This story is Part 2 of a three-part series looking at home schooling in Westlock, and focuses on the increasing use of technology for home-school and distance-education students. Part 1, which ran Oct. 15, examined some parents’ motivations for choosing home schooling. Part 3 will look at the outcomes of home school program, and will run next week.
Technology has had a monumental effect on everything in our lives, and education is no different — whether in a brick and mortar school or at home.
As computers begin to take on a much more significant role in the classroom, so too do they become more significant in a home-schooling environment — whether traditional home schooling, blended school programs or a public education at home.
Many people in Westlock, Alberta and even across the world are turning to online education instead of a traditional approach.
Dr. Terry Anderson, a professor at Athabasca University who focuses on distance learning, has been paying attention to trend towards Internet-based education since he wrote his doctoral thesis on the subject in the mid-1990s.
“I think the Internet started being used in distance education in the mid 1990s,” he said. “It’s been used continuously in a growing amount ever since.”
The trend expanded at different rates depending on the institution — traditional correspondence schools took longer to make use of the technology than did schools that were started specifically to provide online education.
At first, it was often as simple as sending packages by e-mail instead of traditional mail, but more and more we’re seeing that many institutions are making greater use of virtual space to do things like video-conferencing and interactive websites.
“At first distance learning was all by yourself, or maybe with your parent, but there’s more opportunities to do collaborative work projects,” Anderson said.
In Westlock, 14-year-old Natasha Carruthers has recently transitioned from a traditional parent-led home school program to a blended program, where she does some of her courses online.
The Grade 9 student began her online learning in Grade 7 with her Language Arts class, and now has included Social Studies as well — she likes it so much she said she hopes to do all courses except math online next year.
“This year we took up two, to see how it would go. Next year we’ll probably put most of my subject on, except for math,” she said, noting she has found a traditional math curriculum that works for her and isn’t interested in changing.
The advantages Carruthers sees in doing her courses online are many — having a teacher and other students on the other end of an Internet connection have been helpful for her to understand the material she works on.
“I can talk to my teachers for help,” she said. “In the book you read it if you’re just doing it at home and you have to figure it out for yourself, whereas you have a teacher in school to tell you.”
She is registered with NorthStar Academy, based in Didsbury, Alta., and is able to connect with teachers and other students of all age groups to get support and feedback with her assignments.
Another big advantage she sees is having a more rigid timeline for assignments.
“It’s almost like school where you have to have your assignments in on a time basis,” she said. “It’s really good for disciplining yourself to get things in on time.”
Frank McCallum, the associate principal of Vista Virtual School, notes there are many advantages to this method of learning, whether the student is home schooled or follows a public education curriculum at home.
“The big benefit obviously is flexibility,” he said.
Traditional home schooled students are able to be flexible in terms of what kinds of things are being taught — whether the student and/or parents are concerned about focusing on a religious education, or if they’re simply looking to spend more time focusing on a particular subject of interest.
For both home-school and public-school students, the two big areas of flexibility tend to be time and place — students can work more at their own pace, and can work from anywhere in the world.
For Anderson, flexibility is also the most significant advantage to this method — whether dealing with K-12 students or post-secondary students.
“The advantage of that is they can control the speed and the pace,” he said. “There is no right speed for all students. For some the class goes too quickly and for others it’s putting them to death from boredom.”
For all the benefits, it’s not necessarily a completely rosy picture for all distance-education students.
“Like any education program, it depends on the individual,” McCallum said. “You definitely want to match up the individual learning style with the delivery style.”
While some students respond very well to a course that requires a lot of reading online, it’s certainly not for everybody.
“If a student’s learning style isn’t really adapted to that, if they’re much more of a visual or auditory learner, this might not be the best choice for them,” he said. “We don’t want students making the wrong education choices.”
At Vista Virtual, there is an intake interview process that seeks to determine whether the program is really right for the individual student.
Anderson notes that in some cases, the many advantages can themselves become drawbacks for individual students. Flexibility of time, for example, can lead to procrastination.
“It can become a procrastinator’s heaven — it’s really easy to find something else to do other than doing your homework,” he said.
There is also the important issue of educational culture within the home. If a student lives in an environment where education is valued they are more likely to succeed in any kind of education, whereas if that culture isn’t there students might struggle individually.
“If there’s no educational culture within the home, it’s pretty hard for them to sustain the motivation, whereas if they hopped onto a school bus every day at least they can get into the groove with other students,” he said.
The effects of this challenge are manifested in the fact that there tends to be a higher attrition and lower rate of completion with distance-learning courses when compared to the traditional equivalents.
Anderson also knows that an impression exists that distance-learning or home-school students can be anti-social, although he doesn’t know of much in the way of academic literature that would back that up.
For Carruthers, she knows people make that assumption but feels it simply isn’t true — she spends plenty of time socializing with people of all ages through many different activities and it will be apparent to anyone who speaks with her that she is not shy or antisocial.
“I do have a social life,” she said. “I get to know adults more and get to know kids my age, too.”
While many students may find a distance-education option preferable to either a traditional home-school environment or a traditional public school environment, it’s important to note that this option isn’t ideal for every student.
As McCallum and Anderson both clearly indicate, an individual’s learning style and attitude is a big influence in determining their own individual level of success.
Yet with technology expanding into every aspect of our day-to-day lives — not to mention the fact that the speed and quality of digital communications is improving every day — more students may find themselves turning to this kind of education delivery method.
Anderson said that while it is increasing in popularity in the developed world, the economics of distance education have contributed to an even faster growth in the developing world.
“The largest growth and the largest numbers in distance education is in developing countries because it’s so much more cost-effective,” he said. No building is required, and the teacher-student ratio can decrease significantly with distance education.
On top of that, distance education institutions can handles tens or even hundreds of thousands of students.
“The largest number of distance education students, both at the K-12 and university level, are basically doing print packages that are mailed out from institutions for hundreds of thousands of students,” Anderson said.
But no matter the delivery method, or where the student is in the world, distance education should not be seen as an option that’s necessarily easier, or one that will guarantee success.
“If a student was an ‘A’ student in a classroom, they’re likely to continue to be an ‘A’ student in a distance education classroom,” he said.
“If there’s a student getting ‘B’s and they think they’re must be a genius when they go on their own, it’s just not going to happen.”
