Virtual schooling: integrating schooling into technology
William J. Hunter
Rosina Smith
The University of Calgary
Submitted to Dr. Barrie Barrell, Memorial University for inclusion in book tentatively titled “TECHNOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY”
Introduction
Virtual schooling is a remarkable innovation in the
history of schooling--not simply because it uses online teaching and learning
environments, or even because it is an educational alternative that has the
potential to change conventional learning contexts. The remarkable thing about virtual schooling is that it is a
major innovation in delivery that has been adopted by the school boards of
public school systems. Because of this,
we have become accustomed to predictions that virtual schooling will bring
about major changes in schooling overall.
It is certainly possible that this will come to pass, but our purpose
here is to examine the ways in which our traditional conceptions of schooling
are shaping the ways we develop online schools. That is to say, we want to raise the question “Is virtual
schooling a matter of integrating technology into schooling or is it the other
way around?”
That
said, we recognize that in its infancy as an alternative learning model
grappling with barriers that are, in part, due to its inexperience, virtual
schooling has nevertheless introduced notions of “anytime/anyplace” learning,
new opportunities for independent learning, and dramatic shifts in the work of
both teachers and learners. But since
these effects reflect broader social changes like the use of electronic
communication in corporate and personal communication, e-commerce in
international trade and banking, and new forms of political discourse, virtual
schools may simply be indicating the ways in which a schooling system designed
for the industrial economy can adapt to the demands of an information
economy. That is to say, the changes we
have seen may be more evolutionary that revolutionary and might be regarded as
constituting a kind of minimalist change that is merely responsive to the world
of work and that, therefore, extends the concept of schooling as preparation
for work by adapting schooling to an evolving work world. This may be important, but it would not
constitute the kind of fundamental change that many advocates of school reform
(or of integration of technology into education) would advocate.
Online on the Prairies
The growth of virtual schools in Alberta, Canada, over
the last five years has been impressive.
From one school in 1995, the province now has nineteen virtual
schools. Despite substantial reductions
in provincial funding for education during much of this time, virtual schools
have been enthusiastically developed under existing public and separate school
boards and have seen consistent growth in enrollment.
The
development of online education in Alberta is a continuation of a long history
of attempts to deliver quality schooling to citizens in remote locations
(Muirhead, 1999) that include correspondence schools, educational radio and
television, very early approval of home schooling, and an experiment with
fax-based delivery. This chapter draws
on data collected by one of the authors in her doctoral dissertation (Smith,
2000). It may be that this data source, the province’s history, and other
elements of the Alberta environment (e.g., very favourable attitudes toward
entrepeneurship and school choice) restrict the generalizability of some of the
observations here, but we expect that readers will find much commonality in any
large North American jurisdiction that includes substantial sparsely populated
remote areas.
The variety of ways in which Alberta’s virtual schools work makes it extraordinarily difficult to even think about such broad questions as “Do virtual schools improve students’ learning?” There are schools that rely (or have relied) almost entirely on email for communication between teachers and students. Some make extensive use of print resources. Some are using WebCT or other course delivery tools. Some require occasional face-to-face meetings. Some focus on elite athletes, others on home schoolers. It is a dazzling array of options, but all make some regular use of computer-mediated communication as a fundamental part of their educational program.
Oblinger & Maruyama (1996) argue that distributed learning systems permit a variety of educational approaches based on student needs and provide for “anytime/anyplace” learning. The inclusion of a variety of approaches seems to be an attractive feature of online learning and may be the means by which school districts can attract greater numbers of students. Further, with the decline in government funding to education, the virtual school may provide a variety of course offerings in a more creative and flexible manner by collaborating and by sharing resources. Since funding for Alberta school systems is substantially driven by enrollments, incorporating a virtual school provides them with a competitive edge that may help to attract students.
However, school districts do not seem to regard the mere availability of a virtual school as enough innovation; they also use a variety of approaches to structure the schools. There are blended programs, full virtual programs, and dual registration programs. The range of choices enables students to take online courses that may not be available in their “base” school or to take additional courses online while attending a conventional school.
