Running head: MULTI-MODALITY HIGH SCHOOLS MAY REDUCE THE DROP-OUT
RATE, INCREASE STUDENT ENGAGEMENT, AND IMPROVE STUDENT QUALITY OF
LIFE
Multi-Modality High Schools May Reduce the Drop-Out Rate,
Increase Student Engagement, and Improve Student Quality of Life
Kevin M. Hill
EDUC 5333 – Technology in Today’s Classroom
Professor – Dr. Kristy Duckworth
East Texas Baptist University
26 June, 2015
Version 1.0
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Introduction
Technology has had a major effect on the way we function in our everyday life (Hicks,
2011). In the United States, and across the globe, technology in the classroom is on the rise.
Hicks (2011), also states that not all educators and administrators have embraced this practice
which has left the classroom behind compared to other industries. If we are to remain
competitive, in a global society, we must tear down the fears and lack of technological savvy of
our educators and administrators.
I have been very fortunate in earning my undergraduate degree from the World’s most
prestigious aviation university, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU). During my
studies, I have attended classes in five different modalities that Embry-Riddle offers; Traditional
– synchronous face-o-face in-class delivery; On-Line – 100 percent asynchronous delivery via
the Internet; Blended – a combination of traditional and on-line; EagleVision Classroom (EVC);
and EagleVision Home (EVH).
EagleVision Classroom and EagleVision Home are unique. I was a member of the
ERAU team who designed, tested, and implemented this new modality into our delivery options
and subsequently completed several master level classes using all five modalities. EVC virtually
links remote classrooms, synchronously, to a primary classroom who houses the instructor. This
allows for small classes, spread across the globe, to attend classes in a synchronous modality as
if they were sitting in front of their instructor in the primary classroom (Embry-Riddle, 2007).
Embry-Riddle (2007), further expands its synchronous distant learning modality options
via EVH. EVH links several students, many from their homes, with an instructor who may be
delivering lectures form their home or office. Home may be a misleading label as it implies one
must be at home. That is not the case. For this modality, home can be defined as; your
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residence, your office, your hotel during travel for work, or even a forward deployed military
installation in a war zone. As long as you have Internet access, you are home. ERAU integrates
its current technology, such as Blackboard, Oracle, and Microsoft Office with Saba Centra’s
state of the art software including web conferencing, e-meetings, recording capabilities, and
VoiceOverIP to provide an extremely interactive online synchronous modality serving both EVC
and EVH (ERAU, 2007).
With the ever expanding need for technology in education and the requirement to serve
all students, would creating a program that mimics the five modalities, offered by ERAU, create
additional opportunities for student success? Creating additional opportunities may recapture
drop-outs, increase student retention because of a rising student engagement, and improve the
quality of life for teens who do not attend school because of personal issues? This approach to
multi-modality delivery allows for flexibility and choice.
Drop-Out Rates
According to Galehouse (2002), all 50 states and the District of Columbia (DC) have
established laws requiring students to remain n school until a specified date; twenty-nine states
require that age to be 16; 8 others set the number at 17, while the remaining 13 and DC mandate
18 years old. Despite these laws, Statistic Brain (2014) estimates that approximately 8,300
students drop out of school each day, 3 million per year. Most drop outs had at least passing
grades and stated that grades when they vacated their studies and they stated that with some help
they could graduate high school (Hansen & Toso (2007).
Listed in their research article, Hansen & Toso (2007), provide us with six categories
depicting the main reasons students drop out of school; 1) academic difficulty; 2) poor
attendance; 3) Being held back; 4) disengagement; 5) transition to a new school, primarily in the
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middle of a school year; and 6) other life factors. Other researchers such as Balfanz (2007), refer
to the same issues but list them as life events; fade-outs; push-outs; and failure to succeed.
Academic Difficulty
Academic Difficulty, Hansen & Torso (2007), and Failure to Succeed, Balfanz (2007),
synonymously see students who struggle with learning and receive failing grades often get
discouraged and simply give up resulting in drop out.
Poor Attendance
Hansen and Torso (2007), state that a student who is absent one day a week, on average,
from their classrooms have a 75 percent dropout rate. The reasons vary with student.
