National School Boards Association (NSBA)

National School Boards Association (NSBA)
1680 Duke Street
Alexandria, VA 22314-3493
703-838-6722
[www.nsba.org]
Contact: Hilary LaMonte, Director of Educational Services
Contact, alternate: Rachel Kliewer, Manager, Education Technology Programs

CEO: Anne L. Bryant Ed.D., CAE
Budget: $25 Million
Staff Size: 101 - 205 Employees

Plexus Consulting Group, LLC
1620 Eye Street, NW
Suite 210
Washington, DC 20006
Phone:  202-785-8940
Fax:      202-785-8949
Email:   info@plexusconsulting.com

Vital Stats:

The National School Boards Association is a federation of 52 state and territory associations for local boards of education. NSBA serves these associations by supporting their efforts to strengthen local governance of K-12 education through board development, policy guidance, state legislative advocacy, and through financial, insurance and other services to local school districts. In addition, various departments within NSBA focus on issue areas within education, some serving membership groups outside of the board audience. These include the Council of School Attorneys, Council of Urban Boards of Education, School Health Programs, and ITTE: Education Technology Programs.

The Challenge | The Solution | The Process | Unforseen Benefits | Measurements & Results | Lessons Learned

The Challenge

How to increase the effectiveness of the Federation and NSBA departments in serving their constituencies through online education?

NSBA is a national federation comprised of 53 state and territory associations that serve local public school board members. This network of associations covers a wide geographic base and incorporates associations with highly diverse resources and needs. While there is great diversity in terms of needs and resources of both the state associations and NSBA departments, all serve populations that are geographically dispersed, busy and in need of information and skills development.

All of the Federation Members had staff that traveled within their states offering workshops and conferences to local boards of education. NSBA staff also traveled to meetings, organized conferences nationally for their interest groups and focused on knowledge and skill development for its membership. As the online environment developed into a tool for teaching and learning, NSBA saw an opportunity to provide a platform through which these diverse organizations could develop online education programs and at the same time leverage each other's resources and knowledge.

The Solution

To establish an Online Learning Center, building both the technological infrastructure and organizational agreements to guide its development.

The process of establishing NSBA's Online Learning Center included three phases:

• Pioneering through one department.
• Scaling to agreement with a larger group.
  Committing for long-term investment as an organization.

The process began with the first pilot group in 1999. By the spring of 2001, the project had scaled to include over 50 percent of the state and local associations and three NSBA departments. As an association, NSBA committed to the long-term growth of the Online Learning Center by incorporating it into the long-range strategic plan and budgeting projections of the association.

The Process

The Pioneers
Central to NSBA's success in developing the Online Learning Center was the expertise and network of the Education Technology Programs Department, known as "ITTE". For fifteen years, the ITTE led the field of education technology through its conferences, meetings, publications and services. It provided information and knowledge to district staff and leaders on how to responsibly and effectively incorporate technology into K-12 education. The ITTE staff possessed expertise in both technology tools and instructional practices, including online instructional design. Its network of members included district technology and instructional staff around the country who were professionally focused on technological innovation and its implications for K-12 education. They were technologically literate and innovative and were the perfect audience with which to pilot online education.

In 1999, ITTE began to explore the use of online educational tools. The process was methodical, centering on a data-driven approach to planning and decision-making. In the early phases, the staff:

• Conducted market research & needs assessment: focus group, phone, online surveys.
• Developed request for proposal (RFP).
• Solicited bids from online learning providers and selected Blackboard.com.
• Developed pilot course for a technically savvy, glitch-tolerant 'test' audience.
• Assessed the test audience's experience, soliciting suggestions for improvements.
• Gleaned the lessons learned and incorporated them into the next round of course development.
• Scaled out to five courses - assessing and revising with each subsequent iteration.

Market Research
Before developing the pilot program, ITTE surveyed its member audience via focus groups, phone and online surveys to solicit feedback on suggested course topics and technical delivery options. The department found that the best online learners were:

• Busy professionals who may value the flexibility and ability to schedule the time they devote to an online course.
• Disciplined, self-directed learners, willing to set aside the time it takes to complete coursework online.
• Comfortable with writing and sharing ideas in text with other course participants.
• Familiar with electronic communication, downloading plug-ins and attaching documents to e-mail.
• Not afraid to ask for assistance.

RFP and Bid Solicitation
To select courseware products to help instructors create effective online learning opportunities, NSBA conducted a six-month market research study. ITTE staff sought input from students, identified important software characteristics and did a comparative analysis of the major software packages available at the time. The studies identified several key requirements for the software package that included: ease of use for both instructor and learner; an open system to allow customization; secure mechanisms; good user support; and the stability of the software company.

Pilot
In 1999, ITTE launched its first online course focused on board development with a technically literate audience of 12 district staff members from around the country, who were known to be supportive of e-learning and patient with working through preliminary bugs and glitches. This test group took the course at no charge, in return for committing to a high level of participation and giving extensive feedback.

