Virtual High School Meanderings

September 23, 2008

Distributed Learning in British Columbia

Well, a couple of weeks ago now I had the pleasure of sitting down with Tim Winkelmans (which I mentioned would happen in Distributed Learning in British Columbia).  Anyway, I have been promising a posting based on my notes from that meeting, but I can go you one better.

As some of you know, I have been working on an overview of K-12 online learning in Canada report for the North American Council for Online Learning.  In that report, we provide a two to three paragraph discussion of K-12 online learning in each province, and then we take a more in depth look at three of the provinces (if we had funding we would have done all ten and the three territories).  Anyway, British Columbia was one of the three provinces, so here is what the report will say for BC (based largely upon my notes from meeting with Tim, who also reviewed this passage as well - THANKS TIM!!!)…

4.3    British Columbia

As noted earlier, the population of British Columbia is almost four and a half million people. However, half of this population lives in the metropolitan Vancouver area and almost three quarters of it lives in the lower mainland or on Vancouver Island. This means that like most Canadian provinces, there are significant portions of the province that are considered rural, and some that are quite remote. Due to this remoteness, it is not surprising that British Columbia was the first province to begin using distance education at the K-12 level.

History of Distance Education

The first K-12 distance education courses were elementary school courses offered by correspondence in 1919 when notes and textbooks were sent to 86 children living in isolated parts of the province, thirteen of who were living in lighthouses (Toutant, 2003). This was followed by the creation of an Elementary Correspondence School, and by 1929 high school correspondence courses were also being offered (Dunae, 1997-2008). This model has evolved, although in some cases not a great deal. At present within British Columbia distance learning is offered under the label of distributed learning. The majority of districts in the province have signed contracts with the Ministry of Education to allow them to operate distributed learning programmes. However, the systems of distributed learning throughout the province include everything from the traditional correspondence style education described above to online learning opportunities that are more typically associated with virtual schooling (and several other methods of delivery between these two extremes).

During the 1980s, the province created nine regional distance education schools. These schools utilised curriculum materials developed by the Ministry. Course delivery was still done using correspondence education. These nine bodies still exist today as a regional support network for the current distributed learning programmes. In the 1990s, funded the Open Learning Agency to operate Open School BC, which was intended to provide broader provincial support for e-learning initiatives. The Open School made the first steps in British Columbia towards the use of online learning as a delivery model. Through the Open School the Ministry maintained responsibility for course development. In the following decade, the Government closed the Open Learning Agency. The Open School currently operates in another Government department using a shared services model on a cost recovery basis and is used primarily by school districts that want to be able to offer distributed learning but do not want to be responsible for their own programmes.

In addition, there have been other distance education organisations in operation in British Columbia. BCEd Online was an e-learning consortium of school districts that partnered with other educational institutions and organisations, along with government, to support online learning for students who learn in the classroom and at a distance. This organisation merged with the Virtual School Society in 2006. The Virtual School Society is the current managers of the LearnNowBC resource, a website designed to provide a clearinghouse for distributed learning opportunities in the province.

How K-12 Online Learning is Governed

The Ministry of Education is responsible for governing distributed learning programmes in the province and school districts must enter into a formal contract with the Ministry in order to operate a distributed learning programme. This is unique to British Columbia. The province also has a number of specific policies and regulations that apply to the distributed learning programmes. For example, distributed learning programmes are not limited to the traditional K-12 school year (although many do choose to follow the September to June calendar). Most of these policies are under the direction of the Distributed Learning Unit for public distributed learning programmes (it should be noted that there are independent or private distributed learning programmes that are overseen by a separate branch of the Ministry known as the Office of Independent Schools).

Funding for students in these distributed learning programmes comes from the province’s allotted full-time enrollment (FTE) allocation. For Grade 10-12 students, each student’s FTE is divided into eight components, with each course representing a component. If a student is enrolled in six courses in their brick-and-mortar school and two courses in their district’s distributed learning programme, then the school would receive six eights of the FTE and the distributed learning programme would receive two eights of that FTE. K-9 students, however, can only be enrolled in one school that receives the full FTE allocation. For the distributed learning programmes, enrollment is counted three times throughout the year as a way to determine active attendance in the programme.

The Ministry also has regulations to allow for an open borders model. Under this model a student is not limited to the distributed learning programme within their school district, but is free to enroll in a course from any distributed learning programme in the province (and the portion of the student’s FTE follows them regardless of school district). There are some restrictions under this model, for example, districts must ensure that students in their own district are served before they enroll students from other districts. However, as long as space is available a student from another district cannot be turned away from a course in the distributed learning programme.

