Why Distance Learning?

In this episode of Why Distance Learning, Seth and Allyson speak with Rebecca Petrone, the educator/technologist at Central Michigan University's Museum of Cultural and Natural History, and Kayli Adams, a graduate assistant at the museum. They talk about how a museum with a full-time staff of three trains undergraduates to design and deliver live virtual programs for real classrooms, and what students and audiences get out of letting novices present.

Together, Seth, Allyson, Rebecca, and Kayli explore how the museum moved its distance learning from a green screen and webcam to a campus lightboard studio, how Rebecca builds programs around the objects in the collection, and how she uses the chat, open-ended questions, and a co-designed Valentine to make up for what students can't touch through a screen. Rebecca describes her shadow-then-present training model and her plan for a free virtual series that audiences book knowing the presenter is a student. Kayli talks about leading her first program before she felt ready and about the coloring pages she now keeps on hand for shy kids. The episode closes with Kayli, who was homeschooled, remembering what a thirty-minute virtual session meant to a kid who couldn't go on field trips, and Rebecca on how a single comment in the chat can make an older learner feel like they made a friend.

Key topics

• Training undergraduates to deliver live virtual museum programs
• Shadow, practice, present: a scaffolded model for new presenters
• Object-based learning when the audience can't touch the objects
• Using chat, open-ended questions, and gamification to drive engagement
• Student-built exhibits and programs, including the international New Year Traditions program
• Building leadership and confidence through real stakes
• Distance learning as connection for rural, homeschooled, and lifelong learners

Links & Resources

• CMU Museum of Cultural & Natural History — programs on CILC https://www.cilc.org/ContentProvider/ViewContentProvider.aspx?id=733
• CMU Museum of Cultural & Natural History https://cmich.edu/academics/colleges/liberal-arts-social-sciences/centers-institutes/museum-cultural-natural-history
• "From CMU to the World: Lightboard Studio Helps Deliver Interactive Museum Studies Training" — CMU Office of Curriculum and Instructional Support blog (2025). https://blogs.cmich.edu/cis/?p=953
• CMU Lightboard Studio reservations — Office of Curriculum and Instructional Support. [LINK — confirm cis.cmich.edu/lightboard]
• "Museum earns third Pinnacle Award for virtual programs" — CMU News, by Rebecca Petrone. https://www.cmich.edu/news/details/museum-earns-third-pinnacle-award-for-virtual-programs

Guest Bio: Rebecca Petrone

Rebecca Petrone is the Museum Educator/Technologist at Central Michigan University's Museum of Cultural and Natural History, where she develops and delivers the museum's in-person and live virtual programs and teaches museum studies courses on public programming and museum work. She previously managed science labs at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, leading school groups both virtually and in person, and has also worked at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, the National Museum of Ireland, and as an associate teacher in a Chicago elementary school. She holds a BA in History from Central Michigan University and an MA in World Heritage Management and Conservation from University College Dublin.

Guest Bio: Kayli Adams

Kayli Adams is a graduate assistant at the CMU Museum of Cultural and Natural History, where she works mainly in collections and presents the museum's virtual programs. She started at the museum as a student assistant in education and led its Curious Curators summer program in her first year there. She previously worked in early childhood care.

About the Hosts

Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and a host of Why Distance Learning, a podcast for education leaders and practitioners making real decisions about how virtual learning gets designed, adopted, and sustained. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators. See https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts

Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring are co-hosts of Why Distance Learning and members of the team at CILC — the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration — which connects students to real experts through live virtual field trips and experiences. See https://cilc.org

In this episode of Why Distance Learning, Seth, Allyson, and Tami conclude their conversation with Dr. Mark Deschaine — Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Mississippi — with a look at the practical frameworks for building and sustaining institutional knowledge in a period of rapid change. Deschaine traces the Five Cs of digital curation from its origins as a college-level literacy tool to its current life as an organizational knowledge management system, and closes by announcing agentagogy — a forthcoming framework for learning with agentic AI, grounded in the specific role of productive struggle.