Blended programs combine online education with home schooling and create opportunities for students to benefit from professionally-guided learning while allowing parents to retain control over their child’s schooling experience. These virtual programs are designed for students who prefer to learn using computer-mediated communication and who may have felt that the conventional school was not meeting their cognitive and/or affective needs.
The full virtual school program offers everything online and, therefore, does not require the physical structure of conventional schools. Even if students are provided with face-to-face opportunities, the venue need not be a school facility. The possibilities for reduced capital costs are certainly one of the attractions of full virtual schools, but virtual school advocates rarely mention this, focusing their arguments instead on learning issues.
Dual registration programs permit students to attend conventional school and also take classes online (for example, they make take courses required for post-secondary registration which are not offered by their conventional school). These dual registrations provide balance between online and face-to-face socialization, interaction, communication, and collaboration and may also constitute the kind of responsiveness to different learning styles advocated in the research literature (e.g, in William and Brown, 1990). Both blended and dual registration programs permit students to register in part-time online offerings.
Different Views of Student Learning
Historically, distance education emphasized curricular content and instructional design. This approach meant attempting to anticipate learner needs in general and overlooking the characteristics of individual learners as they engaged with the materials. Smith (2000) describes virtual schools as a fourth generation of distance learning that combines such third generation innovations as e-mail, audiotape, bulletin board systems, Internet, videotape, fax, voice mail, and other asynchronous and synchronous communication tools with a greater responsiveness to the affective needs of students and parents.
Parent Satisfaction
Research has shown that parents choose virtual schools because they value flexibility in time and space and opportunities for autonomous learning (e.g., Holmberg, 1989; Smith, 2000 and Flinck, 1989). In Smith’s study, parents indicated that they would continue to register their children in a virtual school despite discouraging results for virtual students on provincial achievement tests. Students taking online courses also want to continue to take courses using this delivery system (58% in a 1996 study by Hiltz, Johnson and Turoff.). Parents, teachers, and students in these studies seem more concerned about students being active participants in their learning and becoming autonomous learners than about students doing well on achievement tests. In fact, acquiring autonomous learning skills is an important factor that draws students and parents to online learning (Moore and Kearsley, 1996).
Parents in Smith’s study also believed that having children in a virtual school environment would decrease their exposure to bullying and violence and might, therefore, provide the potential for greater learning. Parents, teachers, and students were interested in what they saw as growth in student motivation. Students working in online educational settings are reported to be more highly motivated than those in conventionally taught courses (Baker, Hale and Gifford, 1997).
Smith found that Alberta parents believed that the involvement of a ‘key parent’ in some models of online learning provides students with individualized learning opportunities and promotes growth in the self-concepts of students who might have learned to devalue themselves in the conventional school setting.
It seems clear that parents who choose to send their children to Alberta virtual schools tend to be pleased with the results. However, it is worth noting that for many such parents, the choice of a virtual school is, in some way, an attempt to recapture the school of bygone days—smaller schools closer to home with parents actively involved. Despite the trappings of technology, virtual schools seem to satisfy this fundamentally conservative longing for a simpler, safer time.
Teacher satisfaction, on the other hand, was rooted in the use of a new approach to delivery and the opportunity to work in an innovative, creative environment. Teachers reported that they valued the collaboration and communication with the students this environment made possible. They also appreciated the potential for developing stronger skills in the integration of technology in teaching. They felt that they were seeing growth in student motivation and behavior. The model of professional work in these environments gave them more flexibility in the use of time and space and they felt that this was part of a changing role for teachers. They valued the camaraderie they experienced with other teachers (in contrast to the isolation many teachers report in traditional schools).
For teachers, then, virtual schools do seem to represent some kind of transformation of the profession; i.e., something fundamentally different about how we deliver education. For some, this would be amply reflected in longer work hours that are more directly under their personal control. For many, it has much more to do with the way their relationship to students is changed, especially in that they have more direct academic communication with individual students.
We
need to ask whether the teachers’ satisfaction reflects a new model of teaching
and learning or a delivery system that better enables them to make their
existing models work. This may be a
specific example of a general observation made by Weizenbaum (1976) who argued
that computers do not change how we do things; rather, their speed
allows us to persist in doing them the same way after our procedures have
become too cumbersome. (Weizenbaum’s example was the banking industry which he
claimed was so encumbered by paperwork that it was on the verge of a collapse
when computers made it possible to exchange and store information
electronically rather than on paper.
