(upbeat instrumental music)
-: Welcome to the "Accessible Learning Experience",
where we help you turn learning barriers
into learning opportunities.
On this episode,
I had the pleasure of interviewing
Mia Murphy and Chris Smith
from the North Carolina Virtual Public School, or NCVPS.
Mia and Chris have been great partners in supporting
the work of our technical assistance centers at CAST,
especially the work of the Center on Inclusive Technology
and Education Systems, or CITES,
on the topic of virtual learning.
The goal of CITES is to empower school districts to sustain
inclusive technology systems that serve all students,
including students with disabilities.
To do this work, CITES is creating and disseminating
a framework of evidence-based practices
to enhance the successful use of technology by all students.
In 2022, CITES launched its virtual learning project
to learn about promising practices related to educating
and supporting students with disabilities
and their families.
Central to this work was identifying what technologies
are used in these settings,
and how students who require assistive technology
to access instruction are supported.
Equally important was understanding
how teachers and families are supported
to effectively use technology tools
for inclusive teaching and learning.
The CITES team connected with a number of school districts
and other organizations dedicated to virtual learning,
and we're excited to share the work of one of them,
the North Carolina Virtual Public School.
Here's our conversation with Mia Murphy and Chris Smith
from NCVPS.
Hi Mia and Chris,
welcome to the "Accessible Learning Experience".
I'm so excited to have you both with us today.
-: Well, thank you so much for having us.
This is my inaugural podcast, so new experience,
so very excited to be here.
-: Yes, thank you so much, Luis.
I'm excited to be having this conversation today as well.
-: Well, let's go ahead and get started
by getting to know you a little bit better.
So let's get started with this question
that we always ask our guests,
what is your accessibility story?
What brings you to this work on a personal level,
and why is this work important to you?
How about we start with you, Mia?
-: I'm Mia Murphy and I serve as the executive director
for the North Carolina Virtual Public School.
I've been with the organization nine years.
So my accessibility story is multifaceted.
As an educator, you do this work because you want
to make sure that there are possibilities
and options for all students.
And so you do that,
but I don't think until you have to live it,
do you truly understand it.
So I would say my personal story
is, actually started with my son.
He is an amazing 14 year old now,
but he was born at 25 weeks.
So he weighed only a pound and 10 ounces.
So micropreemie, really at the edge of viability,
we didn't know what would happen.
So day by day, only spent a short 10 weeks in the hospital
when you think about what it could be.
But his first few years changed my whole lens of who I was,
obviously as a person, a mom, but also as an educator.
Because I learned true advocacy,
how learning environment should be.
The level of accessibility, the intentionality,
what it should be, not necessarily what it was,
or what even the environments
that I had been supporting as an educator.
So the experience of having birth
not go as you think it should,
but having an awesome outcome with a wonderful son,
where I had to make sure that the environment
that he was due, that I could advocate for.
So I would definitely say it's very personal with my son,
and the same things that I want for him,
and saw that were not there and trying
to break all barriers, I want for all children.
So just kinda in a nutshell,
my personal accessibility story.
And I'm so fortunate that we work in this environment.
I tell everyone that we're blessed
to be the least bureaucratic part of state government.
That we work to be as chameleon like as possible
to figure it out for children,
to alleviate some worries for educators
and just make sure that everyone has an environment
where they can flourish.
And this space, especially being online,
the online classroom has so many possibilities
and can do so many different things.
I'm blessed to work in this space.
That we can come to work every day and we can say,
"Well, let me figure it out."
That it's not an immediate no.
That we're constantly challenged
to figure out how we can help them to help their students.
-: What a powerful story,
and such a personal connection to the work.
I love to hear that.
And you're right, online education has so much potential.
And I can vouch for that firsthand,
as someone who's completed a lot of their schooling online.
Just because of the many flexibilities
that it offers to someone who has a disability.
So thank you for sharing your personal story.
And how about you, Chris?