Together, Seth, Allyson, Tami, and Mark explore the Five Cs — collect, categorize, critique, conceptualize, circulate — and how they've evolved from individual educator practice into a knowledge management container layered above continuous improvement cycles, allowing organizations to hold onto what they know across staff turnover and structural change. Mark revisits No Child Left Behind's standardization mandate as a case study in the gap between quantitative accountability and qualitative story-telling, and asks whether 30 million individualized stories can ever aggregate into policy — or whether the market is already answering that question by moving outside the system. He drops news that Andreessen Horowitz is building its own AI-driven university, framing it as the clearest signal yet that innovators have stopped waiting for traditional structures to catch up. The conversation closes with two connected ideas: that distance learning, from correspondence courses to TikTok, has always existed outside the formal system — and that agentagogy, the framework Mark is currently developing, asks what happens to learning when the agent is no longer the learner but the AI. His answer is specific: productive struggle is the mechanism learning runs on, and an AI that removes all friction may be training us to stop developing the capacity to do the hard part ourselves.

Key topics:

• Five Cs of digital curation as organizational knowledge management
• Continuous improvement and the Process Improvement Guidelines framework
• No Child Left Behind and the limits of quantitative accountability
• Andreessen Horowitz building an AI-driven university
• Distance learning as always-existing informal practice (TikTok, YouTube, correspondence courses)
• Social learning, Zone of Proximal Development, and the role of productive struggle
• Agentagogy: a framework for learning with agentic AI
• ADIL 34th Annual Conference

Links & Resources:

• "The Five Cs of Digital Curation: Supporting Twenty-First-Century Teaching and Learning" — Deschaine & Sharma, InSight: A Journal of Scholarly Teaching, 2015. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281641256
• "Digital Curation: A Framework to Enhance Adolescent and Adult Literacy Initiatives" — Deschaine & Sharma, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2016. https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jaal.523
• ADIL — Association for Distance Education and Independent Learning (34th Annual Conference, online, free for students): https://adeil.org/adeil-34th-annual-conference/
• Journal of Contemporary Research in Education (JCRE): https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jcre/

Guest Bio: Mark E. Deschaine, PhD

Mark Deschaine is a Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Mississippi, where he prepares MA, EdS, EdD, and PhD candidates for school and district leadership roles and serves as editor of the Journal of Contemporary Research in Education. His research focuses on online learning policy, special education in virtual school settings, and differentiated instruction — grounded in a practitioner career spanning building-level principal, special education teacher, and paraprofessional. He is a Research Fellow at Michigan Virtual and a Leadership Team Member for the National Standards for Quality Online Learning.

About the Hosts:

Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and a host of Why Distance Learning, a podcast for education leaders and practitioners making real decisions about how virtual learning gets designed, adopted, and sustained. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators. See https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts

Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring are co-hosts of Why Distance Learning and members of the team at CILC — the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration — which connects students to real experts through live virtual field trips and experiences. See https://cilc.org

In this episode of Why Distance Learning?, Seth, Allyson, and Tami continue their conversation with Dr. Mark Deschaine — Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Mississippi and editor of the Journal of Contemporary Research in Education — about what it actually means to individualize, differentiate, personalize, and build presence in online learning environments, and why treating those four things as synonyms has real consequences for practice. Deschaine frames the discussion through decades of research in special education policy, online learning design, and teacher preparation.

Together, Seth, Allyson, Tami, and Mark explore the four distinct instructional frames — individualization, differentiation, personalization, and presence — unpacking each one's theoretical basis and what it requires from a teacher or program designer. Mark introduces a four-quadrant framework for educational decision-making — theoretical, legal, empirical, and practical — that grounds those choices in something more durable than intuition. Seth synthesizes the two frameworks into a single arc: differentiation creates the conditions, individualization targets the path, personalization restores the learner's agency, and presence is the measure of whether it worked. The conversation then turns structural: as tens of thousands of students leave traditional systems for homeschooling and micro schools, school districts lose not just enrollment revenue but their roles as the primary economic engines of rural communities. Mark traces how state variation in school choice policy, educational savings accounts, and the decentralization of federal funding are reshaping where families live — and what kinds of learning infrastructure those communities can sustain. The episode ends on a question Mark leaves deliberately open: does a community have the resilience to absorb this level of change?