Bankers did not change their processes; they just moved them to the
computer environment.) It is likely
that we will not have a clear sense of an answer to this question until there
is a generation of teachers who have grown up learning with computers. In that kind of environment, it may be
easier for teachers to rethink the whole of the teaching and learning process
with the importance of technology declining as it is taken-for-granted.
Smith’s students reported satisfaction with their virtual school and with the innovative approach to learning that it made possible. They also reported satisfaction with the changing role of teachers, the safe environment online education offers, the reduced number of distractions, and the opportunities for interaction, collaboration, and socialization permitted by virtual school.
When students reflect the same kinds of attitudes the parents reported, it is more difficult to attribute the attitudes to a longing for bygone days. Though they may well be reflecting their parents’ values and standards, we must also consider the possibility that what we have is an indication that these parents have made the right choice for these students. At the very least, that would suggest that virtual schools represent an important shift insofar as they do indeed give parents a choice.
However, it is difficult to judge the overall level of student satisfaction with virtual schools since studies so far have not tracked the perceptions of students who leave virtual schools. Even if all students currently enrolled in virtual schools were to be supremely satisfied, questions would remain about whether this self-selected group was representative of students in general. That is, if students who currently choose to attend traditional schools were required to attend virtual schools, they would not necessarily share the opinions of those currently attending virtual schools
Participants
in Smith’s study reported that the union between teacher and learner in the
virtual school permits a role reversal.
This exchange of responsibilities is constantly shifting, triggering
ongoing role changes for the student and teacher. Kaufman (1989) argues that this ongoing support between teacher
and student permits open dialogue among learners and that this dialogue allows
“the learner” to be defined as both student and teacher. The authors have noted
this phenomenon in other virtual schools.
Students frequently comment that they feel they get more personal
attention from virtual school teachers because they get personal emails from them
several times each week.
Many virtual school teachers refer to their role as being a guide or coach to autonomous learners, many of whom have been immersed in a technological environment. Both teachers and students reported satisfaction with the reconstruction that “anytime/anyplace” learning permits. Students are able to learn in their homes, community, or workplace when they feel the time is right, and they say that they experience quality learning through the guidance and support of qualified teachers (Garrison, 1990). When teachers accept this reconstruction they can no longer be an unquestioned authority on the subject matter. Since students are not physically present with them when they work, teachers also cease to function as managers of classroom behavior. The students accept some of the responsibility for learning independently and they learn to govern their own learning. Baker, Hale, and Gifford (1997) argue that online students develop more positive attitudes toward the discipline under inquiry. Jonassen (1992) indicates that the current model of distance education, in which virtual schools can be classified, has the students assuming more control over their learning than the teacher does. However, one Alberta virtual school administrator has confided to the authors that students are sometimes “inappropriately” drawn to virtual schools because they come with the expectation that the work will be easier or that “someone else will do the thinking for them.”
What does it mean to say that online students take more control of their learning? Students have reported that it took less time for them to do their work online, thus, increasing learner efficiency (Baker, Hale & Gifford, 1997). They have also reported that they would return to the virtual school in the next school year, as did the study by Hiltz, Johnson, and Turoff (1996) which reported that fifty-eight percent of online students would choose to take another online course. Students often work from a “home office” environment, lending a touch of seriousness to their studies. Teachers report that online students are more likely to negotiate the terms of their assignments and that they succeed in this because they make a good academic case for what they want to do.
These kinds of changes do promise that online education opens the way to rethinking how we approach teaching and learning. With data from a survey of 4000 teacher leaders, Riel and Becker (2000) report that teachers who integrate technology into their teaching become more constructivist in their thinking about learning (and in their reported practice). Interestingly, Reeves (2001) has made a case that while students benefit from the changes online education introduces, teachers pay the price in the form of longer hours, more demanding work, and reduced control over course content. For the risk-takers who sign up early, these changes may be just the price of innovation; but if the price remains that high, it is unlikely that the system will accept this reform with enthusiasm
Student Enrollment, Retention, and Attrition
Since the 1996-1997 school year when Alberta virtual school student numbers were first recorded, it has become evident that there has been a substantial annual increase in student enrollment. Steady enrollment increases have been evident in all grades, but the highest growth occurred in grades 4-6, followed by 10-12, K-3, and finally 7-9. It should be noted that the least amount of growth has been consistently from grades 7-9 and that there was actually an 8% decline in enrollment at this level in the 1999-2000 school year. To date, retention and attrition rates have not been formally reported by school districts and/or Alberta Learning.
