Source: OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY submitted to NRP
THE EXTENSION SYSTEM-MILITARY PARTNERSHIP VIRTUAL LAB SCHOOL IMPLEMENTATION
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
0230835
Grant No.
2012-48711-20101
Cumulative Award Amt.
$3,875,000.00
Proposal No.
2012-03804
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Sep 1, 2012
Project End Date
Aug 31, 2017
Grant Year
2015
Program Code
[MI.1]- F4HN-Admin. Discretionary & Reim.-Extension
Recipient Organization
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
1680 MADISON AVENUE
WOOSTER,OH 44691
Performing Department
College of Human Ecology
Non Technical Summary
Military Child Care Systems: The child care system available to military families is rated among the best in the world. The 2009 annual release of rankings for oversight and regulations of quality in child care centers by the National Association Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies indicated that the Department of Defense child care system scored well above all state systems of child care in assuring the quality of care that is available to military dependent children. Centers are licensed and accredited at the highest standards of the child care profession. Nonetheless, the military child care system experiences the same personnel challenges that are experienced throughout the child care profession. Expectations for highly qualified and well‐trained staff are often a mismatch for the salaries earned by providers. Consequently, there is significant turnover in personnel in virtually all child care settings, and child care systems regularly seek educational and professional development opportunities for a continuous pipeline of new staff. In addition to the personnel challenges experienced by all child care systems, the military child care system is prone to special personnel challenges. Military Child Development Centers (CDCs) often employ spouses, family members, and other military community members as child care providers. Many of these individuals are hired with the imminent need to acquire additional training and expertise. This training is provided by a cadre of professionals who are supported by a standard training curriculum delivered in multiple modules. The complete training can require up to 18 months. Given that spouses and family members are often hired to provide care (especially in international settings), and given the length of assignments of military personnel, CDCs can experience very high rates of provider staff turnover and have constant training needs. Centers on bases in foreign countries can easily experience 50% or greater staff turnover in any given year. Domestic CDCs have less turnover, but still experience significant challenges in retaining well trained staff. When these challenges are not met consistently and effectively, program quality is disregarded and children suffer.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
80260203020100%
Goals / Objectives
The objectives of this phase of the project build upon those that have already received funding through USDA. Beginning funding allowed project staff to initiate the development of tools to better meet the training needs of early childhood staff and to build the core website with modifications made in response to suggestions made by child care leaders employed by the US military. Project Goal: The overall project goal of increasing the professional competencies of trainers and front-line child and youth workers in military child care centers and non-military youth development programs through a virtual lab school environment has been expanded, at the request of military advisors, to include management training for personnel in child and youth programming supervisory positions. Project Objectives: The following objectives are based on those articulated for the project's first phases. Modifications to the goals reflect the progress made to date: 1.Continue to develop courses and lessons for the VLS that will be used to support the ongoing professional development of child care and youth development workers, trainers, and supervisory personnel. 2.Evaluate the effectiveness of the virtual lab school concept through user feedback.
Project Methods
The following methods will be used to accomplish the project objectives. 1.Develop additional lessons and courses that correspond with the 13 core competencies. These will be used to support the ongoing professional development of child care and youth development workers. The lessons and courses will cover a range of content in early childhood that correspond with the 13 core competencies that are currently part of the child care and education training used by the US military. The content will include child guidance, understanding child development, classroom management, working with parents and other adults, and other issues relevant to the operation of high quality early childhood programs. The majority of lessons will be built around video vignettes demonstrating best practice. Most of the vignettes will demonstrate best practice in "real world" early childhood settings. Some vignettes will be "staged" to demonstrate hard to capture scenarios. Staged vignettes will be videotaped in the demonstration classroom. The vignettes will be supplemented with additional activities and text related instruction. The resulting repository of lessons will be available in the online training platform that will allow trainers to customize content and training approaches to meet the unique needs of various professionals working with children. The content generated by the video production team will be electronically submitted to the project server where the content will be edited and tagged by project staff to enable subsequent searches using multiple search dimensions. Following the initial editing and tagging, early childhood professionals will review each segment, vet its quality, and provide annotations of what they observe. 2.Evaluate the effectiveness of the virtual lab school concept. During this phase we will conduct focus groups to modify the content and format of lessons and will use a group of trainers to pilot use of a group of lessons through the online platform to construct a professional development program and to administer the program to early childhood professionals.

