 OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. Okay, so welcome. We're so happy to have you here today on this beautiful Thursday morning. And I hope you enjoy our piloting a high-flex classroom presentation. My name is Patricia Potter Krogan. I have been an ESL supervisor at Santa Clara Adult Education for the past three years, but I've been in education for around 22 years. Good morning, everyone. I am Bijal Varia, and I am an advanced ESL teacher at the Santa Clara Adult Education. And as of now, I celebrate 20 years in the field of education out of the two and a half years at Santa Clara Teaching ESL program. Before we get started, we would like to give a special thanks to all of our team members. It takes a dedicated, empowered and a collaborative team for all goals to materialize. And a huge shout out goes out to the D-LAC team members and the leaders for supporting us and guiding us to our journey all the way through to piloting the high-flex program at our school and with the digital leadership. So thank you guys. And not to forget our partner school members, Campbell Community Adult Center and Pittsburgh Adult Center. Thank you guys. Without you, this wouldn't have been possible. So first we're going to think about why did Santa Clara Adult Education apply to the Digital Leadership Academy? As a supervisor at our school, I saw it disconnect from the real world for our students by lack of access and utilization of technology. Many realize that life experiences, as you all know, utilize and are driven by technology such as applying for a job or helping their children with homework. I could see the inequities and disadvantage this caused our student population while integrating into our society. To me, it was such a paradox that our schools located in the heart of Silicon Valley and our students were not having the technical resources, skills and knowledge that this area has to offer. Santa Clara Adult Education staff and students need help in making a successful transition into the technological age in education. Hence, OTAN's Digital Leadership Academy. I was so fortunate to be accepted into this academy during this year, these two years. Little did anyone know the real significance of the program and the team support through these two years, the pandemic hit. We only realized at this moment that these groups in this cohort of the Digital Leadership Academy would be the cutting edge of the change in the education in the technology world. For Santa Clara Adult Education, the pandemic meant going 100% synchronously online during the shutdown. When we just started to feel like we were getting into the groove of things, of online instruction, the next hurdle became how to transition back into the classroom while still meeting student needs. In order to address this inequity and allow Santa Clara Adult Education student population to achieve 21st century goals, we strived for three main goals at our agency for our pilot. One, access to technology. Two, utilization of technology in the classroom and the real world. Three, professional development surrounding our staff. What were the main purpose of these goals? Students' successful integration into the global workforce, higher education, and the community. Once we began to explore all of the resources and expertise in the tech world, we really became increasingly overwhelmed with the amount of knowledge, technology, and that we are now exposed to and how do we sift through that? Bijal and I decided that we needed stability for us in our program. We decided to make our goals sustainable for teachers and students. And by doing this, we chose two models as a guide in our decision-making. And they became more and more important throughout the pandemic. Simplify and solidify, slow and steady. Factors in determining a pilot, there were many factors. Student needs by a survey, equity, and access to hardware and the internet. Students' time, place, space, and pace. Teacher knowledge of best practices in online education. Curriculum compatibility with online learning. And stress factors for the teacher and students as the pandemic was very stressful and always budget. Bijal and I contemplated all of these and had many discussions regarding the issue of online learning continuing forward and transitioning back to campus. For this transitioning back to campus, whatever that meant online, face-to-face or blended learning, we had to keep in our forefront what our purpose was, what the student needs are, and what would be the most effective program to accomplish the most in the shortest period of time. Therefore, we had many decisions in looking at a project for D-LAC. Here are some of the main factors we looked at and decided upon. The duration, we thought we would do a pilot in the school year of 21, 22, starting in August, and continue it as long as feasible considering student needs and the effectiveness of the program. As all programs, Santa Clara Adult Education is always monitoring budget. We wanted to pilot a program, pilot a blended learning class for data purposes for our decision to continue this pilot. It would depend on student need, student learning, and sustainability. We wanted a low-cost or a free trial period and utilize only what we had on hand and to be able to use the data to confirm that this is in the best interest of the student, teacher, and school. We allowed flexibility to ourselves. We utilized what we already had on hand and Beigel got extremely creative with what she had on hand in her classroom. The pilot class consisted of intermediate and high, intermediate, high and advanced students, 24 students, 9 a.m. to 11.30 a.m., four days a week, Monday