It is becoming apparent through the
data recorded in the school profiles that virtual schools were created in an
effort to not lose students to other jurisdictions and to offer alternatives
that might attract students both from within and outside their school
jurisdictions. This has led to some
competition among virtual schools which, in turn, has led to structuring
“fee-for-service” plans to accommodate part-time students. They also permit “anytime/anyplace” learning
which is attractive to many students and parents. Clearly, the introduction of new delivery mechanisms and the
creation of a competitive environment have the potential to broadly affect
public education, but it is probably equally true that the existence of virtual
schools as a service provided by public education will place some
constraints on the degree to which the virtual schools depart from normal
school practice—e.g., thus far, it appears that “anytime/anyplace” does not
mean that students may complete courses in the summer more readily in virtual
schools. Many of the virtual schools
courses have definite start dates and finish dates that correspond to the usual
school calendar. In short, there seems to be at least as much give as take in
the exchange between virtual school and traditional school.
Online courses could provide unique pre-service and in-service opportunities for teachers; for example, a pre-service teacher working with a virtual school might have exposure to a full year of teaching in a subject area in the compressed time of a semester of student teaching. Likewise, since online teaching tends to produce artifacts (email messages, discussion logs, web pages, etc.), there will be more opportunity for experienced teachers to see the products of novice’s efforts and to comment both critically and supportively. For the same reason, the environment is rich with opportunities for collaboration between novice and master teachers. Of course, these opportunities are not limited to novices, and there are exciting possibilities for practicing teachers interested in creating or delivering online courses collaboratively. The very possibility of separating the course creation and course delivery functions (as has been done to some degree at Chinook College in Calgary) is itself an opportunity for teachers to hone particular skill sets or to capitalize on the strengths of colleagues. To date, literature on the online development of online teachers is very limited, but there is a hint of the possibilities in one report of a pilot study of student teachers working with practicing online teachers (Bulls, Brown, Hunter & Fryatt, 1996).
The theme of choices was apparent in the discussion relating to parent satisfaction. Parents registered their children in the virtual school because they sought another alternative to the educational context in which their children had previously attended. Parents who had students registered in a conventional school setting prior to attending the virtual school reported that the negative social element, the promise of more relevant, meaningful learning opportunities, and the independent learning skills that the virtual school offered were the reasons for selecting this alternative.
The parents indicated they were satisfied with the flexible, “anytime/anyplace” learning opportunities that this choice offered and that socially and emotionally their children were happier. Both parents and students stated that the positive change in their social and emotional growth had a positive impact on their grades.
Students also felt that the virtual school was a safer choice as they were no longer open to being criticized, embarrassed, or made to feel less worthy by other classmates. Students did, however, acknowledge that there are some aspects to online learning that are “frightening” such as issues of being stalked online or of entering an inappropriate site.
Students perceived that their academic achievement had improved since registering in the virtual school because this choice helped them feel better about themselves and because they were more accepted by their online peers than they had been in the conventional school setting.
Teachers also reported that this was an alternative choice that they selected because they wanted to teach in an innovative environment and because issues of class management were different. Although teachers argued that they spent less time on behavioral issues, there were still some behavioral issues that existed, but they were different from the ones in conventional classroom settings.
For parents who are proponents of the home schooling context, the virtual school is a choice that offers them direct control over their child’s affective and cognitive growth while permitting guided learning by certified teachers. These parents feel that the conventional school context is not appropriate and that the virtual school offers a choice which provides them assistance with the day-to-day learning requirements, without the parent-perceived negative factors of conventional school settings (Mayberry, 1991). These perceived negative factors include inappropriate peer relationships and inappropriate behavior that may be distracting and may negatively influence their child’s behavior.
