University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository
Graduate Studies Legacy Theses
2001 Moved by the tides of technology: celebration and lamentation for pedagogy in virtual grade school
MacLeod, Kevin John
MacLeod, K. J. (2001). Moved by the tides of technology: celebration and lamentation for pedagogy in virtual grade school (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/21730 http://hdl.handle.net/1880/41015 doctoral thesis
University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca
The author of this thesis has granted the University of Calgary a non-exclusive license to reproduce and distribute copies of this thesis to users of the University of Calgary Archives.
Copyright remains with the author.
Theses and dissertations available in the University of Calgary Institutional Repository are solely for the purpose of private study and research. They may not be copied or reproduced, except as permitted by copyright laws, without written authority of the copyright owner. Any commercial use or publication is strictly prohibited.
The original Partial Copyright License attesting to these terms and signed by the author of this thesis may be found in the original print version of the thesis, held by the University of Calgary Archives.
The thesis approval page signed by the examining committee may also be found in the original print version of the thesis held in the University of Calgary Archives.
Please contact the University of Calgary Archives for further information, E-mail: [email protected] Telephone: (403) 220-7271 Website: http://www.ucalgary.ca/archives/ UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
Moved by the Tides of Technology:
Celebration and Lamentation for Pedagogy in Virtual Grade School.
by
Kevin John MacLeod
A DISSERTATION
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
GRADUATE DIVISION OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
CALGARY, ALBERTA
JULY, 2001
© Kevin John MacLeod 2001 Abstract
Since the inception of virtual schooling in Alberta during the 1993 - 1994 school year, virtual grade schools have drawn increasing numbers of students to their enrolments each successive year. The current hermeneutic phenomenological study inquires into the nature of the relationship between the emergent phenomenon of virtual grade schools and those people who participate in them. The study is organized around the extended metaphor of technology being compared to the manner of an ocean. The topic is addressed by calling upon the experiences of the writer as a starting point, tracing etymological sources of terminology, close observation, consulting research literature and other related sources of information, and obtaining experiential descriptions from others.
A group of 51 people comprised of students, parents, teachers, and administrators involved in virtual grade schooling were interviewed. The study outlines developmental turns of virtual grade schools, along with general patterns of student enrolment. In addition, three general themes emerged from the study that describe the nature of the relationship between virtual schools and participants. These themes involve identity, time/space, and the ongoing tension between "what is" compared to "what could be."
This research suggests that as virtual grade schools have evolved, teachers and administrators have altered the use of pedagogy that was originally designed for traditional classroom settings. Thus, the phenomenon of virtual grade schools has evoked both lamentation for what was once considered "schooling", as well as celebration for the possibilities of what schooling could be. Past and present formulations of pedagogy and technology in virtual schooling are discussed, and efforts are made toward establishing a pedagogical identity for virtual grade schooling.
iii Acknowledgements
I will take this opportunity to formally acknowledge the many people who provided me with guidance and support, as I made my way through the various components of the doctoral program at the University of Calgary.
Thank you to a host of individuals who were involved in the early beginnings of my graduate program. I am grateful to a wide range of people from university professors to office support staff for their valuable advice during my course work, proposal writing, and candidacy examinations.
To my supervisory committee, I thank each of you for your individual expertise.
Your combined talents made my committee both unique and beneficial. Thank you to the following professors: To Dr. David Jardine for his creativity and imagination, to Dr. Bill
Hunter for his provision of opportunity and technical expertise, and to Dr. Jim Paul for his direction and encouragement. In addition, I thank Dr. Dianne Tapp and Dr. Susan E.
Gibson for acting as external examiners during my oral examination. Your thoughtful questions added something special to my experience of the dissertation oral examination.
I am indebted to my research participants. To those students, parents, teachers, and administrators who took time away from the busy world of online grade schooling to take part in this study, I sincerely am appreciative for your participation.
To my family, friends and especially to my wife, Barbara, I thank you for believing in me and in my own unique combination of talents. Barb, your support and encouragement were invaluable over the years.
iv TABLE OF CONTENTS
Approval Page ii Abstract iii Acknowledgements vi Table of Contents v List of Tables viii List of Figures ix
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER TWO: ATTENDING TO THE QUESTION 5 Personal Experiences as a Starting Point 6 Phenomenological Reduction 8 Tracing Etymological Sources of Terminology 9 Close Observation 9 Consulting Sources of Information 9 Obtaining Experiential Descriptions from Others 10 Virtual School Population 10 Research Participants 12 Portraits of Participating Schools 13 Virtual Grade School 1 14 Virtual Grade School 2 15 Virtual Grade School 3 16 Virtual Grade School 4 18 Interviews 20 Rounds of Email Questions 21 Chat Room Interviews 22 Consulting Phenomenological Literature 25 Chapter Summary 25 Reflection 26
CHAPTER THREE: DESCRIPTIONS OF VIRTUAL SCHOOLING .... 28 Developmental Turns of Virtual Grade Schooling in Alberta 28 Evocative Turn: Virtuality 28 Convocative Turn: Appeal 34 Invocative Turn: Promotion 38 Provocative Turn: Answerability 43 Revocative Turn: Presence 45 Chapter Summary 47 Reflection 48
V CHAPTER FOUR: DESCRIPTIONS OF VIRTUAL STUDENTS 49 Inhabitants of Grade School Cyberspaces 50 First Wave. Students Virtually at School 54 Second Wave: Movement Toward Virtual Schools 55 Third Wave: Online Schooling as Viable Alternative 62 Chapter Summary 64 Reflection 65
CHAPTER FIVE VIRTUAL PEDAGOGY AND THE LIFEWORLD 67 Lifeworld 67 Virtual Pedagogy in the Lifeworld of Students 68 Lived Space 69 Physical Space 70 Cyberspace 71 Lived Body 74 Self Without Body 76 Invisible Communities 79 Lived Time 81 Past 81 Present 84 Future 88 Lived Other 89 Anonymity 90 Pseudonymity 92 Accountability 94 Chapter Summary 95 Reflection 97
CHAPTER SIX: CELEBRATION AND LAMENTATION 99 Implications of Grade School Cyberspaces 99 Ethical Significance 99 Society in General 102 Parents 105 Students 107 Teachers 109 Administrators and Regulatory Agencies 115 Future of Virtual Grade Schooling 117 Chapter Summary 120 Reflection 120
vi CHAPTER SEVEN: TOWARD A PEDAGOGICAL IDENTITY 121 Initial Iteration 122 Planning Instruction 124 Instructional Delivery 126 Learning Assessments 128 Pedagogical Thought 130 Recent Reiterations 130 Planning Instruction 132 Instructional Delivery 134 Learning Assessments 135 Pedagogical Thought 137 Future Cycles 138 Chapter Summary 142 Reflection 143
CHAPTER EIGHT: CONCLUSION 144
REFERENCES 148
APPENDIX A: Initial Information Supplied to Participants 154
APPENDIX B: Contacts with Participants 163
APPENDIX C: First Round Interview Questions (Email) 164
APPENDIX D: Second Round Interview Questions (Email) 172
APPENDIX E: Third Round Interview Questions (Chat Room) 180
vii List of Tables
Table 1: Student Enrolments for Virtual Grade School 1 15
Table 2: Student Enrolments for Virtual Grade School 2 16
Table 3: Student Enrolments for Virtual Grade School 3 18
Table 4: Student Enrolments for Virtual Grade School 4 20
viii List of Figures
Figure 1: Student Population Patterns in Virtual Grade School 54
ix 1
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Waiting outside my supervisor's office, I was within earshot of a class that was going on nearby. The classroom door was open, while pre-service teachers in mid-preparation were taking turns presenting to a group of peers. One of the presenters addressed the topic of ethics in teaching and it was delivered in several different sections. The student would present some material, add several scenarios for application and discussion, and then would sum up by saying, "And for more information, visit these web sites". He made reference to web sites several times during the presentation, especially at the end of each section. The audience was always satisfied with this type of closure, as silence would ensue before the next topic was addressed. The silence suggested that the web has evolved to be regarded by its users as not only a resource and a storehouse of information for retrieval at some indeterminate time in the future, but also as a bit of an awe-inspiring mystery. The World Wide Web is as vast as an ocean and its influence flows outward like the tides. I began to think of how the web has so thoroughly pervaded North American society within such a short time frame and even the teachers preparing in that room had been heavily influenced by this technology. The World Wide Web moved those beginning teachers to action, then to silence and, quite likely, back to action. I realized that I, too, had been moved by all of this. (Journal entry, March 7, 2001)
A technological innovation can move people to take action because of the promise that it appears to hold. The implied promise, or benefit, of an innovation may be enough
of a perceived gain for individuals to make an attempt at implementing that particular technology. An innovation may show itself in an advertisement or newspaper article
designed to inform the general public. Once observed, the innovation makes its way into
peoples' conversations and becomes even more widely dispersed. The benefits of
adopting a particular technology do not generally occur without some type of
corresponding cost There are many instances of adopting technological innovations in
our society, at present, and one in particular that relates to education is the advent of virtual grade schools. 2
Virtual grade schools have been officially defined as "a structured learning environment in which students access educational programs electronically" (Alberta
Learning1, 1999a, p. 79). Students attending virtual grade schools receive instruction by way of various methods involving computer-mediated communication2. Teachers transmit lesson content to their students in a variety of ways including email, fax, and chat room. Students complete the requisite homework and send assignments back to their teachers using the same method of computer-mediated communication. While opportunities for teachers and students to meet on a face to face basis are certainly present within virtual school environments, these events are the exception. In recent years, the virtual grade school movement has been very active in North America (Alberta
Education, 1999; Booth-Reed, 1999; Branigan, 2000; Schofield, 1999; Zak, 2000a; Zak,
2000b). Despite the rapid appearance and enthusiastic adoption of virtual grade schools as a technological innovation in education, there have been difficulties with a smooth implementation. One of the greatest challenges encountered by the early efforts of the virtual grade school movement relates to the altering of pedagogy, which was developed for traditional classrooms. Pioneer teachers in virtual grade schools have had to adapt traditional classroom pedagogy in order to fit virtual environments. These early pedagogical trials in virtual schools have been celebrated by advocates (Booth-Reed,
1 The Ministry of Education in Alberta was known as Alberta Education until a government reorganization in May 1999 when Alberta Education amalgamated with Alberta Advanced Education and Career Development. After May 1999, the Ministry of Education in Alberta became officially known us Alberta Learning. This text will refer to both of these names, depending upon the dates of the references. : "Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is the name given to a large set of functions in which computers are used to support human communication. CMC can be defined narrowly or broadly, depending on how one defines human communication. At its narrowest, CMC refers to computer applications for direct human-to-human communication. This includes electronic mail, group conferencing systems, and interactive chat' systems. At its broadest, CMC can encompass virtually all computer uses. The broad interpretation derives from the recognition that computer systems were developed to receive data from humans (or from the environment in a way that mimics or extends human senses) and eventually return some form of that data to humans for some human purpose" (Santoro, 1998, p. 33). 3
1999; Branigan, 2000; Hanna, 2001; Harrington, 1998; Haughey & Muirhead, 1999; Lau,
1998; Marshall, 1998) and lamented by opponents (Alberta Teachers' Association, 1999;
Booi, 2001, Cavanagh, 2000; Flower, 1999). Still, the overwhelming presence of technology in education remains steadfast as evidenced by the appearance of multiple virtual grade schools in Alberta.