through Thursday for 17 weeks was the first semester to be continued in the second semester if we felt feasible, August through December. A high-flex model for blended learning was used. Students must attend a minimum of two days in the classroom, face-to-face, and then the other two days online. The equipment used, Beigel figured out how to do a blended learning program with what was available in her room. What was available in her room was a teacher PC, laptop, camera, headphones, projector, and a projector screen. Teachers support and training. Beigel had great support and training through the Digital Leadership Academy. I don't know how her and I could have worked together without this academy in this type of environment. So many stressful changes and switches. And students then received instruction from Beigel on how to navigate the course simultaneously online and face-to-face. Questions that we contemplated. Number one, was this feasible and sustainable to train all teachers to have a blended learning environment? What would be the cost and how would it be sustainable? What about the stress levels with every other stress, all the other stress happening in the world to our students and to our teachers? How would this pan out? Well, we were able to figure out all these answers to these questions. So let's now take a look at the pilot classroom implementing blended learning. So implementation of a blended learning program. Blended learning, also known as hybrid learning is an approach to education that combines online educational materials and opportunities for interaction online with traditional place-based classroom methods. The pandemic played an important role in implementing the online learning and eventually transitioning to the blended learning in person once we were back in person. As we are the ESL program, our major goals are teaching workforce-based ESL topics in the classroom. Having said so, blended learning ties into the workforce area as having tech skills is extremely important nowadays. All of our students showed a great deal of interest in learning and establishing these skills. How did we design the blended learning program? Well, we went through multiple factors in designing the blended learning classroom. We first discovered if the venture curriculum was compatible with the high-flex plan. Secondly, we designed the pacing of the syllabus for the blended learning course, determined students' level of interactivity based on their choice of days and flexibility, integrate group collaboration activities, facilitate communication online and face-to-face communication, compile a list of resources to support learning, and then finally, we also created an assessment plan. So, when there's curriculum plan, design the pacing for the blended learning course. Well, we tied these two factors in and then we came up with, I'm sure you guys can see this document. It sums up or something would be great since I'm sharing the screen. Yes, Pedro, you can see that. Wonderful. So we developed a Santa Clara Adult Education Yearly Planning document. This we call it as our long-term planning document. So based on the yearly, the monthly planning, we broke it down into our units, the elements that we were gonna use and incorporating the EL Civics program as well. So that was the first step in implementation. Moving forward, determine the level of interactivity. Since some of our students chose to work from home and study from home, we kind of came up with a plan where how to make the optimum utilization of the technology, which is very usable and applicable in the day-to-day life, bearing in mind that not all the students have an access to a laptop from home. So we came up with the application of WhatsApp, which is very commonly used by all of our students. So we started a WhatsApp group on our phones and from there on, we took it forward to Zoom, tying it in with our LMS and then the in-person classroom. So this is our classroom look. We have students sitting in-person, presenting, and then we have a student online joining from Zoom. Integrate group collaboration activity. This was the hardest one of all because we also wanted to provide equity to all of our students. So what was the best possible way? So we also have projector screens in our classrooms. So the best way to do was, I had two cameras set up in the classroom. One was a webcam set up on the PC, classroom PC. And the other one was my laptop camera that I could easily move around. Our classroom also has 30 laptops that are very accessible by the students for their day-to-day activities. So which meant each and every student present in the classroom had a laptop with their cameras turned on. All the students in the classroom would turn on, would log in to Zoom and the students working from home would also log in to Zoom. Now, why was this needed when I had students working online or working in the class in person? Well, one of the main things was to promote group collaboration no matter where you're studying from. So even if the students were studying from home, they would equally have the opportunity to participate in ongoing classroom activities if the classroom students also logged on to Zoom and then working in group-based activity with the online students. I would then project the whole session on the projector screen so that the students in classrooms can also see the students joining in on Zoom on the big screen. This way we could ease off the communication really easily. Now I have an example from a live high-flex classroom that I'd like to share with you all. It's a video recording of my high-flex classroom and the student is studying on Zoom. These students