Key topics:

• Individualization, differentiation, personalization, and presence as four distinct instructional frames
• Four-quadrant decision-making: theoretical, legal, empirical, and practical
• How special education's IEP model illuminates what individualized learning actually requires
• Homeschooling growth and its impact on traditional school enrollment and funding
• School districts as community economic engines — and what happens when they shrink
• State variation in school choice, educational savings accounts, and online learning access
• Geographic equity gaps in who can access distance learning

Links & Resources:

• "Framing Instructional Strategies as a Concept in K-12 Digital Learning" — Deschaine, Rice & Rose, ResearchGate, March 2026. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/402734231
• "Providing Special Education Services in Fully Online Statewide Virtual Schools: A Policy Scan" — Deschaine et al., 2020. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340436252
• National Standards for Quality Online Learning (NSQOL): https://nsqol.org/
• Michigan Virtual: michiganvirtual.org
• The Reflective Practitioner — Donald Schön: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/donald-a-schon/the-reflective-practitioner/9780786725366/?lens=basic-books

Guest Bio: Mark E. Deschaine, PhD

Mark Deschaine is a Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Mississippi, where he prepares MA, EdS, EdD, and PhD candidates for school and district leadership roles and serves as editor of the Journal of Contemporary Research in Education. His research focuses on online learning policy, special education in virtual school settings, and differentiated instruction — grounded in a practitioner career spanning building-level principal, special education teacher, and paraprofessional. He is a Research Fellow at Michigan Virtual and a Leadership Team Member for the National Standards for Quality Online Learning.

About the Hosts:

Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and a host of Why Distance Learning, a podcast for education leaders and practitioners making real decisions about how virtual learning gets designed, adopted, and sustained. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators. See https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts

Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring are co-hosts of Why Distance Learning and members of the team at CILC — the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration — which connects students to real experts through live virtual field trips and experiences. See https://cilc.org

In this episode of Why Distance Learning, Seth, Allyson, and Tami speak with Heather Gate — Executive Vice President of Digital Transformation at Connected Nation — about how the digital divide keeps changing shape, and why closing it takes more than laying cable.

Together, Seth, Allyson, Tami, and Heather explore what "meaningful use" actually looks like — filling out a job application, setting up multi-factor authentication, helping a kid with homework — and why Heather argues the same access-versus-skills gap that shaped broadband adoption is now reopening around AI. They dig into how Connected Nation builds community-specific technology action plans (including a look at Bastrop County, Texas), the Teens Teach Tech program that pays teenagers to train their own neighbors and grandparents, and the idea of "digital compassion" as a companion to AI literacy. Heather also previews Connected Nation's attempt at a Guinness World Record: 25 straight hours of live digital skills training across six continents to mark the organization's 25th anniversary. She closes with one of the more memorable answers the show has gotten to its closing question, using a rural Kentucky classroom's remote-controlled telescope to make the case for what distance learning is really for.

Key Topics:

• Meaningful use vs. broadband access
• The evolving definition of the digital divide
• The emerging "AI divide"
• Technology action plans and community readiness
• Teens Teach Tech program
• Digital compassion and AI safety
• Connected Nation's 25-hour Guinness World Record livestream

Links & Resources:

• Connected Nation — https://connectednation.org
• 25 Hours. One Connected World. (Guinness World Record livestream, September 24–25) — https://connectednation.org/25-hours-one-connected-world
• Teens Teach Tech program — https://connectednation.org/programs/teens-teach-tech
• AI Literacy Resource Hub — https://connectednation.org/resources/ai-web-resources
• "Beyond Access" digital literacy report — https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/beyond-access-new-report-explores-how-digital-literacy-impacts-economic-educational-and-health-outcomes-in-america-302390208.html
• Connected Nation's VP of Digital Inclusion named FCC Communications Equity and Diversity Council Chair — https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/connected-nations-vp-of-digital-inclusion-to-lead-fccs-communications-equity-and-diversity-council-as-chair-301404939.html
• The Divide (Light Reading podcast): Heather Gate on maps, grants, and the "future-proof" fallacy — https://www.lightreading.com/digital-divide/the-divide-connected-nation-s-heather-gate-on-maps-grants-and-the-future-proof-fallacy

Guest Bio: Heather Gate

Heather Gate is Executive Vice President of Digital Transformation at Connected Nation, where she has led digital inclusion strategy for nearly two decades, focusing on rural communities, minority populations, and other groups historically left behind by broadband access and digital skills gaps. She chairs the FCC's Communications Equity and Diversity Council and holds degrees in computer science and public administration from Kentucky State University.

About the Hosts

Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and a host of Why Distance Learning, a podcast for education leaders and practitioners making real decisions about how virtual learning gets designed, adopted, and sustained. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators. See https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts

Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring are co-hosts of Why Distance Learning and members of the team at CILC — the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration — which connects students to real experts through live virtual field trips and experiences. See https://cilc.org

In this episode of Why Distance Learning, Seth talks with Dr. Mark Deschaine - Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Mississippi and editor of the Journal of Contemporary Research in Education - about what online teacher preparation actually requires, and why this moment of institutional disruption represents a structural opening for distance learning. Deschaine draws on three decades of work at the intersection of online learning policy, special education research, and K-12 practitioner experience.

