March 2005

Online Learning through the Eyes of the Instructor

Forks High School, Liz Sanchez and Velma Smith, Online Instructors and Teacher/Mentors

Liz Sanchez and Velma Smith offer insight into both sides of the online experience. They are online instructors with Virtual High School (VHS)—a Digital Learning Commons course provider—as well as Teacher/Mentors at Forks High School, on the Olympic Peninsula. As Teacher/Mentors they work closely with students taking classes through the DLC. Sanchez teaches Poetry Writing and Smith teaches Myth, Magic, and Ritual, an honors English class through VHS.

Online classes include a variety of course work

At VHS, the week opens up on a Wednesday and closes on a Tuesday. When the week opens, students receive the assignments for the week and a checklist. Sanchez and Smith are required to answer any questions from students within twenty-four hours. And they update grades for the students every week, and for the site coordinators, every other week.

"I wrote part of my course while I was proctoring the WASL, so I wrote two weeks of lessons thinking, these kids need to pass the WASL. Students write poetry, but the purpose of the class is to develop core English skills," Sanchez says. "My culminating project at the end is a persuasive essay. Which some kids think is weird since it's a poetry class."

Smith says of her class: "[My students] have open book tests. They read four novels. They do a lot of research and group activities. So there is quite a lot of writing and reading literacy. Our focus is on how fiction affects people's lives and the role literature plays in our lives. We also talk a lot about the oral tradition and genres of literature."

Asynchronous discussions create community

Both Sanchez and Smith use a lot of discussion, which happens asynchronously but involves all of the students in the class.

"They can't be silent, because if they're silent it's the same as if they're not there," Smith explains. "You really get to know the students quite well. And it's nice for the kids, because those who are too shy to speak up in a face-to-face class have time to think about what they want to say…And I really like the fact that everyone is heard from. You're not guessing if they're getting it."

"The students end up building this online community," Sanchez says. "I don't know if you could achieve that amount of depth and sincerity in face-to-face classes. There's always the kid in the front row who answers first…or the kids who worry about not speaking properly…Not everybody raises their hand to make a comment, but in the online class I require a certain number of responses…And I can individualize with twenty-five kids in a way that I could never do in face-to-face classrooms."

Teacher/Mentors make a noticeable difference

"I can tell [as an online] teacher which kids get the kind of support we offer [as Teacher/Mentors] and which kids don't. It's instantly obvious," Smith says. "There are a number of kids in my VHS class who don't have a specific period every day to do their online course work…A lot of times even if they have school access, they don't have really good communication with their site coordinators, and those are typically the kids who don't succeed. The students who have a set aside time and have somebody there to support them, that makes a huge difference in the number of students who finish the classes."

At Forks Highs School, students who take online classes are assigned to an hour-and-a-half long class period in which they do their DLC course work. Each student has a computer to work at, and a Teacher/Mentor is always present. As Teacher/Mentors, Sanchez and Smith help students get started, work through their orientation, and figure out how the course provider's platform works. As the class progresses, they help students with their organization skills and do notebook checks to make sure they're staying on track.

"I think that's a real benefit to what Liz and I do with our mentoring, because these are skills that are really important for the kids to learn," Smith says. "We work with them on learning how to organize their time and manage independent work. I believe that just the experience of having an online class sometime during high school is a really rich experience for our kids."

Sanchez and Smith recognize the role they play as Teacher/Mentors in the success of their online students, but Smith points out that they went through a learning curve. The biggest lesson they learned was the importance of having students registered before the term starts so that they don't fall behind in the course work. "This time we got our ducks in a row and had everything set to go the first day of the term."

A variety of students benefit from online classes

Sanchez says: "A 4.0 GPA is not a criteria. Having a computer at home is not a criteria. Kids who are organized and prefer to work independently and like to read, those kids automatically do well [in online classes]…Kids who want to learn those skills can do really well too…Some kids don't do well with lecture and get bored…I'm an ideal online student. I am able to concentrate for long periods of time if I'm doing the work rather than listening to a lecture."

Smith adds: "I think for kids who need to go at their own pace and who are a little bit shy or feel out of place in the classroom, this gives them a real leg up. For those who get bored, this is nice because they can just shoot ahead at their own pace…And kids who have a hard time with a subject can figure it out before they move on to the next step. That's a real advantage too."

Sanchez also cites anonymity as a benefit for some students. "Last year I had a boy in my poetry writing class, here he was a varsity football player, and he said that nobody in his school knew he wrote poetry, that there was this image of what he was supposed to be as a varsity football player."

Online classes are a supplement to face-to-face classes, not a replacement

"We've always had a hard time offering electives [because of our size], and we also have quite a concern about credit recovery because some of these kids end up in the very same class with the very same teacher three terms in a row, and that's pretty counterproductive," Smith says. "We use online learning very heavily and there's no way it's decreasing our staffing."

Sanchez adds: "What it does is it gives kids more choices. Some teachers may feel intimidated because they think the kids know more about technology than they do. But they're still kids; they still need us. A kid may know more about a computer than me, but I'm still the teacher, whether in person or online…I'm not needed one drop less."

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