RSA 4: Lessons for Online Learning: Charter Schools’ Successes and Mistakes Have a Lot to Teach Virtual Educators
This week, I found Chapter 8 in Palloff and Pratt’s book to be the most relevant in relation to the article that I found. The focus is on promoting collaborative learning in an online community. Some of the main points in the chapter that I think are crucial to developing a solid online learning community include coming up with a shared goal for learning, posting introductions and learning expectations, setting team expectations and making sure there is shared responsibility for facilitation.
This week, I was able to locate an article that focused more on teacher-student learning which matches the book’s focus. The article by Dillon and Tucker is focused on virtual learning and changing some of the traditional school models. They believe that this will help personalize education for students. They aren’t just focused on an online class or discussion group, they are discussing many models including a completely online public school. Dillon and Tucker stress that there must be accountability within a virtual learning environment so that there is a way to identify effective and ineffective practices. Dillon and Tucker note that focusing on outcomes is one of the most important aspects of setting up a virtual learning community. One of the most interesting quotes from this article is “At present, virtual education lacks a firm understanding of what high performance looks like.” This is interesting because in my mind, I think this should be figured out before anyone really started these online programs. Dillon and Tucker also mention that there needs to be more data on the effectiveness of online schools, a secure independent oversight of the school and that the schools need to make sure the outcomes are better than the traditional school model.
Currently, I teach two periods of online independent study. Students utilize the program EdOptions to recover credits that have not completed. Therefore, in one class I can have many subjects so I am just supervising the students in the room and grading completed assignments. Some of the students within this program don’t have reading levels that match this curriculum which sets them up for failure rather than success. This is not a good model for learning and does not create community. I would hope that our district reconsider this program to make it more community like and to really determine expected outcomes and guidelines for placement within this program.
References
Dillon, E., & Tucker, B. (2011). Lessons for Online Learning: Charter Schools' Successes and Mistakes Have a Lot to Teach Virtual Educators. Education Next, 11(2), 50-57.
Palloff, R. & Pratt, K. (2007). Building Online Learning Communities: Effective Strategies for the Virtual Classroom, (2nd ed.). San Franciso: Jossey-Bass. ISBN: 978-0- 7879-8825-8
No comments:
Post a Comment