, the authors examine the data from the fourth cycle of an action research project designed to examine K-12 online learning curricular materials at one Midwestern university. The le...

Article available at https://rdcu.be/cyJip

In this study, we analyzed a subset of uncited or low-cited articles from the data reported in Arnesen, Hveem, Short, West, and Barbour (2019), who examined the trends in K-12 online learning articles from 1994 to 2016. We identified 62 articles that had 5 or fewer citations, and analyzed them for trends in authorship, publication outlets, dates of...

In the context of New Zealand, a dedicated curriculum area for learning international languages is relatively new and has offered both opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, and contrary to the secondary sector where language learning uptake has declined, schools at the primary level have seen increases in numbers of students taking a langu...

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed virtual schooling to the forefront of the national educational landscape. Long-time proponents of this technology quickly positioned digital programs and platforms as the obvious solution for schools that had to close buildings to avoid transmitting the virus. The pandemic exacerbated a trend that NEPC virtual scho...

The authors discuss the applicability of common assessment types used in online instruction to the context of emergency remote education. Written assignments, online discussions, fieldwork, tests and quizzes, presentations, and e-portfolios are specifically addressed. The discussion includes the concepts of synchronous versus asynchronous assessmen...

This report is third of three reports designed to chronicle how each province and territory in Canada managed their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The first report, Documenting Triage: Detailing the Response of Provinces and Territories to Emergency Remote Teaching report (Nagle, Barbour, & LaBonte, 2020), described how each jurisdiction manage...

Downes, N., Roberts, P. and Barbour, M. (2020). Defying distance, ameliorating access: school education for remote Australian students. Education in the North, 27(2), 248-255. Abstract: In Australia, rural and remote schools are known for their innovation in providing education throughout remote locations, with students accessing distance educati...

In the spring of 2020, the term ‘emergency remote teaching’ began to emerge to describe what was occurring in education at all levels, despite the more commonly used term “online learning” dominating media descriptions of the instruction offered to students forced to remain at home. Hodges et al. (2020) described emergency remote teaching as an att...

This report is second of three reports designed to chronicle how each province and territory in Canada managed their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of this second report, as with the first report Documenting Triage: Detailing the Response of Provinces and Territories to Emergency Remote Teaching report (Nagle, Barbour, & LaBonte, 2020)...

Depending on the reference, the practice of K-12 online learning began sometime between 1991 and 1996. Yet two and a half to three decades later, there is still little research to describe the K-12 online or blended learning student experience, which has resulted in a lack of understanding of the actual instructional model, nature of the curriculum...

Ahead of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) March 11, 2020 declaration that COVID-19 was indeed a pandemic, and as Canada began diagnosing its first cases of the coronavirus, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, urged Canadian communities to “prepare for stronger public health measures to contain the spread of the new coronavir...

K-12 online learning continues to grow in popularity and acceptance in North America. Canada, in particular, continues to expand with over 300,000 students being enrolled in distance and online programs in 2019. Despite this rapid growth, there does not appear to be much recognition of this form of learning by institutions in Canada that provide te...

In this study, we analyzed a subset of uncited or low-cited articles from the data reported in Arnesen, Hveem, Short, West, and Barbour (2019), who examined the trends in K-12 online learning articles from 1994 to 2016. We identified 62 articles that had 5 or fewer citations, and analyzed them for trends in authorship, publication outlets, dates of...

In this literature review, the authors examined three key areas that were chosen as relevant to the challenges faced by small rural schools, and collaborative practice between schools working in virtual learning environments in New Zealand. The first area was rural education, where definitions of rurality and the demographics and characteristics of...

Full citation: Barbour, M. K., & Siko, J. P. (2020). An investigation of the development of an urban elearning cluster. Journal of Open, Flexible, and Distance Learning, 23(2). Retrieved from http://www.jofdl.nz/index.php/JOFDL/article/view/375 Abstract: Historically, primary and secondary distance education in New Zealand has focused on providing...

At present, most teacher preparation programs do not have adequate coverage of how teachers can utilize on-line content and tools to deliver instruction at a distance. This deficit has been partially caused by the reality that faculty in teacher preparation programs have historically not viewed online teaching as real teaching. It has also been cau...

