As you have learned, TVM lessons are intended to be completed by learners working independently and asynchronously. Ideally, learners will have received adequate instruction in advance, or the TVM lesson activities will be scaffolded in such a way that learners are able to complete the lesson activities by themselves. The DL Team recognizes, however, that there will always be instances where learners need additional support from an ABE teacher or tutor to complete a TVM lesson.

When the student receives additional instruction to support their completion of the TVM lesson, that time can be counted as face-to-face contact time. However, if the student is unable to complete the lesson independently and instead works directly with a teacher or tutor to complete the lesson, then that time should be counted either as face-to-face contact time or TVM proxy hours. Programs are encouraged to carefully think through these issues and develop a clear set of procedures. Let’s look at a couple of examples to illustrate the difference.

For example, Vang is a student who has only completed part of his TVM lesson assignment on dividing fractions on his own, feels stuck, and comes to see a tutor for help. The tutor proceeds to give him impromptu additional instruction for 30 minutes, using additional examples which are not part of the TVM lesson assignment. Vang feels more confident and is able to complete the rest of the TVM assignment on his own. In this case, Vang’s teacher awards him the TVM lesson proxy hours for his completed work, and the tutor records and submits his 30 minutes of face to face time to his volunteer coordinator for entry in SID as contact hours.

In a different example, Fatima’s teacher assigns a TVM lesson worth 1.5 proxy hours. Fatima completes part of the assignment on her own, but wants help from her tutor to complete the rest. Fatima ends up having a 1 hour tutoring session, and she spends about half of that time completing the TVM lesson assignment with her tutor. In this scenario, because Fatima completed the TVM lesson with significant help from her tutor, the program could choose to either count the 1 hour of face-to-face contact time or the proxy hours for the TVM lesson. This avoids double-counting hours. The program, in this case, chose to count the 1.5 proxy hours for the completed TVM lesson because those hours were greater than the 1 hour the student spent with the tutor.

There could also be instances where learners need to come to an ABE program site in order to complete a TVM lesson (e.g., to use the computer lab). Learners would be physically present in an ABE classroom or computer lab, but would be working independently. This scenario is analogous to a learner coming to an ABE classroom to work independently on another approved DL platform (e.g., Khan Academy or Read Theory). In this case, ABE programs do need to avoid double-counting seat time/contact hours and DL proxy hours. The DL team recommends:

Whenever possible (especially for paper-based lessons), clearly label the lesson materials as TVM content so staff know they should not count time learners are working independently as contact hours.
If you have a drop-in lab or classroom, develop sign-in procedures for learners that will help staff differentiate between contact and DL proxy hours.