As a teacher accustomed to making use of technology in the classroom, I was drawn towards virtual school due to the technological promise and seemingly unlimited educational opportunities it appeared to possess. So many aspects of virtual school were alluring to me, especially the use of computer-mediated communication technologies to deliver instruction. I was moved to become a virtual school teacher with the expectation that I would make use of existing technologies to enhance the instruction and learning of my students. I anticipated merging communication technologies with the tenets of instructional development in order to yield an instructional hybrid that would be well suited for my virtual grade school students. This extensive, almost exclusive, use of technology in virtual school was something new to me as a high school teacher accustomed to traditional classroom environments.
As I prepared to teach high school at the very beginning of that particular school year, I noted how similar it was compared to any other year in my teaching career. I met with the principal and received my teaching schedule, along with several class lists. On my way to the storage room to collect textbooks, I stopped to regard the lists of names. As I shuffled through the pages, I remember thinking to myself, "So many names ... so many students." Remembering names and faces, I recalled, became easier with the repetition that daily attendance checks would bring. I was reassured with the thought of becoming acquainted with each student on the first day of classes. "But wait a minute," I thought. "This is virtual grade school and I won't see my students, so how will I get to know them?" At that moment I realized I had reached the end of my experience as a classroom teacher in traditional settings and had crossed the threshold to begin my journey as a virtual school teacher. An uneasiness moved 4
over me and I began to wonder, "Who are these students on my class lists, where are they, and what had brought them to virtual school?" (Journal entry, August 27, 1998)
As a result of my awareness of how I had chosen to alter my teaching practice by becoming a virtual school teacher, I resolved to investigate these issues further and to thereby inform my teaching practice.
The purpose of this dissertation is to inquire into the nature of the relationship between virtual grade schools and the people who participate in these schools. This text brings the experiences of students, parents, teachers, and administrators involved in virtual grade school into presence in order to allow the reader to recognize the experiential possibilities of life in education. In order to invite the reader into a conversation that addresses the topic, this dissertation is structured like a series of concentric circles that move and spiral around each other in order to present various cycles of meaning. The first sets of circles address an introduction to the study and how this dissertation attends to the question of research. Next, the evolution of virtual grade schooling in Alberta is explored. Beyond this dwells another cycle that offers descriptions of the virtual student population. The next circle takes the reader through an exploration of virtual students' worlds of immediate lived experience. The next larger circle entertains a discussion of the implications and future of virtual grade schooling
The outermost circle presents a beginning effort towards establishing a pedagogical identity for virtual grade schools. 5
CHAPTER TWO: ATTENDING TO THE QUESTION
"All understanding has a circular structure .... The more movement in this circle, the larger the circle grows, embracing the expanding contexts that throw more and more light upon the parts" (Gallagher, 1992, pp. 58-59).
Inquiring into the nature of the relationship between virtual grade schools and the people directly involved with these schools is a question of research that deserved to be approached in a unique manner. For the purpose of this dissertation, I adopted an approach of inquiry that was well suited to the topic of interest. My intention was to address this project as a teaching practitioner seeking the "phenomenology of practice" as a starting point and as an orientation for the entire project. I have been a virtual school teacher since August 1998 and have experienced many of the challenging events that have helped to shape virtual grade schooling in Alberta.
The approach that most appropriately suited the topic was van Manen's (1997)
"Researching Lived Experience" or hermeneutic phenomenological human science.
Phenomenology offers "accounts of experienced space, time, body, and human relations as we live them" (van Manen, 1997, p. 184) and hermeneutics is the theory and practice of interpretation. Hermeneutic phenomenological human science offers descriptions of lived experiences in order to "let things speak for themselves" (van Manen, 1997, p. 180) and offers interpretations "because it claims that there are no such things as uninterpreted phenomena" (van Manen, 1997, p. 180). The purpose for this orientation to research is of particular value to me as a teacher because "the end of human science research for educators is a critical pedagogical competence: knowing how to act tactfully in pedagogic situation on the basis of a carefully edified thoughtfulness" (van Manen, 1997, 6 p. 8). Phenomenological research projects require, "that we not simply raise a question and then possibly soon drop it again, but rather that we 'live' this question, that we
'become' this question" (van Manen, 1997, p. 43) Further, "a good phenomenological description is collected by lived experience and recollects lived experience - is validated by lived experience and it validates lived experience. This is sometimes termed the
'validating circle of inquiry'" (van Manen, 1997, p. 27). The origin of my interest in attending to the question of research by calling upon hermeneutic phenomenological human science is, as van Manen (1997) appropriately described, "to become a participating member of the tradition" (p. 27).
I include the following elements of the research approach that show themselves throughout this dissertation in a cyclical and spiralling fashion: using the personal experiences of the writer as a starting point, tracing etymological sources of terminology, close observation, consulting research literature and other related sources of information, and obtaining experiential descriptions from others. In this chapter, I have outlined the various parts of my chosen research approach. The text of this dissertation may work at various of these aspects "intermittently or simultaneously" (van Manen, 1997, p. 34).
Personal Experiences as a Starting Point
I began this dissertation research by using my experiences as a teacher with a virtual grade school as a starting point. Van Manen (1997) noted,
It is to the extent that my experiences could be our experiences that the phenomenologist wants to be reflectively aware of certain experiential meanings. To be aware of the structure of one's own experience of a phenomenon may provide the researcher with clues for orienting oneself to the phenomenon and thus to all the other stages of phenomenological research. In actual phenomenological descriptions one often notices that the author uses the T form or the 'we' form. This is done not only to enhance the evocative value of a truth experience expressed in this way, 7
but also to show that the author recognizes both that one's own experiences are the possible experiences of others and also that the experiences of others are the possible experiences of oneself. Phenomenology always addresses any phenomenon as a possible human experience. It is in this sense that phenomenological descriptions have a universal (intersubjective) character, (pp. 57-58)
Thus, I offer another description of my experiences as a teacher encountering my students
on the first day of virtual school.
I had spent many hours preparing for that first day of classes. I had a course outline and a daily lesson for each class. Not only that, I had made a list of announcements to send to my homeroom students. Seems that the only repetition that I was going to get with learning the students' names, would be when they sent their daily attendance checks to me and I crossed their names off the daily list. Hum. But I had to send the daily announcements first, so the students would know that I was their homeroom teacher. The materials were all ready to send to students, but I had to create an address book for each class. Each student already had an email address that was issued by the school, so all I had to do was start a new address book and add their email addresses. Yeah, easy enough! Some of the students' names on my class lists were not of the same spelling as their email addresses. After a bit of detective work, I finally had all of my students' email addresses in separate address books and was ready to go! My first email contact with students was about to happen. I summoned a new email message, typed in the class name and hit return. In the subject line I typed, "Good morning!" and then composed a short message. Next, I attached the course outline and first lesson for that class. I clicked the SEND button and off it went. Time seemed to stand still as the message prepared to send and then it disappeared. The message had gone out from my computer and was on its way to the students in that class. I thought about how clicking SEND was similar to the clank of the device on a pay table that sends the billiard balls adrift down a chute, only to be sorted when they pool at the end. (Journal entry, September 2, 1998)
I will offer reflections and personal anecdotes throughout this study. In addition, many of the accounts given by other virtual school teachers who participated in the study 8 also reflect my own experiences as a virtual school teacher. Perhaps my experiences will be recognizable to other virtual teachers as well.
