From: technews <technews@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu'" <it-fyi@lists.ou.edu>
Subject: it-fyi: Colleges Help Set Up Virtual High Schools (Chron of Highe
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 09:15:40 -0500
As Distance-Learning Boom Spreads, Colleges Help Set Up Virtual High Schools
By SARA CARR and JEFFREY R. YOUNG
Distance education might soon be as fashionable in America's high schools as
cell phones and baggy pants. A growing number of colleges, schools, and
companies are delivering high-school courses over the Internet.
Most of these "virtual high schools" aren't trying to replace traditional
schools, however -- cyberspace isn't filling up with P.E. and band classes,
at least not yet. The virtual schools focus mainly on Advanced Placement and
college-preparatory courses in the kinds of subjects that many traditional
high schools don't have enough teachers or money to offer. Proponents say
distance education can give high-school students in poor districts
opportunities for advanced classes that have traditionally been available
only in upscale areas.
Students usually enroll in only one or two virtual courses, meeting the rest
of their requirements in traditional classrooms. The financing of the
courses varies, depending on the nature of the program: In some cases,
students and parents are expected to pay, while in others, school districts
or state departments of education cover the costs.
The virtual-high-school programs are so new, however, that little has been
done to assess the quality and effectiveness of their courses, even when
great care has been taken to produce them. And some observers worry that
fly-by-night operations might emerge and try to peddle inferior courses to
unsuspecting high-school students on line.
Among the states whose governments, universities, or schools have created
virtual high schools are Arizona, California, Florida, Kentucky,
Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, and Utah. The programs transcend state
boundaries, however, and many of the courses are open to students anywhere.
In some cases, universities are leading the creation of virtual high
schools. For instance, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln created a
for-profit spinoff, called Class.com, to sell high-school courses over the
Internet (The Chronicle, April 16).
In other cases, schools or school districts are teaming up to start on-line
programs. A Massachusetts-based education consortium, for example, is
working with 220 high schools in 30 states to develop and share on-line
courses. A number of for-profit companies are also developing or offering
high-school courses on line.
Colleges and universities involved in offering on-line high-school courses
say they're not interested in taking over the business of teaching younger
students. Instead, they're focusing on offerings that are hard to find in
many high schools: remedial courses, such as English as a second language,
and courses for gifted students, such as advanced composition classes.
"We would like to help educators do their jobs better," says John A. Blair,
the president of Nebraska's Class.com. "They know very well how to offer
their core courses. It is in the endpoint areas that we have identified a
need, and it is our intention to help educators solve that problem." Mr.
Blair hopes that Class.com courses and curricula will help high schools
deal with other problems as well, such as teacher shortages and
over-enrollment.
Raymond Ravalgia, the deputy director of Stanford University's Program for
Gifted Youth, agrees that colleges should play a role in providing courses
in specialized areas. He says both high-school teachers and textbook
publishers frequently are unable to provide adequate resources for gifted
students.
"Textbook publishers develop their materials geared at some conception of
the average student," he says. "They are generally not interested in
micro-niches of students, so this is some place natural for universities to
step in."
In the Stanford program, which began in 1992, grade-school, middle-school,
and high-school students can take a range of advanced courses, including
some for credit at the university. The students and their families pay for
the classes in the majority of cases, with some opportunities for financial
aid, but Mr. Ravalgia hopes that ultimately more schools will offer to pay
for the courses, which typically cost $435 per quarter.
At the University of California, officials created an on-line high-school
program to help level the playing field for the state's students. Students
applying to attend the university's campuses are ranked for admissions
purposes on the basis of grades and standardized-test scores using a point
system, and those who have taken honors and advanced-placement courses are
awarded additional points. But high schools in some areas don't offer honors
or A.P. courses, leaving their students at a disadvantage.
"What we are trying to do isto make Advanced Placement courses available to
students who otherwise wouldn't be able to take them," says Elaine Wheeler,
the project director of the University of California College Preparatory
Initiative. "Our philosophy is that nothing beats a quality teacher teaching
good curriculum to students in a classroom, but we are trying to provide
something where nothing is currently happening."
This semester, the university system is offering courses such as A.P.
calculus, honors psychology, and microeconomics to students at 27 high
schools. The program is supported by a $4-million allotment from the state.
Organizers of the College Preparatory Initiative also hope that the students
who are accepted to the university will be better prepared for college-level
work as a result of the on-line classes. Brad Huff, the science coordinator
at the Fresno County Office of Education, says that this fall, 24
high-school students in the county are taking an A.P. chemistry course
offered through the Universityof California programs. Students from the
Fresno schools study, communicate, and take tests completely on line, and
meet once a month for hands-on laboratories.
Mr. Huff says he hopes such courses will help lessen the disparity between
class offerings at large and small schools, and help more students from the
region gain admittance to the university..
Meanwhile, some high schools are working on their own to provide distance
education.
One of the largest school-sponsored efforts is the Virtual High School, run
by the Concord Consortium in Massachusetts (http://vhs.concord.org/). The
non-profit group is working with about 220 high schools, though only 110 of
the schools are currently offering courses. The effort is financed by a
five-year, $7.8-million grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
Participating schools must develop and teach at least one course on line, in
exchange for which their students can take on-line courses from other member
schools. Bruce F. Droste, director of the Virtual High School, calls it "the
barter system for education."
