Noodges, Watchdogs, and Implementers: The Policy Advisory Board, Who They are, and What They Did to Promote The Online Academy

Introduction
As online learning environments became more prevalent in educational settings, it had intrigued me as to how these alternative learning environments find their way into traditional school settings and how they are ultimately used. My work as a George Mason University (GMU) instruction in the Integration of Technology in Schools graduate program brought me in contact with an innovative project called The Online Academy (TOA). TOA is an online virtual learning environment for high school students. Over the past three years, GMU has worked along with three local school divisions to develop and implement the program forming what is known today as the Collaborative. One aspect of the Collaborative was the creation of a Policy Advisory Board to serve as a steering committee for the delivery of courses to high school students.

With my interest in online learning environments and the knowledge that the research is scarce regarding the implementation of virtual high schools into school divisions, I decided to investigate the process of how The Online Academy was delivered from the viewpoint of the Policy Advisory Board (PAB) members. I hoped to learn how each member of the PAB came to be involved in the project, how each perceived their role in the process, what their notions of online learning might be and their perception of how this innovation fit into the future plans for each participating school division and the University as well. By gaining insight into the relationships among the board members, I hoped to learn about the challenges and successes that face administrators as they develop and implement new innovations in online learning. I wanted to understand what needed to be done to ensure acceptance of an online learning environment into the educational community and to gain insight into what types of policies needed to be in place when a new innovation is introduced.

Conceptual Framework
I have not always been interested in online learning environments. It’s not that I deliberately avoided the topic. I simply lacked experience and knowledge about technology and its affordances. Twenty years ago as I began my first career as a health physicist at a medical facility, the uses of computer technologies in a Radiation Safety Office were limited. However, I did have questions about how to make workshops more accessible for the busy doctors, nurses, and housekeeping staff at the medical center. I merely had a sense but no solutions that something needed to be done to allow more flexibility in my training program.
The push to use technology in my children’s school intrigued me as I tried to make sense out of how computers were being implemented into my children’s school. In conversations with teachers, I learned that most were not comfortable with using computers and frustrated by the technology initiatives. My work as an instructional assistant assigned to the computer lab gave me the opportunity to further explore technology use and its effect on learning. Through my Masters program in the Integration of Technology in Schools, I learned about new technological advancements and the challenges of gaining acceptance as innovations are implemented into society. My technology position in the public schools allowed me to try different ways of teaching and integrating technology with teachers and students. It was in this position I experienced first hand the resistance to technology integration by some teachers and administrators and the difficulties in offering alternatives to traditional teaching practices.

My doctoral program and my faculty position at George Mason have focused on the development and implementation of online learning environments for adults. As an online mentor, I have experienced the rewards of working from home in my pajamas. I have seen my online students transform in a way that is different from my traditional classroom students. My interest in virtual learning environments, especially for K-12 students, has grown now that my four children are middle school and high school. I am aware of the challenges that high school students face in balancing commitments to school and obligations in real life as they strive to be adults. I am also cognizant of the fact that some students have issues which prevent them from being successful in high school.

When the Collaborative launched TOA, I was given the opportunity to assist in the design of online courses, which prepared high school teachers for mentoring in the Academy. Additionally, I was able to work with a group of teachers, guiding them through the courses and the process of mentoring. Through on-going online discussion, I was able to hear their stories and ideas about online learning environments and how the opportunity to teach students virtually, made them feel like they were better classroom teachers. Primarily working with teachers has limited my view regarding the online learning phenomenon. To gain a better sense of what was happening in this arena, I found it was necessary to expand my thinking, my conversations, and my research to include other stakeholders involved.

My experiences provided me with the knowledge that technology can be used to support learning and online learning can be used as an alternative learning environment. I believed that there are many challenges and obstacles that need to be overcome when a new innovation is introduced. I also believed that in order for an innovation to be successfully implemented, stakeholders at many levels need to be considered, new policies need to be formed, and a committed change agent needs to be actively involved. These ideas influenced my decision to study of the policy board appointed as a steering committee for TOA. I believed that hearing the stories of each policy board member as they guided the policies for TOA would give me insight from another level, the school division Central Office Staff, about the diffusion of online learning programs.