Phenomenological Reduction
In order to attend to the question of research and "to come to an understanding of the essential structure of something we need to reflect on it by practicing a certain reduction" (van Manen, 1997, p. 185). Reduction is a phenomenological device that allows us to awaken a "profound sense of wonder and amazement at the mysteriousness of the belief in the world" (van Manen, 1997, p. 185). Reduction is also known as
"bracketing" Husserl (1970) used the term bracketing to describe how one must embrace a phenomenon and then place one's own knowledge of the phenomenon outside the phenomenon. Further, in the phenomenological reduction "one needs to strip away the theories or scientific conceptions and thematizations which overlay the phenomenon one wishes to study, and which prevents one from seeing the phenomenon in a non- abstracting manner" (van Manen, 1997, p. 185).
By using the phenomenological reduction in this study, I aim to evoke experiences of lived meaning or concreteness in how I have experienced the question of research. I will inquire into the nature of the relationship between virtual grade schools and the people involved in these schools, as this relationship relates to a possible human experience in education. My ability to make use of the phenomenological reduction will allow me to "see" the extent of this relationship, as the relationship shows various aspects of itself over the course of this inquiry. 9
Tracing Etymological Sources of Terminology
Words and phrases that are presently employed to convey meaning in text, interview, or conversation came to our language with rich and meaningful backgrounds.
Words "that once could reverberate with lived meaning and reveal a living world now have become lame, limp, mute, emptied, and forgetful of their past power" (van Manen,
1997, p. 58). Tracing the etymological sources of terminology, "may sometimes put us in touch with an original form of life where the terms still had living ties to the lived experiences from which they originally sprang" (van Manen, 1997, p. 58). Within the text of this study, I will attempt to trace the etymological sources of some of the commonplace terminology that has been used to describe various aspects of technology related to virtual grade schools.
Close Observation
Another way to collect experiential material for this study was close observation of the phenomenon in order to generate anecdotes. In addition to working alone as a teacher in remote settings, I also had the opportunity to closely observe a number of students and teachers involved with virtual grade school during the writing of this dissertation. Anecdotes representing this close observation have been added to this text.
Consulting Sources of Information
Other sources of information that were helpful to me as I attended to the question of research included the following: various types of emerging technologies on the market, computer advertisements, and descriptions of virtual grade schooling from newspaper and magazine articles. In addition, demographic data from participating virtual schools and from Alberta Learning provided numerical descriptions of virtual schools and virtual students.
Obtaining Experiential Descriptions from Others
Obtaining experiential descriptions from others is a most valuable form of descriptive material. Phenomenological research "'borrows' other people's experiences and their reflections on their experiences in order to better be able to come to an understanding of the deeper meaning or significance of an aspect of human experience in the context of the whole of human experience" (van Manen, 1997, p. 62). In the sections that follow, I will outline the virtual school population and research participants, then render portraits of participating schools.
Virtual School Population
At the time of planning this study, there were growing numbers of virtual schools and virtual programs in existence throughout Alberta. In a paper entitled On-line
Learning: Best practices for Alberta School Jurisdictions, the authors noted how, "In
June, 1998, over twenty on-line or virtual programs were operating in Alberta, and others were planning to begin operation in September, as part of a specific school or school jurisdiction" (Alberta Education, 1999, p. 3). The question of "which schools should be contacted in order to gather interview data?" emerged. In conversations with my supervisor, we arrived at the idea of contacting those virtual schools that had been in existence for the longest periods of time. I agreed that a school would be more likely to participate in this study if the survival orientation that sometimes accompanies starting a new school had passed. It was decided that virtual schools operating successfully for three years, and just starting the fourth year of operation, would be identified. I obtained 11
an electronic copy of Alberta Education's On-line Learning paper. The researchers
included an appendix containing a list of nineteen virtual schools, or online programs, in
Alberta. I highlighted the virtual school programs that had been in existence for three
years or longer as of June 30, 1999. My initial scan of the virtual school population in
Alberta yielded eight potential schools for the current study and I included this list in my
ethics proposal.
After receiving ethics approval, I mailed an information package to each of the
superintendents of the selected school districts, containing a letter of introduction to the
study along with sample consent forms. These letters of introduction written for the
superintendents contained the first draft of my research protocol. In each instance, the
superintendent directed the information package to a particular contact person within the
district. I was then directed to contact these designated individuals regarding
participation in the study. I outlined how the virtual school principal would make a general announcement to students, parents, teachers, and administrators informing them
of the study. Interested participants were requested to access a particular web site and to follow the instructions listed on the site (see Appendix A). Out of the eight oldest virtual grade schools initially identified and invited to participate in the study, four agreed to participate.
Once participants visited the web site, they were to read the first three sections addressing the topics of introduction, research approach, and participant selection. Next,
student, parent, teacher, and administrator participants were requested to access the particular link that applied to them. In the next step of the research protocol, I asked all research participants to create an email message that would inform me of their interest in the project. The subject line of the message was to read, "Grade School Cyberspaces
Study." The content of the email message was to contain some required personal information supplied according to the requirements listed for each group of participants.
For example, I requested that student participants include the following information in the format of a template: Name of Participant, Name of Participating School, Grade,
Number of Years Attending Online/Virtual School, Mailing Address (in order to send letters of information and consent forms), Email Address, and Alternate Email Address
(if applicable).
Participants copied a template from the web site, pasted it within the body of an email message, provided the necessary details, and then sent the message. Once I received an email message from a participant, I added the name and email address to an email address book. Upon receipt of this intent to participate, I mailed participants copies of consent forms and letters of intent along with self addressed and stamped envelopes.
Each participant submitted the consent form, accompanied by the required signatures, before embarking upon their involvement in the study.
Research Participants
For this inquiry, I asked a purposeful sampling of student and adult participants from four virtual schools to offer their personal descriptions of their experiences in virtual schools. Groups of students, parents, teachers, and administrators participated in the study Eligible student participants were junior or senior high school students, enrolled full-time in a virtual school program in Alberta Parents, teachers, and administrators were selected on the basis of their interest in the study. 13
Originally, I projected the number of participants to include six students, four parents, two teachers, and two administrators per school. The numbers of participants that arrived were smaller than the numbers originally projected. In the end, all participants that demonstrated interest in the study were included. In total, 51 people were involved in the study. However, 3 administrators, 8 teachers, 12 students, and 9 parents completed the research interview series (see Appendix C). There were 19 other participants who expressed interest early in the study and then finished only some of the interviews. Those participants who "finished early" did, however, contribute to the interview collection process by providing useful information.
To ensure anonymity, each student and adult participant was assigned a pseudonym. These naming conventions were randomly assigned to the participants at the outset of the study and were used to identify all email interviews, chat room transcripts, and other information that was supplied.
Portraits of Participating Schools
The oldest online grade schools in Alberta have each grown to become varied with respect to how computer mediated communication technologies are employed and administered in the education of students. However, these schools do share several common characteristics, especially during the formative years of creation. These similar features became apparent in each of the four schools that participated in this study. For example, each of the online grade schools was started by a few innovative people within their respective school districts, each school made use of the existing technologies in order to teach virtually, and each school drew dramatic increases in student enrolment numbers during early years of operation. The following sections outline the four virtual 14 grade schools with which the student, parent, teacher, and administrator participants were
associated.
Virtual Grade School 1
During an online chat interview with Sara, an administrator, I asked how it was that Virtual Grade School 1 began. She replied,
Our superintendent, along with a trustee ... the trustee actually envisioned virtual school years ago ... As a superintendent/teacher in a small rural community at that time, the technology didn't exist to make it happen ... In our division, we have a large and well respected homeschooling^ program. Ours was a division that fought for the right for parents to homeschool. When our virtual school was conceived it was really our current superintendent and this trustee seeing the possibilities that could be offered to the homeschool population which as it grew, was expressing the need for some connection to Alberta Education and the diploma process. That's it in a nutshell! (Third round chat room interview, March 1, 2000)
Virtual Grade School 1 started "Tight tech', with fax machines and distance education materials. Not exactly a virtual school as we know our program today ..."
(Sara, administrator. Virtual Grade School 1). This school experienced growth of approximately 350% in its student population during the first three years of operation.
The data in the table below outlines the student population numbers4 in the first five years of operation.
3 Homeschooling or Home Education refers to "that portion of an education program delivered by a parent to a student" in accordance with the Home Education Regulation section of the School Act (Alberta Learning. 1999b. p. 1). A student enrolled in a home education program is registered with a school district or school division that provides supervision. 1 For the purpose of this study, I contacted an official from Alberta Learning in order to obtain student enrolment figures for virtual schools. During the conversation I was informed that "Exact numbers are difficult to ascertain because of conflicting definitions of what constitutes an online student, as students are classified according to the dollars that support their learning" (personal communication. September 27, 1999). Further, the government official suggested that I should contact individual schools directly in order to obtain more accurate information regarding student enrolments. 15
Table l5
Student Enrolments for Virtual Grade School 1
School Year Enrolment Grades
1996- 1997 105 7 to 12
1997- 1998 266 5 to 12
1998- 1999 436 5 to 12
1999-2000 364 5 to 12
2000-2001 432 5 to 12
Virtual Grade School 2
Virtual Grade School 2 began in a shared office space with another school, a physical or traditional school. Many things were shared between schools during the first year of operation, including the principalship. Donna, an administrator with Virtual
Grade School 2, described the beginning of her virtual school as follows:
Donna: In the first year, the principalship was shared with the principal of the brick and mortar school in which we have physical office space. That principal ascended the ladder in our District and the Board decided that the Virtual school and the Home Schooling Program (two separate schools) should have its own principal and identity. I believe the Board was waiting to see if the virtual school was just a shot-in-the-dark or was going to stay around.
KM: Donna, more about the shot in the dark. Was the virtual school an experiment back then?