The Ministry is also responsible for ensuring that public distributed learning programmes meet compliance audits (i.e., a quantitative measure of success) and quality reviews (i.e., a qualitative measure of accountability). The compliance audits are reviews and verifications of the data that has been submitted by the distributed learning programme to the Ministry related to enrollments, attendance counts, student achievement, etc.. Quality reviews are whereby teams of two to three individuals selected by the Ministry meet with the distributed learning programmes administrators, teachers, and students, they monitor courses over a period of time, etc. for the purposes of providing the distributed learning programme with feedback on how they can improve upon their operation and the design and delivery of their courses.

Each distributed learning programme is responsible for hiring their own teachers: some of whom work full-time for the programme, while others work part-time for distributed learning and part-time in a brick-and-mortar school. The Ministry requires that teachers who are hired into distributed learning programmes must have experience with teaching in this environment or the programme must provide the teacher with professional development.

K-12 Online Learning Activity

At present 46 of the province’s 60 school districts have entered into agreements with the Ministry for the operation of distributed learning programmes. There were approximately 49,000 individual students enrolled during the 2007-08 school year, representing over 16,000 FTEs. These enrollments ranged from students taking a single course to students taking their complete programme, with the average student taking two or three courses at a distance.

Students enrolled in distributed learning at the kindergarten to grade nine levels must be enrolled full-time in their distributed learning programmes. The historical completion rate for these students was in the 90% range. At the grade 10 through grade 12 students can be enrolled on a full-time or a part-time basis. The historical completion rate for these students was in the 20% to 50% range depending on the type of programme and geographic location; however, this figure is currently in the 65% range.

In addition to the public distributed learning programmes that are currently available, there are approximately a dozen independent or private schools that also maintain distributed learning programmes.

Other things from my notes that didn’t make it into the report include:

  • in 1999 the Ministry had fourteen online courses available through distributed learning, which was the first time a student could complete enough courses online in order to graduate (my gut tells me that this was available in other formats long before this date, but I didn’t ask Tim for clarification or follow-up)
  • the policies that the distributed learning programs created by the independent schools have to follow are fairly consistent with the regime described above for the public school districts

And that’s about it…  Sorry there was no post yesterday, particularly following a week where there were multiple posts each day.  Hopefully the activity this week will be fairly consistent, although probably not as proliferic as last week.

September 5, 2008

Series: Tell Us Something (Continued)

August 28, 2008

Distributed Learning in British Columbia

I’m going to have the pleasure to meet this guy next week.  In the meantime, he sent me this video of him talking about distributed learning at the K-12 level in British Columbia (mainly so I would be able to pick him out of the crowd, as we’ve never met before).  Interesting comments though, so I figured I’d post them here (given that they are about my home and native land).

Nunavut - Interview with Tim Winkelmans
Nunavut Interview during PTDEA

August 25, 2008

Re-Post from TADO: If You Have Been Following TADO

Over the past couple of weeks, finishing earlier today, I’ve posted three series from Darren over at Teaching and Developing Online (see Series - Statistics from 2007-08, Series - We asked 735 students… and Series: Tell Us Something).  As a follow-up to those three series, Darren posted an entry entitled If you have been following TADO - which explains the purpose of these three series and makes an interesting offer.

I’ve copied and pasted the post below:

If you have been following TADO

If you have been following TADO this summer you will have noticed the postings have followed a certain format. I have been posting the student’s opinions to a series of questions that we ask them during the school year. I hope people have enjoyed the responses. We are about a week away from starting another school year and are developing the surveys that we will use this year.

If you have a burning question that you would like to ask k-12 students…drop me a comment and I will see if I can get it into one of our surveys.

I’m going to have to think about it a bit, but I will be sending you some questions Darren.

Series: Tell Us Something

A third series from Darren over at Teaching and Developing Online (see Series - Statistics from 2007-08 and Series - We asked 735 students… for the last two recent - or summer ones).

I think this is the end of this series - largely due to Darren’s next note which I’ll post in its entirity as a separate entry.

August 18, 2008

Series - We asked 735 students…

Another new series that Darren at Teaching and Developing Online had posted a while ago that I am only getting around to posting now (he’s actually working his way through a third series that I will wait to post until he’s finished.

August 17, 2008

Series - Statistics from 2007-08

April 24, 2008

Virtual Schooling A Hit In Real World, Online Learning Conf. - British Columbia

Another item from my home and native land…  This one taken from the NACOL forums.

Virtual schooling a hit in real world
Teachers meet here this week
Naoibh O’Connor, Vancouver Courier
Published: Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Only a few years ago, it was relatively unknown. Now online learning has become the vehicle of choice for thousands of B.C. students.

Teachers from across the province meet in Vancouver this week for a conference devoted to online learning as the growth continues. Enrolment province-wide climbed from 17,000 students in 2006 to 33,000 students in 2007, according to Ministry of Education statistics.

Gordon Milne, president of the Virtual School Society, which is hosting the conference, witnessed much of that growth. He’s a retired superintendent from the Nechako Lake school district, which launched the first online school, based in Vanderhoof, called EBUS, 17 years ago.

