Posted on 07/24/2008 10:45:18 PM PDT by Amelia
...Educators who supplement or replace their day jobs with online teaching for local public schools are discovering that the perks of working at home come with hurdles: grappling with awkward or confusing lines of communication with their pupils; gauging student performance without seeing facial expressions; and struggling to withstand the urge to check e-mails from students during weekends.
Online courses, mostly in high schools, have proliferated in recent years despite debate about their effectiveness compared with face-to-face instruction. The number of times students enrolled in distance education courses connected with public schools (using Internet, two-way video or other technologies) rose from about 317,000 in 2002-03 to more than 506,000 in 2004-05, the National Center for Education Statistics reported in June. That's a 60 percent increase. In at least 66 percent of the cases, the report says, students earned credit with a passing grade.
Such students could be taking advanced courses unavailable at local schools, fulfilling graduation requirements or pursuing online schooling for other reasons. Prince William's Virtual High, for instance, is open to all students enrolled in a regular high school and rising ninth-graders; it also accepts some home-schooled students....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
To the author of the article:
Oh, boo hoo.
Big surprise that a job has benefits and “hurdles.” NOT.
There’s nothing insurmountable or earth-shattering here. These courses are the wave of the future, except the future is now. Sure, there are things to work out, but they will be worked out. More and more students will choose to get their education in a variety of formats, with the traditional on-campus classroom becoming less and less primary over time.
Some of these jobs pay full benefits. $300 per student per course is more money than I make now, assuming the same number of students per year.
By teaching at a virtual school, I could teach sitting at home in sweatpants or running shorts, work fewer hours per day, probably also have the house cleaned and supper cooked before my husband got home, FReep a little during the day, and not have to worry about high gasoline prices.
Oh, yeah, and like the article said, no cafeteria duty!
What's not to like? ;-)
Exactly!
Also, I have always said that the quickest, cheapest and most efficient way to fix traffic woes all across the fruited plain is for everyone who can work from home to do so.
Sign me up
I do this. I teach virtual part time.
It does have some rather nice perks, like being able to work from home, in your pjs, etc.
These perks do come with drawbacks. To wit:
1. You are not guaranteed anything. Yes, you get paid on a per kid basis, but you may not get enough to justify living expenses. One of my colleagues has five (5) students for the fall.
2. You are an independent contracted individual. That means no retirement, insurance or taxes. You pay taxes once/year.
These drawbacks are minimal as the technology allows all but true face to face connections. We use a program called Elluminate which has real time conversation capability. Works wonderfully for world language teachers such as myself.:)
Also, it provides opportunities to some smaller, rural schools to get AP courses. Georgia Virtual has about 20 AP offerings, and we are working on more. Wanna take Japanese? We got that.:) AP French? Oui. AP Math/Science/English/Econ? Yep.
If I thought I could make it working on line, you bet your boots I would do it.:)
Ping for later read.
I would love to do so!
Wow! Count on the government not to know about or use **web cams**!
The math tutors in India use them routinely. They can also check work **immediately** through e-mail, scanning, and fax.
Highly experienced teachers, with masters and Ph.D. work for $200 to $600 a month!
sweatpants or running shorts,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
With web cams you may not want to do that.
That's very cool - so you can check pronunciation in addition to grammar, etc, then?
I am not sure if I would totally like being an online teacher. I think I'd miss the whole-class interaction sometimes.
Also, it seems to me that this form of instruction would work best (at least right now) for visual learners and more motivated students. Many of my students are more auditory and kinesthetic, and we do a lot of hands-on activities that would not translate well to online.
Oh boy! Outsourcing education! I hope these tutors are easier to understand than the Indians manning tech help lines...
The link to that you provided me yesterday did not work, so I googled and found a couple of articles: here and here.
It looks as if most of these tutors charge $20 an hour or more, and since costs of living are much less in India, the tutors are making a relative fortune.
The article notes that there is an oversupply of people with math and science degrees in India, and a shortage of qualified math and science teachers in the U.S. (probably because we can make much more money in industry) so maybe it's a good match.
Tom Friedman states that accent reduction classes are common and often mandatory for those working on call lines. I expect that the accent problem will fade in time. These jobs are **highly** competitive and the motivation is there to reduce the typical Indian accent.
Tom Friedman reports that the tutors working for tutoring businesses make about $200 to $600 a month.
This is a brand new field. The independent Indian tutor may be charging $20 and hour or more because that is the going rate now in the U.S. I expect that the prices will drop considerably as this industry matures and more Indians catch on to the idea and more education companies are established.
One more comment.
It took my son about 3 months to finish the entire first grade Calvert homeschool correspondence course.