Donna: No it wasn't an experiment. I meant the Board was waiting to see if the guidelines set out by Alberta Education were set in stone and whether our virtual school would pass muster. We were heavily
5 The data presented in Table 1 were obtained from the administrators of Virtual Grade School 1. 16
monitored by Alberta Education during that first year - three times if memory serves. Each monitoring was passed with flying colors and we've never looked back !!!!! (Third round chat room interview, March 3, 2000)
Virtual Grade School 2 began its first year of operation combining facsimile machines and Canada Post mail to send and receive lessons from students, followed by computers with Internet connections. In the first four years of operation, Virtual Grade
School 2 experienced growth in student population, according to the data provided below.
Table 26
Student Enrolments for Virtual Grade School 2
School Year Enrolment7 Grades
1996- 1997 1570 1 to 12
1997- 1998 1809 1 to 12
1998- 1999 1827 1 to 12
1999-2000 1946 1 to 12
2000-2001 1924 1 to 12
Virtual Grade School 3
The origin of Virtual Grade School 3 can be traced to the work of a committee, of five people working from one school. During the 1994-1995 school year, Virtual Grade
6 The data presented in Table 2 were obtained from the administrators of Virtual Grade School 2. 7 These enrolment figures do not separate students who are enrolled in a virtual program from students taking a blended program. In a blended program, aspects of home schooling and virtual schooling were combined. In a blended program, at least half of the program was to be delivered by a school. 17
School 3 started a pilot project involving 76 students in grades 4 to 9. Parents provided the computers for their children during the pilot year. Virtual Grade School 3 made use of email8 and chat9 capabilities within the First Class™ client10 software.
Students accessed the First Class™ server by dialing in through the modem bank from home or from another remote location within direct dialing distance. They communicated with their teachers and received lessons as email attachments. Teachers designed lessons for students that provided three or four months of learning activities.
Students sent their completed assignments back to their teachers as email attachments.
Five years after its inception, during the 1999-2000 school year, the population enrolled in grades 1 to 12 attending Virtual Grade School 3 had grown to over 500 students.
"Short for electronic mail, the transmission of messages over communications networks. The messages can be notes entered from the keyboard or electronic files stored on disk. Most mainframes, minicomputers, and computer networks have an e-mail system. Some electronic-mail systems are confined to a single computer system or network, but others have gateways to other computer systems, enabling users to send electronic mail anywhere in the world. Companies that are fully computerized make extensive use of e- mail because it is fast, flexible, and reliable" (Internet.com Corporation, 2000, http://webopedia.intemet.eom/TERM/e/e_mail.html) 9 "Real-time communication between two users via computer. Once a chat has been initiated, either user can enter text by typing on the keyboard and the entered text will appear on the other user's monitor Most networks and online services offer a chat feature" (Internet.com Corporation, 2000, http://weborjeu^a.intemet.com/TERM7c/chat.html). 10 "A network architecture in which each computer or process on the network is either a client or a server. Servers are powerful computers or processes dedicated to managing disk drives (file servers), printers (print servers), or network traffic (network servers ). Clients are PCs or workstations on which users run applications. Clients rely on servers for resources, such as files, devices, and even processing power" (Intemet.com Corporation. 2000, http://www.webopedia.eom/ITiRM/c/client_server_architecture.html). 18
Table 311
Student Enrolments for Virtual Grade School 3
School Year Enrolment Grades
1994- 1995 76 4 to 9
1995 - 1996 75 4 to 9
1996- 1997 67 4 to 9
1997- 1998 121 4 to 12
1998- 1999 325 1 to 12
1999-2000 650 1 to 12
2000-2001 564 1 to 12
Virtual Grade School 4
Virtual Grade School 4 began as a pilot project during the 1993-1994 school year with a group of 25 grade 7, 8, and 9 students. In the next year, the virtual program was
offered within a shared facility with another school in its district. In this second year of
operation, Virtual Grade School 4 was assisted by the founders of Virtual Grade School 3
and both schools started the school year by using similar connective technologies. By the beginning of its third year, Virtual Grade School 4 was operating as a stand-alone school.
I had the opportunity of interviewing Rob, a student who was part of the original pilot project that inaugurated Virtual Grade School 4.
KM: Rob, I was going over your other responses and you mentioned that you've been a virtual student for 6 years. Correct?
11 The data presented in Table 3 were obtained from the administrators of Virtual Grade School 3. 19
Rob: Yep!
KM: You must be one of the originals!
Rob: Yes, I was in grade 7 of the 1993/94 pilot program.
KM: Were you in regular school before that?
Rob: No, I had been doing home schooling since grade 4.
KM: OK, regular school, then homeschooling, then virtual school?
Rob: Yep!
KM: What was the pilot project like?
Rob: Very new and untested. For lack of a better word "unorganized."
KM: Did you take all of your courses by way of the Internet?
Rob: Yes/no. We received and sent our days work over the Internet but that was the majority of our Internet time.
KM: So the pilot year was a homeschooling/virtual school mix?
Rob: Pretty much you received your work over the Internet and sent it back in the mail much the same as in the distance learning we had done before.
KM: Were there any other differences between homeschooling and the pilot project?
Rob: Beside chatting with teachers and other students the pilot project didn't have much difference from regular home schooling.
KM: Were all of you students in your own homes?
Rob: As far as I know all of us were based in our homes.
KM: Did you have access to a chat room and email?
Rob: Yes, we had chat rooms and we also had network e-mail to anyone in the school.
KM: The pilot project lasted one year9 20
Rob: Actually no, after the pilot project it never really stopped. In the end we kind of got separated from the original virtual high school but still continued off on a strand of the original idea/school. (Third round chat room interview, March 8, 2000)
During the first seven years of operation, Virtual Grade School 4 has experienced a pattern of steady growth in student population and over the years has expanded to include additional grade levels.
Table 412
Student Enrolments for Virtual Grade School 4
School Year Enrolment Grades
1993 - 1994 25 7 to 9
1994- 1995 100 7 to 9
1995 - 1996 180 7 to 9
1996- 1997 218 6 to 10
1997- 1998 360 5 to 11
1998- 1999 400 5 to 12
1999-2000 537 5 to 12
2000-2001 450 5 to 12
Interviews
Interviews with participants were conducted over a five-month period between
December 1999 and April 2000. Similar communication technologies that students,
12 The data presented in Table 4 were obtained from the administrators of Virtual Grade School 4. 21 parents, teachers, and administrators used in their associations with virtual school on a daily basis were used to collect interview data. I made use of email and chat technologies during three separate rounds of interviews with the research participants (see Appendix
B). In addition to interview data, some of the participants supplied additional information such as, lesson plans, samples of students' work, student population statistics, URLs13 for online articles, internal research reports, and copies of presentations or papers from recent conferences.
Rounds of Email Questions
The first two rounds of interviews with participants were asynchronous, email- based communications. Originally I generated sixteen questions to ask participants.
After discussions with my supervisor, we agreed that this total number of questions should be divided into two documents, as too many questions contained in a single document may have led to participants abandoning their involvement in the project. Two separate sets of questions presented in separate documents, it was thought, would provide a better design in order to maintain the interest of participants on smaller tasks that could be readily answered in twenty minutes or so. The first set of questions, or first email- based interview, contained ten items, along with an additional query addressing demographics (see Appendix C). The second email-based interview was made up of six questions (see Appendix D).
Once I received a copy of the signed consent form in the mail by way of Canada
Post, I forwarded the participant the first list of questions as an email attachment. Once 1
13 "Abbreviation of Uniform Resource Locator, the global address of documents and other resources on the World Wide Web. The first part of the address indicates what protocol to use, and the second part specifies the IP address or the domain name where the resource is located " (Internet.com Corporation, 2000, http://webopedia.intemet.eom/TEPvM/U/URL.html). 22 received the first round of email-based questions from a participant, I thanked them for participating and then forwarded a copy of the second set of questions. Then, participants sent back their responses for the second interviews. I printed copies of all email responses, then compiled them in binders divided into sections for each group of student, parent, teacher, and administrator respondents. Upon completion of the second interview, each respondent received an email message that expressed my thanks for participating in the study, and offered instructions for the third round of interviews.
Chat Room Interviews
The first two rounds of email-based interview questions set the stage for the third set of interviews. This next series of contacts with participants occurred in a chat room14 using the synchronous capabilities of the WebCT ™ software. A little background information is required at this point regarding this third set of interviews.
During the months that email-based interviews were conducted, I worked behind the scenes and set up the chat room where the third round interviews were to take place.
I was aware of several online locations where chats with research participants could potentially occur, but felt that these particular options would not offer the privacy and security that I needed for this study. I accessed the WebCT™ web site and discovered from the information presented at the site that I could be approved for a trial version of an online course that would offer many interactive teaching tools. I registered for a "Trial
Course" knowing that a chat room was one of the features offered at this web site. The trial course would last for a period of four months and offered the capability of handling
14 "A virtual room where a chat session takes place. Technically, a chat room is really a channel, but the term room is used to promote the chat metaphor" (Internet.com Corporation, 2000, http://webopedia.internet.eom/TERM/c/chat_room.hUnl). 23 up to 50 registered students in a password-protected environment. The next day, I received an email message from the WebCT™ web site regarding my request for a trial course. They provided a course URL, login ID, password, and an expiry date for the course set for four months into the future.
I accessed the home area that was reserved for me at the WebCT ™ web site and began to design the appearance of this learning space. After changing background colors and adding designs from a reserve library of graphics, I gave the space a name, The
'Grade School Cyberspaces' Online Research Project. This title was the same one used in previous announcements to participants and would serve as a greeting upon entry into the web site. Next, I initiated individual user names and passwords for the participants.