Students reported that the elimination of any concern for appearance, race, gender, and/or age made them feel accepted and increased their grades as they were no longer occupied with how they felt about themselves and what others thought about them. Students also reported feeling more at ease to ask questions without getting embarrassed and were less likely to worry about their physical image. Parents, students, and teachers felt that this environment was beneficial for those students perceived to be socially incongruent within their conventional school settings due to physical or affective differences. In the virtual school, students are known through their text-based dialogues, not through their physical and/or affective characteristics.
Teachers also saw merit in this approach in its potential
to enhance independent learning skills since students were required to assume
more responsibility for their own learning.
Further, parents, teachers, and students reported improvements in
student motivation, a decline in distractibility factors, and improved student
ability to communicate ideas because it eliminated the physical presence which
made certain students feel less worthy, awkward, or embarrassed and made them
less likely to communicate in conventional classroom contexts. It was the parental perception that the
elimination of many of these factors improved their child’s academic standing.
Presently, Alberta school administrators are assuming an innovative role as they adapt and interpret the School Act to address the virtual school context. The theme of administrators and the regulatory framework in education requiring changes emerged from an analysis of the data relating to the regulation and administration of virtual schools and illustrates the change in regulatory and administrative roles.
The School Act governs virtual schools, but there are no specific regulations that pertain to virtual schools. Administrators are required to evaluate teacher performance but if teachers work from home offices, it is not clear yet how their work is assessed. Principals cannot visit classrooms or be present in the hallways in making an evaluation of teachers’ performance. Different methods of evaluation must be employed. In the virtual school context, the principal may review the teachers’ online communication in attempting to understand how much time a teacher spends on teaching or related duties, and through online lessons. Certainly “an electronic trail” (email records, discussion groups, web pages, etc.) of a teacher’s work is available but we do not know the extent to which administrators use this information in assessing teacher performance. Assuming that they do use it, we do not know what evaluative practices and standards are being applied.
Administrators report that their duties shift from engaging in the regular day-to-day management required in the conventional school context to focusing on a role of advocate for the virtual school. Advocating for continued support from the school district, parents and teachers, was one of the major reasons identified by administrators for the sustainability of student enrollment. The administrative advocacy role, then, is in reality about marketing the virtual school program.
The role of virtual school administrator requires adaptability to change, which may make stakeholders feel uneasy, insecure and at-risk because roles and requirements are altered, changed and interpreted. How their work fits with the requirements of the School Act and/or the expectations of a conventional school context may not be clear. Teachers may be concerned about how to replicate classroom learning in this new environment or they may lack confidence in their skills with the technology. Parents may have very different expectations regarding the control they have over what and how their children learn. Administrators must also be mindful that this uneasiness, insecurity and risk also extend to the staff, students and parents (Anderson and Lavid, 1986).
The time will no doubt come when the province will begin to have questions about how best to manage virtual or online schooling. At present, a substantial portion of the students receiving virtual schooling in the province are enrolled in the Alberta Distance Learning Centre, which emerged from the Alberta Correspondence School, a provincial initiative. Although the Alberta Distance Learning Centre is now administered through a local school jurisdiction, it is fair to say that the provincial ministry has maintained an active involvement in its development to date. From this experience and from research that the government has sponsored, it may become clear that standards need to be set for such things as assessment practices or teacher workloads. While many will be happy to have such guidance and direction, it may also reduce the extent to which the virtual schools can continue to function as an exploration of new options.
Virtual school teachers are concerned about the workloads they endure many of them regard the workload as too onerous to be sustained long term. They reported that the keeping current with changes in technology, keeping up with a larger marking load (since they only “see” students through the students’ work), developing and revising online courses, communicating with parents and students, and engaging in professional development required exceptional time commitments. The “intensification” of teaching has also been a concern in the conventional teaching context within the past two decades, but online teachers feel they carry an even greater burden. As one spouse of a virtual school teacher said to one of the authors “I knew I should worry when she didn’t come back from the bathroom in the middle of the night and I found her answering email.” Novelty and a sense of mission justifies the involvement of many current teachers, but the model will not grow if the workload is perceived as too demanding for the typical teacher.