What is your personal connection to this work?
-: Yeah, so I've been an educator
in North Carolina for 22 years.
I started out at K-12, different roles,
classroom teacher,
district level instructional technology specialist.
But in 2012, I decided to take on the role
of a director position at a local community college.
And it just so happened to be one that backed up to the
Western School for the Deaf in North Carolina.
And so that's where I really first got my introduction
into the concept of accessibility.
We had several students from the deaf school
who were cross enrolled in our organization.
I was the director of online learning and programs,
and through that, I was working really closely
with our Office of Disability Services,
and we happened to have a student on campus
who was visually impaired.
And it was time for her to transfer
out from the community college to a four year college.
And went to sit down to fill out the application
through the portal that's used
for all colleges across North Carolina,
and of course it's digital and it's online.
And it was not designed or programmed to be accessible.
And so the student,
it was not able to independently complete the application
to go on to earn a higher degree in college on their own
simply because the way that the technology was designed,
the way that the application was designed.
So it got me thinking.
And so originally when I started addressing accessibility,
it was from the legal standpoint.
We have all these federal requirements
that we have to follow as institutions.
But as years went on, as I got to be a part of NC Virtual,
NCVPS and the opportunities that came about.
In 2018, we had a cohort of students
from Governor Morehead School for the Blind
in North Carolina enroll in our Spanish course.
And I had worked on some of the design
and development of that course.
And so in my opinion, I thought that I had followed to a T
what's required in order to design an accessible course.
And so the students got in there and started working
and were really struggling.
So I went on campus
and got to sit down with them and elaborate
with a cohort of students,
and witness firsthand and observe their experience.
And I was ready to throw their technology
out the window five minutes into the observation.
And so as we talked through it,
we formed a partnership where I returned
multiple times throughout the semester.
So I would gather feedback, and observe, and ask questions,
and I would go make design changes,
and I would come back and we'd try those.
And we finally got it to the point,
before the end of the semester,
they were already excited about enrolling in Spanish 2.
And so that changed my whole mindset,
from those two experiences,
from the legal aspect to the human aspect.
And so while we do have legal obligations we have to follow,
there's so much power in being able to observe,
and listen, and have discussions with individuals,
all kinds of diverse learners of where they come from,
what they need, and how we meet those needs.
And so I think that's my biggest why,
and I continue any opportunity to have the chance
to talk with adults, professionals, meet with students,
observe, sit in classrooms, sit in those situations.
I take those and I run with those.
And in terms of the importance
of this with NC Virtual, NCVPS,
is that before when I was doing this work,
it was within a building, it was within a district.
And now it's across the entire state,
but it's even more than that,
it's nationwide because we're a part of the VLLA,
where we meet with other virtual schools
across the entire country.
And we're sharing in this work together,
we've formed a special work group
that's dedicated specifically to individuals
and students with special needs.
And we're talking back and forth about what do we do
with IEPs, and procurement, and all kinds of work.
And it's really taken that small scale into a bigger scale,
and we have a large team working together.
And that has only been possible
through being a part of NCVPS.
-: Thank you so much, Chris, for sharing that powerful story,
and for that reminder that, like you said, accessibility,
there are legal mandates, there are standards.
But at the end of the day it's about people.
You iterate over time until you get to the experience
where you're seeing that students are empowered
and they're able to accomplish their goals.
So thank you for sharing that.
Just so that people have a little bit more background,
can you give us a little bit more context?
What should our audience know about NCVPS?
-: The North Carolina Virtual Public School, so NCVPS.
And you may also hear us refer to ourselves with NC Virtual,
so multiple names, but same organization.
So we are the state led virtual school for North Carolina.
And so the emphasis on the state led,
because especially now, post COVID,
there are many virtual entities,
but we are a part of our state education agency.
So we're actually going into our 16th year.
And so, really, we are missioned and provisioned
to be the great equalizer.
So regardless of where you live,
your zip code in North Carolina.