While the research on virtual learning communities is emerging (Dabbagh, 2005), little is known about the process of how virtual high schools are diffused into school divisions. Virtual high school programs began to appear around 1996 with the U.S. Department of Education’s Virtual High School (Maeroff, 2003). Since then many states have developed or supported participation in virtual learning environments for high school students. However, not all virtual high schools are alike (Branagan, 2003). Virtual school programs can differ in goals, teacher resources, course delivery, and the design of the course itself. In 2003, Edison, a professor from George Mason University presented her vision of a virtual high school, which became known as TOA, to area school divisions. The design is based on the Community of Practice Learning System (COPLS) model, a patented system developed by Edison. This model utilizes a unique course design and a one-on-one mentor-student relationship (Norton, 2003). It is this design that distinguishes the program from all other virtual learning environments currently offered. By studying the TOA Policy Board, I hoped to inform the literature on online learning environments.

During the data collection phase, Dr. Maxwell suggested that I look into Ernest House’s work on the politics of educational innovations. Four specific ideas presented by House jumped out at me. First, innovations usually do not spread across school divisions. Second, smaller school divisions are the last to adopt innovations. Third, the Central Office Staff has the greatest influence when innovations are considered, and fourth, universities are generally the initiators of innovations. I was happy to have read House’s work towards the end of my data collection after my interview questions had been established because I wanted to keep an open mind in my interviews. I did not want these theories to lead me in any particular direction during data collection.

In order to gain more insight into the phenomenon of online learning, my research question focused on the perceptions of the TOA Policy Board about what they did to advance the delivery of The Online Academy in their school divisions. Subquestions include: What did they believe about the nature of the relationships among board members? What obstacles did they believe they faced in the process? What did they believe were the issue to be resolved for the project to move forward?

Research Methods
Setting
I purposefully chose The Online Academy project because it is a unique program in both design and delivery. The Collaborative included Stafford County Public Schools, Frederick County Public Schools, and Loudoun County Public Schools and George Mason University, a large public university located in Fairfax County in Northern Virginia. The virtual high school project was conceived and developed at George Mason University and the initial implementation of the virtual high school project occurred within these three school divisions. As a faculty member, the program and those involved in it from the University side were very accessible to me.
The school divisions represented in the Collaborative had historically promoted technology programs. Over the past several years, the Loudoun, Stafford, and Frederick Public School systems have invested staff development money in teachers who enroll in the George Mason University Integration of Technology in Schools graduate program. The historical relationship between George Mason University and the school division was a consideration in understanding the meaning of the board’s perspectives.

The participants were purposefully chosen after a conversation I had with Edison, the visionary of TOA and the implementer of the project on the University side. She recommended the official policy board members as participants because in their appointment as the steering committee for the virtual high school, they were the primary information sources about the delivery of courses to the school divisions. Their perceptions about technology and virtual learning as it related to teachers, students, and curriculum formed the basis for making policies about the virtual high school and its use by division schools.

The official board members included three women and three men. Peggy was the newcomer to the group, replacing Paul. Although she had only attended a couple of meetings as an official member, she had been involved unofficially in the project from the onset. As head of the Professional Development department, “a department of one”, as she described, she was in the midst of leadership changes within her division as well as becoming acquainted with prior decisions of the PAB.

Paul had represented his division as the Director of Instruction. His exit from this position amid leadership changes and subsequent relocation to a neighboring school system as a principal made me curious about his influences on and interactions with other policy board members. I wondered if the displacement could be an indicator as to how Paul interacted with the board during his term. I understood that this was a sensitive subject and became even more aware of the huge responsibility for confidentiality I carried as a researcher.

Roger, Director of Student Support Services, had a background in Curriculum and Instruction and he had been a principal. He was involved in many other projects including the development of a support system for elementary school counselors.

Lisa was a co-member on the board in a “supporting role” to her colleague Sam. She was a Technology Resource Specialist in the Department of Instructional Services.

Sam was in the lead role as official member for the division. Prior to his position as Research Supervisor, he had worked for PBS Online, a virtual learning environment for staff development.
Paula was a university professor who specialized in policy and education. She came to the project with an interest in how teaching in virtual environments differed from teaching in traditional classroom environments.

With the exception of a brief introduction to Paula in the past at a faculty training session and few email communications about a policy course in which I was enrolled, I had no prior relationships with the participants. In addition, my prior experiences had not provided the opportunity to work with administrators on the level of Central Office Staff. I enlisted the help of Edison as my gatekeeper to provide me initial access to the participants because through her TOA work, she had developed a relationship with all involved in the project and communicated with them on a regular basis.

My relationship with Edison is worth mentioning. She is my doctoral committee chair and the head of the Integration of Technology in Schools graduate program, in which I am an instructor. We enjoy a close working relationship. She plays a big role in the path that I take in my faculty position and in my research by providing opportunities for teaching and recommending topics for research to inform the programs in which we are working. She is therefore available to me on a daily basis to answer questions that I might have about the participants and TOA. I was aware that I needed to acknowledge this relationship and the possible affects on the validity of my findings.

