Online Learning

I have taken courses using Blackboard and am now getting into Moodle. There was no question that the courses I took at Bridgewater State College would lead to graduate credit. There are many online courses and professional development opportunities whose credit is accepted by institutions of higher learning and state licensing boards. But then there are high schools. Online Learning is a new way of doing things and will require some changes in how high schools look at courses and credit.

In many high schools there is an attendance requirement. This means a student may be passing a course academically but fail the course because they did not meet the attendance requirements. How do you determine attendance in an online course, is the student required to be online a certain amount of time or complete a certain number of posts? How can a school justify an attendance requirement in one course format and not in another? Should they? Schools have been getting around attendance and other issues by accepting this credit as transfer credit. They look at course providers as another "high school". But what happens when high schools become online course providers themselves? In Massachusetts schools can be considered failing if they have unacceptable attendance rates. A school may have sorted out their course and credit requirements but how do they synch with state requirements?

Why offer online courses? In the past many high schools used correspondence courses to help with credit recovery, summer school or to offer students courses the school could not. Are online learning courses any different? Students learn differently. Some work well in a traditional classroom settings. Some students are not able to work in a classroom, but on their own at their own pace maybe able to succeed where they could not before. Other students would never "go" to their online course as there is always tomorrow, these students need the face-to-face class to keep them on task and accountable. If schools wish to meet the needs of their diverse learners, they need to offer a variety of options to match these styles. We need to provide courses to meet the needs of our under achievers and the gifted and talented. This later group has lost offering as schools shift resources to support those at risk of not passing state tests. Online courses can offer the flexibility that traditional classes may not. It would be wonderful if schools could offer a menu of course selections and formats to completely customize the learning experience for each child. The ultimate individual educational plan.