Online Distance Learning: The K-12 Student’s Perspective Free

Public education must adapt to a changing world by liberating educators and students from the traditional, industrial model. This model structures learning to a 6-hour day delivered within the confines of the classroom or school building. Today’s students increasingly expect a learning experience that is relevant, authentic, and real. They require skills and knowledge that will enable success in a new world that is global, agile, and entrepreneurial. The question that is posed by education is: “Will they be ready?”

The K-12 community must recognize that the greatest change agents for fully integrating technology into schools are technology-savvy students. It has been reported that this generation of students spends more time on the Internet than watching television. The Internet is clearly their medium of choice for entertainment, information, and communication. As young people and their parents expect and demand more from their local schools, it will help bring about needed change.

Technology is a way of life for many of today’s students. It is so interwoven into students’ lives that the technology is transparent. As the result, individuals and institutions must keep pace with the rapid change in technology or risk viewing the world in a constant blur. Friedman (2005) alludes to the speed of change in his book, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty First Century. He says, “we are entering a phase where we are going to see the digitization, virtualization and automation of almost everything. The gains in productivity will be staggering for those countries, companies and individuals who can absorb the new technological tools.” He goes on to point out, “whenever civilization has gone through one of these disruptive, dislocating technological revolutions—like Gutenberg’s introduction of the printing press—the whole world has changed in profound ways”. Children are saying:

• Students rely on technology as an essential and preferred component of every aspect of their lives.

• Students are not just using technology differently today, but are approaching their lives and their daily activities differently because of technology.

• As students get older, their uses of technology become more sophisticated but, comparatively, the younger students are on a fast track to becoming greater technology users and advocates.

• The access point for technology use, particularly for older students, is home-focused, not school-focused.

• Today’s students are ultracommunica-tors. (United States Department of Education, Office of Education Technology, 2004)

The community of K-12 education has seen significant growth over the last decade in distance learning programs, defined as learning experiences in which students and instructors are separated by space and/or time. The definition used by the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) is “the acquisition of knowledge and skills through mediated information and instruction, encompassing all technologies and other forms of learning at a distance,” (USDLA, 2005). The key understanding is that teachers and learners exchange ideas and are guided through material. While elementary and secondary students have learned through the use of electronic distance learning systems since the 1930s (Bianchi, 2002), the development of K-12 online distance learning schools and programs is a relatively new phenomenon. E-learning (electronic learning) will ultimately change the very essence of learning and what it means to “attend school.”

Online learning has the potential to overcome the challenges of time, distance, and economics. Satellite, microwave, cable, and broadcast TV first gave students access to courses not otherwise available in their home schools. More recently, multimedia Internet-based technologies have provided even more powerful options for teaching and learning at a distance. With virtually all schools now linked to the Internet, a growing number of states, districts, and individual schools are adopting online courses to expand their curricula.

Online courses make sense. Not only do they expand the range of offerings to all students but they also are of significant interest to special populations such as homebound, incarcerated, and other non-traditional students.

Online distance learning may be ideally suited to meet the needs of those calling for school choice, high school reform, and workforce preparation in twenty-first century skills. The growth in the numbers of students learning online and the importance of online learning as a solution to educational challenges has prompted a closer look at the factors that affect student learning in virtual schooling environments.

K-12 distance education is fundamentally unique. Being a student in an online environment requires new strategies for maximizing learning. Most researchers in the field have an abundance of data on adult learning using online programs, but relatively little is available on K-12. Learning online is a new experience for K-12 students; however, it is a way of learning that will increase in the future as more institutions of higher education, corporate organizations, and the K-12 community use the Internet for distance education. Learning how to be successful online and understanding this new way of learning is key to each student’s success at any age. Although the research indicates that students can be successful in online high school courses when given the opportunity to learn the skills for success, there is still a significant amount of caution raised in the K-12 environment to be sure to design learning experiences that truly meet the needs of the younger student.

The National Educational Association’s (NEA) research found that it is common knowledge that technology can help bridge educational gaps by removing geography and economics as barriers to high educational achievement for every child. It is important to help teachers and administrators in K-12 schools understand how to integrate these rich online experiences into the K-12 environment and listen to the student’s who are embracing this new way of learning.

Today’s challenge, however, is to ensure that information technology increases the quantity of educational opportunities while maintaining or enhancing the quality of those opportunities. It is particularly important that educators use tools of the information age—including online courses—to build information age skills and understandings.

The growing experience and analysis of online learning are revealing that new forms of delivery require new quality criteria. Most of the educational standards for the delivery of instruction at the K-12 level never considered these new communications tools. Standards and methods that have been designed to instruct students in physical classrooms cannot simply be transferred to an online environment. Comparing the two settings and understanding the dynamics that are offered in each setting, however, helps to understand that online learning may suit certain populations of students who otherwise may not be successful in a traditional setting.