Progress 09/01/12 to 08/31/17

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiences for the VLS are teachers, training & curriculum specialists, family childcare providers, and new management staff in the military child development and school-age care system. However, in the best tradition of the university land-grant system, the VLS is also available for public use, allowing college students, public and private child care workers and providers to use the site to enhance their skills as child care professionals. The VLS is included in ACF's Early Educator Central which links the VLS to child care professionals outside the military system. The site is now active and all audiences have begun using the site. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We developed a series of trainings for those who will be using the VLS on their installations. We first trained headquarters personnel from each of the four services in a four day training and then began a series of two day trainings for training and curriculum specialists. Eighteen of those trainings have been held. In addition, we developed a master trainer curriculum which involved two face to face trainings and four months of virtual training of a cohort of 24 Master Trainers. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Within the military system, the VLS has been promoted by DOD and the services to their personnel. The Administration for Children and Families have included the VLS in newsletters and have made it a major part of Early Educator Central. Ohio State University featured a story on the VLS in a 2016alumni magazine that was distributed to thousands of alumni. Presentations on the VLS have been made at the Military Child Education Coalition National Training Seminar, the Council for Professional Recognition Leadership Conference, and the National Association for the Education of Young Children Conference. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The Virtual Laboratory Schoolnow consists of 15core content courses and supporting video for each of five tracks (Infant/Toddler, Preschool, School age, Training and Curriculum Specialists, Management). Eight courses in the family care provider track were completed as well as as well as a training curriculum to support training and curriculum specialists implementing the Virtual Laboratory School system in their programs. Back end databases and programming for the customized learning management system as well as the development of additional tools for use on the website were completed. In addition, the OSU VLS team conducted 14 training sessions for DOD employed personnel resulting in more than 600 training and curriculum specialists being prepared for implementing the Virtual Lab School professional development system. We also completed three special topics courses (Social Emotional Learning for Teachers, Gender Safe Spaces, and Essential Skills for Food Service Workers). In addition, the OSU VLS team collected feedback from the training and curriculum specialist during the face to face trainings and conducted a pilot with 20 family care providers that included pre and post knowledge assessments, feedback during use, satisfaction surveys at pilot end as well as focus groups. The VLS website also allows for immediate feedback from end users.Feedback from direct care users, training and curriculum specialists, and military leadership was overwhelmingly positive.

Publications


    Progress 09/01/15 to 08/31/16

    Outputs
    Target Audience:The target audiences for the VLS are teachers, training & curriculum specialists, and new management staff in the military child development and school-age care system. However, in the best tradition of the university land-grant system, the VLS is also available for public use as well, allowing college students, public and private child care workers and providers to use the site to enhance their skills as child care professionals. The VLS is included in ACF's Early Educator Central which links the VLS to child care professionals outside the military system. The site is now active and all audiences have begun using the site. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We developed a series of trainings for those who will be using the VLS on their installations. We first trained headquarters personnel from each of the four services in a four day training and then began a series of two day trainings for training and curriculum specialists. Two of those trainings occurred in this reporting period.Sixteen additional trainings are planned for the coming year. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Within the military system, the VLS has been promoted by DOD and the services to their personnel. The Administration for Children and Families have included the VLS in newsletters and have made it a major part of Early Childhood Central. Ohio State University featured a story on the VLS in an alumni magazine that was distributed to thousands of alumni. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the next reporting period we will complete the Family Care Provider track courses and conduct sixteen two-day trainings for the DOD. We will also develop a master trainer curriculum/training and train an initial cohort of trainers to be regional support persons in the military setting.

