Saturday, February 13, 2010

Week 3 Reflections

The readings provided critical issues for online schools. I can see how people in education who are not in favor of reform are scared. Online schools call into question the number of days students should physically be in school, as well as, if a school day should be 8am to 3pm anymore. The promise of individualized instruction also calls into question if students should be grouped by age (vs ability). On the positive side, online courses and virtual schools are growing at an annual rate of 30%. I worry about naysayers slowing the growth of online schools. They certainly can call into question the effectiveness of online education given the mixed results from the huge investment in educational technology. Lastly, the readings identified issues related to administering virtual teachers and creating a school culture with virtual and f2f teachers.

This week also had lots of confusion for me. Online schools are a nascent branch of education. After reading about several online state and charter schools, I came away a bit confused. Schools use different terminology and provide different information about their mission and courses. There needs to be more standardization to make it easier to compare schools. Maybe we need a Barron's report on online schools. The confusion also spread to my work for this course. I am usually very organized, but I somehow fell behind.

I came away with a few questions:
  1. About 12 percent of high school students have taken an online class versus about 1 percent for all K-12 students. Is this driven by AP courses? If not, how come online courses have not caught on in K-8?
  2. Charter schools have embraced online classes more than public schools. Do we have data that shows online courses are beneficial? Is there enough data to determine what types of schools and school environments are best suited for online courses?
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2 comments:

  1. Susan LowesFebruary 14, 2010 at 9:45 AM

    As for the high school versus all K-12 issue, fully online asynchronous courses require the ability to read (generally a lot) and to self-manage. Younger students need more support on both these fronts. That said, online learning is gradually moving into the middle school level. I don't know much about how this is supported, but it would be interesting to find out.

    There is data that compares the two environments (you will read some of it later) but that is not the reason charter schools have embraced it. Charters began in order to provide an alternative to home-school students whose parents are able to manage their elementary education but not their high school coursework. Now that so many exist, they are drawing from the traditional site-based school market. As you saw, their model is not fully asynchronous online but self-paced, telephone and email, etc. More of a tutoring type of learning.

    The terminology is indeed confusing--sometimes I think it is deliberate! They are all competing with each other so they throw the words around. That's why I wanted you to collect buzz words--because they are just that, buzz words!

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  2. APHFebruary 16, 2010 at 8:30 PM

    I think people might think that younger students need more organization, management, and order. They might need the "iron fist" of a teacher?

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