Physical classrooms offer an abundance of opportunity for face-to-face communication and student interaction. Students and teachers can have dynamic discussions, which feed the energy in the room. People watch each other, react, and listen to the side conversations that sometimes redirect the class. Physical classrooms can be exciting, fast paced, friendly, and places to find reassurance and support. However, physical classrooms often demand an outgoing personality and a person with high confidence in groups. While some students thrive in this environment, many students disappear into the back of the room and become silent observers. Reasons for this include: “I don’t want to interrupt the instructor, I don’t want to be laughed at for asking silly questions, I am not sure if I know the answer to the question,” and so on.

In a traditional physical class, which meets for one or two 4-hour meetings per week or daily for 50 minutes, students may be unable to fully explore the wealth of topics offered because of the amount of communications taking place in a short time frame. In addition, the traditional passive educational process of lecture followed by question and answer does not serve to capitalize on the knowledge of a learner, nor does it offer other elements students prefer. When students are limited to the information that the instructor provides in traditional classes, it reduces the course’s breadth and scope (Ko & Rossen, 2001, p. 105). In addition, passive students may simply select to refrain from involvement. It is easy for a passive persons to get by with saying very little in a physical classroom because they feel they have met their responsibilities by just being present. It is equally easy for them to feel alienated from the classroom community. Sometimes, this alienation comes from the individual’s own desire to refrain from discussions and sometimes it comes because they feel they do not fit with the other students in the class.

Online education is an appropriate method of education for today, and a method preferred by many types of students, especially the passive communicator. The desire for online learning often stems from the sense of control the student gains. The student in an online world is a free agent able to make choices and direct his or her learning in order to gain the most (Rudestam & Schoenholtz, 2002). In the online classroom, passive, silent students are really not even present until they speak up and take action. Here, the old adage “out of sight, out of mind” is applied.

Learning online appeals to a wide variety of students who need to complete requirements for graduation, pursue special interests, and continue to participate in a home schooling environment. It also requires greater self-discipline but it can give the student more freedom to “attend” class at times that are more convenient. Being able to communicate effectively in written format is critical to success online as most of the work is text based. A benefit of online learning is the ability to review discussions and lectures multiple times thus increasing the student’s ability to achieve course goals. Students are on a level playing field in online courses.

Online learners must be involved to be present in the class; therefore, they are more inclined to become involved in discussions. The online environment also offers learners the ability to work as collaborative partners in the learning process due to the nature of the online discussions and the sense of equality that occurs with the absence of visual and verbal cues (Rudestam & Schoenholtz, 2002).

Secondary, students typically live very busy lives filled with commitments at work, in school, social, family, and more. The asynchronous delivery of online courses presents a myriad of advantages to very busy life styles as students can go to class any time and from any place as long as they have Internet access. The online classroom also provides for a longer time to explore topics, as well as for more in-depth discussions. Therefore, the online mode of education further answers the needs of active students in that the courses allow them to continue their lifestyle with only minor adjustments.

The many thousands of K-12 students who participate in online education programs are attracted to virtual schooling or online learning because it offers advantages over classroom-based programs. Among the benefits of distance education for school-age children are broader educational opportunities for students who are unable to attend traditional schools, access to resources and instructors not locally available, and increases in student-teacher communication.

“Evidence to date convincingly demonstrates that, when used appropriately, electronically delivered education—’e-learning’—can improve how students learn, can improve what students learn, and can deliver high-quality learning opportunities to all children” (National Association of State Boards of Education, 2001, p. 4). Students in virtual schools or online programs have shown greater improvement than their conventional school counterparts in critical thinking, researching, using computers, learning independently, problem-solving, creative thinking, decision-making, and time management (Barker & Wendel, 2001).

A primary characteristic that sets successful distance learners apart from their classroom-based counterparts is their autonomy (Keegan, 1996) and greater student responsibility (Wedemeyer, 1981). Virtual school teachers must be adept at helping children acquire the skills of autonomous learning, including self-regulation. Adults have almost perfected this, but younger students are novices and need guidance. This distinction is important because experts organize and interpret information very differently from novices, and these differences affect learners’ abilities to remember and solve problems (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999), and their ability to learn independently.

A second characteristic that differentiates successful distance learners from unsuccessful ones is an internal motivation, leading them to persist in the educational endeavors. Research has found that older students have more internal motivation than younger students (Gershaw, 1989), reinforcing the need for careful design and teaching of distance education at K-12 levels. Younger students will need more supervision, fewer and simpler instructions, and a more extensive reinforcement system than older students. Effective online programs for young learners include frequent teacher contact with students and parents, lessons divided into short segments, mastery sequences so student progress can grow in stages, and rewards for learning such as multimedia praise and printable stickers or certificates.

Students will continue to choose distance education and particularly Web-based learning for a variety of reasons: geography, work conflicts, family obligations, health, ease of participation, climate/ weather, and opportunity. Although some students report that they prefer to study at a distance, most do so because it is the option that fits most easily into an already busy life. Testimonials written by participants in distance education express student satisfaction with the method despite some hurdles they must overcome. Some state that the difficulties they have to overcome online made them concentrate more, work harder, and learn more. Clearly, distance education via the web offers benefits that make the obstacles worth scaling (Mood, 1995).