Online Resource:
By: Bridget Heenan
February 7, 2011
Within the past decade K-12 online learning programs have evolved across the United States as well as in other countries. “An extrapolation of these figures estimates that approximately 700,000 students for the entire population of 48,000,000 public school students were enrolled in online and blended learning courses.” (Picciano & Seaman, 2007, p.9) The survey and research results conducted by Picciano and Seaman allowed for them to predict how many students were enrolled in online or distant learning programs based off of the percent of their sample population. Therefore, this number is not one-hundred percent accurate but it does allow others to see a glimpse of roughly how many current public education students were enrolled in an online or distant learning course within the United States.
As the number students enrolled in online and blended education it makes one wonder, “what is the educator’s role in this fairly new learning environment?” Palloff and Pratt discuss the role of the instructor for online and blended learning environments. The instructor becomes more of a facilitator that monitors the student’s progress as well as encourages the students through their discussion boards and emails. Not only is the role of the instructor important once the class is in session but the instructors duties before the class starts is also crucial. The instructor must create the syllabus with having the end in mind in order to create a good course. The instructor should create the syllabus for the course by following four basic steps: “(1) defining outcomes and objectives, (2) choosing appropriate reading material, assignments, and tasks, (3) establishing a topic-driven course outline, and (4) developing and aligning assessment of activities with outcomes and objectives.” (Palloff&Pratt, 2007, p. 130) Once the syllabus is developed the instructor should take that first week to describe the expectations of the course in detail so that there are no misunderstanding and most importantly remember that it is okay to include humor within the course.
The number of teachers that have been trained to create a syllabus and set up an online or blended K-12 class as increased over the years. In fact, online and blended education seems to be a growing trend within the last decade. Picciano and Seaman mentioned in their article that Illinois is one of the few states that have a K-12 virtual education program. Since Illinois has a virtual education program I decided to research the programs in Illinois. I found this blog article that discusses Chicago Virtual Charter School (CVCS) and Youth Connection Charter School (YCCS) that discusses their approach as more of a student-centered approach where the teachers help monitor the student progress and help the students become aware of their learning styles. (Palloff&Pratt, 2007) Both of these schools use an online education program by K12 Inc which involves a student-centered approach. This company is one of the biggest curriculum providers for virtual education schools for grades K-12. “CVCS is one of a growing number of schools that have adopted a blend of face-to-face and online instruction, an approach that appears to be paying off: Despite serving many poor and minority students, the school made Adequate Yearly Progress in 2008 and 2009 and has posted considerable gains in both reading and math, becoming one of the 147 public schools in Illinois to win an Academic Improvement Award.” (Ohler, 2011) Those are tremendous accomplishments given the high demands of No Child Left Behind and schools having to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in which very few schools have made AYP within the last several years. I believe for this particular blended online schooling program making AYP in 2009 says a lot for the rigor of the curriculum and the semi self-paced online learning environment.
Educators are not only concerned with AYP and finances but they are also concerned about their students’ progress. Every educator essentially has the same goal and that is for their students to be successful academically and in their future. However, sometimes in order for a student to be successful when it comes to academics they may need to take a less traditional route to be successful such as the K12 online curriculum program. Some students will never be successful in a traditional setting because they are too busy trying to keep their reputation. This is where I see having the students work from home four days and meet their instructor face-to-face once a week on a college campus might be more beneficial. As research has shown in both Picciano and Seaman’s survey results from across the United States as well as the reports from Ohler on CVCS and YCCS goes to show that online education programs are successful and increase throughout nation.
Overall, after reading, researching, and going through K12’s sample lesson plans I think that the blended online module could be the norm for K-12 education within ten years.
References
Ohler, J. (2011, January 21). Blended learning on the rise. [Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://www.committedsardine.com/blogpost.cfm?blogID=1667
Palloff, R. & Pratt, K. (2007). Building online learning communities: Effective strategies for the virtual classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Boss.
Picciano A. & Seaman J. (2007). K-12 online learning: A survey of U.S. school district administrators. Retrieved from http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/pdf/K-12_Online_Learning.pdf
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