Together, Seth, Allyson and Mark explore why teacher preparation programs still treat online instruction as a digital extension of face-to-face teaching rather than its own discipline, and what the NSQOL standards actually get right (and why state adoption is uneven). They trace the structural roots of "à la carte education" — the pandemic-era shift in which parents bypassed school-provided content and found it wasn't that hard — and Mark argues it wasn't an anomaly but a preview. He walks through the three gojies — pedagogy, andragogy, and heutagogy — as a framework for understanding how learner agency changes across contexts, and makes the case that a heutagogical twelve-year-old with internet access could test out of their grade if the system would let them. The conversation builds toward a central claim: what traditional schooling sells isn't content, it's credential and trust — and right now, both are actively eroding through school choice legislation, educational savings accounts, and the dismantling of federal categorical funding. That erosion, Mark says, is where online learning's real opportunity lives. He closes with a preview of decentralized learning, soul-bound tokens as credentialing infrastructure, and the fourth "gogy" he's currently developing — agentagogy — a framework for learning with agentic AI he'll be presenting at AACTE.

Key topics:

• Online teacher preparation as a distinct discipline (not technology added to traditional training)
• NSQOL standards: what they are, why states adopt them, and where they fall short
• À la carte education: the post-pandemic structural shift in family-school authority
• Pedagogy, andragogy, and heutagogy — the three frameworks for learner agency
• Credential and trust erosion in traditional schooling
• Decentralized learning and soul-bound tokens as credentialing alternatives
• Diffusion of Innovations: why the DLAC community matters

Links & Resources:

• "Ala Carte Education: An Inevitable Outgrowth of COVID?" — Mark Deschaine, Academia Letters, January 2021. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348827105
• "The Five Cs of Digital Curation: Supporting Twenty-First-Century Teaching and Learning" — Deschaine & Sharma, InSight: A Journal of Scholarly Teaching, 2015. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281641256
• National Standards for Quality Online Learning (NSQOL): https://nsqol.org/
• Michigan Virtual: michiganvirtual.org
• The Sources of a Science of Education — John Dewey, 1929. Available free at Project Gutenberg
• The Reflective Practitioner — Donald Schön https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/donald-a-schon/the-reflective-practitioner/9780786725366/?lens=basic-books
• Diffusion of Innovations — Everett Rogers https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Diffusion-of-Innovations-5th-Edition/Everett-M-Rogers/9780743222099
• Journal of Contemporary Research in Education (JCRE): https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jcre/

Guest Bio: Mark E. Deschaine, PhD

Mark Deschaine is a Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Mississippi, where he prepares MA, EdS, EdD, and PhD candidates for school and district leadership roles and serves as editor of the Journal of Contemporary Research in Education. His research focuses on online learning policy, special education in virtual school settings, and differentiated instruction — grounded in a practitioner career spanning building-level principal, special education teacher, and paraprofessional. He is a Research Fellow at Michigan Virtual and a Leadership Team Member for the National Standards for Quality Online Learning.

About the Hosts:

Seth Fleischauer is the founder and president of Banyan Global Learning and a host of Why Distance Learning. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual exchange programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators. Find Banyan at banyangloballearning.com.

Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring are co-hosts of Why Distance Learning and part of the team at CILC, the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, which connects students to real experts through live virtual field trips and experiences. Find CILC at cilc.org.

Why Distance Learning is available at whydistancelearning.transistor.fm.

In this episode of Why Distance Learning, Seth, Allyson, and Tami speak with Dr. Nichole Lemmon, Executive Director of Virtual Learning and Strategic Planning at Springfield Public Schools and founder of Launch Virtual Learning — about what it takes to run the only statewide K-12 virtual school in the country inside a public school district. Launch serves more than 400 Missouri districts and 23,000 students annually, with 85% of those students enrolled in just one or two courses at a time, a structure Nichole has maintained deliberately for fifteen years.

Together, Seth, Allyson, Tami, and Nichole explore how Missouri's public education funding flows through virtual providers and why roughly $60 million of it is going to out-of-state for-profit companies. They get into the three reasons Launch outperforms the field on state assessments: Missouri-specific curriculum, class sizes that mirror what the state mandates for seated schools, and in-state testing. They talk about what drove the decision to add synchronous instruction after years of building async-first, and what it looked like when Nichole told the governor of Missouri she could put the entire state on her platform in 2020 - and then had to deliver on it. The conversation also covers how Launch now runs direct-to-consumer ad campaigns on Hulu targeting millennial women on Sunday evenings, and why a public school program decided it had to compete on marketing terms with the companies it's trying to outperform.