Some teachers in Smith’s study found that they had difficulty adjusting to the variability in student’s progress through material. This is not just the normal variation due to ability or study habits, it is also a matter of students entering and completing at different times. While the model of “anytime/anywhere” learning would suggest that this is an acceptable, or even desirable, feature of online schooling, some virtual schools have limited the extent to which teachers must deal with this issue by imposing strict starting and ending dates for courses.
Teachers in Smith’s study also expressed concern about lacking time for professional development, but teachers in another virtual school (not part of the study) where teachers are hired on part-time contracts, reported that the opportunities the virtual school provided for professional development was a rewarding feature of the position. Clearly, this is not such an easy option for full-time teachers, but it is an indication that when the time is available, online teachers avail themselves of the opportunities and value them. In an even more recent case, an online school contracted with a university to provide a graduate course online during normal working hours because 1) the teachers had the flexibility with their time due to the amount of evening work they did and 2) the school could make attendance at the course an expectation for employees. This situation seemed to work out very well and may be a valuable model for future professional development for full time teachers in online settings.
Virtual school teachers do not have regular daily schedules so some feel that marking and preparation for classes was on their own time, outside of regular school hours. Teachers in regular classrooms do have “prep” time, but most would say that they spend many additional hours on these tasks. We really don’t have a basis for assessing the total workload, but teachers with experience in both settings consistently say that online teaching demands more time as so university faculty involved in distance education (estimates run from 50% to 100% more time).
Online teachers work at computers on desks at school or work. They sit still for long hours, rarely in ergonomically designed chairs. Some virtual school teachers in Smith’s study indicated that they had medical confirmation that they had injuries and ailments directly attributable to their working environments.
Although the Provincial Achievement Tests (PAT) indicated that virtual school student achievement was, on average, below the Provincial Acceptable, parents were still satisfied with the virtual school. A provincial official has indicated that testing of virtual school students is highly problematic since the range of enrolment patterns varies so greatly (including students who are in regular school full time and take additional courses online). The fact that number of students tested was a small fraction of those believed to be attending virtual schools and the variation in types of virtual schooling offered also combine to make it impossible to have any overall sense of how well students in these schools are doing on the PAT.
Online students express concern about writing the PAT because they are required to write them in a conventional school setting. Since they may have found conventional school contexts somehow disadvantageous, they also feel disadvantaged by being tested in a setting that differs from the setting in which they learned (in this, the students are supported by testing research).
In short, the bottom line for online student achievement is both dotted and curvy.
Anyone familiar with the hustle and bustle of a typical school hallway, lunchroom or playground would realize that the vision of kids working quietly on computers in their own homes creates confused reactions. On the one hand, many parents have chosen virtual schools to avoid bullying, rough play or other negative social influences they see present in regular schools. On the other, we generally expect that schools are the place where children learn to get along with others in large and small groups and we expect that to be an enjoyable experience for the most part. Virtual school students have nearly all of their school communication in text form. The reader of this text will recognize that text-based communication is usually a pretty lonely business for both writer and reader.
Traditional home schooling parents report that they
find alternative ways to achieve the ends of socialization: students have
part-time jobs, they work with others in study groups, participate in social
and recreational programs, etc. Virtual
school students told Smith that needed to be outgoing individuals, ensuring
that socialization, collaboration, interaction and communication did occur both
within and outside of the virtual school.
Indeed, though the research on the topic is limited and the researchers
often acknowledge a home schooling bias, the more careful studies, like Thomas
Smedley’s master’s thesis, conclude, “the home educated children in this sample
were significantly better socialized and more mature than those in public
school.” At the very least, we must say
that questions about isolation and communication in virtual school environments
remain open.
It seems clear to those involved that virtual schools are not for everyone. To succeed, students must have intrinsic motivation and independent learning skills; they must enjoy working with computers, read and write reasonably well, have consistent parental support and guidance and have very good time management skills. Kauffman (1989) and Flinck (1980) confirm these findings and support the need for these characteristics if a student is to be successful in an online educational environment.
