One of my favorite TV shows I used to watch as a little boy was Skippy The Bush Kangaroo. The main hero is a boy living with his family in the Australian bush. The boy’s best friend is a kangaroo named Skippy. I don’t remember any of the stories from the TV show, but there is one thing I remember that made a great impression on me – as I think it did on many school children watching the show at the time.
The family in the story was separated from civilization by many kilometers of the Australian wilderness, but their children used a short wave radio to talk to their teachers. Thanks to advances in communication technology, distance learning – and more specifically online learning in its many forms – is common practice nowadays, and not only in higher education. The Khan Academy, for instance, offers a range of courses in several languages online in the form of YouTube videos and supplementary materials on its website.
In recent years, online learning found its way into high schools, middle schools and even elementary schools. It has created new possibilities for families and students who travel a lot, for those who can’t attend school sessions during normal daytime hours, for children with health difficulties, for homeschooled families, for budding young professional athletes who attend training during regular school hours, and so on.
Even students who attend normal schools use online courses to enrich their learning with both required and elective courses of their liking, or they take an online course to fulfill a prerequisite to enable them to apply to a university of their choice. AP and IB courses are also available online, although the full online International Baccalaureate Diploma and the Advanced Placement Capstone programs are not available yet at this time.
Interestingly, online learning is not limited to academic courses only. Vocational courses and whole programs are offered online as well.
Online schooling is a booming industry, and not only for online schools and universities. More and more companies use online courses to train their employees. The recent forecasts indicate that the annual online educational market will grow to over $400 billion by 2023 (Market Research Future, September 2017). Software developers are creating new learning management systems and communication tools to effectively and safely connect students with their online teachers. Publishers find whole new markets for entire libraries of e-texts and video resources. Passionate experienced teachers retired from regular daytime school work are now able to continue to make impact on young students while supplementing their pension with welcomed income. Female teachers can continue teaching from home while raising young children. The list goes on and on.
Being director of the QSI Virtual School (https://www.qsi.org/online/qvs/) allowed me to gain firsthand experience of many aspects of the online education system. I love the success stories of our students and teachers! But I do have to say that online learning is not easy. If you were thinking that online learning was similar to Neo learning Kung Fu in The Matrix, well, just forget that. We are not there yet.
Not all adults and even fewer teenagers are successful as online students, and not all successful face-to-face teachers are fit for teaching online. It is also a common myth that online courses are easier, or less academically demanding than regular face-to-face courses. This is definitely not the case.
In QSI, whenever possible, online courses are built into student’s everyday school schedule. In scheduled online periods, children have a place to go to where needed technology is provided and where they are monitored by an adult at all times. This helps teenage students to use their online time effectively. Everyone who works with a computer and internet daily knows how hard it is to sit down and immediately start working without first checking the latest news, subscribed blogs and new friend and family posts in social media.
To help students stay focused, most online courses have a set deadline by when portions of the course have to be completed. Young students usually need a strong monitoring system to help them not only to start an online course, but also to stay on track all the way to the finish line.
In the current 2017-2018 school year, eighteen KIS (Kyiv International School) high school students are taking online courses from three different online providers. Our main goal is to provide safe and friendly online learning environment, to support our online students in their efforts so they can receive the credits they are working towards, while also enjoying the process of online learning as much as possible.
Distance Learning
Frantisek Plasil, QVS Director