So....Why not extend on-line learning to elementary and middle schoolers? Many elementary students could zoom ahead in selected subjects on the weekend, summers, and vacations. Math would be especially adaptable to this format. Other subjects well suited might be social studies or foreign languages.
By the way, EducationNews.Org has an interesting interview concerning on-line education on today's blog. I will start a thread on it. Unfortunately, again, the on-line learning is confined to high school.
Anyone who thinks a webcam is a good idea is plumb crazy and naive to a stupid level
Indian teachers can surely advertise on Craig's list, and they too can later build their professional practices through word of mouth. It is for this reason that I expect the cost of tutoring to drop dramatically very soon in the comming years.
Also, given the technology of webcam, e-mail, fax, scanning, PC tablets, etc. I see no reason why children in the U.S. couldn't have their own personal and inexpensive elementary or middle school teacher. As I have previously posted, personal tutor is amazingly efficient. ( about 2 hours) a day.
Finally,...I think drawing the line at high school for on-line tutoring is an artificial boundary for age.
By the way, I enjoyed the links. Thank you.
That should be “niece” and “coming”.
Webcam in the bedroom? Unsupervised tutoring?
Well...These parents are so stupid that **indeed** their children should be institutionalized.
My children are homeschooled and I used a writing course with teachers called Write@Home. Very good program and the children progressed dramatically.
Between the programmed self instruction courses like Teaching text book and the dvd courses like the Teaching Company, school is going to look very different in the next ten years.
actually I think the REAL future of education is to have MORE online offerings. this will make it far more easy to have something closer to homeschooling.
Of course the need to to have it be more automated for the base courses so a human (see NEA incompetent) is not in the mix.
Oddly enough, it was in a Virtual Virginia class that my daughter encountered her first instance of true high school bullying. I guess the kid didn't realize that every interaction was monitored and he came out with some nasty, taunting, very very ugly stuff. The DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION IN VIRGINIA got involved because it was so bad and the kid was expelled from the program.
For students, it has many of the benefits of home schooling, including not being subjected to the pathologies of some of their fellow schoolmates
Look for online teaching to be the next big thing to be outsourced offshore
but if everyone works from their single family home in crime free suburbia then politicians can never get the funding for their inner city light rail white elephant pork.
Pennsylvania (among other states) has Virtual Charter Schools serving elementary thru high school. Take a look at K12.com
Do you think this would work best for visual learners, or do you think it would work just as well for children with other learning styles?
Clearly that would work better for Indians than Americans....it would be awfully hard to pay the rent, much less buy groceries, on that paycheck.
I can see the cost savings, but truly I hate outsourcing anything, including the call center jobs.
As long as I have a decent shirt on, I think I'd be okay...I wouldn't be planning on any full body shots. ;-)
In addition, assignments, reading, postings, etc are done on a fairly strict guideline and even being a week behind can cause a massive pile up. Some kids couldn't handle it and dropped out. If a student is not disciplined, then on-line classes will be a disaster.
To be honest, if a parent has to be on hand and at the kids elbow to get the work done, or to monitor what is going on, the parent has done a very poor job and the on-line is inappropriate. On the other hand, it's a great way to be portable with education - kids can use their laptops and just pretty much learn anywhere
Cheating is a big problem with OL classes. You simply never know who is submitting answers or completing the virtual exams.
I teach online for a college, as well as having live (traditional face-to-face) classes.
My OL class retention rates are MUCH LOWER than my traditional FTF class enrollments. That is because the OL students are required to come to campus in person, with an ID, to complete the Midterm & the Final. So, to prevent cheating, it is more of a “hybrid” class than 100% online.
Many of my OL students later admit that they thought an OL class would be “much easier,” because there is no time wasted traveling to campus, finding parking, sitting in class, etc. Plus — they can study asynchronously, meaning at their own pace & on their own schedule.
The reality is that many OL college students are working adults, with WAAAAY too much on their plates to begin with. They mistakenly think they can “fit” one more activity onto their busy plates, — a “fun & easy” online class, in addition to a full time job, kids, other classes, and other personal responsibilities.
They fail to realize that OL classes involve many hours of study a week, just as any regular class does.
In the end, the proof of the pudding is unfortunately in the eating: when my FTF midterm is given, the effect of all of their weeks of putting off the work that would have been successfully completed were they forced (required) to attend live class meetings (due to the social pressure and imposed-rigor of a regularized class schedule) is sadly revealed.
Perhaps the solution is to allow OL classes, but with a universal exit exam such as the SAT, taken in person at proctored testing centers, after completing virtual classes.
This would be a “check” on the online process, assuring that those completing the classes were 1) actually enrolled, 2) learned the material and 3) were the ones actually completing the assignments & tests, rather than having a parent, brother or sister, or paid graduate student do the work.