are doing a group activity in the classroom and like you can see, the student here is participating with this group as she is in close connection with what's going on in the classroom. Wait. Yeah, that's my story. But if you show me this, I know, okay, I believe I'm going to do it. Let's... What is the only difference? Why don't you just stick... Oh, you know what? Just take to speak to your audience. A very simple example of a classroom utilizing the high-flex model, moving forward. B-Jill, just real quick, there is a question about some students holding their cell phones, wondering what they're doing with their cell phones. Oh, so like we also have WhatsApp going on, Margarita would sometimes post things on WhatsApp too for them to write down on the poster post here. So some students would also... So we actually, the way we designed the high-flexes that our students could use their phones to communicate and to share and to make the best possible use of the technology, which is available readily. Did that answer your question? Okay, moving forward. There's one more, sorry. Go ahead. That took me a second to unmute myself. Okay, so did you have help switching between the camera? So the way this model... Sorry. Go ahead. The way this model works is it's pretty easy. I did not need to switch between the cameras at all. Imagine a camera on my PC facing towards me. So that's this part here. All the students can see me. The other camera was facing towards the class, which is my laptop. Now laptop being laptop, we can move laptop around the classroom. So my students would have helped me. If I needed the laptop to move to different places in the classroom. If my student was working with just one group, that one group would hold the laptop close to them and then that's how they would collaborate. So ideally speaking, I did not feel the need of switching between the cameras at all. Again, the projector screen played a huge role because everybody could see the projector screen from the classroom. Sometimes if I'm talking to the students, I'm teaching something, I may not always be looking at the camera. That's when if my student working from home had a question and she would just raise her hand, my students from the classroom would just draw my attention and say, teacher, I think she needs some help. And so it was very collaborative. We all were in this together helping each other. So coming to that point, facilitate communication. So how did we facilitate communication? Again, WhatsApp and email. Sometimes I would send a task via WhatsApp. If it is a video recording task, I always encourage my students to do some video recording for which the phones were very useful. Some of the tasks I would send sometimes via email depends on what the task was. For in-person students, they would follow the instructions and collaborate with students in person and online on Zoom, just like how we saw. Zoom, online, like I call them, works synchronously with the students in person and collaborate with Zoomers in the breakout rooms. So for students, if I had more than one student, then one or two students, then I would also have breakout rooms where they could do their activity in a small group in the breakout room together. And then finally, we also had LMS in place. We started off with Google Classroom, which was a huge success. And then moving on to Canvas, we transitioned to Canvas as that's the need of the average. And I guess my students really took on board with that too. So that transition from Google Classroom to Canvas really helped. So what is High Flex? High Flex is a blended learning model, course format that combines a face-to-face classroom and an online classroom simultaneously. So we just saw how, right? Now, technology scaffolding for levels. How did we come up with what is needed for which level? Since we have so many levels, right? We have five levels in our ESL program. So this is how we actually, we designed the scaffolding tech skills feed, where we have all the levels right from- Right from literacy to advanced level. So this is how we broke it down. So students beginning at zero level or level one, it was important that they knew basic skills of using Zoom, email, just a keyboard, computer, just the basic skills. Websites that we use for all these, this level was Cambridge Ventures, Presentation Plus, and then Learning Resource Websites, YouTube. Moving on to beginning low, they would slightly learn more because now they would be using a lot more technology in their classrooms. So then we would introduce them to hyperlink, tap in the Zoom, moving forward to all the other using, you know, making PowerPoints, presentations, supplying to an email annotation tool on Zoom. So as they moved to the advanced class, my students were now able to create a video. They were able to use a class blog, logging on to Zoom, email, joining Google Classroom with a code, navigating Google Classroom, submitting their homework in form of Google documents. So a great deal of, we use Google Sweets a lot too, all the time to make PowerPoint presentations. And then we also made a list of websites that were useful for our students and our fellow teachers because we believe in sharing best practices. If something worked for the advanced, I don't see a reason why it wouldn't work for the basic levels if we voted it down a little. So that's that. Finally, we created an assessment plan. So this was the assessment that I would do unit by unit. So this is my Canvas page. And on this page, I would upload all the units and then at the same time, I would upload their quizzes. Sometimes the students would take the quiz in person. If the student did not come to class in