Students clamoring for online courses

County administrators are reviewing state-approved courses; teens want a way to do required work without giving up specialties

Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2006

Caila Driscoll did not want to give up playing in the Walt Whitman High School orchestra or taking courses in photography or Advanced Placement Spanish in order to take a half-credit health course that the state requires for graduation.

So, she turned to the Internet and took the class online over the summer. Now, she hopes to do the same to fulfill a technology education requirement.

‘‘I haven’t yet taken a tech ed class because to do that, I’d have to drop orchestra, AP Spanish, photography 4 or AP chemistry just to take a class in Word and Excel,” Driscoll, a junior at the Bethesda school, told the county school board last week. ‘‘That’s just crazy, especially because for over a year, I’ve had good reason to believe that MCPS would develop an online tech ed course.”

Such a course already does exist, one of two dozen or so that have been approved by the state Department of Education. Among those, several are being reviewed against the county school system’s curriculum standards and could be offered next school year.

Driscoll is not alone in demanding online courses. Twenty-five county students took the health course online when it was first offered two years ago, said Richard Jolles, an instructional specialist for student online learning with the school system. This summer, about 400 students took the class online.

The demand for tech education online is high because, like health education, it is a graduation requirement, Jolles said.

Online education presents educators with both an opportunity and a challenge. Schools must balance the demand of students who have grown up with online technology with the assurance that online courses provide what students need to learn.

For more On online courses, go to mdk12online.org.

Students like Driscoll want to see more courses offered online to give them a chance to get required coursework out of the way so they can open their schedule for challenging academics or an artistic passion.

Katherine Hillenbrand, a junior at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, told the school board that in order to take a technology class, ‘‘I would have to drop either AP Spanish or AP studio art. Next year, I may have to give up the chance for an internship that will prepare me for college and even a career to get this one credit if the online class is not offered.”

The state Department of Education’s ‘‘Maryland Virtual Learning Opportunities” course book is 22 pages long and lists about two dozen courses in art, career and computer science, English, foreign language, health, Web design, math, science, social studies, political science and economics.

Many courses are still under review; they must have state approval before they can be used in county schools.

The courses are expensive. Online health education, a half-credit course offered only in the summer, cost $365 this year. The school system is working to reduce that price, which covers the computer server, content and teacher costs, to $300. The one-credit tech education course would cost $600.

In addition, with some low-income students already trailing their wealthier peers in academic performance, administrators want to be careful not want to create a technology gap for those who cannot afford the course or do not have Internet access at home.

‘‘The equity is a concern, and it’s one of the reasons we haven’t moved forward on this,” said Carol Blum, the school system’s director of high school instruction.

Schools can offset costs by offering some students financial aid similar to that offered for summer school programs, Jolles said.

Another concern is whether students get a quality education from the online courses. While many of the state-approved courses were developed by outside vendors, the county school system developed the health course on its own and is looking to do the same with a technology course. Developing an online curriculum includes building in face time with teachers.

While students do much of their work in virtual classrooms, meeting face-to-face with teachers increases the chances that students will complete the course, Jolles said.

Caila Driscoll said that while the health education course included online activities, such as Web research, it also featured three meetings with a teacher. ‘‘You get some interaction with the teacher, and you talk as a class and see speakers,” she said.

Most online courses also include an in-class final examination, Jolles said.

Making sure students can pass those tests after taking a course online remains administrators’ top priority. That’s why evaluating the quality of a course, considering how students learn and keeping them connected to a good teacher is important, Jolles said.

‘‘A human can meet a variety of needs, but a textbook dumped online cannot,” he said.