Sunday, April 19, 2009
Topic 2: Efficacy and potential influence of a virtual environment on student learning
From my own experience, it seems as though any student who has decided to complete high school online has done so because they were not succeeding in the traditional school setting. Also, of those students, the majority of them have had someone else complete the course for them. There are so many institutions online that offer students diplomas with very little to no effort being required of the students. I have recently heard of a high school that offers students a valid high school diploma after taking 4 tests. So basically, a person can get a high school diploma in about 2-3 hours. How will that affect the students? I think many of our students are used to doing things the easy way and doing just enough to get by. If more of our students are turning to institutions like these, I’m afraid that in the future, we will have intelligent individuals who cannot hold down a job or have trouble focusing on tasks because they were used to taking the easy route all their lives.
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If a student can pass the test that proves that they know the content necessary to meet the requirements for graduation, I say...let them graduate. Let them move on with their lives. I think online learning is actually harder than regular school. Since they don't have the emotional communications and attachments with the physical presence of other students, even if they have teacher support, and online fellow students, they don't have a buddy that will hug them and offer to help them out. I find that students are family to each other. So for certain students the loss of this emotional bond can be a loss.
ReplyDeleteI do, however, know that online classes have saved some of my students who were depressed that they were not going to be able to graduate with their friend and not enter college on time. Online schooling allowed them to recover lost credits. I guess I find that online learning is VERY individual at this point in our educational system. It really depends a lot on the individual students situation if online schooling is going to successful or not.
I like the way you look at it. It also has saved people I know from thinking they are failures. One person I know in particular is about to enroll into college after dropping out of school. I'm just hoping he begins making better choices from this point on...hopefully!
ReplyDeleteI have not heard of High School Students signing up for online courses and then have someone else do the work for them. It is an interesting situation to think about. I wonder what would be the solution to that problem?
ReplyDeletePart of me agrees with Ms.W that if you can pass the test, you may as well get the diploma, but another part of me thinks that part of schooling is learning how to collaborate with others, which is often a necessary skill for higher education and the workforce.
In a quality online course this type of work would be integrated into a course, so I think that what we need to work at is making sure that our students are offered quality online experiences.
I am finding that it is really hard for students who don't have any set career pathway to make the transition into college or a job. Often they feel like losers, but their education was not set-up right for them. The stats for 1st year college dropouts backs up what I have seen...things are really shaky for these students. I think that a lot of these students are not taking classes in high school that meets their actual needs. Not every student will benefit from the added math, science, and English requirements. Marketing, computers, drafting, and accounting may have help them connect school work and helped them create an interest that could transition into careers.
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