As the school year is only a few days away and the uncertainty caused by the teachers work to rule begin to get parents thinking, the concept of online education may gain favour. In the United States New York State now requires Online Education as the board has reduced the amount of time students need to spend in class with teachers. Is this a positive move? I think so, having taught online for the past seven years, I know how positive the experience can be for students and for instructors. However, one has to be careful about how this mode of instruction is used. It may be a good thing, and in a post on August 8th, Andrew K Miller stated
Online education is becoming a legitimate and viable option for education systems around the country. Both colleges and secondary schools are offering classes to students. In fact many states and schools are requiring students to take some method of mode of online learning. New York made major changes around seat time and face-to-face contact between student and teacher. The state's intentions are good. They want to move away the focus from seat time, and they want to offer courses that might be hard to offer in certain areas of the state to all students. With all these innovative systemic changes, one might think we are completely on the right track. I offer a word of caution.
Online education is in danger of replicating a system that isn't working. Yes, I wrote it. With all the potential for innovation that online education has to offer, we have fallen into the pitfall of replication. The keyword is "danger." There is much that online education can do to innovate the education system, and much that has already been done as a result. Yet most of the actual courses and pedagogical structures that are in place are simply replicating the traditional style of education.
What's the biggest positive effect of online education? It is causing schools to reevaluate and seek to answer the question: "Why do students need and want to go our schools?" In addition, online education is focusing on the learning, not time, a movement toward competency-based pathways, especially those championed by iNACOL, and moving conversations about student achievement in the right direction. Teaching and learning can be tailored to the specific student. Students complete work at their own pace and seek feedback and instruction as they need, rather than when the teacher decides. Students are immersed in a variety of technology tools and media, allowing for different ways to learn content.
With all these positive implications and results, what is missing? The pedagogical structures for most online courses is traditional and does not meet the needs of all students and the variety of learning styles that they come with. Although there might be a variety of media types, such as videos or music or reading, the lesson design is still in the "sage on the stage" mode, where the course knows the content and pushes it out on students. Although students might be asked to show what they know in different modalities, from a collage to a podcast, they mimic low-level performances of regurgitating knowledge for the teacher to assess. Grading practices are often poor, with arbitrary point values being given, rather than focus on the standards. Well-designed rubrics are not present for students, and if they are, the students are left to their devices to understand it. Revision mimics a typical essay from school, where only one draft is required. Although there might be discussion boards or other social media to collaborate, collaborative assessments and work are not present to create a true need to collaborate. Discussions boards, for example, are treated as a summative assessment, points in the grade book. Shouldn't it instead be used for the purpose is was created? It should be a place where collaboration and wrestling with rigorous questions can occur, not a punitive measure to "cattle prod" students into doing work. Courses are often not culturally responsive, nor are teachers trained in culturally responsive teaching and what it looks like online.
So we have to be careful about how instructors teach online but we also have to be careful of how the system treats students who take online courses. The following is a letter sent to the Superintendent of Schools in a local district in BC. In the letter the writer point out how the system discriminates against students taking online courses. ( I have removed the name of the school)
I was informed today, May 11 2010, by my son that he was ineligible for all district scholarships. Since he has been the Student Council Co-President for the past 2 years, an Honour Role and Principal’s List student, we as parents were more than shocked with this news. He told us that he was deemed ineligible for District Scholarships because of a problem with taking English 12 through the Learn at Home Program.
He had applied for more than 30 school and district scholarships. Upon being informed of this problem from my son, I phonedthe School I was told that he was ineligible because he had not completed 60% of the English 12 program through Learn at Home by April 15 2011.
I will briefly outline the problems again:
Online education is becoming a legitimate and viable option for education systems around the country. Both colleges and secondary schools are offering classes to students. In fact many states and schools are requiring students to take some method of mode of online learning. New York made major changes around seat time and face-to-face contact between student and teacher. The state's intentions are good. They want to move away the focus from seat time, and they want to offer courses that might be hard to offer in certain areas of the state to all students. With all these innovative systemic changes, one might think we are completely on the right track. I offer a word of caution.