person, they had the same access to the Canvas from home. So they would synchronously on Zoom, sit for the quiz. If my students could not do either, then they had the option of sitting for the quiz asynchronously, which is using the, you know, giving, sitting for the quiz in their own personal time. Ma'am, Biju, there was a question about what was the ratio of online to face-to-face? So how many online did you have? So like I said, like we mentioned earlier, it was solely based on students' choice. Now here's how the choice factor works. We do not give students a choice saying, you know, out of four days a week, you can come any two days a week in person, any two days stay at home, no. So this was very structured. We asked the students to give us a preference. What were the days that you would wanna work from home? And the other days, you needed to come to school in person because that was the deal breaker. You have to come to school in person for 50% of your time. The other 50%, you choose the days and stick to those days because looking at the pandemic, we have to be very careful at the student participation in person as there was limitations going on at that time. So if my students chose Monday and Tuesday in person and they wanted to work for Thursday and Friday, or Wednesday and Thursday from home, then they stick to that plan for that whole semester unless they wanted to come all in person. The only choice was that either you come in in person 100% or you come in person 50% of the time, but it was never the other way around. Again, this was just for the ESL program. I also teach a speaker program, which is speaker class, which I teach only on Friday. For that class, I have given my students a choice that it's up to you. If you guys want to do 100% from home, you can do that. So I have two students who stick from working from home. So by answering to your question, the ratio was usually, I would say, five or six students working from home and the others in the class. Now, successes and challenges. What were the successes of this? First success, I found it extremely creative to design this program with the resources that were available at camp. So I didn't have to go to the school and say, hey, I want to teach this, can we buy ours? No, we made our own ours. You know, we had our laptop, we had a webcam, we had me, and then I had my students and the projector screen. This semester, I have been lucky enough to get the interactive whiteboard and now I'm very excited to use that as well. One of the major successes was to take, we were able to hit all the learning modalities and cater to different learning styles of our students. So I have students in my class who are tech-deep, they're technologically so advanced, they don't have as much language, but by incorporating high-flex, these students' confidence just boost up and they were so much into helping other students around in the classroom and the language just, it just happened for them, it would flow out of their mouth. Student retention, we didn't have to go through the hurdles of convincing the students to come in person, what you cannot come in person and pandemic had a great role to play in too because it was a serious situation. I guess as a school, we can definitely do this much for our students, you know? You don't wanna come to school in person, no problem. The school will come to you, right? Flexibility for both students and teachers. There was a time where, you know, I also had a choice of doing some meetings from home because I was unwell and I think this really worked out well for everyone. There was a high student engagement because learning tech skills is a very important thing in this time and age and everybody wants to learn it. Having said so, work-based learning, you know, makes a great impact when the students can actually write their resumes, they can go on indeed, find a job, seek out my help for their interview skills, send me videos, practicing their language by recording themselves again and again. So that was a very high student engagement there, helping each other learn different skills, sharing documents, you know, and then using these skills in their real life, even with their children. Teacher training was another great hit. We, once I kind of established this, I shared this with my other fellow teachers. Of course, this is not easy. You really have to get the hang of it because you're teaching as well, right? You're not just gonna sit down and fidget with the cameras all the time. But if you make the placement of the cameras easy and accessible, then this is by far the most reliable and the most possible solution. And I think it's very friendly. This kind of teaching is very friendly. I really enjoyed teaching this. I'll ask Patricia to go over the challenges now. Over to you, Patricia. Oh, great. Yes, you know, there was numerous challenges, not only in the classroom, but also in the world in general. And we always had difficulties with student attendance and protocol for the COVID. But generally, we had to work with the challenges, we're always the equipment and the internet connection for the students. Also learning how to use the equipment for the students and the apps and learning how to do it as second nature. And they're so used to being in face to face at first then all online. Now they're learning of a hybrid, a high flex class. So it was learning another learning environment. With the teachers, professional development, of course was the crunch, but most of this, the challenges for the teachers were about time. And also, I believe they're stress levels. And so we really worked at trying to reduce the stress levels on both student and