Despite the massive growth in K-12 online learning, there are no opportunities for teachers to learn and develop skills to succeed as online instructors. This study is the third iteration of an action research project, which focused on improving a graduate instructional technology course and developing teachers with these skills. Previous results o...

This paper presents an overview of the relevant literature in the field of the K-12 e-Learning. The literature suggests that e-Learning at the K-12 level has been growing exponentially. The main focus of this paper is to describe some foundational concepts such as what is K-12 e-learning, how has it grown, how is the technology employed, and what i...

The 13th issue of the annual State of the Nation: K-12 e-Learning in Canada study describes the changes that have occurred in relation to e-learning governance and activity over the past year. Jurisdictional profiles describe activity and nature of governance for each province and territory, as well as for Indigenous programs under federal jurisdic...

La 13e édition du rapport sur la situation nationale du e-learning en M–12 au Canada décrit les changements survenus en matière de gouvernance et d’activités d’apprentissage en ligne au cours de la dernière année. Les profils juridictionnels décrivent l’activité et la nature de la gouvernance de chaque province et territoire, ainsi que pour les pro...

Barbour, M. K., & LaBonte, R. (2019). Sense of irony or perfect timing: Examining the research supporting proposed e-learning changes in Ontario. International Journal of E-Learning & Distance Education, 34(2). Retrieved from http://www.ijede.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/1137 Abstract: Only weeks before the 2019 annual meeting of the American Ed...

In this study, the authors analyzed 51 articles published between 2015 and 2018 inclusive in the Journal of Online Learning Research (JOLR). The purpose of this study was to examine the trends regarding article topics, geography, research methods and article types, authorship, and citation frequency. The results indicated that JOLR gave additional...

While massive open online courses (MOOCs) garnered plenty of attention at the beginning of the decade, initial findings about their value have been disappointing. In particular, only a narrow range of participants appear to be successful in completing and passing these unmonitored courses: white, educated, affluent males. One prominent Catholic sch...

In March 2019, the Government of Ontario unveiled its vision for education through a policy entitled Education that Works for You – Modernizing Classrooms. From an e-learning perspective, the proposed policy called for a centralization of e-learning courses and a graduation requirement that students take a minimum of four e-learning courses beginni...

As proponents continue to make the case that virtual education can expand student choices and improve the efficiency of public education, full-time virtual schools have attracted a great deal of attention. Advocates contend that this potential for individualization allows virtual schools to promote greater student achievement than can be realized i...

State-level departments of education vary in their mechanisms for monitoring online courses and programs. This study reviewed various state models for initial and ongoing evaluation of online courses. Five constructs were identified through this review, and examples from Georgia, Maryland, California, Washington, and Colorado were detailed. The rep...

While the use of distance and online learning at the K-12 level of growing exponentially, the availability of empirical evidence to help guide this growth is severely lacking. The author of this chapter provides an overview of the nature of K-12 distance and online learning today and a critical examination of the literature and-lack of research-sup...

This issue of the State of the Nation: K-12 E-Learning in Canada report marks its 11th year, and the sixth year of the Canadian eLearning Network’s (CANeLearn) support of this research. This report follows the relatively extensive tenth anniversary edition and the annual report has undergone significant changes. This 11th issue describes changes th...

The 12th issue of the State of the Nation: K-12 e-Learning in Canada report is also the seventh year of the Canadian eLearning Network’s (CANeLearn) support of this research. This report and its accompanying research briefs and vignettes grow in importance given the increasing interest and attention e-learning is taking in K-12 education. New polic...

La douzième édition du Rapport sur la situation du e-Learning en M-12 au Canada correspond également à la septième année d’appui à cette recherche par le Canadian eLearning Network (CANeLearn). Ce rapport ainsi que les documents de référence sur des questions et défis ainsi que les vignettes qui l’accompagnent gagnent en importance compte tenu de l...

Barbour, M. K., Mann, B., & Melchior, S. (2018). CASTLE Brief No. 2 – A virtual shortfall: How full-time online learning models are not living up to the promise. Denver, CO: University Council for Educational Administration’s Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), University of Kentucky/University of Colorado...

In this study, we examined the research literature in the field of K-12 online learning to identify the leading scholars, journals, top cited articles, research methods, and topics in this field of inquiry. Our research process involved collecting a corpus of journal articles focused on K-12 online and distance learning; categorizing these articles...

