Picture this: You've been working your whole life to be an Olympic athlete. You started playing ice hockey when you were 3 years old. Your hockey stick was like a foot and a half long! Now you're in high school and you've come a long way and you're really good! Unfortunately, you think education is most important, so you'll just forget the Olympics coming up and wait another 4 years to make your dream come true right? WRONG!!! There is an answer: Online learning! But, wait. If you take online learning courses won't that just mean reading a bunch of articles and writing about what you read? Won't it mean sitting with your eyes glued to a computer screen all day? Absolutely NOT! There are a lot of misconceptions about the types of students who take online classes, online learning in general, as well as the instructors who teach online courses. Let's take some time to clear those up.
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Online learning is term we hear more and more each year. In an interview, Susan Patrick stated that online learning is increasing by 30% annually. The types of students enrolling in online courses? Athletes, home bound students, struggling learners who are looking for extra support, and also students who are taking advanced courses. Online learning provides individualized instruction that meets the need of the learner.
Online learning has been defined as "teacher led instruction that takes place over the internet, with the teacher and student separated geographically". (Watson, et al, 2011). There are many different forms which this online learning can take. Greg Vanourek developed the following ten dimensions for online learning in 2006:
But nobody will benefit from online learning if we don't have quality instructors developing quality courses. Susan Patrick shared the following statistic about the state of Georgia in an interview: There are 400 high schools and there are 89 qualified physics teachers in the state of Georgia. That is astounding! If those 89 teachers were highly qualified online instructors, they would be able to reach more students. Teachers are in need of training to develop appropriate, beneficial programs. Michael Barbour states that in his research of online learning he has found that virtual school teachers are typically more effective using the synchronous environment because of the similarity with the traditional classroom environment. If all teachers received training in online learning, there would be a number of highly qualified teachers able to bring successful programs of all kinds to online learners.
So students of all kinds, across the entire country are in need of high quality online programs developed and delivered by highly qualified educators. Online learning is here to stay, we should probably make sure we're doing it right.
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I like that you focused on the misconceptions of online learning. One of the biggest misconceptions is that online learning will replace teachers. It's true that some online courses are teacherless but people are becoming more critical about those programs. The other misconception is that good face-to-face teachers/students will also be good online teachers/students. Online learning requires a different skill set so it's common to see successful students/teachers struggle when they move online.
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