It's a big state, very many, majority rural,
but many more metropolitan areas.
That opportunity does not look the same,
and so we're that game changer.
So regardless of where you live,
you have exposure to high quality teaching and learning.
You have a teacher who is nationally board certified,
AP certified, master's degree.
One that possibly in your district and where you live,
you could not attract.
So that is our reason for being,
we offer every course that a student needs to graduate
with the two diploma types from North Carolina.
So our catalog ranges from 130 plus courses.
So Chris's team develops those.
Our annual enrollments are, average about 55,000.
And so that's from every single school district
in the state, many charters.
And we also enroll home and private school.
But it also includes department defense schools.
Chris already mentioned the school for the blind.
Our residential schools, schools for the blind,
school for the deaf, school for the arts.
Really any entity where education should be going on,
we work to be there.
And so within this space,
there's always room for continuous improvement.
And so we work to perfect our craft continuously.
We're heavily involved with course quality.
We were actually recently recognized this year
by Quality Matters for our work
in really making a difference for students.
We're very proud of that.
We have the most QM certified courses
of any K-12 institution in the state.
So when we talk about this and talk about accessibility,
which is a major part of the QM process,
you see that we live it and we breathe it forward.
And so we're pretty large.
We've consistently remained
about the second largest state led.
There are different entities,
but we're the largest state led.
And Chris also mentioned the VLLA,
that is the Virtual Learning Leaders Alliance.
That is a consortium of other state led like-minded schools
that we're a part of, actually about 20 of us,
that with this type of work, you're kind of a unicorn.
So we're the only ones like ourselves in the state.
There are other virtual entities,
but they are more than likely not supplemental like us.
I don't think I mentioned that.
But we are not diploma grading.
We offer all of the of the courses to your diploma,
but you're not gonna come to NCVPS and graduate.
The great thing about us in being supplemental
is that the student can have the great experience
of having a quality online learning program,
but also continue your studies at your traditional brick
and mortar or whatever type of school.
And so we may be one,
possibly two courses in your educational journey,
but in terms of your actually graduating for us
and us doing those fully school fledged things,
actually transcripting and report carding.
We don't do that.
The way that our relationship works and it works well,
to enroll with us is completely a school
or a district decision.
They decide because we're outside of their system,
and they say that we demonstrate the quality
and the fidelity of instruction to say,
"Yes, my student can learn from your program,
I trust you to ensure that it is quality."
And then we then give that grade
back to them to do report card, transcripts, and so forth.
We're actually small in full-time staff.
There are only 27 of us who are full-time.
But large with our whole community,
we employ over 700 teachers.
None of our teachers are full-time.
Chris's team employs hundreds of contractors
to help us develop courses.
There is a whole lot to this entire community
to make it work.
But when you look at those people
where it is your full-time job,
it's amazing what can be done
and what has been done over the course of the last 16 years.
-: Wow, and that's really impressive.
And I think it'll be really helpful
for those in our audience who are not familiar
with virtual schools and how they work.
So thank you for that really detailed explanation.
I'm gonna turn over to you, Chris, now.
I understand that you did a presentation focusing
on how NCVPS supports students with disabilities.
Can you tell us what were two or three takeaways
from that presentation that you would share
with our audience members if they're looking for strategies
to better support their own students who have disabilities
in an online environment?
-: Yeah, most definitely.
And I can actually lead
into that as a follow up to the previous question,
which Mia was answering.
In terms of one of the biggest questions was,
how do we maintain that control of accessibility
over our content that we offer to students?
And so one of the ways that we do that with NCVPS,
is that with a majority of our courses,
we write them ourselves.
We don't use textbooks,
we hire certified teachers to write the content,
we review it.
We provide training to our entire organization,
even all those hundreds of contractors that Mia referred to,
on how to design accessible content.
And so we build it into the course.
So the biggest thing that was emphasized
from the beginning is,
the more opportunities you have to take control
of the entire process internally, the better off you are.