Key Topics

• Public vs. for-profit virtual school funding in Missouri
• Course-access model and why 85% of Launch students take one or two classes
• Class size standards and how Launch mirrors seated school requirements
• Why Launch added synchronous instruction — and what wasn't working without it
• COVID-era overextension: saying yes to the governor and the two-year recovery
• Virtual special education and medically fragile learners
• Direct-to-consumer marketing for a public school program

Links & Resources

• Launch Virtual Learning: https://launchvirtuallearning.com
• Virtual Learning Leadership Alliance (VLLA): https://virtuallearningalliance.org
• VLLA Accred accreditation program: https://accredved.org/
• Digital Learning Collaborative (DLAC): https://www.digitallearningcollaborative.com
• KSMU: Launch Virtual Learning Serves Thousands (May 2025): https://www.ksmu.org/news/2025-05-21/launch-virtual-learning-serves-thousands-from-its-office-in-springfield
• Pulitzer Center — Cash and Consequences: For-Profit Online Education in Missouri (2021): https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/cash-and-consequences-profit-online-education-missouri
• Pew Charitable Trusts — Virtual Classrooms, Real-World Disparities (Nov 2025): https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2025/11/virtual-classrooms-real-world-disparities

Guest Bio: Dr. Nichole Lemmon

Dr. Nichole Lemmon is the Executive Director of Virtual Learning and Strategic Planning at Springfield Public Schools in Missouri, where she founded SPS Online in 2011 - now known as Launch Virtual Learning - and grew it into the only statewide K-12 virtual school in the country operating inside a public school district, serving more than 400 districts annually. She serves on the Executive Board of the Virtual Learning Leadership Alliance and as the Missouri State Affiliate for the Digital Learning Collaborative. Dr. Lemmon holds a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from Lindenwood University.

About the Hosts

Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and a host of Why Distance Learning, a podcast for education leaders and practitioners making real decisions about how virtual learning gets designed, adopted, and sustained. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators. See https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts

Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring are co-hosts of Why Distance Learning and members of the team at CILC, the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, which connects students to real experts through live virtual field trips and experiences. See https://cilc.org

In this episode of Why Distance Learning, Seth Fleischauer and Allyson Mitchell talk with Raymond Rose - President of Rose & Smith Associates and Public Policy Chair at the Texas Digital Learning Association- about what digital accessibility actually requires of educational institutions, and what it means to be out of compliance with an agreement you've already signed. Rose came to this work through civil rights enforcement, not ed tech, and it shows in how he frames the problem. For most institutions, the legal commitment to full accessibility is already on record. The question is whether anyone knows it.

Together, the hosts and Raymond explore the Office of Civil Rights' operational definition of accessibility - same information, same interactions, same time frame - and why the "same time frame" clause changes what compliance actually looks like in practice. They work through the most common failures in online courses: PDFs that are images rather than readable text, missing alt text on graphics, videos without adequate captions, and data tables used for layout. Raymond explains why Universal Design for Learning is the right design framework for all learners - not just those with identified disabilities - and points to a simple test: 25% of males have some form of colorblindness, and roughly half your audience is already using closed captioning on their television. The episode also covers how to ask vendors for a VPAT before purchasing third-party tools, where automatic captioning still falls short, and what shifts when the students are K-12. The episode closes with Raymond making the case that most institutions are not deliberately ignoring accessibility - they just haven't been told they were already responsible for it.

Key topics

• Digital accessibility as a civil rights obligation under Section 504 and ADA
• The OCR definition: same information, same interactions, same time frame
• Universal Design for Learning (UDL) — the three components and why it benefits all learners
• Common compliance failures: PDFs, alt text, captioning, color contrast, data tables
• How automatic captioning has improved and where it still falls short
• VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) and how to vet third-party vendors
• The 504 coordinator gap: most schools have never trained this role for the web context
• K-12 vs. higher ed: where the compliance pressure sits and why K-12 has been slower