I decided to conduct audio-taped interviews with each of the six participants. I felt that as Central Office Staff, these participants were accustomed to having conversations and sharing information about new programs. Initially I went back and forth on the length of the interviews, deciding between thirty and sixty minute interviews. I decided that these experienced individuals, with little extra time on their hands, would have less than forty-five minutes to spare for an interview. As gatekeeper, Edison initially introduced me through email to all the policy board members and gave them an overview of what I wanted to do in the study. Within minutes of her email, we received responses from five of the interviewees. I noted the quick response time and realized that the members thought highly of my gatekeeper and were readily available to meet her requests. The only contact that I had with the participants prior to the interviews was email and telephone conversations to schedule the interviews. Even though I did not have an opportunity to advance my relationships with the interviewees prior to our scheduled meetings, I did believe that my gatekeeper’s involvement added credibility to my requests.

An aspect that helped to prepare me for my interviews was the informal conversations that I had with others involved in different capacities with TOA. Through my position as instructor at George Mason University I frequently had contact with individuals who have knowledge about the leadership structure, the missions of the school divisions, and past attempts at implementing innovative projects in the school divisions. These casual exchanges have helped me to focus my research questions, develop my interview guide and have provided a preliminary list of organizational categories for which to use as I collect data. “Vision”, “Obstacles”, “Policy”, and “Role” were a few that came out of my informal conversations. In addition, I gained background knowledge about the general atmosphere at the Central Office of each school division in the Collaborative. Specifically, I’ve learned about how leadership changes in the instructional technology department in one county have diminished the focus on technology projects. Since I do not have experience in this arena, I think these conversations gave me confidence as I prepared for my interviews.

Initially I considered viewing the PAB meeting minutes as part of my data collection process. However, the brief time frame allotted to this pilot study did not allow for the collection and analysis of those documents. In terms of validity, these documents would have been useful for triangulation of the data and to verify the themes that emerged from the interviews.

Data Collection
Table 1 illustrates the interview schedule that I followed. I noted that for the most part my interview length increased, which I attributed to a continual revision of my interview questions. New thoughts and questions developed from each interview and I used that knowledge to build new questions to ask in subsequent interviews.

Table 1

What had changed in my thinking about my topic after I began data collection was my preconceived notion that the policy board operated as a unit and was all on the same page with the same issues. What I observed during my first interview was that each school division in the Collaborative had issues that differed from each other. It was revealed to me that the board operated as separate entities bringing in division specific issues for everyone to address. It showed me that I needed to reexamine my preconceived notions about the virtual high school projects and reaffirmed what I had learned from my coursework in qualitative research that data collection and data analysis can and should happen concurrently.

The questions I asked the interviewees were developed to gain insight into the roles, relationships, obstacles and issues faced by the Board. I asked questions about how the participants became involved in the project, what they believed to be their role on the board, what issues they had resolved or had outstanding, what they believed about online learning and its use in the division schools, and the obstacles that they perceived. A sample of the Interview Guide can be found in Appendix B. My initial concern was that participants might go off topic and that I would be lost in trying to bring them back around to my questions. This was an important lesson for me in that while I was in control of the initial questions, it was the participants who had the story to tell. I learned to ask the participant why they believed the “new topic” was important. I worried that I would not be able to ask good responding questions but when faced with an actual interview, I found that my interest in the topic naturally led me to follow up questions based on what the participant wanted to talk about. I discovered that if I treated the interview as a conversation between two people who had an interest in the topic, I was a much better listener.

Validity
I saw two main areas which threatened the validity of my study. Researcher bias was a main threat. My doctoral program and my faculty position are both focused on the design and use of online learning environments and reflect my support. I know that I want these types of programs to succeed and because I work in the office that produced TOA and have opportunities to work on elements of the program, I have a professional interest in the project as well. However, I feel that as a professional, I also want to know all sides of the problem, to have the opportunity to make improvements and to learn lessons for other projects. In this way, I have tried to remain open-minded. I believe that while I have knowledge and experience in one aspect of TOA, I had no relationships or knowledge about the PAB. This helped me keep my eyes open. Also, the process of revising and building on my interview questions for subsequent interviews allowed me to use what I was learning from the participants to dig deeper rather than my own assumptions. Writing about my beliefs and assumptions also played a role in acknowledging my biases and gave me the opportunity to revisit these notions throughout the study.

I had informal conversations about my conclusions with Edison as well as my doctoral program mentor, who is involved in TOA as a University professor. From these conversations, I was confident that I had allowed for the voices of the participants to be heard but also made plausible conclusions as to what was happening in the process. Another way that I did validity checks for research bias was to write about my findings and share those with peers and Dr. Maxwell, whose advice not to believe everything I was hearing was a huge breakthrough for me. This caused me to look at connections to check interviews against each other so see if the same ideas were emerging.