We've formed PLCs,
professional learning communities around the country,
in different aspects of education.
If we can get those to work
together collaboratively to build, and design,
and create the content,
then we have the ability to go ahead from the start
and add in some of the common IEP accommodations,
modifications such as reduced answer choices,
extended time, different things like that,
which is what we take into consideration
when we build our courses.
On top of that,
knowing what needs to be done to design accessible content
also goes into the whole procurement process
because you gotta know what's expected
or what needs to happen in order to review content
that you're looking at purchasing.
So I mentioned that we do a majority of our courses
we build in-house,
but there's some that we rely on third party vendors for.
But we have the same expectations at NCVPS
for those third party vendors that we put
into the design of our own courses.
So we go through and ask for a demo ahead of time.
And that was one of the things I stress.
When if you are a school, or a district,
or an educational entity of some kind,
and you're looking, looking at procuring content,
make sure you get access to that content ahead of time,
at least a demo of it,
so that you can go through and look for these things.
Don't just go out and purchase it first because,
as a person who's involved in the purchasing process
or procurement process,
you're ultimately a part of that decision as well.
So there's a lot of different things that come into play.
The other thing is, is that,
and this was kind of a discussion
that came about in that FETC session.
Is that, accessibility,
digital accessibility has been researched,
and written about, and talked about,
and trained on in higher education for well over 10 years,
well over a decade.
But even having been in K-12 before,
and left to go to higher education, and coming back to K-12,
it still remains not so much talked about, discussed,
and even implemented as much in K-12 settings.
And so that was where a lot of the conversation was,
because FETC was highly focused on the K-12 environments.
We talked about that a lot.
And then we talked about there are tons of materials
that are available through CITES.
There are gonna be a lot of those that are gonna
be connected to this podcast and referenced in this podcast.
And then the
National Accessible Educational Materials Center has tons
of materials that are available as well.
Those are really good starting points.
But as I emphasized earlier,
the key thing is also don't forget,
you're not just going to get all of this out of a book
or from a presentation.
It's kind of like when you go to college
to become a teacher.
You sit through a lot of courses to learn how to teach,
and the philosophy behind it, and everything else.
You also go into a lot of classrooms
to get a lot of practice.
But until you graduate, and you get your own classroom,
and you get in and start working with students,
you really don't fully comprehend the whole entire process
or grasp it.
And that's the key to accessibility.
You can't just learn it off of paper,
or out of a video, or off of audio.
You have to get in, and hands on the ground,
different things like that,
and interact with different individuals.
And so those were the key takeaways for me.
-: Great takeaways, and thank you for sharing those, Chris.
And reminding us about the importance of procurement, right?
And how you can be proactive.
And ensuring that accessibility
is part of the entire process
from the time that you're considering things to procure
to when you actually implement them.
And as you said,
getting that lived experience with the tools.
You mentioned getting a demo ahead of time.
Often we've recommended also having
some students with disabilities.
The people that are actually gonna use the tools,
try them out as part of that demo process
and provide their feedback.
So combining sort of what we know
about best practices from the literature,
but also with the lived experience.
And the experiences of people
that actually use assistive technology
and require accommodations is so important.
So thank you for highlighting that so well for us.
And you mentioned the resources
from the National AEM Center and CITES,
the Center for Inclusive Technology and Education Systems.
And I understand that you've been supporting
some of the research of CITES over the last year
or so through a variety of different methods.
Interviews, surveys, and participation in some meetings.
Why was it so important for you to participate
in that research?
-: Kind of going back to what I mentioned earlier,
with that national voice,
that national collaboration,
that's what CITES has offered through this.
The virtual project that they've been doing in terms of,
there were several of us that served
on a virtual advisory board where we looked at key things
like assistive technologies
and supporting assistive technologies,
IEP needs and meeting those IEP needs.
And the procurement piece that I've talked about,
there's about five things that we focused
in on with that virtual advisory board.