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? • Creation of a robust online learning management platform that supports the primary purpose of the system to provide service branch customized professional development to military center-based personnel and well as providing public access to the created content. The system includes back end features that allow for multiple military and expert reviewers to provide comment on content under review; registration, assignment, tracking and dashboard features that support reflective supervision and training and management oversight of registered learners; automatic adjustments to video quality in response to different internet speeds; multi-platform displays (e.g., desktop, tablet, mobile device); and video use tools (storage, search, identification) for use by content developers. The flexible system supports the Core Content (15 courses), Specialized and Partnered Content (future development), and the birth to five DOD classroom curriculum being developed at Purdue. • Creation of research-based content that conforms to a Learn, Explore, Apply, Demonstrate (LEAD) framework and the Know, See, Do approach to the Learn content narrative. Content is aligned across the 5 existing tracks. The OSU team has written 75 courses (15 for each of the 5 tracks) averaging 5 video supported lessons per course, totaling more than 375 lessons and more than 600 narrated videos. VLS team members have traveled to more than 25 military installations to record video that supports course content. • Development of an offline assessment package that includes a knowledge assessment for each Core Content course and a corresponding observation tool that trainers and supervisors can use for systematic observations in the classroom that allow them to assess mastery of course content. • A pilot of selected course content with military users. • Cooperative meetings and conversations with the curriculum team at Purdue and with external initiatives (e.g., the ACF Early Educators Central portal, which is now live and includes a link the VLS), and multiple presentations to external audiences. In 2016, we developed and began a series of face to face trainings with training and curriculum specialists charged with implementing the VLS on installations. We conducted three trainings with DOD and service personnel thus far and have fourteen more scheduled in the coming year. Feedback on the VLS has been extrememly positive. Those attending trainings have been enthusiastic about the material and format. In addition, entities outside the military are praising the content and recommending its use.

    Publications


      Progress 09/01/14 to 08/31/15

      Outputs
      Target Audience:The target audiences for the VLS are teachers, training & curriculum specialists, and new management staff in the military child and youth development system. However, in the best tradition of the university land-grant system, when fully implemented, the VLS will also be available for public use as well, allowing college students, public and private child care workers and providers to use the site to enhance their skills as child care professionals. The creation of the virtual laboratory school will allow military trainers, as well as professors and other instructors at land grant universities to avoid assigning hours of inefficient student observations by providing a searchable site that allows users to view any number of situations or instances that they may or may not see in a typical lab school setting. Lastly, as the site is fully implemented, extension faculty and staff at land grant universities will also benefit through the availability of these learning lessons to be packaged and distributed statewide in support of child care providers in non-military settings. During this phase, the VLS was reviewed by child and family policy leaders in the DOD and the military services. In July of 2015, the VLS was added to ACF's Early Educator Central Portal. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?In June, 2015, we provided a two day training for 80 Training and Curriculum Specialists and Child Development Center Directors. The training featured presentations on some of the research that supports the VLS and provided an introduction to the VLS system. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?In addition to the training event held for military child care professionals, the VLS was included in the Early Educator Central website,two press releasese/articles were written for the ACF child care newsletter, and Dr. Buettner presented on a workshop on the VLS at NAEYC. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The following objectives are articulated for next reporting phase of the project. Complete military review and publish the final 3 courses (Self and Cultural Understanding, Program Management, and Professionalism) of the Core Content for each of the five center-based tracks (15 courses in total). Continuedevelopment of the family care provider track (13 courses) aimed at providers who care for children in their homes. This phase will include military review of the courses as they are completed. Refinement of learner and administrative dashboards as well as development of website use tutorials. Planning and execution of a military installation technical/implementation pilot, including development of a detailed implementation plan with installation personnel, registration and assignment of personnel to the system, consultation and technical support for installation staff and collection of formative feedback on technical needs and implementation successes and challenges. Planning and implementation of a series of regional VLS implementation training events.

      Impacts
      What was accomplished under these goals? The following has been accomplished: Creation of a robust online learning management platform that supports the primary purpose of the system to provide service branch customized professional development to military center-based personnel and well as providing public access to the created content. The system includes back end features that allow for multiple military and expert reviewers to provide comment on content under review; registration, assignment, tracking and dashboard features that support reflective supervision and training and management oversight of registered learners; automatic adjustments to video quality in response to different internet speeds; multi-platform displays (e.g., desktop, tablet, mobile device); and video use tools (storage, search, identification) for use by content developers. The flexible system supports the Core Content (15 courses), Specialized and Partnered Content (future development), and the birth to five DOD classroom curriculum being developed at Purdue. Creation of research-based content that conforms to a Learn, Explore, Apply, Demonstrate (LEAD) framework and the Know, See, Do approach to the Learn content narrative. Content is aligned across the 5 existing tracks. The OSU team has written 75 courses (15 for each of the 5 tracks) averaging 5 video supported lessons per course, totaling more than 375 lessons and more than 600 narrated videos. VLS team members have traveled to more than 20 military installations to record video that supports course content. Development of an offline assessment package that includes a knowledge assessment for each Core Content course and a corresponding observation tool that trainers and supervisors can use for systematic observations in the classroom that allow them to assess mastery of course content. A pilot of selected course content with military users. The pilot conducted in 2014 included a pre- post-test of knowledge, a satisfaction survey, and focus groups with direct care, training and curriculum specialists, and management groups. Results were shared with DOD leadership via a written report and were used to inform implementation plans. Cooperative meetings and conversations with the curriculum team at Purdue and with external initiatives (e.g., the ACF Early Educators Central portal, which is now live and includes a link the VLS), and multiple presentations to external audiences.