Links & Resources

• WAVE Accessibility Checker — free tool for identifying accessibility errors on any website. wave.webaim.org
• CAST — Universal Design for Learning — the national headquarters for UDL frameworks and resources. cast.org
• TxDLA Digital Accessibility Course — Texas Digital Learning Association's multi-session course on digital accessibility. txdla.org
• Quality Matters — standards and training for quality online course design. qualitymatters.org
• National Standards for Quality Online Programs — Aurora Institute. https://www.aurora-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/national-standards-for-quality-online-programs.pdf
• Rose, R. & Blomeyer, R. (2007). Access and Equity in Online Classes and Virtual Schools. iNACOL / Aurora Institute. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED509623.pdf
• Rose, R. (2014). Access and Equity for All Learners in Blended and Online Education. Aurora Institute (formerly iNACOL). aurora-institute.org
• Raymond Rose's blog — e-Learning Evangelist rmrose.blogspot.com

Guest Bio: Raymond Rose

Raymond Rose is President of Rose & Smith Associates and serves as Public Policy Chair and Digital Accessibility Liaison at the Texas Digital Learning Association (TxDLA). He co-directed the Virtual High School at the Concord Consortium - one of the first large-scale K-12 online programs in the country -  and wrote the nation's first virtual school Special Education Policy. For two decades he has focused on digital accessibility as a civil rights obligation for K-12 and higher education, working with institutions, policymakers, and federal funders on what compliance actually requires. He was inducted into the TxDLA Hall of Fame in 2026.

About the Hosts

Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of Why Distance Learning. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators - building the kind of structured, human-centered distance learning the podcast explores. See https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts

Allyson Mitchell works with CILC, the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, to help educators implement high-quality live virtual learning experiences across grade levels. Discover more at CILC.org.

In this special episode of Why Distance Learning, hosts Seth Fleischauer, Allyson Mitchell, and Tami Moehring skip the guest interview and trade hot takes drawn from their recent run of research conversations — with Michael Barbour, Bobbi Sandberg, Jered Borup, and Kristen DeBruler. Each host came in with their own list, then picked which ones to dig into together. What surfaces is a set of specific, evidence-backed reframes: where parents' instincts to help go wrong, why remote isolation is a design failure rather than an inherent cost of distance learning, and what's actually breaking down when students sense their teachers are using AI on their feedback.

Together, the hosts work through the Academic Communities of Engagement framework's head/heart/hands distinction, and why the "heart" and "hands" work — trust, executive-functioning support — protects kids more than parents jumping in on academic content. They connect a CBS News piece on remote-worker isolation to Michael Barbour's finding that logging into school was, for some students, the most normal part of their pandemic day, arguing that isolation is what happens when culture isn't designed on purpose, not something baked into the medium. And they spend the back half of the episode on AI: not the cheating problem schools have mostly focused on, but the mirror-image trust break when students catch teachers using it on feedback without saying so — and why an honest, disclosed, assignment-by-assignment AI policy beats a blanket ban nobody actually follows.

Key topics:

• Head, heart, hands: the Academic Communities of Engagement (ACE) framework
• Why parental "head" support (re-teaching content) can do more harm than good
• Remote work isolation as a design failure, not a modality problem
• Michael Barbour's finding on pandemic remote learning and student mental health
• Teacher-student trust and AI-generated feedback
• Assignment-by-assignment AI disclosure as an alternative to blanket bans
• "Improved" vs. "more" parental involvement

Links & Resources

• Prior Why Distance Learning episodes referenced: Michael Barbour (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), Helaine Marshall, Bobbi Sandberg, Jered Borup (Part 1 & Part 2), Kristen DeBruler
• Academic Communities of Engagement (ACE) framework: https://edtechbooks.org/encyclopedia/academic_communities_of_engagement_ace_framework
• Behind the Screen: Exploring Parental Roles in K-12 Online Education (Sandberg & Borup, Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 2025): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15391523.2024.2447729
• Cuccolo, K. & DeBruler, K. (2024). A Look Back At 3 Years of Michigan Virtual Research. Michigan Virtual. https://michiganvirtual.org/research/publications/a-look-back-at-3-years-of-michigan-virtual-research/
• Make It Mindful episode with Katherine Heavers on the biology of trust (referenced by Seth): https://mim.bepodcast.network/episodes/85-katherine-heavers
• CBS News piece on remote work and isolation (referenced by Tami): https://www.cbsnews.com/news/remote-work-job-isolation-mental-health/
• Derek Thompson, "A World Without Work," The Atlantic (July/August 2015): https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/world-without-work/395294/
• Ikigai (Japanese concept referenced by Allyson): https://www.japan.go.jp/kizuna/2022/03/ikigai_japanese_secret_to_a_joyful_life.html

Note: this is a hosts-only episode, so there's no guest bio or guest-provided links to confirm — just the items above referenced on air.