Teachers must take a 26-week training course -- on line, naturally -- before
they are let loose in a virtual classroom. Mr. Droste says that the
cooperative effort allows a high-school teacher to design and deliver a
"dream course" on a subject of personal interest. Courses on ethnobotany,
A.P. statistics, or American popular music might not be in enough demand at
a single school, but they can fill up quickly on line. Class size is capped
at 20 students.
Companies are also looking to cash in on distance education for high
schools. APEX Online Learning, for instance, focuses on creating and
delivering Advanced Placement courses on line (http://www.apex.netu.com/).
The company, started by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, offers only four
A.P. courses so far -- calculus, statistics, microeconomics, and U.S.
government. Bryan Barnett, the company's chief academic officer, says more
courses are in development. Each costs $395.
The company isn't an accredited high school, so it can't grant academic
credit for its courses, though students are free to take A.P. tests in hopes
of receiving college credit for their work. And APEX is working to form
partnerships with high schools and colleges under which those institutions
would grant credit for APEX courses. Last month, APEX officials forged such
an arrangement with Michigan Virtual University, for instance.
Another company, Archipelago Productions, is developing materials for
on-line high-school classes (http://www.archipelago.com). The company does
not deliver courses on its own, but instead sells its materials to high
schools or colleges that want to use them. It is a division of Harcourt
General, the textbook and trade publisher.
What concerns some school officials and others is that the possibility of
profits might also attract questionable operations. The College Board,
which creates and administers the A.P. tests, is particularly concerned that
companies could promote on-line courses as preparing students to take A.P.
tests.
Says Lee Jones, executive director of the A.P. program for the College
Board: "It makes me wonder to what degree the College Board needs to be
involved with determining standards for delivery. If people are going to use
the A.P. name, we want to have some mechanism in place to measure quality."
Mr. Jones also says that the board is now considering whether it should
offer its own A.P. courses on the Internet (The Chronicle, October 8).
Some aspects of a high-school education, such as science laboratories, are
more difficult to replicate in cyberspace than others.
For one of the Virtual High School's courses in physics, the school mails
students laboratory kits so they can perform experiments in their schools or
homes. "We went out and bought a lot of large fishing-tackle units" to
package the kits, says Mr. Droste. The kits include various tools and
instructions for doing the labs. At other virtual high schools, students
must come to campus for a weekend to complete the laboratory requirements of
science courses.
Some educators are trying a different approach -- setting up virtual
laboratories. Wolfgang Bauer, a physics professor at Michigan State
University who is teaching an on-line A.P. physics course this semester, is
creating interactive simulations for it, including a Java program that
shows students a video of a computer being thrown off of a building.
Students can stop the video at any point and find out the speed and height
of the falling object at that instant. Students are asked to plot this data
and compute gravity's influence on the object's acceleration.
"I think that's a very valid lab experiment," says Mr. Bauer. "The only
thing they don't get is the satisfaction of dropping the computer five
stories and smashing it themselves."
He argues that virtual labs can actually provide better training than can a
traditional laboratory. These days, even physicists do much of their work
with computer simulations, Mr. Bauer adds.
One of the students in the course, Brian McNeil, says that so far the
on-line labs have served their purpose. "They are quite simple by definition
-- the concepts they explain are simple, and not difficult to understand in
the abstract," he says. He adds that he may miss having real lab sessions
"later on, when the subject matter turns to thermal physics, electricity,
etc."
Mr. McNeil's only complaint so far is that the course is too easy, covering
concepts he had encountered earlier, in an independent-study course. "I
expected it to be rather more difficult than that," he says, "given that it
is the on-line version of a 200-level physics course at a large
university."
One college admissions official says she hopes the additional options don't
add too much to the pressure on high-school students.
"The bar is already so high for students," says Robin G. Mamlet, the dean of
admissions at Swarthmore College. "One worries that all this will do is add
to their burden, and they will not only take courses at school, but also on
line. There is a joyless drudgery in taking as many courses as possible."
Ms. Mamlet acknowledges that on-line courses will be a boon to students who
do not have access to A.P. and honors classes, or who want to take courses
their schools do not offer. She said she would be wary, however, if a
student opted for an on-line course instead of taking a traditional course
that seemed more challenging.
"If a student chooses not to take the harder courses when able to do it face
to face, but takes them on line, that would be an issue I would want to
explore," she says.
Most leaders of the on-line programs don't intend their courses to make
face-to-face interaction obsolete. But the director of Christa McAuliffe
Academy -- a private, accredited, on-line school based in Washington -- says
he hopes to present students with a viable alternative to more-traditional
schools, even requiring courses like P.E.
The director, Glen Blomgren, says he's spent 10 years working to have
Christa McAuliffe accredited as a degree-granting, distance-learning
program, and now he wants to make the curriculum "available to the masses."
Currently more than 300 students are enrolled at Christa McAuliffe.
"My plan is to be serving a million students within five years," he says.
"We feel like we are poised on the edge of a huge explosion with this."
___________________________________________________________
Copyright 1999 by The Chronicle of Higher Education