Parcing A Dissertation On Cyber Charter Schooling

I think today, or at least the first half of it, may be a research kind of day…

Over the past couple of years, the doctoral research of Rob Darrow has been discussed on this blog.

• Defining A Dissertation Topic – Which Aspect Of K-12 Online Learning?
• Rob’s Continuing Dissertation Journey
• Final Stages of Rob’s Dissertation Topic Journey
• Finished His Doctoral Journey

It appears that Rob is now posting edited segments of his dissertation to reach a larger audience, and I wanted to help him in that journey.

• What IS online learning?
• “At Risk” students and online learning
• Research: high school dropouts
• Research: Charter Schools in California…a little history
• Charter schools success measures
• Research: Online School History
• Research: Defining online schools
• Research: Online Learning, part 1
• Research: Online learning part 2
• Online learning: counting students
• Online Learning Research: Results
• Online Learning Growth in California

If there are more to come I’ll post those in a part two entry (although he hasn’t posted any in the past week or two, as he appeared to have moved on to a blended learning theme).

Research Question About Online/Vir​tual Internship​s

A few days ago, I got the following e-mail from a doctoral student:

Dear Dr. Barbour,

After reading a lot of your work, I am writing to ask if you can direct me to any research articles describing or discussing virtual internships for pre-service teachers in university education programs.  I understand that teachers receive professional development training and continuing education credit hours via trainings through Michigan Virtual School, but I don’t think any Michigan universities are partnering with Michigan VS to offer online internship experiences.  Do you know if this is happening anywhere?

I am at the XXXXX working on my dissertation about the online/virtual internship with the USF Physical Education pre-service teachers via FLVS.  I know about the partnerships that FLVS has with UF and UCF, along with USF, but I am not having success discovering what similar internships are going on elsewhere in the country.

Thank you very much for any assistance you can provide.  I can’t believe I haven’t thought to write to you before!  Thanks so much for your time.

As a first point, everyone should feel free to call me Michael (as that is my preference). Anyway, my response to this student was:

I’d direct you to a couple of entries on my blog as a starting point:

Top 8 Virtual Schooling Universities
Florida Virtual School And Online Student Teaching
Teaching And Learning Online (a Canadian example)

I’d also direct you to the program materials of the TEGIVS program. They did include a practicum component in both their undergraduate and graduate courses.

I also indicated that I would post this to my blog and see if any of my academic colleagues or readers had any additional advice for this student.  So, does anyone else out there know of other programs you could tell us about?

Looking For A K-12 Online Learning School For A Research Partner

A doctoral student left this comment on a recent Virtual Schooling In The News entry:

I am currently writing a dissertation for the Educational Leadership Administrative Foundations Ph.D program at Indiana State University. I would like to interview five virtual school teachers from the same school to research their views on virtual learning and the affective domain. I would appreciate any assistance to contact a virtual school willing to participate in this research process.

Comment by Kimberly Tucker

If you are with a K-12 online learning program and have five virtual school teachers that would be willing to be interviewed (or would be willing to let Kimberly contact your teachers to see if she can find five volunteer teachers), please leave a comment below or e-mail me directly. Note that Kimberly is monitoring this message.

2011 Outstanding Dissertation Award – Kathryn Kennedy

I saw this scroll through my Facebook a few days ago…

Congratulations Kathryn!!!

Another Research Request

I saw this scroll through my Facebook yesterday…

Click on the image or visit https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6HPZYJQ

Give Tim a hand if you can!