Blended learning has grown rapidly in K-12 schools and is commonly seen as a potential vehicle to make learning more student centered by providing students with some level of control over their learning pace and path. As a result, blended learning is most likely to have a transformative eect when it is paired with constructivist learning strategies...

Funding and Resourcing of Distributed Learning Executive Summary In Fall 2017, the Government of British Columbia (2017) began a review of the model that it uses to fund K-12 education. In the press release announcing the members of the review panel, the Government (2018a) described the goal of the review was “to find a better way to provide equi...

There is a shift occurring in education systems around the world, which could change the face of education as we have known it through blended and online learning. The purpose of this chapter is to describe the current e-learning initiatives and projects for students in secondary schools in Singapore. An overview of the Singapore education system,...

Retrieved from http://repository.cmu.edu/etcpress/82/

This chapter provides an overview of the state of K-12 online, blended and distance education, or e-learning, in Canada. A summary of the history of K-12 e-learning and research is provided along with enrolment, current policy and legislation. A description of programs is provided along with an overview of practitioner-based organizations and conso...

Many involved with the practice or study of K-12 online and blended learning are familiar with the American context. It surrounds us in the media and published research. However, online and blended learning is occurring in meaningful ways to address specific K-12 student needs all around the globe. There are several areas where the international pr...

In 2012, the Governor and Michigan Legislature passed legislation requiring Michigan Virtual TM , formally Michigan Virtual University ® , to establish a research center for online learning and innovation. Known as Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute ® (MVLRI ®), this center is a natural extension of the work of Michigan Virtual. Establish...

Like many K-12 online learning programs, the Illinois Virtual High School (IVHS) began by utilizing vendor content to populate its online courses. In its fourth year, the IVHS began a concerted effort to design more of its own online course content internally. The aim of this chapter was to examine the support needed and application of tools used b...

JOURNAL OF ONLINE LEARNING RESEARCH The research presented created a revised K-12 online course design rubric based off the iNACOL National Standards for Quality Online Courses. The redesign was completed in three distinct phases, beginning with a literature review of the iNACOL standards that compared current K-12, higher education , and other re...

This issue of the State of the Nation: K-12 E-Learning in Canada report marks its 10th year, and the fifth year of the Canadian eLearning Network’s (CANeLearn) support of this research. The report continues to be Canada’s own benchmark for the expanding use of technology-supported blended and online learning in Canada. The anniversary report contin...

The Education (Update) Amendment Act 2017, which came into effect on 19th May, allows for the establishment of Communities of Online Learning or COOLs. The Virtual Learning Network Primary School (VLNP) is one organisation that is in a position to make the most of the COOL initiative. In 2015, VLNP secured funding through the Ministry of Education’...

“Teacher unions in Canada have had concerns about developments in online learning, but have generally been supportive if they have felt conditions were appropriate,” according to the Director of Research and Technology at the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (BCTF). This sentiment has been echoed by the researchers involved in the annual State...

Over the last five years, the National Education Policy Center has published a Virtual Schools in the U.S.: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence report. As an extension of the data collected for the Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2017 report (Molnar et al. 2017), the lead authors produced case studies for five states (i.e., Ohio, Wisco...

We see them every day, staring fervently at their phones, oblivious to other people and sometimes cars. Today's college student is constantly bombarded with interruptions and distractions from a variety of sources, and presumably is unable to focus on any task for any length of time. The purpose of this study was to explore the work habits of colle...

Within the K-12 online learning environment there are a variety of standards that designers can utilize when creating online courses. To date, the only research-based standards available are proprietary in manner. As such, many jurisdictions have begun adopting online course design standards from the leading advocacy organization, which that have y...

The use of online learning at the K-12 level has seen exponential growth for much of the past two decades. Based on the limited research to date some students can experience success in the supplemental K-12 online learning environment, but other types of K-12 online learning are largely failing adequately to serve students. While proponents will ar...

The iPad is a tool that could change the way in which teachers prepare and deliver instruction in the K-12 environment. But, while proponents tout its capabilities, school administrators run the risk of purchasing yet another tool without understanding its potential impacts on the teacher, students and classroom environment. This study used iPads t...