      Publications


        Progress 09/01/13 to 08/31/14

        Outputs
        Target Audience: The target audiences for the VLS are teachers, training & curriculum specialists, and new management staff in the military child and youth development system. However, in the best tradition of the university land-grant system, the VLS is also available for public use as well, allowing college students, public and private child care workers and providers to use the site to enhance their skills as a child care professional. In the coming year, the virtual laboratory school will also add a track for the home-based care providers. Because the VLS courses are still under development, the VLS has not yet been fully deployed to these audiences. Beginning courses were, however, successfully piloted with staff at a military installation in the past year and the VLS has been introduced to officials at the Administration for Children and Families, who distributed an article on the VLS in their newsletter. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? The project director and lead scientists conducted a workshop on the use of the VLS at the National Association for the Education of Young Children Conference. The pilots of the VLS system provided training to over 70 personnel working at military child development centers. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Since the VLS is still under development, extensive dissemination has not taken place. However, we have had conversations with senior officials at the HHS Adminstration for Children and Families (ACF), and we wrote an article about the VLS for the ACF newsletter. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? We will continue to produce new courses and we will refine materials based on pilot feedback. In the coming reporting period, we will be engaged in significant promotion efforts on behalf of the VLS.

        Impacts
        What was accomplished under these goals? The VLS project team developed additional VLS courses and related materials for military review and eventual deployment.To date, courses in Safety, Cognitive Development, Child Abuse Prevention, Child Abuse Reporting, Healthy, Learning Environments, Communication, Physical Development, and Creativity, Guidance, and Self have been created and are in various stages of review/revision. Two pilots have been conducted at military child development centers and feedback was positive. The website continues to be refined and features brought online. We produced a promotional video for the site. It can be seen at www.virtuallabschool.org. We also developed a PSA video at the request of the DoD that promotes family style dining.

        Publications

        • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2013 Citation: Buettner, C.K. & Meeker, K. (November, 2014) Going Online with Professional Development: The Virtual Laboratory School. Oral presentation at the National Association for the Education of Young Children annual conference, Dallas, Texas.
        • Type: Websites Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2014 Citation: www.virtuallabschool.org


        Progress 09/01/12 to 08/31/13

        Outputs
        Target Audience: The target audiences for the VLS are teachers, training & curriculum specialists, and new management staff in the military child and youth development system. However, in the best tradition of the university land-grant system, when fully implemented, the VLS will also be available for public use as well, allowing college students, public and private child care workers and providers to use the site to enhance their skills as child care professionals. The creation of the virtual laboratory school will allow military trainers, as well as professors and other instructors at land grant universities to avoid assigning hours of inefficient student observations by providing a searchable site that allows users to view any number of situations or instances that they may or may not see in a typical lab school setting. Lastly, as the site is fully implemented, extension faculty and staff at land grant universities will also benefit through the availability of these learning lessons to be packaged and distributed statewide in support of child care providers in non-military settings. During this development phase, the VLS was reviewed by child and family policy leaders in the DOD and the military services. Changes/Problems: Two competencies (child abuse prevention and child abuse reporting) were added by the Department of Defense to the content areas covered by the VLS. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? We will continue generating content and refining technical systems. We are in constant communication with the leadership at the Department of Defense regarding the writing and review timeline and the needs of the end users.

        Impacts
        What was accomplished under these goals? Content and video support for four of the core 13 compentencies has been completed as well as two additional competencies (child abuse prevention and child abuse reporting) that were added this year at the request of the Department of Defense. These six competencies (representing 30 courses and hundreds of lessons across the five current tracks - infant/toddler, preschool, school-age, training and curriculum specialists, and managment) are currently at various stages of military and expert review. The user interface of the VLS was refined and, along with the content for two competencies, is currently being reviewed/piloted at Wright Patterson AFB. We are collecting user feedback on both the interface and the content during July and August 2013 through online feedback surveys and in-person focus group interviews.

        Publications