Another validity threat could be found in my data collection and the choices I made in what type of data I would collect. Due to a lack of time and sensitivity to confidentiality issues, I decided not to collect and view the minutes from past PAB meetings. The minutes contained information about and statements from individuals who did not agree to participate in the study. In order to get the perspectives of the official board members as my research questions indicated, I felt that audio-taped interviews yielded adequate data for my purposes.

Data Analysis
An important part of my data analysis process was the frequent review of interview tapes prior to transcription of the audiotapes. Since I had to drive a considerable amount of distance to the interviews, I used the return trip from the interview sites as a time to review my audiotapes. I believe this process not only made transcription more efficient but I believe this action engaged my thinking about possible organizational categories.

Following each interview, I developed a habit of listening, transcribing, reading and note writing. During each of these steps, I took time to reflect on the conversations and made notes to myself as thoughts occurred to me. While some of these thoughts proved to be random reflections, they helped me to keep an open mind about my data and to ask myself, “What’s missing here?” Preliminary organizational categories such as Roles, Obstacles, Vision, Policy, and Issues were developed from my research question and interview questions and were used to provide an overall framework as I analyzed data. After each interview I took notes about my impressions and added to my list of organizational and substantive categories (Appendix C).

After each interview transcription, I read through a printed copy of the transcript and penciled in categories in the margin as they appeared as well as underlining key phrases that supported each category. After listing all categories found, I then collapsed the categories into four categories to describe the of the Policy Board members perceptions about what they did to promote The Online Academy. These consisted of Relationships, Roles, Issues, and Obstacles. Each theme was assigned a highlighter color, which I used to highlight phrases and statements on my printed transcript copies. During this process, I found that I had to define Issue and Obstacles because for instance, one interviewee would describe the need for human capacity as an obstacle while another would declare it as an issue. Comments that described an unsettled matter for discussion by the Collaborative fit into the Issues theme and those that described situations that impeded the Collaborative processes were defined as Obstacles. I also began to see that some statements overlapped into two categories. I noted these occurrences on the transcript by using both highlighter colors and noting the overlapping categories in the margin. These occurrences helped me to think about making connections and at this point I started to develop a picture of what was happening by using a whiteboard to ‘draw’ the relationships.

In the next step of my data analysis, I returned to my electronic transcripts and used the highlighting tool to replicate the coding I did on the printed copies. This procedure served two purposes. I reflected on how I coded each segment, looking for anything that I might have missed and rereading portions of the interview transcripts, especially sections that did not have coded segments. As a result, a theme, “the right people at the table” emerged and I went back through all the transcripts again to re-code segments that would fit into this new theme. In addition, with my electronic transcripts coded, I could copy and paste segments into an electronic matrix for each category. This allowed me to collect segments across the transcripts and to see all the comments made by all the interviewees on a particular category or theme. Within the categories of Relationships, Roles, Issues and Obstacles in their respective matrix, I subdivided coded segments into more specific descriptors to capture a more complete understanding of each theme. Some of the descriptors were developed by me such as “internal division” Obstacles, whereas others were provided by the interviewees, i.e. “The Bus” Relationship.

After printing my matrices, I highlighted common phrases in one color under each category as well as those comments that didn’t fit in with the others in another color. Once again, I went to my white board and under each category, wrote down common things that the interviewees said as well as noting those comments that didn’t fit. At this point I began to make connections and asked myself, “What is happening here?”

I noticed that categories I had developed were all interwoven and affected by each other. Roles caused obstacles but because of relationships, issues could still be resolved, and so on. I decided that I needed to look at the substantive categories that emerged from the data and how those themes told the story about what the policy board did (Appendix C). I found that the data supported and challenged ideas about the diffusion of education innovation into school systems. Some of these ideas I had as a result of my experience as a technology specialist in a school system and others were ideas I had learned about from Ernest House (1974) regarding the politics of education innovations. It was at this stage that I began to include theories of the politics that occur when innovations are diffused into educational communities.

Findings
My research set out to understand the perceptions of the TOA policy board on what they did to advance the delivery of TOA into the school divisions. Through this understanding, I hoped to learn how online learning in the form of a new innovation, is diffused into educational settings. My initial perception that the policy board was comprised of a group of school administrators who met monthly to develop policy for the delivery of the program was quite different from what was happening.