While I've talked a lot about some of the things that we do
really well with NC Virtual,
and even in the state of North Carolina,
the North Carolina education system,
Department of Public Instruction
is one of seven cohort members
for the National AEM Center cohort program
for the four years that we're in the middle of that term.
I'm privileged enough to be on that state leadership team.
And so we've been analyzing
things from the entire state level in North Carolina.
And we know that procurement
is something that we really need to focus
in on because that language is not there.
We're lucky with NC Virtual because we get
to make those decisions primarily ourselves,
but when it comes to the state level,
the conversation is not always as well spread out,
or they don't bring all the right people to the table,
as you talk about, Luis.
It is important to have individuals represented
in terms of visual impairments, deaf, hard of hearing,
different types of learners and educators involved
in that process.
And so that's what we're really working on trying to do.
And that's where I've gotten a lot of,
where we as a state as a whole have gotten
a lot of benefits from this work with CITES,
because we've talked to some other organizations.
I believe I remember through that work we were doing,
Virginia was talking about how they were able to procure
an entire video system for the entire state,
which is supposed to be used,
it addresses closed captions, and transcripts,
and how they went about making that happen.
And so that collaboration only happens through the work
that CITES put together to bring us together.
Because there is things that we're doing really well.
Not all the other states, or not all the other participants
in the group were designing their own courses.
So I've shared some of the materials in terms of what we use
to train all of our developers
on how to create accessible content.
I've shared those links that I think we'll share
with the resources for this podcast,
different things like that.
But there's just the areas that maybe we,
either as NCVPS, or as, again,
a state system of education need some extra assistance with.
There's other states that are doing really well,
and these national programs, whether it's VLLA, CITES,
the AEM Center,
all of those things allow us to come together
and work together to figure out problems.
-: And we're excited to hear that you're finding
the connections that you're making through the work
with our technical assistance centers so helpful.
So as we wrap up here,
is there anything else you would like to share
with our audience about the challenges that maybe encounter
when supporting students with disabilities
in online settings?
Where should people get started when they're developing
their strategy for creating more inclusive
and welcoming environments for these students?
-: I will state, just a challenge and a barrier,
especially for us in this space that we live in,
and it's a continuous improvement area,
it's probably the communication.
Because we can only support, advocate,
work to resolve issues for what we know.
So we really depend on our school partners
and district partners to let us know
what is going on with the student.
But to also look at,
especially if you are enrolling a student
into a program external to your organization,
to make sure that the appropriate supports can actually be,
"I'm done, achieved."
That it's the best environment.
And so one of the, Chris said,
one of the things when we started working
with the residential schools.
We had students enrolled and we had no idea
that you had that level of a disability.
And so it became, really, Chris becoming every man
to figure this out and make sure that our courses
and our environment could meet their needs.
So one of the things that,
and this is across all of our programs,
is we really work on that communication
and that partnership to make sure that if there are areas,
or interventions,
or things that we need to know,
to make sure that this is the best environment possible
for students, that our partners share that with us.
-: The biggest barrier that we continue to try to find
a solution for as an entire state of North Carolina
is being able to get the right people to the table.
And that's come up as a theme
throughout what we're talking about.
But in this, what I'm talking about is,
in North Carolina and the Department of Public Instruction,
primarily the conversations around accessibility lie
in the area of exceptional children.
So across the United States,
sometimes it's referred to as exceptional children,
sometimes it's still referred to as special education,
but that's where this conversation lies.
And it has to get outside of that area.
We have to have all key leadership, all key teachers,
students,
we have to have that whole variety of everyone involved.
So we continue at a state level to try to find a way
to get more of this information
in front of the superintendents, in front of the principals,
in front of the division section chiefs,
different things like that,
so that we can understand that it has to come
from the outsides in, from the top down,
from every different direction.
So that's one of the barriers.