Each participant's identification was established within WebCT™ to include their first name, last initial, assigned user ID, assigned password, and a confirmation of password.
The last item to be established on the trial course home area was to use the "hide" feature and make the other interactive tools available on the web site disappear from sight, thus giving participants less of an opportunity to somehow lose their way as they accessed the chat area. By default, the chat area itself was divided into six parts made up of four separate rooms, a general chat area for the course, and another general chat for all courses. I made use of the four individual chat rooms, as WebCT™ automatically made logs or transcripts from chats occurring in these rooms but did not do so in the general areas.
The chat rooms were prepared as the second email-based interviews were nearing completion. I sent a list of general instructions to participants that outlined how to access the chat rooms I sent a second email message to each participant outlining specific 24 instructions and providing individual user IDs and passwords. Participants were invited to validate their accounts when the contents of these two email messages were combined.
Next, I developed schedules for chats and sent them to participants on a weekly basis. Research participants booked specific times for chat interviews, which were scheduled on weekday evenings and on Saturday mornings or afternoons Participants would select a particular day, time, and then a specific chat room would be assigned.
Before each of the third interviews, I reviewed participants' responses from the first two interviews. The third interview included five more questions, but I also sought clarification, expansion, and insight into certain comments made by participants during their first two email-based interviews. I found that my time in the chat rooms with respondents was very purposeful and focused, as we had already addressed many of the introductory issues during the first two rounds. The five questions asked of participants during the third interview have been included in Appendix E.
The chats were generally 45 minutes in length, although some were over an hour in duration. I scheduled enough time in between interviews for this eventuality and rotated the four chat rooms, so participants in one chat room would not be aware of the presence of other participants. My name, along with the participant's first name, showed on the right-hand side of the chat room screen. No personal identification or school affiliation was detectable. The left-hand side was reserved for the chat transcript itself
After each interview, I accessed the chat log that was automatically generated by
WebCT™. Before deleting the log, I saved an electronic copy and then printed the transcript. Each printed chat room transcript was added to the binders containing participants' previous responses from two rounds of email-based interviews. The interviews were placed in chronological order, one behind the other for the purpose of visiting and revisiting a particular participant's interview series. The electronic copies were saved and used to copy/paste portions of participants' responses to the text of this dissertation during successive rounds of writing and interpretation.
Consulting Phenomenological Literature
During the course of this study, I consulted and included phenomenological literature within the text for the following reasons. First, some phenomenological literature has "already addressed in a descriptive or an interpretive manner the very topic or question which preoccupies us" (van Manen, 1997, p. 75). The authors of these texts entered into the conversation, which this study has continued Phenomenological materials also "enable us to reflect more deeply on the way we tend to make interpretive sense of lived experience ... and they allow us to see our limits and to transcend the limits of our interpretive sensibilities" (van Manen, 1997, pp. 75-76). References to selected phenomenological texts are taken up within the text of this dissertation.
Chapter Summary
In order to attend to the question of research, I have called upon a research approach that most appropriately suited the topic, van Manen's (1997) "Researching
Lived Experience" or hermeneutic phenomenological human science. Van Manen (1997) noted how phenomenological research projects require "that we not simply raise a question and then possibly soon drop it again, but rather that we 'live' this question, that we 'become' this question" (p. 43). For the last three years, I have been a teacher of students attending virtual grade school Thus, I have experientially "lived" and indeed
"become" my research question. In addition, "a good phenomenological description is 26 collected by lived experience and recollects lived experience. This is sometimes termed the 'validating circle of inquiry'" (van Manen, 1997, p. 27). The topic of research was addressed by calling upon the experiences of the writer as a starting point, tracing etymological sources of terminology, close observation, consulting research literature and other related sources of information, and obtaining experiential descriptions from others.
A group of 51 people comprised of students, parents, teachers, and administrators involved in four of the most established virtual grade schools in Alberta were interviewed in order to obtain experiential descriptions. In this chapter, I have outlined the elements of a research approach that show themselves throughout this dissertation in a cyclical and spiralling fashion.
Reflection
The email messages were sent a few minutes ago and I waited to hear back from my students. Class sizes were large and I anticipated a reply from each of my students, so I looked forward to receiving a lot of messages. I waited and checked each of my class lists from time to time. The messages I sent stated that once students received my message, they were supposed to respond to me. So, I kept waiting.
Every 15 seconds or so I clicked on GET MESSAGES and they eventually started to trickle in. Some of the students were right there (wherever that was) at their computers and they were responding! Wow!
Students answered with cheery greetings and offered hopeful wishes for the term. Although I was physically absent from my class, 1 felt as if the students were somehow really there! The exchange of message sent followed by an almost immediate response from students gave me a sense of the students' presence. The physical space that students occupied, whether near or far from me, somehow became transparent because we were online at the same time. Thus, teacher and student occupied the same cyberspace at the same time.
More email arrived so I enthusiastically checked names off my lists and clicked to receive more messages. I had begun to teach in a virtual environment, so I kept clicking and checking! Once messages from students started to arrive and as the day wore on, I realized that my notion of pedagogy included several elements that I was taking for granted as a teacher in a virtual grade school. To me, pedagogy meant a relationship between teacher and student. The term originated from the Greek word paidagogos, the slave who escorted children to school. Pedagogy, as the art of teaching, was about an educational association between a teacher and student. Teacher and student gathered together for a particular educational purpose or task. The teacher was ready to teach and the student was ready to learn. Teachers made use of a selection of materials to present topics to students. Students would take the instruction and learn the lessons that were presented to them. My understanding of teaching involved being with students at the same place and at the same time. As I waited for virtual grade school students to contact me on the first day of school, I realized that my understanding of the most basic elements of pedagogy had been somehow interrupted. With this interruption of time and space between teacher and student at the forefront of my mind, I wondered how it was that virtual grade schools started? (Journal entry, September 2, 1998) 28
CHAPTER THREE: DESCRIPTIONS OF VIRTUAL SCHOOLING
Developmental Turns of Virtual Grade Schooling in Alberta
Early in this research, I wondered how virtual schools started; how did the tides of technology reach our students in grade schools? I recognized that finding answers to this question would be of benefit, as I delved further into the topic of research. Virtual schools started in Alberta several years ago due to a particular sequence of events and I endeavoured to collect artifacts in order to reconstruct those events. The remnants that were left behind included newspaper and magazine articles, government documents, print and broadcast media advertisements for virtual school services, advertisements for related computer technologies, and descriptions from research participants. These texts allow aspects pf virtual schooling to speak and to be heard by bringing them into nearness
This vocative power of language has been present over the years in the various texts that have been used to describe virtual schooling. The language employed in this matter has yielded several textual portrayals that describe virtual grade schools in particular stages of development including the following: virtuality, appeal, promotion, answerability, and presence. Each of these developmental turns of virtual grade schooling has been influenced by the tides of technology and they range from initial ebbing to the recent swells. The sections that follow address each of these five topics in turn.
Evocative15 Turn: Virtuality
The first virtual school in Alberta was opened in the early 1990's. Once this start happened, there were numerous other schools and divisions that wanted to experiment with online delivery. Some have succeeded and others have failed" (Fred, teacher currently in his fourth year of teaching
15 The use of five terms in this section (evocative, convocative. invocative, provocative, revocative) was inspired by the work of Van Manen (2000) relating to phenomenological inquiry and has been applied to the context of virtual schooling within this text. 29
online, Virtual Grade School 2, Second round email interview, January 23, 2000).
Within the evocative turn of development, virtual grade schools were first developed and named. The naming of virtual schools was influenced by advances in the computer industry and these developments evoked certain images. Computer technologies had grown to become commonplace within so many aspects of our culture and applying more technological influences to grade schools may have seemed inevitable Early forms of virtual schooling were introduced to students by a handful of educational innovators using computer-mediated communication technologies that were available to them at the time. These educators introduced virtual schooling to students simply because they could, as the technology was available to do so. The beginning ripples of virtual grade schooling are consistent with a technological-determinist point of view associated with technological development. This origin may be found within strong currents that underlie the tides of technology, which is the philosophy of technology
Ihde (1990) describes that a technological-determinist orientation "finds in the development of a technology itself a whole nest of possibilities that determine future directions for the socius" (p. 5). The people responsible for developing the earliest virtual grade schools in Alberta may have recognized the seemingly unlimited possibilities that potentially presented themselves when technology and pedagogy were combined.
The appearance of a new type of schooling delivered by way of different combinations of low and high technological means was first described by proponents as virtual school or what several years later became officially known as a "virtual program" 30
(Alberta Learning, 1999a, p. 79). Originally, the term chosen to describe this new type of schooling seemed to draw heavily from the enthusiasm of the educational innovators and the power that the chosen language held. They were using the term virtual, and in a sense, the use of this word drew heavily from the promise of the recent influences of technological ubiquitousness throughout our culture by way of the notion of
"cyberspace." Consider the following passage.
Cyberspace is a globally networked, computer-sustained, computer accessed, and computer-generated, multidimensional, artificial, or 'virtual' reality. In this reality, to which every computer is a window, seen or heard objects are neither physical nor, necessarily, representations of physical objects but are, in form, character and action, made up of data, of pure information. This information derives in part from the operations of the natural, physical world, but for the most part it derives from the immense traffic of information that constitute human enterprise in science, art, business, and culture. (Benedikt, 1993, pp. 122-123)
Unfortunately, the groups of people who received the messages about virtual schooling were not necessarily in tune with recent technological developments. These listeners may have already held an understanding of the word "virtual" and to them it meant
"nearly," "almost," or "not quite there." Thus began the difficulty with applying the term virtual when describing a new kind of alternative to forms of grade schooling that traditionally involved physical classrooms, along with the physical presence of teachers and students in these traditional spaces for schooling.