The issue of “parental support and guidance” deserves elaboration. In the context of online education, this is not a matter of dinner table conversations on the topic “how did school go today?” Parents need to be actively monitoring their child’s work and engaging with them as they work their way through new materials. Online teachers can provide the academic content, but the parent is often responsible for informal assessments of progress, for frequent encouragement, and for supervision to ensure that work is done in a timely manner.
In Alberta, the provincial government funds virtual schools through per-pupil grants to the school districts. Many of the schools also accept “outside” students on a fee-for-service basis. For example, other schools may pay for the online courses that the student registers in—for example, if the student is taking a physics course that her own school does not offer. Some students pay for their own online courses—for example students past the age of 19 seeking to complete high school or students from out-of-province. Parents of elite athletes may pay additional fees for virtual schools that accommodate their child’s travel, competition and practice schedules.
Perelman (1993) argues that the proliferation of schooling alternatives will result in a greater need for restructuring educational bureaucracies to manage the differences. Similarly, Webber (1995) argues, “Educational consumerism is a characteristic of the era in which Albertans live and . . . this competition might lead to a healthy transformation of public education.” This transformation may see school districts ensuring that all of their educational contexts are pedagogically sound so as to draw as many customers to their districts as they can.
A relatively unexamined funding question is the cost of technology for teachers and students. At least to some extent, the reliance on home computers may constitute a subsidy for the schools by reducing other capital costs. Some virtual schools have purchased computers for their students, some lease computers, some require the student to obtain access on their own. Some online schools subsidize the cost of an Internet connection; others expect the family to pick up the cost. In all of this, the question of equitable access to public schooling looms large and the answers are elusive.
Administrators at the four virtual schools in Smith’s study reported that they must have open access and cannot discriminate because these schools are publicly funded institutions. The virtual schools can only advise and recommend characteristics of students who would most benefit or find success in the virtual school. The promotional materials of other virtual schools make clear that this is a general pattern.
In an online environment students spend more time working with course content independently, leading teachers and administrators to see the environment as friendly to the kind of constructivist teaching that encourages students to actively develop their own mental organizations for material rather than passively accepting teachers’ dictates. For example, as early as 1987, Harasim reported that 10 to 15 percent of online class time was directed by teacher talk as opposed to 80 percent of the class time in a conventional setting. This increased role of student-based communication, combined with the now hackneyed observation that “on the Internet no one knows you are a dog” may be leading to a more equal form of exchange between teachers and students. Some virtual school students talked about it this way:
Mike: One thing that I find that my teacher does that's different is that when you e-mail. Your teacher or when you talk to your teacher, you don't have to call them Mr. Perkins or Mr. Something, you can call them by their first name. Like hey Jean, you don't have to talk to them like they're some adult that's not approachable. They're completely approachable because they are someone who is at your level. Like to me calling a teacher, like I mean if it's an adult, it's like a person you don't know or it someone you're going to meet then you'd call them Mr. or Mrs. But when it's a teacher you see every day that you know and stuff I'm more prone to not wanting to call them, because to me that's kind of impersonal. But when I can call the teacher by their first name which is just a nice thing to be able to do because you don't do it often. It helps me to create a personal relationship, which doesn't happen with all the teachers. It's just a very personal relationship.
Alice: I'm still uneasy when it comes to calling a teacher by their first name. I don't know why I've just always been. I like to call them mister or missus.
Jason: I find with e-mails and what not that the teacher gets to know you more on a more personal bases than in an regular school because they're responding solely to you, you don't have a crowd of people there wanting to ask the exact same thing. It's you talking to the teacher not a whole group of people. What I've noticed is they're not as up-tight with using their Mr. and Mrs. because well, by the way I look at it, you have to write out their last name and what not but their first name could be easier because you might not know how to spell their last name and really, I wouldn't want to insult somebody by spelling their last name wrong.
Teachers did have concerns, however, about the issue of not being able to actually see the reactions of their students. Both teachers and students indicate that occasional telephone or in-person meetings add to the quality of their interaction.