Being Held Back
Students who have academic difficulty but remain in school often find themselves being
held back a grade. This retention within a grade often yields a multi age classroom and the
struggling student faces being the oldest in class and all the stigmas that accompany the retention
according to Hansen and Toro (2007).
Disengagement
Teachers did not connect learning to real-life situations, or teachers and parents seemed
uninterested in the student’s education was a common theme surrounding drop outs who became
bored or uninterested in the learning process (Hanson & Toro, 2007).
Transition to New School
Today’s families are much more nomadic than decades ago. Parents change jobs, the
divorce rate is higher, and military children move on an average of every three years. Students
in these categories often find the new school will be much harder, causing frustration, or much
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easier, causing boredom, and drop out according to according to Hansen & Toro (2007). These
changes can be placed in any one of, or all of, Balfanz’s (2007), reasons for dropping out.
Other Life Factors
Hansen & Toso (2007) and Balfan (2007), may have different category names for the reasons
student drop out, but their categories, Other Life Factors and Life Events, respectively, are nearly
identical. In these categories fall, pregnancy, family problems, arrest, financial problems leading
to the requirement to choose work over school, are key factors in high dropout rates we see
today.
Technology in Teaching/Learning
In the Home Statistics
According to Woolfolk (2013), digital media and technology, to include smartphones,
i products, tablets, laptops, along with clouds, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snap Chat…and
many more have changed the way we live and the world in which we live. In 2012, 71 percent
of American Households, with children from 0 to 8, own a smart phone and 42 percent also own
tablets (Woolfolk, 2013). With these devices, coupled with multiple televisions in the home,
kids spend only more time sleeping than being digitally engaged. She also proceeded to say that
homework often includes the use of these devices for research and communications with
classmates via e-mail, text, or the sharing of files in collaborative learning.
In the Class Statistics
In 2009, approximately 97 percent of teachers had one or more computers in their
classrooms and 57 percent were allowed to bring in their own for instructional purposes. Nearly
93 percent of those with computers and 96 percent of those who utilized their own device had
Internet access within their classrooms. In the United States, the student to computer ratio was
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5.3 to 1. These statistics were obtained from the Institute of Educational Services (2015), an
entity within the U.S. Department of Education. The article does not address mobile devices
such as smartphones, tablets, or laptop computers which would increase the devices present in
the classroom substantially.
A vital statistic, also shown within the Institute of Educational Services article (2015),
was that 57 percent of teachers either have in their classrooms, or have access to, interactive
white boards, a tool that increases the effectiveness of the traditional, blended, EVC and EVH
modalities mentioned previously. This device can be used, asynchronously, within the online
modality but does not provide any extra efficiency.
Student Engagement
Blessinger & Wankel (2013) define student engagement as a conscious awareness and
desire of a student to invest time and resources to successful grasp and utilize, in a meaningful
way, the information they are attempting to learn. Meaningful can be seen as useful for the
application within their everyday life either currently or in the future.
A key factor in establishing student engagement is motivating them to learn. Lacina,
Mathews & Nutt (2011), convey that teachers use technology in their classrooms as a motivator
and frequently use it as a reward for efforts put forth in non-technological delivery and learning.
They also state that technology in the classroom is an effective means of creating student interest
in content area and is a purposeful manner in which to build upon prior knowledge.
Conclusion
I would like to conclude this assignment in an unconventional way. I am presenting to
you a scenario that will put the content of this paper into perspective and display a case where a
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Multi-Modality High School will make an at risk student be successful while battling an all-toreal situation that many teens are facing today.
Scenario
Jane Doe is a successful student at XYZ High School and is enthusiastic about her studies
as shown by her class ranking of 5 out of 275. Jane makes an all too common mistake that many
teens do today, she finds herself pregnant. Being from a Christian Family she does not
contemplate abortion. Jane attends school as normal but is finding that her peers are shying
away from the usual conversations and not inviting her to after school gatherings that she
enjoyed until now. She becomes disinterested in school and her grades are dropping. She wants
to give up and drop out.