I always worry when OL faculty exclaim, “my enrollment is 80 students!” While mine is 20 students. I always ask, “Do you give any tests in-person? Is your class 100% virtual?” When they say it is “100% online,” I ask, “How do you know all of these students are the ones actually taking the tests, etc.?” They always respond with something ENTIRELY lame, such as “Oh, we go on th “Trust” system!” Or, “Oh, the exams are TIMED [with narrow windows allowed for completing the work]!” — as though this arrangement prevents collusion. These instructors are deluded if they think any of these practices “prevents” cheating. A college degree is worth 100,000’s of dollars in future income streams. As gate keepers, we need to monitor the process of allocating course credit & degrees much more carefully, whether in an OL setting or a traditional classroom.
4L, Los Angeles
See! Just as I thought! Government schools really are prisons to reform the incorrigible!
Good points! And, practical suggestions for accountability.
Based on watching my daughter and her friends on the OnLine classes - I do not think they should replace the brick/mortar school, but are a supplement - a very, very valuable supplement, and would be a very poor replacement.
My experience from the online courses I've taken is that students would need to be highly motivated and self-directed to be successful in such classes.
I see online education as a valuable addition to traditional schooling, but I think it is a long way from replacing it.
what about ex-pats living in lower expense countries?
Imagine being an american teacher being able to live like a king in a country with a low living expense.
Imagine a school district housing teachers abroad in low expense countries to match the “low salary” of teachers.
I think computer training is good for the base material that has to be memorized. Essentially glorified flash cards.
What I see with the move to virtual schools is a validation to home schooling. Imagine if a public school has to compete with virtual schools ACROSS THE COUNTRY.
Thus parents could reject PC nonsense history classes and substitute a vitual correct history class from somewhere else.
That's a good point. In our school, so far it has mainly been used for high-achieving students to take courses that aren't offered at our school because there is no one available to teach them, or not enough demand.
Thanks for all the great information.
Anybody who thinks OL classes of any sort are going to be a breeze is sadly mistaken! If actually done, they are always more work and take more time. I really think the only reason to take OL classes is that the student actually wants to and is suited to learning in that way. All the “convenience” rationales, as you pointed out, really don’t wash in reality because OL courses are not something one simply fits in around gobs of other stuff.
As for cheating, I’m sure you’d agree that it occurs in FTF classes as well. However, I totally agree that using a testing center with a proctor is the way to go. There are OL classes where Kinko’s is set up to provide ID verification and proctors; it worked well in the few instances I observed it. With new ID methods (fingerprint etc.) and verification (webcams etc.), the cheating problem can be substantially overcome for those willing to subject themselves to those measures.
The real point, though, as I see it, is that the last person who should sign up for an OL class is someone who is inclined to cheat in the first place. IOW, OL classes work only for the truly motivated who want to learn, not just check a block or get by. So the process of integrating OL classes into education should actively weed out those who don’t meet that criteria.
For all the reasons you mentioned, schools (at whatever level) have a vested interest in making OL coursework as legitimate as FTF work. The degree has to mean something.
Personally, I think that while we have gone through a period in which more and more kids go to college, and there is a more and more pervasive conclusion that all kids must/should go to college, in the future, high school grads will be open to many different educational paths and employers will be more accepting of an education that we presently consider less than traditional.
There are so many ways to learn now. The internet makes knowledge available that no library in the history of education can rival. Anyone who truly wants to learn a particular subject, and who has the cognitive ability to do so, now has the means to accomplish that. That fact is going to rock the world over time. Bill Gates dropping out of college to concentrate on building computers in his garage won’t be such an isolated phenomenon.
Thank you so much for all your responses.
Because of privacy issues, we can’t do a retina scan or take a finger print of our students, over the internet, to roughly verify they are the actual respondents on quizzes and so forth.
I think that outsourcing exam assessment is the way to go — contracting with Sylvan or Kaplan
http://www.kaplan.com/kaplaninternational.htm
allowing them to process test taking in a proctored environment for a small fee for OL institutions, whether in Japan or Billings Montana (these being hypothetical locations, of student OR school)!
Thanks again,
4L
For the child who needs institutionalization, yes, I absolutely agree with you. On-line courses are a valuable addition.
For the academically successful homeschooled child, I think on-line teaching offers almost unlimited opportunities.
Hopefully we will soon see inexpensive, foreign, “out-sourced” teachers for full elementary, middle, and high school programs. I know that I would have found this very convenient. Being one of the pioneers in homeschooling, I did have quite a few false starts when it came to teaching some subjects.
If I were an Indian teacher, I would set up a paypal account. Advertise on Craig's List, and then build my professional education professional practice through the word of mouth of satisfied customers.
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