School policies for online classes
Astoria School District is in the beginning stages of adding online courses to our curriculum. As an administrative team we have had numerous discussions concerning online policies for students and staff. We know that there are many school districts throughout the state that have established online programs that must have policies in place and might be willing to share what they are doing. Rather than having to reinvent the verbage that goes with what we trying to say, we would greatly appreciate any help or suggestions that we can get from other districts. Is there a statewide acceptable use policy or is this something that needs to be discussed?
EdWeek Chat on Friday, Sept. 26
Hello all,
Thought some of you might be interested in the live chat about Online Teaching and Learning to be held Friday, Sept. 26 at 9 a.m.:
http://www.edweek-chat.org/
Virginia Petitt
Oregon Online/Southern Oregon ESD
re: School policies for online classes
Scott,
Actually, policies for online classes are not too different from those for face-to-face ones. Your school probably already has an acceptable use policy/ computer services/network services agreement and language on plagiarism.
Some of the questions are practical; some philosophical. How many online courses can students take at one time, where do they do their work, and how do you do assessments? Do students work on campus or at home? Do you have tests proctored? Can assessments be done in other ways? To what extent should project-based learning be used? Community-based learning? Service-based learning? Who decides how many online classes students can take and under what conditions? Should the school provide a computer/ Printer/Connectivity/Tech support? What happens if a child is not doing his/her work? How do you enforce this? What CMS will you use? Where will content come from? And, perhaps most importantly, who should teach online and how should you prepare them?
After ten years of experience with online learning for both K-12 and teacher professional development, I can tell you what has worked for the several organizations with whom I have worked, but I also know there is a great deal of difference among online learning projects at different schools/districts based on district philosophies, cultures, purpose--and money. I'm using the "contact" button in your profile to send you an email. If you reply, I'll be happy to send attachments of the documents we use.
Lots of districts are interested in these topics--let's keep the conversation going!
Virginia Petitt, Oregon Online
Southern Oregon ESD
Sharing success stories
Virginia you are right on target with the types of questions that we are trying to address. While each school district is going to vary depending on the resources or people that they can devote to this project, the building of a school within a school is so new to us that we want to try to get it right from the beginning. We really could use some help with what works for other districts.
Scott Holmstedt Technology Director Astoria School District sholmstedt@astoria.k12.or.us