Virtual savings? Online courses bring better access but little impact on the bottom line - Virtual High School

School Administrator, April, 2004 by Brett Schaeffer

Teacher Contact

Opp has partnered with the University of Alaska to meet some teacher certification needs. "The university is providing the programs and the supplemental courses," says Opp, who is trying to coordinate teachers' online courses to run concurrently with an online course for students.

"The idea," he explains, "is that a student signs up for a distance education course, biology as an example. The local teacher then signs up for a distance education course with the university focusing on teaching biology content. The local teacher participates in both courses."

In his experience, Opp says after-school distance education courses for teachers have had limited success and limited enrollment. "Not many teachers want to spend their evenings also going to school."

A second reason for running the online courses concurrently is the student-teacher contact.

A student's success in an online course often can be traced to the teacher's involvement, says Opp. He plans to add a web conferencing application that will allow the online course teacher to communicate directly with the online course students. The voice technology isn't the same as being face-to-face with a teacher, but, says Opp, "it still helps to have that local adult to ensure students don't fall through the cracks."

Tim Stroud, executive director of the North American Council for Online Learning, foresees the prospect of more cost savings in online professional development than in student course delivery. The professional development modules, with their significant upfront production costs, will have greater longevity in terms of impact and use.

Canter & Associates, for example, has invested several million dollars in the development of an online master's degree program for aspiring principals in with AASA (see related story, page 30). Individual courses will be offered for sale to school districts, regional service agencies and state education departments.

Stroud says once a school district builds an online program or buys access to content for in-service training, it can be used economically with a large group of teachers for as long as the content remains current. For instance, strategies and skills in classroom management don't change much from year to year, lending a longer shelf life to an online product on such a topic.

"The only costs associated with this program would then be annual updates, if necessary, and some limited personnel costs associated with conducting the courses," he says.

Another advantage to online training, he says, is that it allows for "continuous, long-term training using online synchronous and asynchronous communication mediums," such as web conferencing.

Existing Options

Most school districts have yet to jump on the bandwagon for virtual professional development.

The rural Dansville, Mich., district, where Michael Simeck is superintendent, is close enough to several universities, including Michigan State, that teachers who need graduate credits toward certification usually have plenty of options to take those the old-fashioned way: in person. But Simeck's teachers may find the latest Michigan Virtual Schools initiative even more accessible.