Week 4 Reflection

Blog reflection: What did you learn this week that struck you as particularly important or interesting? Has your thinking changed as a result of what you learned this week?

On Charter and For-profit Virtual Schools:

Once again this week I examined the other virtual schools that my peers had profiled (Wetpaint WIKI, Google Spreadsheet) but this time I was contrasting these schools more to their State virtual school peers than against each other.  Once of the main reasons for doing so is there is such wide variety among the various charter schools and for-profit schools that it is difficult to compare them. However, when you think about a students choice there are really very few to choose from: a state virtual school in their state, a charter virtual school in their state, a for-profit run virtual school in their state, or one of the few virtual schools that allows non-resident students to enroll. So, the big learning nugget for me this week was that while it is great to know what exists across the country (and it might be beneficial to know this as a source of future ideas), actual implementation and use of online learning will be restricted by the options available in the state where I am going to be teaching. From the educator perspective, however, I will definitely be keeping an eye open for great online teaching ideas and possible even opportunities for me to teach online in the future.


On Instructional Design:
I enjoyed examining the different courses offered by the two schools that I have been exploring although I have to say that I was quite disappointed that there were no demo courses available for preview. It makes me question how parents and students would be able to make well-educated informed decisions about choosing to enroll in these schools.

From what I was able to cull from the school's website and the course descriptions, I have discovered that while more is better than less, organization is better than more. In other words, while having lots of information about a course is good, it is much better to well organized information that clearly illustrates what students will be required to do, what learning objectives the course topics will cover and what results the course will inspire. I also think that it's important to have standards. I'm not talking about educational standards for each subject but rather standards that all online courses should comply with. This includes not only the standards mentioned below, but standards for core content provided on the schools' websites with regard to course description, syllabus, assignments, etc...

On Quality Standards:
Finally, I've reviewed the document by NACOL called National Standards of Quality for Online Courses and think that is a great start. I love the idea that online courses could be compared using these national standards so that students can make educated choices about the courses they wish to enroll in. I also think that having this list of standards will eventually help improve the design of online courses as they strive to meet these challenges. My only complaint is that for category 'F' (21st century skills), it's a rather generic criteria seemingly thrown in there at the end. Unlike the criteria in all the other sections this one is catch-all of everything '21st century'. For such an important area, shouldn't we have more specific criteria? (Especially since the article notes that it used the Partnership for 21st century skills as a reference, and I know for a fact that their standards are much more comprehensive). Let's see if we can't start thinking outside the box beyond the traditional discussion boards and internet chat and start relying on some Web 2.0 technologies for online courses. Wikis, Blogs, Skype and more will provide even more interaction and collaboration for online learning of the future.