by David Safier
Here's an example of how an online school can use a different model -- as in, the classroom model, only online -- than what we see in most online education.
The school is the Education Program for Gifted Youth, also known as the Stanford Online High School (SOHL) because of its affiliation with the university. Let's look at how it differs from the typical charter online school -- say, Arizona Virtual Academy (AZVA), which is part of the K12 Inc. for profit corporation.
Start with money. AZVA is free to students. The state gives it somewhere in the $6,500 to $7,500 range per student. SOHL is private, and expensive. It costs $14,800 a year, or $3,200 if someone wants to take a single class.
AZVA has a 50-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio. That's not a typo. It's really a 50 to 1 ratio. Kinda makes you wonder why a school without buildings or sports or drama or music programs and which has about half as many teachers per student as bricks-and-mortar schools gets the same amount of state funds per student as the other schools, doesn't it? Shouldn't conservative budget hawks be all over this waste of taxpayer money?
SOHL has something like a 15-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio. That's prep school numbers. Its tuition is about half what you'd pay at most prep schools, so parents are actually getting a break compared to typical private school expenses.
AZVA gives students books, online materials and assignments, which students complete on their own time, asking for teacher assistance when they need it. The rate of students withdrawing and returning to their previous schools, or simply not graduating, is very high. It takes a self directed young person or a very vigilant parent to make self directed education work.
SOHL has real time classes which a class of students attend together, though they may be sitting in front of computers around the world.
In a typical class session, about 14 students simultaneously watch a live-streamed lecture, with video clips, diagrams and other animations to enliven the lesson. Instead of raising hands, students click into a queue when they have questions or comments; teachers call on them by choosing their audio stream, to be heard by all. An instant-messaging window allows for constant discussion among the students who, in conventional settings, might be chastised for talking in class.
“You’re interacting with people all the time — with people all over the world,” said Nick Benson, a senior whose career as an actor required the flexibility of online schooling. “The nature of the classes is that you do interact with people quote-unquote in person — you’re seeing their face and responding to them like in any normal class.”
Students may be separated by geography, but they're rubbing visual and verbal elbows with one another, unlike the typical online school where there is little or no student interaction. And since these are top students -- they have to submit applications with essays, recommendations and standardized test scores -- I imagine the classes are pretty unpredictable, lively and valuable.
SOHL is an elite version of online education which has more in common with bricks-and-mortar schools than with AZVA. The model probably can't be mass produced, any more than elite private schools can be mass produced. Schools of this kind are always going to serve a very small slice of the country's students. But the difference between SOHL and AZVA point out problems inherent in the standard online model -- the lack of student contact and the lack of curriculum flexibility being the most obvious and problematic.
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