Jane’s parents are very supportive and speak with school staff regarding a way to remotivate and reengage Jane, as she has a bright future with a great support system. The school
principle mentions a pilot Multi-Modality High School concept that is being sponsored by the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The program will be paid by public funds and grants from the
foundation. Jane and her family decide that they will give the program a try.
Jane enrolls in and successfully completes an Online, asynchronous, class in home
economic that satisfies an elective and prepares her for routines she will need post-partum. Janes
parents decide that it be best if they move as to allow Jane to make new friends after she returns
to school after the baby is born. Jane enrolls in another online class and simultaneously enrolls
in a short Blended course at her new school that is a member of the Multi-Modality consortium.
She is not showing but does have many doctors’ appointments to attend so she attends face-toface (synchronous) one day per week class in algebra and satisfies the reminder of her course via
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the online modality. This allows Jane time for her appointments but also allows for her to meet
personally with the teacher to ask questions and receive clarification of math procedures.
The big day has arrived and Jane gives birth to a happy health baby girl. Jane is only
three classes form graduating but is finding it difficult to attend these classes because of her
responsibilities as a new mother. She reviews the new program’s and sees that a class she needs
is offered at the local high school but because of low enrollment numbers it has been scheduled
in a synchronous online modality, similar to EVC, that will require 3 students from her school to
be in a classroom where it will be linked to a classroom of 15 students that is 400 miles away.
She is excited to here that the instructor will travel form site to site and present from each site
every other week of the eight week class.
Jane still has two classes to register for so she can graduate prior to her 18th birthday, a
goal she has set for herself. This would not be possible because an elective she wants to take, to
satisfy a college entry requirement, is not offered at her local school. But she sees that the class
is being conducted synchronously between seven students, all who live in towns that are quite
some distance apart. This allows for the instructor to teach the class from his home,
synchronously as seen with EVH, while all seven students attend from their homes.
Because of her recent success in the four modalities in which she completed her course,
she is becoming re-engaged and excited about completing her course of study. Jane takes a giant
leap of faith and decides, with help from her grandmother as a baby sitter, to take her last class in
the classroom at her local school, where she can attempt to make new friends and walk the stage
at graduation in June.
Although this scenario mat be constructed in a perfect world, you can see how once was a
probable high school dropout has successfully completed her education and prepared herself for
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the next level of her education, attending a local university and becoming a counsellor for unwed
teen mothers.
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References
Balfanz, R. (2007, May 9). What your community can do to end its drop out crisis: Learning
from research and practice. Prepared for the National Summit on America’s Silent
Epidemic, Washington, DC. Paper retrieved from http://web.jhu.edu/CSOS/images/finaldropout_Balfanz.pdf
Blessinger, P. & Wankel, C. (2013). Increasing student engagement and retention using
classroom technologies: Classroom response system and mediated disclosure
technologies. [Accession Number 513324]. Retrieved from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com
Convisson, K. (n.d.). Why kids drop out of school. EduGuide. Retrieved from
http://www.eduguide.org/article/why-kids-drop-out-of-school
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. (2007, May 31). Embry-riddle worldwide launches
eaglevision. Retrieved from http://www.worldwide.erau.edu/newsroom/pressrelease/embry-riddle-worldwide-launches-eaglevision.html
Galehouse, M. (2002, January 28). Drop out bill speaks questions. The Arizona Republic, pp.
1-2
Hansen, J. & Toso, S. (2007, Fall). Gifted dropouts. Gifted Child Today, 30(4), 30-41
Hicks, S. (2011, September). Technology in today’s classroom: Are you a tech-savvy teacher?
Clearing House, 84(5), 188-191. doi:10/1080/00098655.2011.557406
Institute of Education Services. (2015) Educational technology. Retrieved from
http://www.nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=46
Lacina, J., Mathews, S. & Nutt, L. (2011). Technology integration: Graduate use of technology
in their k-8 classroom. Social Studies Research & Practices, 6(1), 149-166
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Statistics Brain. (2015, March 17). High school dropout statistics. Retrieved from
http://www.statisticsbrain.com/high-school-dropout-statistics/
Woolfolk, A. (2013). The learning sciences and constructivism. In Educational Psychology,
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