Online education is in danger of replicating a system that isn't working. Yes, I wrote it. With all the potential for innovation that online education has to offer, we have fallen into the pitfall of replication. The keyword is "danger." There is much that online education can do to innovate the education system, and much that has already been done as a result. Yet most of the actual courses and pedagogical structures that are in place are simply replicating the traditional style of education.
What's the biggest positive effect of online education? It is causing schools to reevaluate and seek to answer the question: "Why do students need and want to go our schools?" In addition, online education is focusing on the learning, not time, a movement toward competency-based pathways, especially those championed by iNACOL, and moving conversations about student achievement in the right direction. Teaching and learning can be tailored to the specific student. Students complete work at their own pace and seek feedback and instruction as they need, rather than when the teacher decides. Students are immersed in a variety of technology tools and media, allowing for different ways to learn content.
With all these positive implications and results, what is missing? The pedagogical structures for most online courses is traditional and does not meet the needs of all students and the variety of learning styles that they come with. Although there might be a variety of media types, such as videos or music or reading, the lesson design is still in the "sage on the stage" mode, where the course knows the content and pushes it out on students. Although students might be asked to show what they know in different modalities, from a collage to a podcast, they mimic low-level performances of regurgitating knowledge for the teacher to assess. Grading practices are often poor, with arbitrary point values being given, rather than focus on the standards. Well-designed rubrics are not present for students, and if they are, the students are left to their devices to understand it. Revision mimics a typical essay from school, where only one draft is required. Although there might be discussion boards or other social media to collaborate, collaborative assessments and work are not present to create a true need to collaborate. Discussions boards, for example, are treated as a summative assessment, points in the grade book. Shouldn't it instead be used for the purpose is was created? It should be a place where collaboration and wrestling with rigorous questions can occur, not a punitive measure to "cattle prod" students into doing work. Courses are often not culturally responsive, nor are teachers trained in culturally responsive teaching and what it looks like online.
So we have to be careful about how instructors teach online but we also have to be careful of how the system treats students who take online courses. The following is a letter sent to the Superintendent of Schools in a local district in BC. In the letter the writer point out how the system discriminates against students taking online courses. ( I have removed the name of the school)
I was informed today, May 11 2010, by my son that he was ineligible for all district scholarships. Since he has been the Student Council Co-President for the past 2 years, an Honour Role and Principal’s List student, we as parents were more than shocked with this news. He told us that he was deemed ineligible for District Scholarships because of a problem with taking English 12 through the Learn at Home Program.
He had applied for more than 30 school and district scholarships. Upon being informed of this problem from my son, I phoned
I will briefly outline the problems again:
2) parents were never formally informed by the school that their child was deemed ineligible for School District Scholarships because of problem #1.
3) parents should have been informed by either the Learn at Home program or by the Secondary School at the end of March 2011 of the arbitrary deadline of April 15 2011 to have 60% of the Learn at Home course completed in order to be eligible for School District Scholarships.
4) 3 outstanding students are being denied Scholarship opportunities due to errors and omissions that are not of their doing.
5) There is no indication of the arbitrary date of April 15 2011 to have 60% of Learn at Home coursework completed in the District's Foundation 2010/2011 Scholarships Bursaries Awards Booklet.
There is no requirements for students not in this online program to complete 60% of the course by April 15, which to me means that the system discriminates against students taking online courses.
The teachers and the admin involved probably were not aware of the issue of how their actions could be seen to be discriminatory. The Superintendent allowed the students to be considered for scholarships in this case, because of the lack of communications. The bigger question is how will this district deal with the attitude that students taking online courses are being discriminated against?
As parents if your son or daughter is taking an online course, you should check your districts policy about how these students will be treated come scholarship time.
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