The formation of a Collaborative was a result of recruitment by George Mason University to implement an online high school into school divisions, developed by Edison. Generally, universities are the source of innovations (House, 1974) because they have the organizational structure, the time, and the resources to invent. Once the innovation is designed a network of implementers must be established. Each member revealed that their respective divisions had a prior interest in and were in the process of investigating an alternative form of instruction such as online learning to meet the needs of students who were homebound, involved in work release programs, or couldn’t fit into the traditional classroom setting. The invitation to join the Collaborative was open to all schools but Paula indicates, “when the dust settled, there were three plus Mason and that’s what we called the Collaborative.”

However, the recruitment and decision to join the collaborative was very deliberate. Prior relationships between the three school divisions and the University ultimately convinced the school divisions to commit to the project. Edison, the developer of TOA had particularly strong ties to the three school divisions, cultivated through the Integration of Technology in Schools (ITS) graduate cohort programs that she offered in these divisions. Paula confirmed that “they [the school divisions] knew the students did well in the programs and they [the school divisions] trusted her.” In my own experience as an instructor in these programs, I had witnessed successful learning among the graduate students from these school divisions. The TOA project was based on the same principles of good instruction that Peggy said, “[Edison] is well renowned [for].” The members expressed great respect for GMU and Edison’s work. Lisa was “very much in awe of the work she’d [Edison] done on [TOA]” and as one who valued projects based on research, she thought it was “wonderful…that GMU is doing the outside research component of [TOA].” The members were in agreement with Roger that “the elements of good instruction…stand[s] in TOA,” unlike the other online programs each division came across as they explored the possibilities prior to being introduced to the GMU project. Peggy felt that “George Mason has a great name” and Paula added, “They [the school divisions] work with the University in lots of different ways. But I think every time, there’s that kind of outreach to a school division, it really cements relationships.”

What I discovered was that the relationships based on trust and formed under the constructs of the Collaborative provided a great advantage for the diffusion of TOA. The divisions and the university were separated across distances and did not share borders. One obstacle that board members cited was that even the most convenient meeting place required extensive travel time, as much as an hour and a half or more each way. It was unlikely that these four entities would come together to meet on a project. Innovations rarely spread from one school division to another because school divisions operate as their own government entity which typically inhibits the flow of information (House, 1974). With the Collaborative, there was a network of direct personal contacts which allowed the communication about the online program to penetrate into the division government. With support from the Collaborative small school divisions which generally do not have the resources to implement the latest innovations were able to do so when working together with larger school divisions. Roger admitted that “we’re a fairly small system,” and but the “beauty of the collaborative also is no matter what size the school division, no matter what assistant superintendent, or if you‘re a coordinator or university professor, there’s a quality among the board members and there’s respect for the profession, a respect for judgment, there’s respect for the fact that you are representing a constituency.”

Roger’s comment about “representing a constituency” contradicted my notion of the purpose of the Policy Board. It signaled to me that Roger while holding an official board membership conferred with the leaders in his school division about TOA issues. I initially thought the board was working together as a single decision-making unit and that the school divisions faced similar issues with regard to implementing a virtual high school. I also believed that the board created policy with equal voices about how TOA should be delivered to school systems. My perception was misguided in three respects. First, the board members each had different issues stemming from what Paul offers as “three distinct instructional philosophies, obviously all pointing to the same direction but with different philosophical views.” Examples of these different views included “the unique scheduling options in each division” (Paul) and “and the whole transcript issue” (Roger). In order for TOA to work in all three school divisions, each member worked closely with their Central Office Staff to insure that TOA elements fit into school division. At the monthly meetings, the members returned with reports about what elements fit and what did not fit. Paul’s criticism of the other online programs was that “they are built based on the educational philosophy of that particular locality [which initiated the program]” while through the Collaborative, TOA was developed to work within the constraints of several school divisions.

By operating on group consensus, the board members were forced to work out issues within their division or presented ways to modify TOA thereby making the program flexible enough to reflect the educational philosophies of three localities. Sam commented that “adding other school divisions enriches the content, if for only…that you’re using [different] texts…different resources…different experiences. It gives you a broader based understanding of what policies are in place…grading issues, instructional issues.” It also allowed for TOA to be flexible enough to be used by other school systems outside the Collaborative, a major issue currently facing the board. This illustrated another aspect of the Collaborative which promoted TOA not only in their divisions but outside the Collaborative.

A second mistake in my initial thinking was that the policy board developed policy. However, it was the notion of policy making that was lacking in my conversations with the interviewees. Roger explained that what comes out of board meetings was “not a policy as much as it is practice.” Sam was more direct by saying, “…we don’t operate based on policy. We operate based on decisions that aren’t written down.” It is “an advisory board”, he continued. Paula, an expert on policy making, clarified that the board was officially called Policy Advisory Board with a statement that “its policy advisory board because in fact only a school board can make policy in Virginia. So it’s always advisory.”