Although Szabo (1998) suggests that the human need to understand the world and have a mental model of it may imply a need to be physically present with other human beings, it is clear that there are positive patterns of socialization, interaction, collaboration and communication in online schools. It may be, as Tapscott might argue, that new models of interaction will emerge in a generation raised with interactive computing. To again borrow from an online student:
Jen: (What) I like the best about it is that the teachers that you have are so willing, no matter, like if their busy they don't complain to you that they're busy. You have their undivided attention because you email them or you ask them a question and they will respond to you. But you know that they, it's not like they can say, “I'm busy right now.” . . .they will reply to you within two days of school. I have the teacher’s undivided attention when I need it. And then that's good because I don't have to fight with them. When I need them they'll answer me and I'll get a very good answer.
Concussion
Virtual schooling is off to a good start. Teachers are using technology effectively to
reach students that might otherwise be missed. Parents, students and teachers
report positive experiences with their online schools. But then, so do parents, students and
teachers in most public schools in Canada.
When people express discontent, it is with “schools,” not “my
school.” It often seems like it must be
“other people’s schools” that are the problem, but we can understand it better
than that. In the particular, people
believe their schools work well; the problem is with some general notion of
“schooling.” For virtual schools, at
this point in time, the generalities are elusive. They are new and varied and experimental. In the entrepreneurial climate in which they
are emerging, we can reasonably expect that market forces will shape their
destinies: the fit will survive.
Fitness
will no doubt be determined in part by the students’ success on some form of
provincial or standardized testing since policymakers like numbers. Preparing
to establish credibility in this format may mean that the schools will have to
be deliberate about preparing students for a kind of assessment they rarely
encounter in online learning. As a
matter of survival, that is often what happens in regular schools as well—days
and weeks are given over to preparing for examinations rather than working with
the course content in creative and constructive ways.
Fitness
will likely also rest on the ability of virtual school leaders to convey the
message that online education is not “correspondence school.” Too many people, including many school
leaders and teachers’ union officials live with the unexamined belief that
anything that involves distance education can be equated with an image of an
isolated student struggling unaided through piles of paperwork, basically
become self-educated with the help of recommended readings. People who have never participated in an
online forum, who do not make regular use of email in their work, who forget that
teachers and students can use telephones, are inclined to brand virtual schools
with this image and to assume that no meaningful learning can take place in
these environments. Confronting and
correcting that perception may be a more difficult challenge than raising
achievement test scores.
The
big questions, however, have not to do with the success or survival of
individual virtual schools but of the impact of the virtual school movement on
schooling in general. At present, the
virtual school bag is as mixed or more mixed than the regular school bag. Apart from reliance on technologies that are
also available to regular school teachers and students (and which students are
increasingly required to learn in any event), are there lessons and directions
for “schooling” from the virtual school experience? They use the same teaching methods, the same curricula, similar
teaching materials (sometimes more electronic media) and they seek to engage
learners in the same ways even though they must do it through computer-mediated
communication. So, are they sheep in
wolf’s clothing? Is there anything there to be alarmed about or excited about?
There
is. While the expectation that students
are engaged in constructivist learning simply because they are working
independently is naïve, the very fact that online teachers are working toward a
different model of learning is important.
That they are frequently working toward this model of learning with a
clientele that is more-than-normally predisposed to favor the conservatism of a
back-to-basics schooling (and being well-received doing so) is worthy of
note. It is also noteworthy that the
integration of technology is pretty much a foregone conclusion in virtual
schools. These students will likely
find that notions like “information society,” “knowledge management,” and
“single-source documentation,” make sense to them intuitively. They will learn and work in computer rich
environments as if that is the way it is supposed to be.
Can
we look to a time when all education will be virtual education? Well, maybe, but we can’t look forward to it
with optimism or enthusiasm. Part of
what we are learning from virtual schools is that the whole notion of “school
choice” may have merit and that its merits may be played out within the
contexts of a more responsive pubic education system. If we now steer a path toward a completely online educational
system, we will be ignoring that lesson.
Just as there are kids that are distressed by roughhousing that others
enjoy in physical schools, there are students who would wither in the absence
of daily face-to-face contact with other students. There are kids who desperately need direct contact with a caring,
compassionate adult who values learning in general and who fosters it in them
personally. There are kids who will always
need “Jiminy Cricket” reminding them of what must be done and when. What we need to learn is how to respond to
this diversity sensitively and fairly and to recognize that equity lies not in
giving everyone the same education, but in helping everyone to get the
education that they need.
.
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