Figure 9. 1. Cisco Networking Academy organizational hierarchy.

learning in a manner that respects teachers' needs for time and autonomy. The four key elements of the academy are centralized curriculum development; Web-based delivery of curricular content; on-site implementation by instructors who guide, support, and give feedback to students who complete hands-on labs and other learning activities; and standardized online assessment and track­ing of student performance in order to prepare students for industry standard certifications.

Centralized Curriculum Development. Centralized development of the academy curriculum provides a cost-effective way to design and revise the content of in­struction that has been delivered to approximately 400, 000 students in 10, 000 academies in 150 countries.

The academy curriculum for students and curriculum guides for instructors are developed by Cisco based on the recommendations of industry experts and program faculty for what students need to know and be able to do in order to be successful in network engineering and network administration positions. Cur­riculum objectives are set for each course, and course content is developed and tightly organized in order to meet each objective.

The Handbook of Blended Learning

The use of a centralized curriculum development strategy allows Cisco to maintain the Standards Alignment Database, which stores and reports the relationships between course objectives for the four CCNA courses and national standards and individual state standards. Each set of standards tracks the curriculum against subject categories such as mathematics, science, and lan­guage arts.

The curriculum includes texts, laboratory work, and, increasingly, online sim­ulations. Instructors are invited to join curriculum development teams, offering input on the strengths and weaknesses of all aspects of the curriculum and help­ing make changes.

One instructor contrasted the CCNA curriculum with the typical situation he faces as a teacher, in which he must decide on a text and build all of the lessons. His opinion is that the CCNA curriculum is thoughtfully assembled by people with greater expertise in the subject area and more time to develop ma­terials than the typical teacher. He noted that the instructional activities in the Cisco program foster conceptual understanding rather than simply practical ap­plication of lessons. He also noted that having a centralized, standardized curriculum provides him with more time to think about his students and how to be working with them in class. From his perspective, the CCNA curriculum yields good-quality materials and allows teachers to use more of their time to think about teaching.

Online Content Delivery. All curriculum materials are delivered over the Internet. When students register for a CCNA course, they are provided a log-in identifi­cation and password that allow them to access the course content at any time and from anywhere they have an Internet connection.

The primary benefit of online content delivery for students is that it provides consistent content that is updated and improved on a regular basis, and these materials are made available to students in a cost-effective manner.

Online content delivery provides the same benefits for instructors as for stu­dents. For the instructor, the online content becomes the background or prework that students complete leading up to a classroom activity or a hands-on lab. Teach­ers' primary concerns regarding online content generally have to do with issuer of accessibility in case hardware breaks or Internet connections go down. Yet these concerns are not apparently too great because although books are available to sup­plement the online materials, few academies choose to purchase them or recom­mend them to their students.

On-Site Implementation of Instruction. For students, on-site implementation provides opportunities for the social interaction of face-to-face learning

The Cisco Networking Academy

environments, including time to receive guidance, feedback, and support from in­structors and to work with peers while solving practical problems in hands-on lab activities.

For instructors, online implementation means that although the curriculum is provided by Cisco, instructors can rearrange, deemphasize some content sec­tions, and enhance the curriculum as they deem appropriate. They can choose any of a variety of instructional strategies to support students' achievement of cur-ricular objectives, customize lessons by providing remediation or enrichment experiences, check on students' readiness for assessment before students take on­line tests, and provide specific contextual guidance for how a general concept or procedure might work in their particular networking environment. Because in­structors are responsible for the on-site implementation of the curriculum, all the resources provided by Cisco serve as support for, rather than an imposition on, instructors.

Standardized Assessment of Learners. The Cisco Networking Academy as­sessment strategy comprises a variety of interactive online exams and hands-on performance assessments. Assessments, like the curriculum, are developed by Cisco and administered at the academies. The assessments are closely matched with the objectives, curriculum materials, and instructional activities for each course in order to facilitate students' mastery of course objectives effectively and efficiently. The online assessments are administered directly to students through a Web-based interface, and the hands-on performance assessments are adminis­tered by instructors in labs based on resource materials provided by Cisco. In both cases, assessments are designed to inform students about their performance in order to improve learning, as well as to hold students and teachers account­able for results.

The online tests are scored by computer programs, and results are ware­housed in large databases by Cisco's staff in assessment, research, and evalua­tion. Students, instructors, and CCNA program administrators receive test results. Testing provided to students also provides immediate personalized feedback to students. Because they are designed using advanced statistical techniques most commonly found in statewide or national exams, each test also allows normative comparisons between students, academies, RTCs, and CATCs. Over thirty thou­sand online assessments are taken each day in the academy program around the world.