By the spring of 2001, ITTE had offered the following five-week interactive, facilitated courses for $185.00 each with online prepayment required:

• Staff Development: Technology in an Integrated Curriculum
• Strategies to Support Teachers to Effectively Integrate Technology
• Grappling with Accountability: Resource Tools for Organizing and Assessing

Technology for Student Results
While students completed the course at their own pace, a certain level of interactivity enhanced the overall learning experience. Learners, according to their availability, also participated in synchronous chats scheduled by the instructor. NSBA is also planning to diversify into self-paced models without a moderator, and graduate credits are now available. All tools and materials that a student needs to take an NSBA online course are contained within the course.

Each course includes the following sections:

• Announcements: used to display announcements, updates and reminders.
• Course Information: description and objectives.
• Staff Information: information about the instructor, teaching assistant and guest lecturers.
• Course Documents: documents required to complete course assignments.
• Assignments: listing of all assignments students need to complete.
• Communication: communication tools listing (discussion, chat, e-mail, student pages).
  External Links: Links to external web sites included in curriculum.
• Student Tools: Tools to submit information to instructor, view course calendar, etc.

The computer skills and configurations that a student must have are:

• Basic understanding of computers (keyboard, mouse, CD-ROM drive).
• Access to a computer with at least a 150 MHz processor and 32 MB of RAM.
• Windows-based PC or Macintosh.
• Monitor capable of at least 800 x 600 resolution.
• Internet connection.
• Web browser such as Netscape 4.0 or higher and Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher.
• Familiarity with electronic communication and downloading plug-ins.
• Building Agreement

As ITTE pioneered and piloted online courses with district staff, state association discussed the online learning implications and opportunities for school board development and services. Between June 1999 and January 2001, the board development staff, executive directors, and state association board officers all addressed this topic in their annual networking meetings.

As general interest grew and the field of online education continued to develop, several states began piloting online courses to their members. Using a process similar to ITTE's described above, the states assessed their members for interest and connectivity, piloted courses and assessed their effectiveness and popularity. They discussed the outcomes with their colleagues at networking meetings.

While there was general success in the online courses for board members, the start-up costs were considerable and the development costs for each online course were considerably higher than for face-to-face workshops. The states began discussing how they could work with each other to leverage their individual investments, so that each state would not have to reinvent the wheel when starting out in online program development.

In the fall of 2000, a committee of state association executive directors and NSBA staff developed a proposal for the Online Learning Center Consortium. Open to any state association belonging to the Federation, the consortium provided each member with a free customizable online campus through which they could develop courses for their members. Housed at NSBA and running on the Blackboard platform, the courseware was user-friendly and supported centrally. This represented a considerable savings to the state associations.

Additionally, with all consortium members working on the same platform, it was easy for states to exchange courses with each other, saving time and cost in the course development process itself. A large part of the agreement included the stipulated revenue sharing for courses offered through the consortium platform and the governing groups to resolve issues as they arise. The Consortium proposal was accepted in March of 2001 and by June, twenty-eight states had joined.

Organizational Commitment
NSBA is making a significant commitment of resources to launch the Online Learning Center. Initially, it is bearing the full cost of the software licensing, site hosting, and is devoting one full time staff member to manage the project, as well as the partial time of additional staff. While the Online Learning Center is expected to operate at a deficit in the first several years of its existence, NSBA projects that within three years, the program will break even in the budget year and that within five years, the association will have recuperated its initial investment.

Unforeseen Benefits

 While the online learning program was developed with a specific purpose in mind, NSBA has found that the technology and methodology can be applied to a much broader scope of association-wide training initiatives. NSBA's education and technology team is continually looking for new ways to maximize the impact of the distance learning tools to train people to deliver services more effectively.

Measurements & Results

NSBA's careful planning and inclusive method of implementation has paid off. The association has conducted detailed evaluations of its online learning initiatives. The results include:

• Only 40 percent of ITTE's online learners are members. The program is reaching a wide audience of K-12 practitioners who are potential members.
• Online learning taps NSBA's best thinking and serves as a best practices resource.
• The program helps associations to leverage one another's strengths and ideas.

NSBA's member associations are widely dispersed and vary enormously in terms of size. By developing the Online Learning Center Consortium, the Federation has transformed its business model, enabling member associations to benefit from each other's work and investment in online courses.

Lessons Learned

"Keep telling your story to the most receptive audience."

Of all the lessons that NSBA learned from developing its online learning program, the one that stands out is the importance of developing a "vanguard" group of enthusiastic supporters within the association. The online learning team invested significant time and effort to select a first audience that was comfortable with technology and in all likelihood would be highly receptive to online learning in both theory and in practice. Overall, the following lessons emerged from the process:

• Know your members, understand their needs and know how to approach them.
• Approach educators with an education message.
• Score an early win by demonstrating a successful prototype to a receptive audience.
• Lobby to integrate your online learning program into the association's strategic plan at an early phase.
• Work with a supportive network of colleagues to develop an effective comment and feedback loop to gauge progress and fine-tune the deliverable.
• Realize that it will require a great investment in time to help both instructors and students to understand the process. Take the necessary time to do this.
• Set realistic timelines, establish and follow strict review procedures to manage the project effectively.
• Use the data gleaned from assessments, surveys, focus groups and other means to drive your decisions.
• The association's main challenge was to communicate to members that a high-tech delivery tool can be every bit as effective as a classroom experience in transmitting knowledge. In developing the online learning program, NSBA has found that distance learning is not so much about the venue as it is about the education.