The third that the board members had equal standing among each other was incorrect as well. the advisory aspect of the board showed that not all at the table held equal roles as I had suspected early on in my research. A delineation of roles and a clear leader emerged from the data. As the initiator of the innovation as well as owner of the intellectual property known as TOA, GMU “will always have a different role than the three school division” as stated by Paula. Sam stated that “we’re advising GMU… as much as we like to say we have equal voices at the table, GMU is driving the bus. We all have a seat on the bus but GMU is driving it.” Paula would agree with Sam’s statement because “I saw my role as sort of a manager of the board” and “the one to kind of cajole the school system to sort of move along and help think about what are the legal things.”

Paula’s leadership was clear to me because she demonstrated a balance between sensitivity and hardness, something that was missing from the conversations with the other board members. In the interview she spoke of making sure no one is embarrassed if they were not in the position to make a decision without higher approval. She also was the only member who spoke of playing “a little bit of hardball” when she “refuses to sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)”, the initial agreement that set up the structure of the Collaborative. She felt that one member was holding up progress by firmly standing on the issue to have voting members rather than group consensus. Not until the member, whom she called “destructive”, relented did she, as the University representative, sign the MOU. Because of the weight that the University bore in its ownership of TOA, the Collaborative and the project could not continue without the University’s signature. This showed the leverage and the upper hand that GMU had in the project.

The school division members indicated that they did play a subordinate role to GMU. Roger quoted his Superintendent in that the job of the board was to “keep the herd moving roughly westward.” Paul saw the role of the board as “having to be problem solvers”. Lisa saw a need to be “looking at the communication between GMU and the fact that it all need to be on paper.” Sam summarized the board’s accomplishments as “being the noodge.” Paula referred to “the people at the table [are] the implementers”, the ones “who really know how this [TOA] is going to have to be implemented.” Paula was clearly excluding herself from the role of implementer because she went on to say, “We have come to find out what the implementers, as I am calling them, what it is they can do and what it is they can’t do. And if they can’t, the strategy is, you have a written document, and you say, ‘We need your school division’s position on these things and they can take it back [to their school divisions]’, and there’s no question of trying to reinterpret it when they go back home.” What was found in all of these descriptions was that the school division members were in the role of watchdog, worker bee, and pest, but certainly not in leadership roles with equal voices. These self images from the board in part lead to the controversy of whether or not the project was “getting the right people to the table” as Sam stated.

Frustration to Sam was “getting the division as a whole, getting the right people at the table, to say [that] these are the procedures, these are the students we are going to serve, this is how we’re going to open this up as far as [to] acknowledge that this [TOA] is really going on.” However, Lisa believed that “policy board people need to be empowered [by] reporting to or connected to people who are in power to make things happen.” Peggy, although very new to the process, was concerned that she did not “deal with curriculum on a daily basis” and is “not familiar with high school” since her background was in elementary education. Paul became frustrated because his Superintendent and superiors were wondering why there were “spending all this money if we don’t have a product yet and I had to constantly explain to my superiors that the product is not ready to deliver.” It seemed that the way the members view themselves as board members had a lot to do with what is happening internally within the school division.

Sam and Lisa represented the same school division. Sam stated that “a challenge really is the bifurcation that we have at this school division.” There had been struggles throughout the TOA process to which Lisa attested, “ I did not expect for there to be within the County such internal strife over who would manage the process internally here, whether it would be Pupil Services with the Guidance directors, whether it would be the head of C and I [Curriculum and Instruction], whether it would be Instructional Services.”

The internal strife was addressed further by Sam and his assessment of the situation that “there wasn’t a good dialogue between the two [Instructional Services and Pupil Services] as we were developing [TOA].” The internal challenge that TOA faced when presented to the Curriculum and Instruction people was described by Lisa as “curriculum is always an issue in the school districts because there’s always a core group of people who feel they own it and that their curriculum is the BEST!...looking at someone else’s [TOA] curriculum isn’t going to be good enough.” Her attitude towards that “core group of people” had been “get a grip!” The “traditional mindset” present in the school division frustrated Sam because “innovations are very hard for school divisions who are…entrenched in what they know.” According to House (1974) those in the Central Office have frequent contacts with the outside world but it is “as propagator or inhibitor of innovations within the district that they exert the most influence” (p.45). Sam and Lisa were the propagators of TOA; however, they are supported by GMU, a highly respected institution throughout the school division. This relationship provided a strong influence against those that wished to inhibit the innovation. The project was moving forward within the school division so it is clear who had the most influence. In terms of the Collaborative, whose role was to advance TOA into the divisions, Sam and Lisa seemed to be the right people at the table because they offered issues to be addressed rather than obstacles.