Instructors have freedom in how they use tests and test results. Test scores may be a primary or a minimal factor in the student's final grade; therefore, testing is not necessarily a high-stakes experience for the student. One instructor noted that on occasion, the class will collaborate in taking the test as a learning exercise.

The Handbook of Blended Learning

Instructors may provide input about the tests just as they do with the curricu­lum, having the opportunity to join test development teams and work on revising tests with Cisco staff The result is that the test development process involves a good mixture of expertise in testing, the content domain, and instructional strategies.

Although teachers have flexibility in test administration, it is also true that low test scores at an academy will trigger an administrative flag in the program hier­archy. CATC or RTC staff will visit the academy, observe teaching practices, and review instructional activities to ensure that they are sound. If it appears that teach­ing practices are not engaging to the students or teachers are not setting appro­priate expectations for learning, professional development support will be provided. Finally, data from assessments are also used by staff at Cisco to adapt curricu­lum content in order to improve instructional activities and resulting student achievement.

An important distinction exists between the standardized assessments that are used as part of CCNA course work and the standardized assessment known as the CCNA certification examination, which students take from an independent test administrator after they have completed all four courses of the CCNA program. An analogy that may help to distinguish between the standardized assessments that are part of CCNA course work and the certification examination would be to think of the certification examination as equivalent to the Scholastic Aptitude Test and the standardized assessments as equivalent to unit tests that classroom teachers administer to students. This analogy should also help readers understand the rev­olutionary difference between traditional classroom tests and CCNAs standardized assessments: CCNA assessments serve to determine students' course grades, but they are based on item analysis, norm referencing, and database warehousing that are the hallmark of national examinations that measure student achievement.

Approaches to Blended Learning in the Cisco Networking Academy

Research is underway in order to understand the impact of the Cisco Network­ing Academy model on student achievement. Part of this research initiative in­cludes developing an understanding of the approaches to blended learning thai are used in various academy programs and courses. Although curriculum and as­sessments are standardized and delivered over the Web, instructors are free to im­plement curriculum and tests in whatever ways they deem appropriate to support student learning and achievement.

The Cisco Networking Academy

Four general approaches to blended learning may be used by instructors in the CNA environment. One approach, drawn from traditional classroom prac­tice, is to structure the course following the lecture method, using the online curriculum to prepare learners for lecture and the online tests for postlecture student assessment. A second approach in this blended learning environment is for students to read online curriculum in advance of class meetings, complete online tests, and receive feedback at the beginning of class; then the majority of class time is spent with the instructor and students working together through discussion and activities to address knowledge gaps identified in the testing. A third approach follows a format in which students read online materials prior to class and then attend class sessions, which are primarily discussions or question-and-answer sessions, after which students complete online tests. A fourth approach to blended learning in the CNA environment is similar to self-regulated learning approaches: students read online materials, complete in­structional activities, and take online tests, using the instructor as a resource when needed.

The blended learning approaches demonstrate a range of formats that may be used to support student achievement, which brings us back to the core issue regarding blended learning. The real test of the value of blended learning as a model for education is and always will be its impact on student achievement.

Conclusion

Student achievement is a result of the interaction of complex, multidimen­sional, and interrelated factors (Rowe & Hill, 1998; Walberg, 1984). Most educational effectiveness studies consider three types of variables: student in­dividual characteristics, instructional elements, and environmental factors (Lee, 2000). It is likely that many of the multiple factors that affect student achieve­ment in face-to-face learning environments will also affect student achievement in blended learning environments. Therefore, we propose that an appropriate starting point for understanding the CCNA program in particular, and blended learning environments in general, would be to focus on the same variables studied by previous educational productivity researchers. The interaction among these variables in a proposed theoretical framework is depicted in Figure 9.2.

Understanding the factors that affect student success will help designers of blended learning environments to improve the instruction and effectiveness of their

The Handbook of Blended Learning

FIGURE 9.2. PROPOSED THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR UNDER­STANDING THE VARIABLES THAT BEAR ON STUDENT SUCCESS.

programs. The current and ongoing evaluation of the Cisco Networking Academy will provide data to answer this question in a particular blended learn­ing context. We encourage educational researchers to study blended learning in other contexts in the hopes that our shared efforts will shed light on a topic that is becoming of increasing importance as educators everywhere continue to rely more heavily on the Internet and the World Wide Web to support learning and in­struction.

More information about the Networking Academy program is available on the Web at cisco.netacad.net.

The Cisco Networking Academy

I

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CHAPTER TEN