Virtual Schools? I have been asking myself why there is a rising percentage of enrollments in these schools. What does make it better than any other learning environment? Is it really better or just a good alternative for some people?

Let’s see what is a virtual school. Virtual schools provide classes completely online. In one class, there can be more that 25 students. A student can learn everything at home, from math to English. There is no f2f meeting required. All assignments and quizzes can be submitted online.

Here is a definition of a Virtual School from Wikipedia “A virtual school or cyber-school describes an institution that teaches courses entirely or primarily through online methods. It has been suggested that a virtual school is an online learning platform offered by an educational organization whereby individuals can earn credits in the particular area of interest which can be counted toward graduation or advancement to the next grade.” As read from this, anyone who wants to graduate from high school but does not want to be in a f2f learning environment, this would be a good solution.

Everything has two sides, advantages and disadvantages, including virtual schools. However, the question here is which one is more valid and important to us and our needs. Advantages of virtual school, a student can get in any class he/she wants without worrying if the class would be full (as mentioned earlier, some virtual schools can have 200 students in one class). Moreover, parents can have an easier access on their children’s work and progress. Students may find it as a more comfortable learning environment and they would not be shy to participate (there are many cases were students are shy to participate in real classroom. The disadvantages, one of them could be having poor teaching systems. Using videos and quizzes online to teach a complete high school curriculum is hard, especially if there is not f2f interaction. This sort of learning environment needs a strong inner motivation to keep up with the visual class. Teachers would face challenges in these classes to keep students enthusiastic toward the subject they are learning. Some may argue even in traditional classrooms teachers have challenges pertaining to keeping students engaged; however, the challenges in f2f classroom are surely less than those in virtual classroom. Reasons for that, in virtual schools teachers do not have a direct interaction with the students so they need to use only words to interact directly to them. But in a real classroom, a teacher can use her/his body language, gestures, sign, words .. etc. to communicate with the students easily.

In sum, I do not agree on a full online learning for high schoolers and under. One of my main reasons, direct f2f interaction creates a different relationship between the teacher and his students. Another big factor for supporting classroom environment is inner motivation, virtual schools require from students to have a strong inner motivation. Along with that, I absolutely and FULLY support blended learning environment where technologies, along with e-learning, is used in f2f learning environments. 

As an example for a virtual school, here is this website http://www.connectionsacademy.com/home.aspx it provides full-time learning, and you can graduate and get your certificate.

To know more about the raising numbers of enrollments in virtual schools, here is a research on Ohio e-schools.

http://www.educationsector.org/publications/ohio-e-schools-learning-their-experience

Here, this article shares two students’ experiences in learning through a virtual school. In addition, it discusses some online struggles. It will give you some insights of this kind of virtual learning.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/headlines/20120823-virtual-schooling-offers-tuition-free-public-education--but-its-not-for-everyone.ece

resources:

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_school