The State of the Nation: K-12 E-Learning in Canada report continues to be Canada’s unique benchmark for the expanding use of technology-supported blended and online learning in Canada. This ninth edition of the annual report continues the strong tradition of incisive analysis of the state of K–12 online education in Canada. This year also sees a re...

While K-12 online learning in the United States has increased exponentially, the ability of teacher education programs to adequately prepare teachers to design, deliver, and support has been deficient. A small number of universities have begun to address this deficit through the introduction of graduate certificates in online teaching. This article...

The field of K–12 online and blended learning is varied and growing. Regardless of whether a student is enrolled in a brick-and-mortar school and taking one or two courses online, or if they are completing all of their education from a cyber school, more and more students are enrolled in online and blended learning opportunities each school year. O...

This paper is a review of a three-cycle, design-based research study that explored the relationship between the pedagogical research and the actual implementation of a game design project using Microsoft PowerPoint. Much of the initial literature on using homemade PowerPoint games showed no significant improvement in test scores when students creat...

This paper reports on a naturalistic research project that was conducted in response to the educational concerns of the coastal rural communities of Labrador Straits. The research project investigated the current provision of education available to the children and the youth of these communities and found that due to declining population, changing...

In 2011, the International Association for K-12 Online Learning released the second iteration of the National Standards for Quality Online Courses. These standards have been used by numerous institutions and states around the country to help design and create K-12 online courses. However, there has been no reported research on the validity of the s...

Public Act 60 (2013) of the Michigan Legislature tasked Michigan Virtual University, through its Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute, to " research, develop, and recommend annually to the department criteria by which cyber schools and online course providers should be monitored and evaluated to ensure a quality education for their pupils....

Designers have a limited selection of K-12 online course creation standards to choose from that are not blocked behind proprietary or pay walls. For numerous institutions and states, the use of the iNACOL National Standards for Quality Online Courses is becoming a widely used resource. This article presents the final phase in a three-part study to...

This article describes the organisational development of virtual learning in networked rural schools in New Zealand, specifically the obstacles that e-learning clusters of rural schools face in their journey to sustainability and maturity through the lens of the Ministry’s Learning Communities Online Handbook. Analysis of a nationwide purposeful sa...

Current research in K-12 online learning in Canada has focused on defi ning distance learning and its current strengths and weaknesses. Yet, the proliferation of technologies and digital learning spaces has led to the emergence of new instructional strategies and digital learning practices for teachers in many K-12 classrooms, both online and onsit...

Due to the challenges facing rural schools, many jurisdictions have resorted to the use of virtual school programs to provide curricular opportunities to their students. While the number of virtual schools that rely on synchronous instruction as a primary or significant method of delivery is quite small, there are some programs that do (and a growi...

Homemade PowerPoint games are a low-tech alternative for using game design in classrooms. To date, much of the research examining the games has not shown an improvement in performance. This has led some to question whether the games are properly aligned with the instructional strategies researchers have used as justifications to support using them....

Online, Blended and Distance Education in Schools provides students enrolled in Education Technology, Educational Administration and related Masters and PhD programs with expert opinions and insights on the practice and policy in K-12 online, blended and distance education, online and blended programs, including curriculum, instruction, technology...

Online, Blended and Distance Education in Schools provides students enrolled in Education Technology, Educational Administration and related Masters and PhD programs with expert opinions and insights on the practice and policy in K-12 online, blended and distance education, online and blended programs, including curriculum, instruction, technology...

Like many K-12 online learning programs, the Illinois Virtual High School (IVHS) began by utilizing vendor content to populate its online courses. In its fourth year, the IVHS began a concerted effort to design more of its own online course content internals. The aim of this study was to examine the nature of the support needed and application of t...

Over the past decade, the number of K-12 students engaged in online learning has increased from between 40,000 and 50,000 to more than two million. Students have also gained increased access to mobile devices throughout recent years, and educators have actively looked for ways to capitalize on this trend. A case study of students enrolled in an Adv...

p>El aprendizaje preescolar, básico, medio y medio superior (K-12) en línea y las escuelas cibernéticas autónomas han crecido a un ritmo acelerado en la última década en Estados Unidos. Al mismo tiempo, para estos programas en línea es difícil ofrecer los espacios sociales en donde los estudiantes puedan interactuar y que las escuelas K-12 tradicio...

Retrieved from http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/virtual-schools-annual-2014