The word virtual used in the sense of virtual grade schooling was meant to play on the images given to us by "virtual reality." The phrase virtual reality was coined by
Jaron Lanier in 1986 and "the philosophical echoes in the term 'virtual reality' serve perfectly well to suggest today's ambiguous merger of life with computers .... The poetic appeal of the phrase, its grandeur, struck the appropriate chord .... Appropriate too was 31 the subtle reference of the phrase to its historical origins in computing" (Heim, 1995, p.
65). Despite its origins in computing, some of the strongest images that are indicative of virtual reality came to us by way of children's toys and entertainment. Heim (1995) describes how virtual reality, "shows us the first merger of computers with reality.
Arcade games, CD-ROM fantasies and location-based theme parks beguile our human sense of presence. We find ourselves going back to the future, visiting the stars and walking through Star Trek's Holodeck" (p. 66). These images of virtual reality may have inspired the early designers of virtual schools by adding unprecedented promise and high adventure to their newfound enterprise. However, Kramarae (1995) commented on the general development of virtual reality in the computer industry, as follows.
The makers of the virtual reality programs promise us that we can immerse ourselves in new environments, as if we were really on the battlefields or driving a tractor through the fields .... The existing cyberspace simulations are not refined, and it will be years, if ever, before the computer illusions will be confused with our non-computer-assisted experiences, (p 36)
Despite the continued effort that was required of the computer industry for the further development of virtual reality programs, the promise of virtual reality influenced the reifying of virtual grade schools. In turn, the influence of the newly emerging concept of virtual grade schools had begun to move by way of language.
Ayto (1990) traced the etymology of "virtual" as a derivation of the word
"virtue," which in its Latin origins meant "bravery, strength, capacity, skill, merit" (p.
560) By the 17th century the word virtual, as a descendent of virtue, originally meant
"'having power, in effect' and had evolved into its modern sense 'so in effect or in essence'" (Ayto, 1990, p. 560). Virtual schools surfaced partially as a result of the 32 excitement that the innovator-teachers experienced as they reified the new educational landscape, but unfortunately the language employed was more widely understood in differing contexts. For example, students attending virtual grade schools may have been understood as virtually at school. Thus, virtual grade schools were almost like but not quite like regular school. By extension, the earliest prototypes of virtual grade schools may have been understood by those people not directly involved as a replication of regular or traditional schooling simply due to the language used to describe virtual schools. The varying meanings and interpretations of the word "virtual" when applied to virtual grade schooling began to cause somewhat of a division between virtual school advocates and anyone else that heard about this new type of grade schooling.
Three of the four virtual grade schools in Alberta that participated in this study offered virtual schooling to groups of home schooled students. Consider the following anecdotes from teachers reflecting on the origins of virtual schooling
I believe that virtual schools are an extension of the basic home schooling movement - parents want their child at home but also value the expertise of the school system and the teachers. In essence, it's the best of both worlds for those families. (Donna, administrator, Virtual Grade School 2, Second round email interview, February 19, 2000)
I feel that virtual schools began in order to meet the needs of home schooling families. In a true home schooling environment, parents facilitate all learning tasks for their children. This includes selecting curriculum, marking daily work and teaching content. When considering the level of expertise required by parents to teach some of the more difficult subject areas, many home schooling parents understood the advantages of having certified teachers involved in their children's education. It must be remembered that even with having virtual teachers involved in the educational process, parents of virtual school children still play an important role in ensuring their children enjoy a successful academic year. (Lome, administrator, Virtual Grade School 1, Second round email interview, February 27, 2000) 33
Virtual schools started from the need from traditional home schooling parents who felt that home education was important but did not have the educational background to teach the high school curriculum. Therefore, with online education a professional was accessed through the home environment Supporting the above issue was the need for a quality flexible program where teachers could be accessed 24 hours / day but students were not bound by time constraints. (Gerry, teacher beginning third year of teaching online, Virtual Grade School 1, Second round email interview, February 13, 2000)
Virtual schooling allowed parents to educate their children at home with the added benefit of accessing the expertise of teachers. This benefit was especially evident as home schooled children reached high school grades and courses in various subject areas were offered by virtual school teachers.
Home schooling expanded in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Parents were attracted to this option of schooling their children as it put the responsibility on them to provide quality education. They were then also able to instill their own family values into the schooling experience. There was a change in program allowance - about 1995/1996, Alberta Education made an allowance in the home schooling regulations for 'Blended Funding' with this new funding system home schooling programs were given the 'school' allowance for students; however, at least 50% of the students program was to be 'school delivered'. This was the beginning of our virtual/online school (Suzanne, teacher beginning fourth year of teaching online, Virtual Grade School 3, Second round email interview, February 1, 2000)
In addition, virtual school offered home schooling parents a level of control that would allow them to continue modelling their family values well into the high school years.
Early forms of virtual grade schooling offered some students a new horizon as an alternative to traditional schooling and home schooling that was not possible before.
These later developments reflect a move away from technological-determinism, whereby decisions to further technological development are made based on the technology itself, to more of a social-determinist position, where "what really counts in technological 34 development is some set of decisions by a power elite ... the particular technologies usually remain background factors against which the human social and political conflicts take shape" (Ihde, 1990, p. 4). Within Ihde's description, the "power elite" may be considered to be the members of the virtual school movement. A movement began to form, which was comprised of individuals involved in virtual schools including, students, parents, teachers, administrators, government officials, and university professors. The virtual grade school movement slowly began to stir and gain momentum.
Convocative Turn: Appeal
People that were interested in virtual grade schooling began to convoke, or assemble, in order to call together for a common conversational space. Individuals involved in virtual grade school were having new and very meaningful experiences in education. These educational experiences, by way of virtual grade schooling, were not previously possible. As the appeal of virtual grade schooling grew, membership in the virtual grade school movement began to expand. This new assembly of people who shared an educational commonality understood that they would be stronger acting together as a group.
Once established, the virtual method of schooling began to appeal to other people: itinerant students, athletes, families who have doubts about traditional school environments, and people who simply prefer an on-line education venue. Home-schooled children would benefit from the help of professional teachers when more expertise is required than can be given from a parent. Students who move a lot due to parents' work and/or commitments could establish a long-term and consistent school environment through an on-line school as expectations and atmospheres remain constant over the years. Athletes who require the flexible schedule of an on-line school would benefit as sporting engagements take them on the road for days and weeks at a time. Families who uphold set moral and religious values and who find these values continually challenged and thwarted by negative peer group influences in traditional school environments can have more control over the company they keep via the 35
on-line system. Finally, there are many students who find that they work better in the on-line system for any number of reasons; they simply prefer this method. (Peter, teacher in his second year of teaching online, Virtual Grade School 1, Second round email interview, February 27, 2000)
The prospect of virtual schooling began to appeal to many types of students, rather than just home schooled students who first occupied virtual schools. However, the proponents of the virtual school movement began to realize the shortcomings in the use of the term virtual school and how the public was beginning to perceive this new educational phenomenon (Alberta Teachers' Association, 1999; Virtual school gets mixed reviews, 1999; Cavanagh, 2000; Flower, 1999; Litke, 1998). In an attempt to navigate these new argumentative riptides, the virtual grade school movement began to alter the language that describes virtual grade schools, starting with summoning the prefix "cyber." For example, newspaper articles describing virtual grade schools as
"cyberschools" broke the surface (Harrington, 1999; McGowan, 1999).
The prefix cyber is derived from Greek and means "to steer" or "to pilot."
Further, the word cyber has become "one of the most used prefixes of the 90s, signifying a world of computer dominance and disembodied experience" (Appignanesi & Garratt,
1995, p. 129). Use of the term cyber may be traced to "cyberpunk."
The word that actually started all the cyber-enthusiasm, was 'cyberpunk' as a subgenre of science fiction popular in the late 80s. Cyberpunk represents the implosion of the future into the present and total intrusion of technology into human lives. Here giant corporations wield more power than governments, anarchistic computer hackers lead rebellions against them on the new frontier of global networks, the human body goes cyborg, augmented by chemicals, bionic prosthetics and neural implants. (Appignanesi & Garratt, 1995, p. 129) 36
Another term born out of the cyberpunk subgenre and has been used extensively of late is the term cyberspace. Gibson (1984) described the origin of his term "cyberspace" in his science fiction novel, Neuromancer. as follows,
Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions ... in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts ... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding .. (p. 51).
The terms "cyberpunk" and "cyberspace" are descendants of the term cybernetics. The term cybernetics was coined in 1948 by Norbert Weiner and described,
a new science which united communications theory and control theory. For Weiner, cybernetics encompassed the human mind, the human body and the world of automatic machines and attempted to reduce all three to the common denominator of control and communication. From this perspective, the image of the body becomes less one of an engineered body with the key tasks being the transfer and conservation of energy, but more of a communications network based upon the accurate reproduction and exchange of signals in time and space. Hence information, messages and feedback which facilitate control and communication become seen as the key aspects of both organisms and machines. (Featherstone and Burrows, 1995, p. 2)
The prefix cyber has a particularly rich history; the prefix and its past provided great assistance to the cause of the grade school movement.