teacher. The teachers had to learn how to use the equipment, the applications, the online curriculum and then teach it to the students. They had to learn best practices of teaching online and face to face and simultaneously. They had to learn how to juggle all online and face to face activities and all interactions all at once. They had to teach the students how to navigate the physical classroom as well as the online classroom and equipment. For the teachers workload and prep time increased dramatically. Our point was try to reduce some of these stresses and the teachers and students and help socially and emotionally to returning to somewhat of a pre-pandemic state. Although our belief is that it'll never be a pre-pandemic state due to the knowledge of technology now. Patricia, there's several questions coming into the chat here. So I just wanted to- Okay, let me just look. So David Rosen had a question. Can you tell us how much retention improved and did course completion improve? Ryan had a similar question. And do you know of students in the high flex model had better learning outcomes than students in in-person classes? So there were questions about retention. So retention of students. To me, everybody that could be there was there. We're still in a pandemic. So how would this model serve outside of a pandemic? I think you would have a lot more retention. We had a very fluid in all of the classes in and out and COVID protocols being had. If somebody was sick, they had to stay home. But with that being said, they could join if they were well enough or at least listen to the class if they chose. So retention. I'm not sure I can give you a straight answer because right now I don't feel like we're in the real stable world of adult education. Retention. Biju, what do you think? Hi, my take on retention is that I'd like to give you the example of my speaker class. Of course it's a paid class, but having this option of working from home was very intriguing for my students. They were like, oh, we don't have to come to school. Okay, I can juggle with my child's school timing and I can join in five minutes later, but via Zoom. So I think it's really helped my students to have this flexibility of using Zoom. Now, am I a stickler that you did not choose this day so I'm not gonna allow? Well, no, I would definitely bend down a little if my students had a genuine reason and they were consistent in joining the classes as per their contract. So I think this High Flex model is, it definitely worked for us. We did High Flex from August until December and there's a reason why we did it only for that time since we were just piloting. We wanted to troubleshoot every single thing before we kind of made it accessible to all the ESL programs, but I think it's a good model. It definitely is a good model. Maybe what we could do because I think that this last slide may answer a lot of the questions in the chat of the conclusions, and then we can take some more questions if that would be okay with everybody. Yeah, there are several coming in. So yeah, go ahead and do that and then we'll go through the... Sure. And people can unmute and ask, go ahead. So our conclusions, did the High Flex model learning model meet student needs? Definitely, yes. According to a survey that I had sent out in the summer of 2021, many students wanted a blended learning model and it was a perfect fit. We also had, at that time, we had acquired laptops. 100% had Wi-Fi in their homes. So they were very good about having that. Bijal? Yes, exactly. And making it accessible via phone was a big thing because everybody had a phone and they could just come in contact with the students, with the teachers. We also had apps downloaded on phone, for example, Canvas. It was downloaded on their phone. So they could actually see what has been uploaded on the Canvas via phone. And then the second question, did student learning take place? Yes, it did. I checked the Learner Gains Summary Report in TE for this class. Of the 21 pair of accurate scores on CASATES in reading and listening, all 21 students made gains in both the reading skills and listening skills. Now, this is not unusual for our advanced class because we have a super teacher as well. Bijal, that's you. Thank you. So I think opening the world to internet and websites and other online resources, it starts really escalated learning to a different level, to be really honest with you, because students in their own time are able to listen to different podcasts. So I'm a big on TED Talk podcast. So on my WhatsApp group, I also post TED Talk podcasts to different topics going on. I also would take a little snapshot of little grammar snippets and then put them on our WhatsApp group. So when I want my students have a couple of minutes, they would say, okay, when can I use code and when can I use word? Or how are verbs, what are words and how can I use verbs in different sentences and just little snippets of grammar. So I think, yeah, definitely having access in class to online resources has really escalated learning to a different level and that has played a key role in getting the game because students are learning a lot more using their different learning modalities. This is a good model, trust me. Was this type of classroom sustainable? Yes and no. Yes, but it would have to take several modifications to make it less strenuous and work friendly for the teacher and the students and some equipment modification to make it easier. Budget to support this model and teacher professional development and planning into the budget for that. So I would also like to chime in here. Is this type of classroom sustainable? I think it is because we