[Bridging_the_digital_divide] Video on demand boosts students' math scores

[Jason Barkeloo]

Video on demand boosts students' math scores
  By Corey Murray, Assistant Editor, eSchool News
  June 29, 2004

Short video clips that reinforce key concepts are effective in 
increasing student achievement, according to a second research project. 
An earlier study found that video can improve learning in science and 
social studies. Now, brand-new research shows judiciously selected 
video clips also can produce statistically significant gains in algebra 
and geometry scores.

  The new study, conducted by independent research firm Cometrika, 
headed by Franklin J. Boster, a distinguished-faculty-award winner at 
Michigan State University, was released June 21 during the National 
Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in New Orleans.

  Approximately 2,500 sixth and eighth grade students from four Los 
Angeles area middle schools participated in the study. Each student was 
given a pre-test to assess comprehension of specific California state 
education standards for math, and at the end of the quarter, post-test 
assessments were given to gauge improvement. Throughout the quarter, 
teachers assigned to experimental-group classes incorporated 
approximately 20 standards-based, core-concept video clips into their 
daily lessons, while teachers in control group classrooms continued 
with their traditional lessons.

  Boster and his team found that sixth-grade students whose teachers 
showed them video clips during instruction improved an average of five 
percentage points more than students in the control group during 
post-testing. Eighth-grade students in Los Angeles improved an average 
of three percentage points more than students in the control group.

  The clips came from the unitedstreaming video-on-demand (VOD) service 
provided by United Learning, a division of Discovery Education, whose 
parent company produces the Discovery Channel.

  These latest results come as educators are looking for ways to help 
students meet the rigorous testing requirements of the No Child Left 
Behind Act (NCLB). To help more schools experience the same kinds of 
gains, Discovery Education has announced it will offer its 
unitedstreaming service at no cost to one school in every 
non-subscribing public school district in the United States during the 
2004-2005 school year. School districts already subscribing to the 
service are not eligible for the introductory program.

  From July 1, 2004, through June 30, 2005, the company's new "VOD Pass" 
program offers free access for one school building in every new 
district. According to the company, the service provides access to more 
than 2,200 full-length videos and 22,000 video clips correlated to 
individual state education standards.

  Educators in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) had an 
inkling of what the study's outcome might be even before the results 
were official. Jill Longman, a sixth-grade teacher at LAUSD's Olive 
Vista Middle School in Sylmar, Calif., said she wasn't surprised by the 
latest study results. She knew the videos were working, she said, by 
the way her students had responded to them.

  "We were feeling the positive effects long before the results came 
in," said Longman. "The [students] were telling us it was working."

  In January, the research team approached officials at LAUSD, the 
nation's second-largest urban school system (behind New York City), 
with a proposition: Open your doors to a group of independent 
researchers for five months, and if you like what you see, Discovery 
Education will give participating schools free access to its content 
for one full year.

  Aware of favorable results involving science and social studies in a 
similar study conducted across three rural Virginia school districts in 
2002 (see Virginia schools boost student achievement with video on 
demand"), LAUSD officials signed on to the idea.

  For Discovery Education, it meant a chance to achieve, for the second 
time, what has become the gold standard in the school field: a 
control-based experiment designed to demonstrate a product's 
effectiveness in the classroom, as required by the scientifically based 
research provision of NCLB.

  But for LAUSD officials, the project was risky. If the technology 
worked as they hoped, it would provide a new tool for educators to use 
in reaching the district's 750,000 students--especially the more visual 
learners, who sometimes struggle to grasp concepts related by educators 
in classroom lectures. However, if the project failed to show 
improvement--or worse, if teachers' use of the technology resulted in a 
drop in student achievement--school officials would be faced with the 
prospect of explaining to angry parents why the project was approved in 
the first place. They decided to let teachers participate on a 
voluntary basis. In the end, the results proved to be worth the risk.

  In an interview with eSchool News, Discovery Education Vice President 
Jim McColl branded the project a success and said the combination of 
the two studies is proof that unitedstreaming can be deployed 
effectively by educators at almost any grade level, across a wide range 
of disciplines, regardless of rural or urban locales. The company's 
program currently is used in approximately 26,000 schools from coast to 
coast.

  In the classroom, educators saw results quickly. At Olive Vista, where 
two-thirds of the student population speaks English as a second 
language, Longman used the power of video to highlight mathematical 
concepts where words sometimes failed.

  "Visuals are helpful when language is a barrier, especially for math," 
she said.

  Olive Vista Principal Joan Whitaker said students were so enthusiastic 
about the use of the videos that many went home and told their parents 
about the project. In turn, many parents requested that the videos be 
demonstrated during community meetings and asked when school officials 
planned to roll out the service to all students, not just those 
involved in the study.

  As word of the study spread throughout the district, Whitaker said, 
many teachers and parents began asking for access to the clips. Of 
course, one problem with any control-based experiment is that educators 
must agree to offer the solution to some students, while withholding it 
from others.

To sidestep a potential headache, McColl said, Discovery offered 
participating schools access to its full video library for one year 
following the conclusion of the research.

  "We hope this will be a really valuable resource that they will 
continue to use from this point forward," said McColl, who added that 
LAUSD's willingness to participate in the survey was predicated upon 
the success of the earlier research, researchers' ability to explain 
the intricacies of experimental-control design, and a pledge to cut the 
project short should it have any adverse effect on student achievement.

  It also didn't hurt that the program was easy to introduce. The 
technology is web-based. Unlike some educational solutions, where 
cumbersome installations and training programs divert attention from 
busy school technology staffs, the unitedstreaming model requires no 
installation and little training, according to Olive Vista Technology 
Coordinator Robert Benavidez.

  Throughout the district, participating teachers underwent a two-day 
training program to learn how to navigate the site, Benavidez said. 
Meanwhile, Discovery Education kept representatives on hand to answer 
any technology questions and to ensure the implementation went as 
smoothly as possible.

  At Olive Vista, officials downloaded more than 100 video clips to a 
local server and also burned them onto CD-ROMs for participating 
teachers in the event that the web site went down or teachers ran into 
traffic problems online. Despite an ongoing construction project at the 
school, no problems were reported, Benavidez said.

  Educators at Olive Vista already have begun planning how to deploy the 
technology in the upcoming school year. Besides using the application 
in the classroom, Principal Whitaker said, the school also will offer 
access to unitedstreaming from a private area in the school library, 
where students who were absent on a given day can watch the videos to 
review any concepts they might have missed in class.

  "To see the look on a child's face when they connect with a concept 
and share in their joy when they truly understand the subject matter is 
a wonderfully gratifying experience for all of our teachers," said 
Whitaker of the technology.

  Hoping to replicate those feelings in schools across the country, 
Discovery Education on June 22 announced the creation of its VOD Pass 
initiative.

  "By providing the unitedstreaming VOD Pass to every non-subscribing 
public school district, we're introducing educators across the country 
to the only video-based learning offering scientifically proven to 
improve student performance in math, science, and social studies," 
Steve Sidel, Executive Vice President for Discovery Education, told 
eSchool News.

  To apply, district instructional technology coordinators can log on to 
the initiative's web site at http://vod.unitedstreaming.com. Once 
eligibility is verified, information and instructions for accessing the 
unitedstreaming service will be provided via eMail, the company said.

  Links:

  Summary report of study (PDF format)

  Los Angeles Unified School District

Olive Vista Middle School

Discovery Communications

unitedstreaming

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?ArticleID=5134
---

Jason Barkeloo
President
TouchSmart Publishing
http://www.touchsmart.net
tele 513.225.8765


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