The growth has been phenomenal. I remember we started with a half-dozen kids that many years ago and it’s grown in leaps and bounds,” Milne said. “We were the only school district that provided online learning for many years and now other schools have leapt in and begun to offer it as well.”

The three-day Vancouver forum, from April 22 to the 24, focuses on the latest digital tools and strategies to teach the Internet-savvy generation.

Milne said students register in courses for various reasons. Some are elite athletes trying to fit courses into their schedules, others have part-time jobs they’re working around or they can’t fit a course into their regular schedule, while still others prefer learning via computers.

“Some parents just choose to have their children educated at home and have withdrawn them from the regular public education system and are using online learning to support their kids’ learning,” Milne added.

The Virtual School Society, an independent society funded by the provincial government, supports online schools by helping with software and hardware and through leadership.

It developed an educational portal called LearnNow B.C. Fifty-two virtual schools across the province–including two in Vancouver through the Vancouver Learning Network, which offers elementary and secondary programs–have courses registered through LearnNow B.C.

Flexibility is the key to virtual schooling’s appeal and rapid growth, according to Milne.

Students can participate in lessons available on live video feeds at prescribed times or they can access archived lessons at any time.

Technology is also easier to use and students are more Internet savvy than in previous generations. Online learning was also largely unknown three or four years ago, Milne pointed out, which explains the spike in interest in recent years.

“It wasn’t widely publicized. LearnNow B.C. has provided an opportunity for kids to take a look at what every virtual school in the province is offering and there’s a real variety there in how those courses are presented so kids can pick what interests them,” he explained. “Some kids have a definite interest and aptitude when it comes to learning in that way. Other kids have no interest–it’s the last way they would want to learn. They want to be in a traditional bricks and mortar classroom. Some kids like to do a little online, a little face-to-face. There’s a nice combination of blended programs around our province.”

Despite virtual learning’s rapid growth, Milne maintains it doesn’t spell the end of traditional schooling. “I can’t envision that. I wouldn’t want to even consider that. I just think that traditional face-to-face work with kids is so important for many kids–these connections that are made are so powerful I wouldn’t even want to think about that.”

http://www.canada.com/vancouvercourier/new…25-c6f31502e52b

Reminder - Canadian E-Learning Conference June 17 – 20, 2008 - Reminder!

This showed up in my inbox today, wish I was able to head out to Calgary to attend as there is usually a lot of K-12 involvement in this conference.

Canadian E-Learning Conference June 17 – 20, 2008 - Reminder!

Join participants from Calgary, Canada and around the world for this blended conference where we will share ideas about how technologies enhance learning.

This event is value-packed with many benefits for registrants. Once you register you can get involved right away online by sharing your thoughts and questions, joining discussion groups and even starting your own blog!

Other benefits include high level speakers, workshops, interactive / virtual presentations, poster sessions, and meals during the conference.Early Bird Rate ($250 + GST) Early Bird registration also guarantees your entrance to our hands-on workshops. See http://conference.adeta.org for more details and costs.

March 15, 2008

ADETA March 15 Update

The President of the Alberta Distance Education & Training Association (ADETA), which is the jurisdiction where most of the virtual school activity happens in Canada (i.e., Alberta), has just posted his update for March.

March 15 Update from ADETA President

This is what has been happening in March so far on the ADETA front:

  • We received 20 proposals for presentations for the June conference in Calgary. The program is coming together nicely and we have negotiated overlap times with both the Blending Learning conference in the UK and the CANHEIT conference in Calgary, so we will be sharing some presentations.
  • Also for the June conference, we have set the registration fees to $250 + tax for early bird and secure very affordable accommodations for attendees right on the UofC campus.
  • The planning for the Symposium in 2009 has begun. Check out the new website for that event for details. ADETA will be looking after the Program and the Website and let us know if you would like to help out with one of those.
  • We look forward to interview candidates for the Communication Officer and Conference Convener staff positions next week. If you are interested in the Conference Convener position check out the job description on the adeta.org website.
  • We have become a project for a Public Relations class at Mount Royal. I met with 5 teams of students and they will work on developing a communications strategy for ADETA as part of their course work. I look forward to seeing what they come up with.
  • We have had some new directors appointed to the Board as we have had a couple of resignations. I welcome Dr. Martha Burkle from SAIT to the Board. Go to http://adeta.org/boardmembers for a current listing. These appointments are only until the AGM on June 20th with the board membership will be re-elected by the membership.
  • Speaking of the AGM on June 20th, please plan on attending. It will take place at 12:00 noon in the Alberta Room in the Dining Centre on the UofC campus. Lunch is on ADETA.

Have a great Easter Break.
Rod Corbett

I post it here because of the links to some Canadian conferences that may be of interest.

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