State of the Nation: K–12 Online Learning in Canada

A variety of initiatives are driving online and blended learning in each of Canada’s provinces and territories. From teachers’ unions in Nova Scotia fighting to ensure online learning is an accepted method of educational delivery, to Ontario’s College of Teachers creating an e-learning endorsement for teachers or the British Columbia government creating policies to expand the growth and opportunities online learning provides, there are multiple, isolated initiatives happening across the country. State of the Nation: K-12 Online Learning in Canada is now in its fourth year of publication and can be seen as a national guide for understanding the field and the state of online learning across all provinces and territories. The report can also provide guidance, resources, and ideas for how to improve both policy barriers and teacher practice in the nation’s schools in order to provide access to high quality educational opportunities for all students through online and blended learning

Who’s Researching Virtual Schools?: A Case for Instructional Technologists

Over the past 11 years, virtual schooling has gone from isolated experiments to a reliable alternative to a brick and mortar education. However, during this time, little research has been conducted into how these learning opportunities are and should be provided to their adolescent audiences. Even more troubling is that very few of these researchers are from the field of instructional technology. In this article, I discuss those who have been involved in this early research and then make a case for the value that instructional technologists can bring to this emerging field

Bridging the Home and School: A Case Study of One Web-Enabled Technology

In today\u27s society, there are many new technologies that educators have at their disposal to use both inside and outside of the classroom. One such technology was the focus of the first stage of an on-going project on the open school model. This open school model is designed to provide access to information on a child\u27s schooling to both students and parents outside of the traditional school day. This article considers the use of one web-enabled technology called ThinkWave in two one term, elective courses

Introducing In-Service Teachers to Virtual Schooling Through the Lens of the Three Teacher Roles

This study will examine the third and fourth rounds of data collection from an action research project designed to help in-service teachers become better virtual school facilitators (currently being analyzed). The data included blog entries and comments from five of the seven graduate students in an instructional technology course related to K-12 online learning. The specific discussion prompts relate to virtual school readings and the Teacher Education Goes into Virtual Schooling (TEGIVS) curriculum. Based upon initial analysis, the TEGIVS curriculum was effective for providing these graduate students some experience with how K-12 online learning opportunities were delivered, along with some of the possibilities and challenges associated with K-12 online learning. The analysis of this data is continuing, and there are plans to continue this line of inquiry with additional students in future offerings as we continue to improve upon the course design

Book Review - The Publish or Perish Book: Your Guide to Effective and Responsible Citation Analysis

Book review by Michael K. Barbour. Harzing, Anne-Wil. The Publish or Perish Book: Your Guide to Effective and Responsible Citation Analysis. Melbourne, Australia: Tarma Software Research Pty Ltd., 2011

Principles of Effective Web-Based Content for Secondary School Students: Teacher and Developer Perceptions

In this article, I describe findings from a study of the perceptions of course developers and electronic teachers on the principles of effective asynchronous web-based content design for secondary school students. Through interviews, participants\u27 perceptions of various web-based components and instructional strategies, and the effectiveness of both based upon the experiences of the participants were investigated in a virtual high school context for the purpose of generating a list of guidelines that future course developers might utilize

Review of Virtual Schooling and Student Learning

A new report compares the performance of Florida Virtual School (FLVS) students with students in traditional brick-and-mortar schools and concludes the FLVS students perform about the same or somewhat better on state tests and at a lower cost. The report claims to be the first empirical study of K-12 student performance in virtual education. This is not correct, and the report in fact confirms the findings and repeats the methodological flaws and limitations of previous research. The report’s findings fail to account for the potential bias of student selectivity in the FLVS sample, the potential impact of regression effects, differential mortality in the two groups, and the fact that the virtual environment is simply a delivery medium. Given the limitations of research such as this new study, researchers have moved beyond simply investigating whether one medium is better than the other and begun—and need to continue—investigating under what conditions K-12 online and blended learning can be effectively designed, delivered, and supported

Portrait of Rural Virtual Schooling

Over the past two decades, distance education has become a reality of rural schooling in Newfoundland and Labrador. In this article, I provide historical background into the challenges facing rural schools in the province and how distance education was introduced to address that challenge. I also describe how that system of distance education evolved from a system that used the telephone lines and bridging technology to one that uses a combination synchronous and asynchronous system delivered over the Internet. Finally, I examine recent literature concerning the nature of today’s secondary students that would need to avail of this system and relate how this may not be an applicable portrait of youth in rural areas, such as Newfoundland and Labrador

Virtual Education: Not Yet Ready for Prime Time?

The field of K–12 online and blended learning is varied and growing. Regardless of whether a student is enrolled in a brick-and-mortar school and taking one or two courses online, or if they are completing all of their education from a cyber school, more and more students are enrolled in online and blended learning opportunities each school year. Over the past decade, there have been successive legislative and regulatory changes in jurisdiction after jurisdiction designed to encourage this growth in K–12 online and blended learning. Many of these changes have been spurred by proponent claims that K–12 online and blended learning will revolutionize education by allowing students to personalize or customize their education, which they also believe provides a more meaningful, higher quality learning experience. However, expansion of K–12 online and blended learning options continues to outpace the availability of useful research on the efficacy of this method. This chapter examines the current state of research into K–12 online and blended learning, and how much of this enthusiasm from proponents and their legislative allies often runs contrary to what is actually known from the existing but limited research base

Today’s Student and Virtual Schooling: The Reality, the Challenges, the Promise

Introduction: In 2008 I was approached to deliver a keynote address at the biennial conference of the Distance Education Association of New Zealand (DEANZ) in Wellington on the topic of today’s student and K–12 distance education. Several months ago, Mark Nichols asked me if I would be interested in putting some of the ideas that I discussed as a part of that August 2008 presentation into a manuscript for the Journal of Distance Learning. This paper represents my best efforts to summarise and expand on those ideas. As in my 2008 keynote, I want to discuss three main themes in this paper. The first is to critically examine the common labels we assign to this generation of students and the characteristics these labels attribute to the youth we find in our schools, colleges, and universities. This examination includes the literature and research, (or lack thereof) to support these labels. The second is to trace the substantial history of distance education at the K–12 level. This history begins with the use of the correspondence model and continues with current online learning initiatives. The third and final purpose is to describe the virtual school movement, with a focus on developments in North America. This description also includes a discussion of how virtual schools have been organised and the nature of students served. From Concluding thoughts: While distance education at the K–12 level has been around for over a century, the use of online learning in K–12 environments and the organisation of these programmes into formal entities are still quite new. In North America, virtual schooling has been a reality for only about 15 years, and it is less in many other jurisdictions. There is therefore still much that we don’t know about this form of distance education with this population of students. Having said that, as the percentage of K–12 students enrolled in online learning continues to grow, and as the population of students who access these opportunities continues to expand, more is needed to prepare both students and teachers to be successful in these environments