About the Hosts:
Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of Why Distance Learning. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators — building the kind of structured, human-centered distance learning the podcast explores. See https://banyangloballearning.com/

Tami Moehring and Allyson Mitchell work with CILC, the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, to help educators implement high-quality live virtual learning experiences across grade levels. Discover more at CILC.org.

In this episode of Why Distance Learning, your hosts talk again with Michael Barbour — the most-cited researcher in K-12 online and distance learning — about what it would actually take to fix how teachers are prepared to teach online, and why thirty years of K-12 virtual learning hasn't produced that change yet. Drawing on his 2024 paper with Charles Hodges, Michael lays out six concrete steps — two focused on building the research base, four focused on teacher preparation programs — and explains why none of it happens without explicit mandates from states and accreditation bodies. The assumption under examination: that teacher prep programs will gradually incorporate online pedagogy on their own as demand grows. The evidence suggests they won't, for the same reason they never properly integrated technology in the first place.

Together, the hosts and Michael explore the structural reasons teacher preparation programs can't make room for online pedagogy without a mandate, even when they want to. They dig into a counterintuitive finding from Newfoundland and Labrador — where students with K-12 online learning experience actually performed worse in college online courses than their peers, not because online experience is harmful, but because of how that particular program's heavy synchronous structure coddled students in ways that didn't transfer. They examine what the research actually shows about online learning and mental health (short version: the modality isn't the problem, and during the pandemic, logging into school may have been the most normal part of a child's day). And they work through the affordances and tradeoffs of synchronous versus asynchronous instruction — a framework any practitioner can apply immediately. Michael closes with the two big questions currently driving his research: where is the field of K-12 online learning thirty years in, and how much of what gets regulated in the US is driven by ideology rather than evidence?

Key topics:

• Six-step framework for reforming online teacher preparation (Barbour & Hodges, 2024)
• Why teacher prep programs don't change without state or accreditation mandates
• The Newfoundland counterintuitive finding: when prior online experience hurts
• Site-based facilitators / e-deans and the role of on-site support in distance programs
• Synchronous vs. asynchronous instruction: affordances, tradeoffs, and how to choose
• Online learning and student mental health: what the research actually shows
• Governance and regulation of K-12 online learning in the US vs. other jurisdictions

Links & Resources:

• Michael Barbour's website: michaelbarbour.com
• Barbour, M. K., & Hodges, C. B. (2024). Preparing teachers to teach online: Steps for teacher education. Open Praxis. https://openpraxis.org/articles/10.55982/openpraxis.16.4.727
• Barbour, M. K., Moore, S., & Veletsianos, G. (2023). Online/remote learning and mental health. https://touroscholar.touro.edu/tucse-pubs/29/
• Digital Learning Collaborative / Community for Advancing Digital Learning (DLAC): Research agenda report and special issue of the Journal of Online Learning Research https://www.deelac.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/DLAC-Research-Agenda-Phase-2-Final-1052025.pdf

Guest Bio: Michael Barbour

Michael Barbour is widely cited as the most prolific researcher in K-12 online and distance learning. His work spans student success and persistence in virtual environments, teacher preparation for online instruction, and the governance and regulation of K-12 online programs across jurisdictions. He is currently focused on building a research agenda for the field and examining how political ideology shapes online learning policy in the United States compared to other countries. Barbour holds a faculty position and has previously held posts at Wayne State University, among others.

About the Hosts:
Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of Why Distance Learning. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators — building the kind of structured, human-centered distance learning the podcast explores. See https://banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts

Tami Moehring and Allyson Mitchell work with CILC, the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, to help educators implement high-quality live virtual learning experiences across grade levels. Discover more at CILC.org.

In this episode of Why Distance Learning, your hosts talk with Kristen DeBruler — Assistant Director of the Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute — about what makes online learning work for K-12 students, and what quietly undermines it. Drawing on survey data from over a thousand virtual teachers and fresh findings on student and teacher AI perceptions, her work reveals where the conventional promises of online learning diverge from what the data actually shows. The episode centers on a tension that practitioners rarely name directly: the flexibility that makes online learning valuable for some students can work against those who are still developing the self-regulation skills to use it well.

