Log In and Learn

Online courses are becoming a growing option for students, but experts caution moderation.

By Karen Nitkin

Photo by Photodisc

Jessica Brown, a junior at West Chester East High School in West Chester, Pennsylvania, decided to challenge herself this year by taking Advanced Placement biology.

Small problem, though. Her school didn't offer the course, a demanding college-level walk through the mysteries of DNA and photosynthesis.

Not to worry. Brown discovered the Massachusetts-based Virtual High School, which offers the course over the Web and added her to its growing roster of students who meet teacher (and classmates) online. Brown's "virtual" instructor, Laura Hajdukiewicz, teaches science at Andover High School in Massachusetts, but she could just as easily hail from the other side of the country.

Under the Virtual High School system, teachers like Hajdukiewicz lead one class online for students anywhere in the world, and in exchange, 25 students can take online classes and receive credit at their own schools.

While the vast majority of K–12 students continue to attend classes in traditional bricks-and-mortar schools, more are taking one or two courses from a growing list of providers like the Virtual High School, a nonprofit organization that offers more than 200 courses.

It's a system that increasing numbers of educators and students find attractive indeed. Recently, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that enrollments in distance education courses (which include both Web-based courses and older technologies such as two-way interactive video hookups) in public K–12 schools topped 327,000 in the 2002–03 school year. In urban and suburban districts, online courses have surpassed video programming as the top method of distance learning.

Flexibility a Plus

Photo by Patricia McDonnell

Advocates of distance learning say online courses, though not a replacement for traditional classrooms, offer some pluses.

Flexible scheduling tops the list, says Bruce Friend, chief administrative officer for the Florida Virtual High School, which has seen enrollment jump from 77 students when it launched in 1996–97 to more than 18,000 students this year. Many high achievers, especially in small districts, may be ready to take advanced or specialized courses their local schools simply don't provide, Friend points out. Other students take a course online because they need to make up a class, or their overstuffed schedules require them to take classes outside regular school hours. "One of my first students was very involved in student government and in band, and he was on the soccer team," says Friend, who taught before taking the administrative position. "And—oh yeah—he needed to take U.S. government in order to graduate." By taking the course online, "he was able to do them all."

Ruth Adams, a former teacher and contract negotiator for the Massachusetts Teachers Association who now serves as dean of students at the Virtual High School, believes that students taking courses online hone their ability to work independently and manage their time. Students in regular classes learn these skills, too, but when you're taking a Web-based class, "There's nobody standing over you making you sit down and do your work," she says.

Teaching over the Internet is challenging, but Hajdukiewicz is creative about finding substitutes for hands-on lab work. Her students do a virtual pig dissection instead of the real thing, and learn to classify cells without looking through a microscope. "Doing it online is not going to give them the same experience, but for some students it's the best they've got," she says.

Steady Does It

Kids and teachers who take advantage of this virtual learning are definitely connected—by their mouses and Internet hookups—but are they really, well, connected?

While supportive of distance learning's potential to expand opportunities for students and staff, a 2002 NEA policy statement notes that face-to-face opportunities are critical, too. NEA's statement advised against arrangements in which students "receive all or most of their education at home through distance education and rarely convene in an actual school building."

Even supporters of online education are troubled by the growth of "cyber-charters." These are virtual schools that students attend full time, under existing state laws for charter schools. Some of the schools are run by for-profit businesses; many of the customers are home-schooled kids taught by their parents, rather than a certified instructor, notes Barbara Stein, a technology expert with NEA.

Schools such as the Massachusetts-based Virtual High School, though, use certified teachers with special training in online delivery, and they take steps to ensure that students stay connected. Unless there are exceptional circumstances, students are limited to two online courses per semester, says Adams. And Hajdukiewicz says that online courses "are more interactive than many believe." Her students cooperate on lab work, work on presentations together, and have "heated debates" that transcend distance.

Before Christmas break, Hajdukiewicz faced one of the toughest tests of classroom community: One of her cyber-students, Angie, was killed in a car accident. She had to break the news to her other pupils by posting an announcement on the class page, and she created a discussion thread so students could reflect and react. Though separated by distance, the kids bonded. Said one student's post: "Reading about Angie really slowed down the cadence of life, and made me appreciate many of the smaller things. Until now, I guess I thought of everybody (including myself) as a name on a list…. [B]ut Angie's death has made the entire class so much more human to me." Adds

Hajdukiewicz, "That definitely made the class seem more real to me as well."

Need Guidance?

Get your copy of NEA's "Guide to Online High School Courses."

Source: QED