Peggy was Paul’s replacement on the board. Paul’s exit from the board demonstrated the changing leadership structure in that school division. For her school division, Peggy saw that there “isn’t a clear vision…timeline or plan for how we are going to roll this out” and “we have fewer people here wearing too many hats” because “we are going through growing pains right now.” However, Peggy saw the project moving forward despite the obstacles because “we have always prided ourselves in [this county] on being cutting edge despite being so short staffed in key spots. She advocated a “tag team approach” by sharing the position with a Curriculum and Instruction individual to make sure the right people were at the table. Peggy was still in the honeymoon phase of her appointment to the board. When we spoke she mentioned that she was “very impressed by everyone else’s sensitivity to me coming in new” and that everyone was willing to email me the information [to bring her up-to-date on the board issues].” In Peggy’s case, she may have been the only one who could sit at the table due to personnel changes in the Central Office.

Roger’s experience also demonstrated that internal relationships affect a board member’s belief about the right people at the table. Roger believed that his division “might be a little unique” in the strong communication channel that operated in his division. He worked closely with the Director of Staff Development on the recruitment of teachers and the content coordinators “reviewed all the classes and curriculum [in TOA] and they felt very comfortable that…there’s a good positive correlation between our courses and those of The Online Academy.” These positive relationships were noticed by other board members. Sam stated that “[Roger]” is in sync very closely with [the Assistant Superintendent] in his division and they regularly talk. Paula singled out Roger’s division by saying, “I really think a lot of the people in Frederick. They seem really, really super. They’re really committed to this [TOA].” It was important to note that among the three, Roger’s school division was the smallest and located to the very western edge of Northern Virginia, where tremendous growth had yet to occur. Lisa, whose county was one of the fastest growing in the United States, commented, “[Roger’s] school division is static…they see themselves as experiencing tremendous growth but they don’t really know [what growth] [laughter] is!” Roger did not question his right to sit at the table. He believed that there’s “the right driver, the right people on the bus, but not just the right people the right people in the right seats on the bus.” With a cohesive division administration and little change within the division, Roger was able to be the right person at the table.
I also learned that the Collaborative is attempting to deliver a program that is innovative in many ways. It is innovative in terms of its patent pending design. A selling point for Roger and his school division was that “the elements of good instruction will stand in The Online Academy. It’s just that we’re going to use a different medium to deliver it.” TOA is innovative in its content. Sam explained the dilemma faced within his school division because the Supervisors say “This is more rigorous than our course content… kids are going to be hard-pressed to do this because we don’t teach this way [in the schools].”

The program is innovative in its development of a university graduate program for teachers to learn about and design online content for high school students as well as the practice of online mentoring. When Peggy thought about why she might be having difficulty in recruiting teachers for the program, she stated, “ It’s not a Masters that they have already envisioned in their mind. Most teachers might walk around and think…I’ll get a Masters in Administration and Supervision or I’ll get one in straight out Technology. They already have an idea. With this Masters, it does raise the question about, ‘What will I do with this Masters? It won’t open up new jobs with the division for me right now.’…although it does prepare them quite well for private companies.”

The concept of online teaching is just too new for most teachers to imagine the possibilities. Peggy described the difficulty in getting the message across to prospective teachers in recruitment flyers and meetings. It was not until she asked one of the graduates in the first teacher cohort to recruit that they “got the turn out” which she attributed to the first hand knowledge the recruiter was able to provide. This demonstrated that with a new innovation, personal stories and experiences need to be related before understanding of the innovation takes place.

The innovation is new at the University level as well. The innovation has caught the attention of the Provost and the Board of Visitors (BOV). Paula reported that “there’s some pressure from the Provost to try to take this to a greater scale” and “the Board of Visitors see this as something that could make a mark out in the world and they like that. They both [Provost and the BOV] want revenue to come into the University…but they also want the University to get recognition and they see this [TOA] as something that might lead to that.” Paula did not see any negative consequences to this because she also represented the needs of the University. However, the impact that TOA has had at the University level caused the Collaborative to take notice. Sam believed that “the Policy Board needs to begin looking at how the bus is being driven…we are a K-12 division, GMU’s a Higher Ed. We serve students based on where they come in the door whenever they come in the door. GMU serves students who choose to go there and pay tuition, so there’s that whole dynamic there.” Expansion of the program had been a consideration from the beginning but the issue remained open. As Roger put it,
“ When you get into something, each new task, each new discovery triggers more passion, more enthusiasm, more desire to know. From the get go we tried to say we’re going to do more than a perfunctory offering, the board is going to have more than a perfunctory discussion…sometimes you don’t arrive at quality on the shortest trail”.