Together, the hosts and Kristen explore how a researcher inside a state virtual learning organization sets and pursues a research agenda — including the unusual advantage of having direct access to student data. They examine common failure modes in classroom-level research, particularly how vague research questions leave teachers vulnerable to the biases they're trying to surface. Kristen walks through her team's findings on the gap between how students and teachers define acceptable AI use, and why that ambiguity is already showing up in the classroom. The conversation turns to teacher feedback as the connective tissue of asynchronous online learning — and what the data shows about what makes it work and what makes it hollow. And Kristen makes a pointed case about applying adult learning research to K-12 populations: the data doesn't transfer as cleanly as the field sometimes assumes, and the consequences land on students who are still building the executive functioning skills that adult learners already have. Her pacing research is illustrative: students who cross unit boundaries — not just move around within one — end up with final grades 9.5 points lower on average, a gap large enough that teachers should treat it as a warning signal, not background noise.

Key topics:

• Researcher role inside a state virtual learning organization
• Setting a research agenda: legislative directives vs. internal needs
• Avoiding bias in classroom-level research
• The AI acceptable-use gap between students and teachers
• Teacher feedback as the primary relationship-building mechanism in async courses
• What makes feedback substantive (personal, formative, actionable) vs. hollow
• AI-generated feedback and trust erosion in online learning
• Student pacing deviation and its effect on learning outcomes
• Executive functioning support for K-12 online learners
• Cautions in applying adult learning research to adolescents

Links & Resources

• Michigan Virtual: https://michiganvirtual.org
• Michigan Virtual Digital Backpack (blog): https://michiganvirtual.org/blog/
• Michigan Virtual research publications: https://michiganvirtual.org/research/publications/
• Cuccolo, K. & DeBruler, K. (2024). A Look Back At 3 Years of Michigan Virtual Research. Michigan Virtual. — Source of the AI policy gap data (30%/80%) and AI facilitator vs. task-completion findings. https://michiganvirtual.org/research/publications/a-look-back-at-3-years-of-michigan-virtual-research/
• Cuccolo, K. & DeBruler, K. (2024). Out of Order, Out of Reach: Navigating Assignment Sequences for STEM Success. Michigan Virtual. — Source of the 9.5-point pacing deviation finding. https://michiganvirtual.org/research/publications/out-of-order-out-of-reach-navigating-assignment-sequences-for-stem-success/
• DeBruler, K. & Harrington, C. (2024). Key Strategies for Supporting Disengaged and Struggling Students in Virtual Learning Environments. Michigan Virtual. https://michiganvirtual.org/research/publications/key-strategies-for-supporting-disengaged-and-struggling-students-in-virtual-learning-environments/
• Harrington, C. & DeBruler, K. (2021). Key Strategies for Engaging Students in Virtual Learning Environments. Michigan Virtual. https://michiganvirtual.org/research/publications/key-strategies-for-engaging-students-in-virtual-learning-environments/
• Michigan Virtual report on student and teacher AI perceptions (2026): [LINK — get from guest; published ~2 weeks before recording]
• Jared Borup's ACE for Community Framework: https://edtechbooks.org/encyclopedia/academic_communities_of_engagement_ace_framework 
• Virtual Learning Leadership Alliance (VLLA): https://virtuallearningalliance.org/
• Karle Delo, Michigan Virtual (AI policy): https://michiganvirtual.org (search staff directory)
• Why Distance Learning Michigan Virtual Episodes: See list for episodes with Dr. Tovah Sheldon and two with MV alum Chris Harrington. https://www.cilc.org/News-(1)/Why-Distance-Learning-Podcast.aspx
• Make It Mindful Michigan Virtual Episodes: See list from Seth's other podcast for episodes with Karle Delo and two with Aaron Baughman. https://mim.bepodcast.network/episodes

Guest Bio: Kristen DeBruler

Kristen DeBruler is the Assistant Director of the Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute, where she has spent more than 14 years studying K-12 online learning — including student pacing, teacher communication, mentor support, special populations, and AI use in virtual environments. Her research is oriented toward practitioners: she publishes findings in formats designed for teachers, administrators, and program leaders to act on, not just cite. She holds a PhD in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology from Michigan State University.

About the Hosts

Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of Why Distance Learning. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators — building the kind of structured, human-centered distance learning the podcast explores. See https://banyangloballearning.com/

Tami Moehring and Allyson Mitchell work with CILC, the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, to help educators implement high-quality live virtual learning experiences across grade levels. Discover more at CILC.org.