StigmergicWeb

Along with some colleagues, I toured around two different implementations of online learning in the K-12 system. In both cases, they have experienced substantial increases in the number of students that they serve. The growth in online learning among K-12 students is burgeoning and ready to cause some real changes in the way that we think of schools.

The first visit was to the Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School - thanks for the info, Darren. They have a comprehensive approach to online education, providing not only courses to students, but also some supports and even some ways to provide a sense of school community (some of these were student driven). Some (most - I’m not actually sure of the ratio) of their courses are managed through WebCT, but a substantial number of their resources were public and blog based. The use of blogs, RSS and aggregators were key elements of their communication and information dissemination plan. I was delighted to see that my own meager blog was included in a screenshot of Darren’s aggregator!

The cyber school operates on a continuous registration system - students can register at any time during the school year, and they have 150 days to complete the course, which may result in students picking up their work in September where they had left off in June. All work is done asynchronously and all the interaction within the course is teacher-student, so while their might be a school community there seems to be little opportunity for any kind of classroom community to flourish. A goal of the cyber school is to offer course materials and resources so that teachers in face to face classrooms will be able to use some sort of blended or hybrid learning with a combination of classroom based learning and online learning.

The second stop was the Online Learning Center of the Saskatoon Public School Division. The model they have adopted is to deliver courses online and also to provide resources for classroom teachers. They are not a school so much as an alternate delivery system for courses. The courses are delivered asynchronously and offered over a school semester. Students register at the start of the semester and the final exam is at the end of the semester. Since all students are proceeding through the course at the same time, although not necessarily the same pace, the opportunity exists for some class community to develop. Since the model is to deliver courses, not create a school, there isn’t any opportunity for a school community to develop.

Of the two, I think the first model - the fully fledged cyber school - works best. Students are offered not just courses but a school community. I would expect that students would be much more likely to take further classes if they already felt part of a community. Course communities are great, perhaps even essential for some courses to succeed. The problem with course communities is that they expire on the last day of the course. An ongoing community in which the class is embedded would better support student learning. There are also public parts of the community - the various blogs - and a private part of the community supported within the WebCT framework. (I’m sure it would also work very nicely in Moodle!)

The school division where I work is looking at developing some online learning. We’re a geographically large division with all varieties of schools from small town K-12 schools all the way to comprehensive high schools. I’m not sure what kind of model will work best for us. I expect we’ll copy a bit from both of these models, steal borrow from others and make up a few things of our own along the way. These sorts of things tend to take on a life of their own after a while, so I’m not sure where we’ll end up but it should be a fun ride! Stay tuned for further details …

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 19:39 and is filed under online learning, teaching, education, technology in education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.