More on online tutoring
Karl Nelson of the Digital Learning Commons sent me an email after my last entry with some thoughts on the topic of online tutoring. DLC has several years experience now in working with districts, schools, and students using online learning here in Washington state, and I thought his observations were worth sharing.
On tutoring programs:
I think the real power with these online tutoring programs (and I’d
class the ones that the DLC offers, Apex’s ClassTools and Internet
Academy’s ALPs, in with this category) is in the ability to personalize
and individualize. This gets especially interesting when you’re
combining that with in-person help from a teacher. I think it can let
the teacher focus their attention on an individual student or small
group while the rest can continue learning at their own pace.We’ve had a number of good comments about people using products like
this. See, for example:
http://www.learningcommons.org/about/stories/2007/03/coupeville.php
http://www.learningcommons.org/about/stories/2006/09/wasl_math_prep.php
http://www.learningcommons.org/about/stories/2006/04/west_seattle_hi.phpOn AP courses:
Over the first three years of the DLC, 12% of online courses were at the
AP level. Looks like our stats for this year, as of a few months ago,
are about the same. So, maybe we haven’t seen a “rapid increase”, but
they are popular.I think online AP courses are really compelling because lots of schools
just can’t offer them otherwise. Think rural and remote schools who
can’t find teachers (or money, or enough students, etc). Even more
urban schools often have priorities in other places (math WASL,
anyone?), so they can’t offer AP. Online courses are a fairly easy way
to give students the option to take courses. Our evaluations of online
courses show that the biggest reason people take courses is that a given
course simply isn’t available at the school — over 3/4 of courses are
taken for that reason.While I’d agree that online learning might not work for everyone, we
think a *huge* factor is the support structure. Pretty clearly, just
putting a student in a course and telling them “good luck” isn’t going
to cut it. So, a school needs to set up a real support structure for
students in online courses. The good news is that the staff supporting
the students don’t necessarily need to be subject-matter experts in
order to support a student in a course (that’s what the online teacher
is for). Check out the DLC best practices page if you’re interested in
what we tell schools to do:
http://www.learningcommons.org/educators/cs/best_practices/
Or, check out some course-focused success stories:
http://www.learningcommons.org/about/stories/2007/01/courses.php
http://www.learningcommons.org/about/stories/2006/05/white_salmon.php
http://www.learningcommons.org/about/stories/2005/11/juanita.php
http://www.learningcommons.org/about/stories/2005/03/profile_on_liz.php
I think what Karl points out in the last paragraph is key. Early in the history of online learning, that subset of kids who could be successful were the same kinds of kids who could learn effectively through book-based self study. As we’ve expanded online learning and had more experience, practitioners have become more aware of and more effective in addressing the needs of the normal, average learner who still needs facilitation, encouragement, and an occasional pointed reminder to keep on task. It’s great that the state has continued to support programs such as the DLC where that kind of expertise can be developed and shared with other educators exploring online learning.