And then one of the barriers that I've always faced
in this entire process,
going all the way back to talking about that work
in the community college system,
is coming up with a comprehensive accessibility plan
for an organization.
And so even once I started with NCVPS,
we started from that very first year in 2017 when I began,
trying to come up with our own internal accessibility plan.
And we worked and we worked,
and we put it away for a little bit.
And we came back and we tried it again,
and three or four times over three or four years,
it just wouldn't work for us.
And finally we were able to get the right collective
of the right people from each area,
talking about our OAS department, with our social media,
with our website to curriculum,
with the way we build courses to instruction,
with the way we teach courses.
And we finally were able this past year
to come up with that comprehensive accessibility plan,
which would lay groundwork for any educational institution
that is out there.
And so that's gonna be shared as a resource.
And so with that, where would you start looking
at that accessibility plan
and understanding how comprehensive it is?
This is not just the work of an individual.
A lot of organizations will go out and hire one person
to be in charge of disability services,
and expect that they kind of work miracles
to address everything that's out there.
There's nothing that's individual or independent
about this entire process.
And so I would suggest looking over that plan first,
picking something and starting small.
That can have the biggest impact.
I think making sure that any video that you produce
and put out, whether it's through social media,
on your websites, that it has captions,
and preferably a transcript as well, that is a key piece.
With modern technologies,
what artificial intelligence and machine learning
is doing for accessibility is huge
in terms of allowing us to generate auto captions
that are 90 plus percent accurate.
From there we can create transcripts.
Those are things that are easy to do,
just learn how to take advantage
of the modern advances in technology,
and it's gonna save so much effort, time,
and energy in this process.
So, I think that's key.
There's a lot of professional development going on right now
in terms of things like ChatGPT,
and artificial intelligence and what they can do.
But we can use that technology
to create detailed alternative texts
for images when we're not sure.
We can use it to help generate and fix auto captions,
transcripts.
There's just some amazing things we can do
in this modern world of technology,
and so those are some of the areas where I would start.
-: Thank you so much, Chris, for those valuable tips
and for reminding us that technology evolves.
And use things like artificial intelligence
to get a head start on things like captions and transcripts.
Of course it's not perfect,
so we need to go in and do the last mile, if you will.
We need to edit those captions, those transcripts,
but it can save a lot of work and give you a headstart.
And also for reminding us that you don't have
to do this all on your own.
It really is a team sport when it comes to accessibility.
So that's a great reminder.
And speaking of, you mentioned communication, Mia,
so how can people stay connected with you?
How can they continue this conversation and stay in touch?
-: So Twitter, I had to look it up. (chuckles)
It is at @miafmurphy.
LinkedIn is actually my whole name, it's Mia Foy.
My maiden name is Foy, F-O-Y, Murphy.
I'm also on Facebook, but there's pictures of my children
so I'm not as interesting.
But I would love for to be anyone to reach out.
Also, of course,
if you have questions about our program overall,
we're on social media.
We're @NCVPS, and that is on Facebook, Instagram,
and Twitter.
-: And how about you, Chris?
How can people stay in touch with you?
-: Yeah, I did put in my handle for Twitter,
and I have put in my LinkedIn, with Chris Smith NCVPS.
But email's generally the best form
of communication to reach out.
So we can have some more specific conversations
about design, so chris.smith@ncpublicschools.gov.
I'm ready and willing to have a conversation
about this topic anytime anyone wants to talk.
-: Thanks for tuning in to this episode
of "The Accessible Learning Experience",
brought to you by the National Center
on Accessible Educational Materials at CAST.
You can find us on the web at aem.cast.org.
There you'll find show notes with links
to all of the resources mentioned on each episode.
Thanks again for listening,
and remember, accessibility is everyone's responsibility.
(funky instrumental music)
The contents of this podcast were developed
under a cooperative agreement
with the US Department of Education.
However, those contents do not necessarily represent
the policy of the US Department of Education,
and you should not assume endorsement
by the federal government.