The Collaborative members agreed that a major issue was defining the entity of both TOA and the PAB before expansion could begin. According to Paula a second MOU was necessary to define the “next phase of our connectedness”. In addition, Lisa said the “commitment to building capacity in the form of teachers, students, the systems, and support” needed to be defined. These statements showed how the PAB members were moving in uncharted territory, not surprising for a new innovation, but rare for a group of school divisions. With touch of skepticism, Sam spoke of the board as “a bunch of educators trying to do something that’s pretty entrepreneurial and business oriented…” indicating a new venture for school divisions.
The story of the Policy Advisory Board and their perceptions about what they did to advance TOA into the school divisions revealed a very interesting relationship between a university and three K-12 school divisions. It confirmed my belief that a change agent, in this case, the University and Edison, needs to be involved in the process in order to bring the entities together and to guide them through the process. School divisions do not have the structure or resources in terms of human capacity, time, knowledge or finance to initiate and implement such project on their own. School divisions that collaboratively deliver an innovation bring diversity to the table which actually can enrich the elements of the innovation and make the innovation more adaptable to other divisions. Collaborative such as TOA allows the spread of innovation across school districts and gives smaller school districts the opportunity to participate in the latest phenomenon. The work of the Collaborative also opens the door for a possible state-wide program TOA, bringing revenue and notoriety to the University and the Collaborative school divisions as well. The Collaborative school divisions are rapidly growing entities, who are gaining the notoriety of top-notch divisions, a title previously held by the larger school divisions in the area. While the study affirmed the position, intentions, and goals of a university when initiating an innovation, it would be interesting to further study the goals and expectations at the superintendent level of the school divisions. The perception of these decision makers about division-university relationships and what they believe TOA can do for them would be a good addition to this study.

As indicated in the study, only the perceptions of the official policy board members were considered and therefore my conclusions were limited to their perspectives. Many others attended the meetings and had interactions with board members and their perceptions might have been a good way to validate the statements made by the official board members. Along the same lines, the official board members were extremely positive about the TOA experience and had invested lots of time in the project. I wondered if their optimism caused them not to reveal important problems. Hints of much internal strife was evident in many of the interviews but participants stopped short of sharing too much information about their internal division troubles. In this case, my relationship with the interviewees did not have time to develop and I was not given privileged information.

Also as mentioned before, the review of Board meeting minutes could have been used to triangulate the data collected. The study was also limited by the fact that only one interview per participant was conducted. A second interview of each may have produced additional information. I felt that my interviewing skills improved as I conducted more interviews and would have liked to have the opportunity to interview the first participants again. I am aware that the perspectives of a policy board are only one aspect in studying this phenomenon. In the future, to more fully understand the problem I would expand my list of interviewees to include the visionary of the program, the curriculum designers, the mentors, and the technical personnel who have been involved. It would also be interesting to interview the parents and students in the pilot program to understand how a virtual high school program impacts the community as a whole.

Reflection
If I were to do this study over, I would try to spend more time gathering information from the participants. Because the interviewees had tight schedules, I would ask the participants if they would be available for follow up questions. These could be asked via email and in this case, I believe the participants would have been agreeable to the idea. For validity purposes and clarifications, these follow up questions might prove to be valuable. In addition, I would try to take more time away from the data and to allow myself to take a step back and return to it with a fresh look. I found that I had an easier time looking at someone’s project and asking questions about what was happening than looking at my own. I also would like to conduct the study with another researcher. I believe there is a huge advantage in having discussions with another researcher who is engaged in the same study. This has the benefit of using different points of view as to what is happening with the data and to be able to really brainstorm all plausible alternatives.

References

Branigan, C. (June 2, 2003). Forum addresses virtual schooling myths. eSchool News. Retrieved on November 19, 2005 from http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=4456

Dabbagh, N. & Bannan-Ritland, B. (2005). Online learning: Concepts, strategies, and application. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc.

House, E. (1974). The politics of educational innovation. Berkeley: McCutchan.

Maeroff, G. (2003). A classroom of one. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Norton, P. (2003). COPLS*: An Alternative to Traditional Online Course Management Tools. Technology and Teacher Education Annual, 2003. Charlottesville, VA: Association for the Advancement Of Computing in Education (AACE). Published by Allyn & Bacon Publishers. Received SITE 2003 Outstanding Paper Award.