Ann Arbor high school students benefiting from expanding online course offerings
Online courses serve a growing segment of high school students in Ann Arbor and are providing more opportunities to get ahead of the curriculum, officials say.
More than 650 high school students are enrolled in online courses district-wide in the current school year, district online coordinator Susette Jaquette said in a presentation to the Huron High School Parent Teacher Student Organization on Monday
Many students use the online courses in different ways — such as making up credits, looking to get ahead or just taking a class for fun.
“Most kids are usually just too distracted in school, but some kids have hole in their day,” she said. “They can go to the media center and work on the class there and just do that during the hour.”
Four types of online courses are available for students in Ann Arbor — Michigan Virtual High School courses, Moodle classes, Assessment Learning and Knowledge Spaces math classes and Education 2020 courses. At Huron High School, the health, government, Algebra 1 and 2, geometry and math analysis classes are the normal in-building classes offered online through Moodle.
The district first began offering online courses in the 2001-02 school year, when 23 students enrolled in classes through the Michigan Virtual High School — originally created with funds from the state’s settlement with tobacco companies, Jacquette said. The first Ann Arbor students who took online classes were mainly from Community High School.
In recent years, the district has been using MVHS services less and less — zero students enrolled in MVHS classes during this past summer — and relying on Moodle, ALEKS and e2020 classes more, which saves the district money. In addition to using its own teachers, the district doesn't have to pay for spaces in the state program.
“We’re starting to wean ourselves away from MVHS,” Jacquette said. “This summer we did not use any of their classes and that gives us a cost savings because we’re not having to pay them.”
A typical online class costs the district $220 to $250, and an Advanced Placement class costs $325 to $350. The district doesn't charge students unless the online course is the seventh class on a schedule.
The e2020 class is one of the innovative programs, which the district has begun participating in as a part of a countywide consortium.
Jason Skiba, ninth grade principal at Huron, said the program allows students to recover credit during the school year, which can dramatically improve a student’s grade.
“You can catch up without falling behind,” he said. “A great example is biology, which breaks into units every two months. One unit just ended in October, and if a student didn’t master that, they have the opportunity to make up for that before December so they don’t fall behind.”
The ALEKS program is a self-paced program often used by students to advance a level in math. Oftentimes, students will take geometry and Algebra 2 at the same time so they can move up to calculus, with one of those being in a classroom with a teacher and the other online.
The program will assess students and determines when they should be ready for a test. A test will include 24 questions, with eight focusing on a past subject already tested on, eight on the current subject and eight on a future subject that hasn't been covered.
“It really helps those students who can’t sit in a classroom and go through math step-by-step,” Jacquette said. “We had close to 100 kids last summer, and a lot of them were trying to get ahead and do a whole year class in one summer.”
Moira Tannenbaum’s son enrolled in some online classes this fall and said the online program has been a revelation.
“I can’t say enough about it,” she said. “He feels 100 percent better about himself, and he’s just cruising through it.”
Kyle Feldscher covers K-12 education for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at kylefeldscher@annarbor.com.
Comments
michael dalman
Wed, Nov 10, 2010 : 8:01 a.m.
i was enrolled in the german 3 online class at huron. one of the major problems with it was that when the students were enrolled, the rest of the class had already been working for between 2 and 3 weeks. in addition to this, the website was very confusing, and the instructor was new to the online course, and didnt know a lot of things about the website.
Nate Clyde
Thu, Nov 4, 2010 : 8:14 p.m.
Everyone I know dropped out of the German 3 because of how complicated the course was. Taking foreign languages in classes is much better than online courses...
suzanne
Thu, Nov 4, 2010 : 12:45 p.m.
Our family did not have good experience with this program. At Huron if you are beyond 2nd year German-you are out of luck to have a class at the High School. Our son tried the online version and it was a complete failure. Our son was excited about German and really invested in keeping up with the German program and is very disappointed to have to let it go. it was not run well-students were not oriented to the program and MANY/MOST dropped out. So, he will have 2 years of a language on his transcript-unless he begins a new language his senior year. @ sweet_life I completely agree with you-this was our experience.
Dr. I. Emsayin
Wed, Nov 3, 2010 : 7:57 a.m.
It is too bad that the large high schools do not allow their students to use the computers in the school library to work on their online classes. Students are told that classes that sign up to use the library need the computers and that the computers cannot be used every day by the same students. It seems the hole in this online experience is where the student is supposed to go if the online experience is in the middle of a school day. Each school ought to designate space in their E2020 classrooms which are held in the schools during the day for those students who take online courses and need a place to go. The students are told that attendance is the issue; that there is no way to account for them on powerschool if they are not registered for the E2020 where they would like to sit and do online work. If powerschool could find a way to include these students names without credit being attached to it, it would solve some of this problem unless the E2020 class was filled with E2020 students. Schools used to have study halls or allow students to use the school library, and having students split between schools does cause scheduling and whereabouts issues. Many students at the large high schools want to attend Community High but it is increasingly difficult to make it work because the CHS schedule does not often allow for the students to schedule two courses in the block (ie: block 5 &6) due to classes being full or the necessary course is not offered in a block sequence. Since AAPS does allow for split scheduling, there needs to be better arrangements for those students who choose online courses to fill the block that they cannot get into the block they need at CHS. If they stay at Skyline or Huron or Pioneer on the every-other-day part of the block, they need a place to work where they can be accounted for.
RSM
Wed, Nov 3, 2010 : 6:48 a.m.
Government online has worked well so far for my daughter even with almost no teacher/student interaction. However, since she splits her day between Skyline in the morning and Community in the afternoon, she is NOT allowed to use her one open class hour to work on her online class in the Skyline library. Once her classes there are over, Skyline administration insists that she exits the building. It's a beautiful, well-equipped library but she does her online work at home.
sweet_life
Tue, Nov 2, 2010 : 7:43 p.m.
They may work for some kids, but our family experience with online courses in the AAPS (3 kids, total of 5 courses) has been universally bad. They are good students who did well in regular classes with direct teacher interaction, but not so well in online courses. Poor communication between students and instructors, assignments that got lost after submission, little or no feedback on work, etc. are examples of the problems we have seen with these courses.