After a brief period of use of the term "cyber" to help describe virtual schooling, other terms were introduced. The term virtual schooling began to be replaced by the term online learning. During this brief time of transition, the presence of both phrases began to appear in the same newspaper articles (Booth-Reed, 1999; Petrie, 1998; Sytnick,
1999). Future use of the term "online" became devoid of the hyphen between "on" and
"line." This lack of hyphen was deliberate, as if the term on-line could be replaced by its opposite, off-line. This distinction could lead to unfortunate terms like "off-line grade schools" when technology may momentarily stop working from time to time and people care to reify the experience.
Many of the changes that virtual grade schools participating in this study went through during this developmental turn involved an interplay between replication and non-replication. For example, replicating those pedagogical functions of traditional school that lend themselves to replication in virtual grade school environments (e.g., attendance checks, morning announcements, distributing assignments, and providing written feedback to students), while adjusting those aspects of traditional school that cannot be replicated in virtual grade schools (e.g., immediate presence of teacher, the subtleties of social interaction, teacher observations of students' work habits and behaviours, and classroom dynamics). These replication issues existed in early schools, due to the availability of various communication technologies and ongoing efforts to adapt them to virtual school environments.
Proponents of virtual schooling also turned their attention to another concern of increasing importance. If early virtual grade schools were somehow the digital replications of traditional schools, then how did virtual grade school students socialize with other people? Could these social experiences also be digitally replicated or represented electronically? Melissa, a parent with one child attending Virtual Grade
School 3 stated, "I would say that students in virtual school tend to be more mature because they learn more proper behaviour because their models are their parents and not a bunch of silly, immature kids" (Second round email interview, February 10, 2000).
Other parent participants in this study with backgrounds in homeschoooling described 38 similar adaptations for socialization, consisting of behaviours modelled for children by parents combined with the child's involvement in formal organizations selected on the basis of pursuing personal interests.
Concerns about virtual students and a lack of socializing with others began to turn away from home schooled children and toward those students who had once attended traditional schools but had recently enrolled in virtual school programs. Students who had changed their educational venue in this manner became introduced to new challenges, such as, isolation issues and increasing pressure from their online programs regarding academic performance. However, the virtual grade schools participating in this study began to address these two issues on a daily basis For example, each of these virtual grade schools encouraged students to contact each other and offered various opportunities for students to meet in person. In addition, potential students have been informed of the rigors of virtual grade school before enrolling. One teacher described the characteristics of successful students attending online grade schools and they have been noted to, "exhibit very strong problem-solving skills, self-motivation and self-discipline"
(Jill, teacher in her third year of teaching online, Virtual Grade School 1, First round email interview, February 15, 2000).
Invocative Turn: Promotion
The language that was used in advertisements helped to intensify the appeal for virtual grade schooling. This intensification provided a strong form of promotion to inform the public about virtual schooling. The messages that invoked essential information about virtual grade schooling not only attracted interested parties including, 39 students, parents, and teachers, but also established the beginning of a particular terminology within educational circles.
Another element that helped to promote the virtual school movement was a new plan for integrating technology into Alberta schools, which appeared in early 1994
(Alberta Education, 1995). The integration plan was further supported by a funding schedule under the Network Access Grant that became available in 1996. During these early years, the availability of money to implement technology, combined with a growing demand for virtual schools, provided an opportunity for many school districts.
Competition between school districts began to surface, as one virtual school opening within a particular school district led to the start of other virtual schools in other districts.
In addition to four virtual programs that were in operation before the 1995-1996 school year, more virtual schools began to appear in Alberta. During the 1996-1997 school year,
Four new virtual grade schools opened (Alberta Education, 1999). Consider the following anecdotes, one from a teacher and another from an administrator, as they describe the origin of virtual schooling.
Virtual schools now exist because of the demand from parents and students. Virtual schooling is a legitimate alternative for parents who wish to provide their children with a quality education. It also allows the parents to monitor the activities of the students - with them being at home parents see what their children are doing more than they would if that child was in a brick and mortar school. (Suzanne, teacher beginning her fourth year of teaching online, Virtual Grade School 3, Second round email interview, February 1, 2000)
In our particular environment, our virtual school began because our division responded to requests/needs from parents and students. Many were looking for options in educating their children. Traditionally, distance education programs have not offered great completion or success rates, and students in our division accessing distance education programs expressed frustration with lack of teacher support, delays in mailing of and 40
return of assignments, and poorly designed materials that are not kept current. I believe that virtual schools now exist as a response to these concerns, and also because advances in technology have allowed us to provide updated, current lesson material, and a great deal of teacher support. (Sara, administrator, Virtual Grade School 1, Second round email interview, February 20, 2000)
In order to attract students to enrol in newly opened virtual schools, administrator- promoters of virtual schools invoked various forms of advertising. Advertisements featuring individual virtual schools began to appear in many different forms including, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, billboards, flyers, presentations, and web sites.
Once the message about virtual schooling started to spread throughout the population, parents and students began to demand that neighbouring school districts establish a virtual school. For parents, virtual schools appeared to offer an opportunity to keep a close watch on their children, thereby giving parents an enhanced form of educational surveillance. For students, virtual schools afforded them an opportunity to attend a type of alternative education and to move away from traditional schooling.
As the allure of virtual grade schools was gaining momentum during these years, officials with Alberta Education began to understand the need for the development of governmental policies involving virtual grade schools including formal definitions and funding issues. In addition, governmental support for virtual grade schools was increasing as Alberta Education sponsored the first Virtual School Symposium in 1997.
The goal of the symposium was for interested parties to meet and discuss issues associated with the opening and operating of virtual schools. One of the major benefits of this first symposium related to professional development efforts for virtual teachers, as 41 formal gatherings to learn more about pedagogy in virtual grade schools were virtually non-existent before this event.
During the 1997-1998 school year, five other virtual schools appeared in Alberta, followed by an additional six schools the next school year (Alberta Education, 1999).
The growth of virtual schools during the 1997-1998 and 1998-1999 school years was more dramatic compared to previous years and the demand for virtual schools as an educational alternative continued to grow. Consider the following accounts from teachers.
Virtual schools began (a) to meet the needs of students in remote areas and in classrooms where rote tests could easily be graded through CAI (computer assisted instruction). As the Internet became more accessible, and programming became more sophisticated, more opportunities arose for whole courses to be offered and (b) to assist parents who saw virtual schooling as a viable option for their children. Virtual programs were developed to help families meet the educational requirements of their kids. (Glenn, teacher in his second year of teaching, Virtual Grade School 3, Second round email interview, February 19, 2000)
I believe that virtual schools began as a means of distance education for courses (post-secondary and personal interest such as programming tutorials). They now exist as a viable alternative to traditional classroom teaching/setting. (Jill, teacher in her third year of teaching online, Virtual Grade School 1, Second round email interview, March 13, 2000)
During the 1997-1998 and 1998-1999 school years, the virtual grade school movement increased in impetus as more virtual schools appeared and the term "viable" was invoked when individuals described the virtual school alternative for students. For example, Lau
(1998) wrote how one virtual school principal described, "the interest in virtual schools has grown so much and it will continue to grow as people begin to recognize it as a viable alternative" (p. 11). The word "viable" was originally a derivation of the term "vital" and 42 came from "a derivative of the Latin vita 'life', or 'living', ... and etymologically means
'capable of life'" (Ayto, 1990, p. 561). By extension, students choosing the virtual grade school alternative are restoring life to their schooling as a result of the availability of this choice. By inference, a reader of the newspaper article might wonder if traditional schools have indeed become "lifeless" for some students.
As the popularity of virtual grade schools intensified, Alberta Education and the
Learning Technologies Branch sponsored the second Virtual School Symposium in
November of 1998 Several members of the virtual grade school movement began to collaborate in order offer a greater force towards the development of virtual schooling within Alberta A proposal for the establishment of the Online Consortium of Alberta for the purpose of collective action was included in the conference proceedings of the second symposium (Alberta Education, 1998b).
After the oldest virtual schools in Alberta had been in operation for nearly six years, Alberta Learning officially defined a virtual program as "a structured learning environment in which students access educational programs electronically The planning, implementation and assessment of instruction is the responsibility of a certificated teacher employed by a school board or accredited private school" (Alberta Learning,
1999a, p. 79). In addition, the need for specific policies governing virtual programs began to become recognized, as virtual schools and traditional schools are governed by the same governmental regulations. During this approximate time frame, the Alberta
Online Consortium was officially formed in February 1999 "to advocate for and support the growth of online education in the province" (Alberta Online Consortium, 1999, p. 4).
In an effort to offer continued support those people involved in virtual grade schooling, 43 the Alberta Online Consortium organized the third annual Virtual School Symposium in
1999.
Provocative Turn: Answerability
The influence of virtual grade schooling continued to flow out and appeal to interested people, including students, parents, teachers, and administrators However, a provocative question began to arise in the midst of all the anticipation and excitement over virtual grade schooling. Were students attending virtual grade schools successful, and if so, in what ways? In the provocative turn of development, the grade school movement began to become answerable for what they had created. Consider the following comment from a virtual grade school teacher,
"Virtual schools sprang, in my understanding, from the need to offer alternative programming to students. Virtual programming is offered in various settings as a response to this need, and has continued to flourish because this type of instruction provides success for many students" (Cindy, teacher in her second year of teaching online, Virtual Grade School 4, Second round email interview, February 16, 2000).
Cindy's definition of what constitutes "success for many students", as they attend virtual grade school, is currently germane within the provocative turn of virtual grade school development. Common practices to measure students' success in grade school include scores on achievement tests (D. Smith, 2000), along with other factors involving the cultivation of" ... skills, knowledge, and disciplines students will need to be successful in future post-secondary studies, the work-place or elsewhere in life" (D. Smith, 2001, p.
