Idaho Ought to Require Online Coursework
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Michigan is considering requiring their high school graduates to take at least one course online. It was derided by many geeks who sniffed at the thought of proving their ‘tech-savviness’, but the learning experience is different, even for geeks accustomed to all manner of online life. I would say online classes are less about gaining online experience (pfffft!) but more about gaining online learning experience; there is a big difference.
The biggest difference between physical and virtual classrooms is the amount of writing required. Physical classrooms will never be able to match the amount of writing required in online classes if only because of communication media. Teachers and students freely talk to share ideas in a physcial classroom. Nobody hears your ideas in an online class until you type it out for the others to read. Every little statement a student wishes to make must be typed.
While this seems difficult, it is! It gets even more difficult because there is more expression difficulty in writing than in face-to-face discussions. Everyone has seen miscommunications happen through email correspondances, imagine all of your conversations taking place in a written environment and how many misinterpretations will occur. Students taking online coursework quickly learn to hone their written conversational style to communicate most effectively and clearly. How often do they get to do that in physical classrooms? Perhaps occasionally, but in online classes they must do it every day, and often several times daily as they “converse” with teachers and students on multiple projects.
Online coursework also requires much more writing assignments than any physical classroom I have ever attended. Typical online classes require students to write answers to discussion questions related to that week’s learning (100-300 words), write weekly papers (500-1000 words), write reviews on reading materials (2-400 words), write ‘participation’ statements or replies to the ongoing classroom discussion (”I agree” answers are not permitted), and write weekly summaries of what they learned each week (1-200 words). These writings are always in addition to the normal large paper projects inherent to most classes.
You can see that students will learn, use, and hone their writing skills much more in an online classroom than in any physical classroom anywhere in Idaho, even our English classes.
Another great reason to require some online coursework for Idaho high school graduates is the need for students to work independently. It is one thing for students to go to classes because they have to and get pulled through lessons by teachers who often must entertain in order to capture student attentions. It is quite another for students to have to log into a class daily without anyone forcing them, because any days they miss will put them weeks behind. It is quite different for all students to force their own attentions to the learning tasks and not count on the teacher or environment to entertain them into learning. When students must progress on their own volition and force themselves to read everyone’s daily conversations with the teacher and force themselves to read the assigned PDF materials and write their own papers based on the written-only instructions and check themselves against the online calendar to ensure they are turning in the required writings on time, these students are learning to learn on their own gumption. Very few physical classroom experiences impress this on Idaho students.
Of course online classes do not have to always consist of dry, boring, all-written coursework. Most online classes I took used at least three or four interactive, Java-based learning simulations. These would present scenarios like you are the president of a company and must decide how to manage employees or production to achieve certain goals. Your past decisions would affect future rounds as you progressed through the simulation. These sims made the experience seem much more ‘real-world’ and all students always raved about how helpful they were to learning the content.
Finally, one of the best reasons for requiring online coursework is if the class allows enrollments outside of Idaho. Some of my online courses had classmates from not only around America but around the world. Cashiers, phone reps, entrepreneurs, and corporate executives were teamed up in some classes, and the shared diversity added up to a learning experiences greater than the sum of the parts. This is an educational experience that cannot be offered in physical Idaho classrooms.
I strongly believe requiring online coursework would help Idaho’s educational system become more rigorous, in addition to other recent suggestions.
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Comments
Vote:
0 
0 My son is enrolled in traditional high school but takes a course on-line every semester through the BYU online. In his case, these weren’t interactive though. More independent study.
The first two classes were advanced algebra. This allowed him to move at his own pace, since he’s absolutely brilliant in math, and to also take an extra elective that he wanted at school.
An interactive course would be interesting but in his case, he takes the classes that allow him to move more quickly than a class would.
This is probably a little different than what you’re proposing, but it has worked for us.
The only thing I don’t like about it is that the high school only enters his grade as a pass/fail. So earning an A has to be for personal pride rather than the hope that it will impact the GPA.
Vote:
0 0 Another good reason. It will be worth more than personal pride when the SATs come around, for certain.
Vote:
0 0 I have to agree with that, the GPA is a thing of the moment that nobody really cares about later.
It’s much more important to prove what you know today than what grades you earned in the past. Good and bad grades really don’t reflect true learning. Take the example of any course taught by a range of professors grading on a range of difficulties.
I’m amazed our educational system still clings to the completely subjective grading system while trying to build support for a utopian (and hopefully objective) merit-pay system.
Some schools have dropped the letter grade system in favor of essay evaluations. Many students and professors wish more would.
When learners stop focusing on letter grades, most will spend that energy instead on learning more.
Vote:
0 0 Inside Observer, I wanted to mention that courses involving formulaic learning like math can be done very interactively online, but it requires considerable investment by the institution.
I took a master’s accounting course where we learned the formulas via an interactive software called ALEKS (I think it’s licensed to many schools.)
It was amazing. Without it, I would have been learning the accounting formulas the old fashioned way (and knowing my math struggles probably not nearly as well as I ended up).
Vote:
0 0 I don’t want to get off track on a great topic, but I had a thought: How about the state requires a class a year (and pays for it?) for anyone on Welfare, Medicaid, food stamps, etc. who is mentally capable? Even a special state online college might work.
To stay on topic, if kids came out of high school as registered students, this would always be a simple option to instigate.
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Vote:
I think you make some great points here. The other benefits I can think of include the ability to take a course in something outside of the cirriculum that a student has defined for themselves. There is hardly time by high school to take an auto course, for example, unless you are heading toward that path as a career. Students are so pidgeonholed by this age that there is barely time to get the basics in one area that you might need before college.
The second thing that comes to mind is that it is a step toward higher education. If a student has enrolled and successfully completed a course with an online University, all the easier to continue.
I could see offering the alternative of enrolling at a local college extension or tech school for a class. This does not offer a lot of the benefits Joe has listed, but does promote continuing education.