have not invested in a lot of fancy products. It's just something which is very handy and it is available in every classroom almost nowadays. Having said so, I would also say that the students also found it very interesting because they would then suggest the same thing to their child's school teacher and then to this kind of fast dawn to different areas of teaching and learning too. The one thing that Bijal didn't mention is that all of this required technical expertise. So the professional development of all teachers would have to be increased and be specific to what they are using and also specific apps and tools taught to them and give them a limit so they don't get overwhelmed of what they can use. Bijal, was a high flex classroom user friendly for the teacher and student? I would say yes and no. So yes and no is the answer for the teacher. Sometimes I used to get tired. Sometimes I used to be like, you know what? Just turn off everything, I just wanna teach. And there were times when I used to get really excited because my students joining on Zoom would come up with the best possible ideas and I'm like, okay, great, this works. You know what? This is my wife for having the high flex classroom. So yes and no, it can be time consuming because it takes a lot of time to find resources because now you're not just catering to students in person. You're also catering to students online. So a teacher's expertise at using Zoom is very important because Zoom itself has a lot of resources that we could use. Like for example, whiteboards. So when I do the high flex, you know how we divide the learning intention on the whiteboard in the classroom? I used to also write it on the whiteboards on Zoom and then present it on my projector screen. So that used to be my whiteboard for my Zoom students and the students in person. So I would say it is time consuming, but I guess once I got the hang of it and slowly I started working with it more, it kind of, you know, I transitioned to becoming almost a pro at high flex, if I may say. For students, at the very beginning, some of my students were a little hesitant and I will call this hesitant because they know their skills, right? Nowadays with phones, everyone knows to know, you know, almost how to access everything on the phone. However, using Google Sweets, sometimes on the phone could be a bit challenging, for which we had laptops in the classroom. For the students joining from home, I kind of requested them that if they had an iPad, that would have been, you know, more helpful than a phone, but if they didn't, no problem, we'll make things work. Now, one of the questions that I was asked earlier on was, what were the students doing with the phone in the classroom? Let me tell you, for those students who did not have iPads or laptops and they were joining in on Zoom from their phones, they would take snapshots of their work and then post it on my Google classroom or Canvas or even the WhatsApp group. So the phones were also being used for taking snapshots, for recording, for taking pictures within of their work and submitting their homework as well. And so we want to also look at, will Santa Clara adult education continue this model? For now, we have discontinued our pilot as of December. And what was the reasoning behind our decision? Our students wanted to be all face-to-face in the classroom. The blended model didn't meet the needs of those students at that time. And we wanted to release the extra workload and prep on the teacher. We wanted to reduce stress and change during an already stressful time. With that being said, it was the students, whether they're being socially starved because not in pandemic and they needed that collaboration or face-to-face, only the future will let us know. I'm having said so, we have discontinued using the High Flex program for the ESL program, but we have continued using it for the speaker class. So for our speaker class, we still are continuing to use the High Flex program where the students are joining in from home. We still need to go on to the next slide real quick, and so we have some time to answer those questions. Okay. The future of blended learning, online learning as well as blended learning will be driven by student needs. Right now, our students want face-to-face. Here's a question I'm going to pose to you, though. Have our students been socially deprived of social interaction? And is that why they're coming in Groves? And at some time into the future, will this model be more than wanted? Also, this is the ESL program. I know that in other areas such as HSD and HSE, it has been more successful and student wants are not as, they want more online. To Beagle knows, and I know, and Santa Clara adult education knows how to develop and implement a successful program. Would we be hesitant when and if the need arises? Sure, we'd go back in a heartbeat. We would need modifications to the pilot to make it easier for stress on the students and the socio-emotional health of the students and the teacher and maybe being out of the pandemic. Will we continue to monitor the ESL students and staff in the future? Of course, we're going to continue because we aren't out of this pandemic yet and things will still change. What we do know is that we will never go back to what we have before. We don't know what the future holds. However, we feel extremely privileged to be part of this fantastic transformation of education. In this time and day, we are in the process of transitioning to the world technology world in the field of education. Santa Clara adult education is ready for whatever the students may need to integrate into our success, our society successfully.