Missy BradenIndividual Assignment #5, Due December 2, 2012

Public Online Charter School Students: Choices, Perceptions, and TraitsBy Paul Kim, Flora Hisook Kim, Arafeh KarimiPublished in the American Education Research Journal

The first thing I found surprising is that in a 2007 study Picciano and Seaman found that three-fourths of US schools offer fully online or blended courses, with 69% of those enrolled at the high school level. With the dramatic increase in online courses available, that number may be significantly higher today. In hindsight that number really should not be that surprising, but it does attest to the changing educational environment today. I would be interested to know today how many students have taken at least one online class by the time they graduate high school.

In the current study the authors found that 56% of the students currently enrolled in online classes perceived online discussion to be helpful while 44% did not see it as helpful. The students in the study took the survey beginning 14 days after the beginning of class and closing 2 weeks after that. On the outside students had only been enrolled in the course for 4 weeks when they responded to the survey. This raises the question of what would the results be if the survey was taken during the last 4 weeks of the class, after students had been working in an online learning environment for most of a semester? Does the novelty of online learning wear off and did that influence their perception of the importance of online discussion? Was there a correlation between grades earned and the perceived helpfulness of online discussion?

The final interesting point was that many of these online learners indicated that they like working in groups (mean of 3.02/4 for the students who indicated online discussions are helpful and 2.65/4 for those students who indicated that online discussions are not helpful). As the authors point out, this is inconsistent with earlier studies that indicated a preference for more isolation. Is this difference due to advances in online learning courses, or perhaps the population of online learners is simply growing and thus diversifying to become more similar to a traditional school population?

In addition to the questions already raised, these three observations should be considered in using or developing an online educational scenario. First of all, the dramatic increase in students taking online classes must be considered when making curriculum decisions in any school. Staffing, learner support, technology availability and reliability, and methods of assessment must all be considered as online learning becomes more of the rule and less of the exception. Secondly, is there a link between student perception and performance? For many students their perception of an online class may vary dramatically from what the class actually offers and requires. If we can clarify student perceptions, will that increase their success in the course? Finally, it needs to be clarified what “working in groups” actually means. Collaboration in high school student projects in brick and mortar schools often results in one or two students doing a majority of the work while the others do not contribute as much. Does this change for online classes? How do online classes grade and evaluate group projects that are done online? Are there any legitimate reasons for a learner to be unable to contribute to a group project?

Overall, online learning presents new challenges for curriculum development and implementation, and we must be careful to make decisions based on research rather than making assumptions based on more traditional learning methods.