Al 1). Rankings of traditional schools according to students' achievement results are also beginning to include a few virtual grade schools (Fraser Report on Schools, 2000; Fraser
Report on Schools, 2001). Virtual schools, as relative newcomers, are compared to 44 traditional schools on these rankings, however, virtual schools have just recently joined this tradition of school rankings. Nevertheless, the time for the virtual grade school movement to become accountable for the success of their students ebbs closer and closer.
During the provocative turn, fellow educators, along with the general public, began to voice their concerns about virtual schooling (Alberta Teachers' Association,
1999; Booi, 2001; Hanna, 2001; Unland, 2001). Within this same time frame, research studies specifically relating to virtual grade schooling appeared (Barker, Wendel, &
Richmond, 1999; Barker & Wendel, 2001; Muirhead, 2000; R. Smith, 2001). In addition,
Alberta Learning and the Alberta Online Consortium announced in June 2000 of their joint sponsorship for a study addressing student achievement and performance levels in virtual schools in Alberta. This particular study is presently underway. Each of these studies add to the growing research base in the area of virtual grade schooling and these contributions were necessary in order to help gain the confidence of educators and the general public regarding virtual schooling.
The virtual grade school movement grew to require the support of related research in order to continue and further its cause. Some of the research related directly to virtual grade schooling, while other aspects of the same studies drew from a distant relative originating within post-secondary settings. As its membership expanded to include post- secondary members, which began a draw of theory and practice from the more established realm of post-secondary online education, the Alberta Online Consortium changed the name of the fourth annual conference to the Online Learning Symposium
2000, "formerly the Virtual School Symposium" (Alberta Online Consortium, 2000, p.4).
After these developments, the references to virtual schooling became fewer in number. 45
Revocative Turn: Presence
During the revocative turn of development, the virtual grade school movement began to observe the congruity between word and experience. Now that virtual grade schools have developed over the course of six or seven years, it has become possible to explore the relation between what virtual schools claim to be able to accomplish and the experience of those individuals who were directly involved. The stories of people involved in virtual grade schooling may bring their experiences of education vividly into presence, thereby enhancing the revocative turn.
Virtual grade schools continue to evolve as they advertise to attract prospective students, adopt new or upgraded educational hardware and software, adjust school operations, and develop related procedures. Virtual schools are constantly changing and adopting new and applicable technologies. Perhaps virtual schools are evolving at a rate that is derived from the rapid speed of technological change in society. The speed of this type of change is indeed staggering. For example, Campbell (1998) outlined Ray
Tomlinson's contribution to technological history as the person who sent the first email message in late 1971. Campbell (1998) explained, "The pace of progress has accelerated tremendously .... This means that any single development is stepping on the heels of the previous one and is so closely followed by the next that most advances are obscured. I think that few people will be remembered"
(http:/www.pretext.com/mar98/features/story2.htm). This blurring of memory is a cost of creating technology from the perspective of the developers. But what about the users of technology9 It has been noted that, "while the promise of the Net is its ability to spread knowledge, its paradox consists in the fact that the speed of change sometimes 46 precludes the possibility of full participation" (Interrogate the Internet, 1996, p. 127).
What can we learn from the users of technology in virtual grade schools? What are their stories?
Consider the following accounts from administrators, who were once teachers, describe their experiences as participants of virtual schools.
From my experience as a virtual school administrator, the general public, as a whole, is still not aware that virtual schools offer a solid educational experience for traditional school students. The general public is just starting to be exposed to information about virtual schools and I do see their perceptions towards virtual students by talking to parents at virtual school presentations and discussing virtual students with family, friends, and colleagues. (Lome, administrator, Virtual Grade School 1, Second round email interview, February 27, 2000)
In some ways, teaching students in this environment can be more rewarding than in a traditional setting. Although I may not see the student, I feel I often receive a more accurate view of who they are and their skills and abilities, because their communication with me is not influenced by the dynamics of a classroom. I've found that many students are more willing to ask for assistance in this environment. At the same time, teaching students in this environment can also be frustrating. I cannot 'see' frustration on a student's face if they are experiencing difficulties, and be able to assist them at that moment. Tracking students in this environment can be a challenge especially students who are having difficulties. (Sara, administrator, Virtual Grade School 1, Second round email interview, February 2, 2000)
Stories like these help bring the presence or lived-throughness of experiencing virtual grade schools to the surface. Now that virtual grade schools have been in existence for a number of years, stories of lived experiences are starting to show themselves. Whether or not virtual grade schools achieve what they set out to accomplish remains a question within the revocative turn of development and is a topic for ongoing research. However, stories of students' lived experiences in virtual grade schools are present. These stories 47 of experiences in virtual school help to bring the experiences into presence. In order to explore the nature of the relationship between virtual grade schools and the people who participate in these schools, this dissertation attempts to bring the experiences of virtual grade school participants into presence in order to allow the reader to recognize the experiential possibilities of life in education. Stories of students' lived experiences in virtual grade school is the topic of the next chapter.
Chapter Summary
The most established virtual schools in Alberta have faced many challenges as they moved through various phases of evolution over the years including, virtuality, appeal, promotion, answerability, and presence. While these changes have followed unique sequences accorded to the virtual grade school movement, the origin of virtual school is consistent with a technological-determinist point of view associated with technological development identified within the philosophy of technology. Later in the development of virtual grade schools, pedagogical changes occurred in order to prove the worth of virtual grade schools to students, the general public, government officials, and other teaching professionals. These developments reflect a move away from technological-determinism, whereby decisions to further technological development are made based on the technology itself, to more of a social-determinist position, where
"what really counts in technological development is some set of decisions by a power elite ... the particular technologies usually remain background factors against which the human social and political conflicts take shape" (Ihde, 1990, p. 4). Within Ihde's (1990) description, the "power elite" (p. 4) may be considered to be the members of the virtual school movement. 48
Some of the first grade schools offering virtual education programs started as pilot projects and began to appear as early as 1993. Since then, virtual schools delivering instruction to students by way of various computer-mediated communication technologies have moved to become more sophisticated by adopting increasingly accountable delivery methodologies and also by attempting to establish the reputation of the particular school. Still despite these efforts, virtual grade schools struggle for identity and for acceptance by their professional peers who represent the larger educational arena
(Alberta Teachers' Association, 1999; Booi, 2001; Hanna, 2001).
Still other challenges facing online grade schools relate to answering questions about the students themselves. For example online schools, in their relatively short existence, have been attracting a growing number of students each year (Government of
Alberta, 1998; Harrington, 1998; Sytnick, 1999). But what types of students are drawn to online schools? This question will be brought into the conversation within the text of
Chapter 4.
Reflection
Today I learned that only a very small number of students attend virtual grade schools in Alberta, although the virtual world at this point has me almost completely enveloped. I also understood, as a result of conversations with an administrator here, that a few years earlier in the school's history, virtual students were made up almost exclusively by students in homeschooling programs. The students presently enrolled were from a variety of backgrounds and a few were homeschooled. The administrator also said that there were enough virtual schools in Alberta to compete for that small proportion of students that we taught. "After all," She said, "the educational funding follows the students now." Our school was involved in an active advertising campaign to recruit potential students. I suddenly began to realize that virtual schools represented a most entrepreneurial venture within the otherwise altruistic profession of teaching. Who were these students that I was teaching in this virtual school and how did they come to be here? (Journal entry, September 25, 1998) 49
CHAPTER FOUR: DESCRIPTIONS OF VIRTUAL STUDENTS
Why are some students drawn to attend virtual grade schools? As a starting point,
I looked for descriptions of virtual grade schools that depict students in terms of numbers and then called upon individual students' descriptions of themselves. Currently, there are few research studies in existence that address aspects of virtual schooling in Alberta
(Barker & Wendel, 2001; Litke, 1998; Muirhead, 2000; and R. Smith, 2001). These studies have addressed Canada's secondary virtual schools, a case study of a junior high virtual school, teachers' perceptions of online education in Alberta, and the virtual school context in Alberta. With regard to this growing body of research studies, few specifically describe the population of students in virtual grade schools in Alberta. However, the body of literature that sheds light on some of the qualities of young computer users, as a larger population, has continued to grow over time.
According to Statistics Canada (1996), the age interval in 1995 with the highest degree of computer ownership in their homes was the 45 to 54 age group
(http://www.statcan.ca/englislVads/ceo/fig3e.htm). Further, computers were present in
44.8% of single-family households without children, but in 58% of those with children
(Statistics Canada, 1996, http://www.statcan.ca/english/ads/ceo/dec96.htm). A similar phenomenon has occurred in the United States and Tapscott (1998) has identified how two thirds of children have used a computer at home or at school. The group of children he was referring to have been termed "the Internet Generation, and include the youth who in 1999 will be between the ages of two and twenty-two" (Tapscott, 1998, p. 3). These students have also been described as "Screenagers" by Rushkoff (1996) and as the
"Millennium Generation" by Knoke (1996). 50
As a group, this new generation of learners has characteristics that are unique.
For example, the youths in the Internet generation are the first generation in history to possess knowledge of digital media that their elders do not (Tapscott, 1998). They have been born into a culture mediated by the television and the computer (Rushkoff, 1996).
Individuals within this new generation of learners are able to live in ways that are unique.
For example, opportunities for learning in virtual settings (i.e., virtual grade schools), due to the capabilities of the World Wide Web, have been in great demand over the past several years by parents and students, and have been further supported by teachers and school administrators.
Inhabitants of Grade School Cyberspaces
"The most innovative member of a system is very often perceived as a deviant from the social system, and is accorded a somewhat dubious status of low credibility by the average members of a social system" (Rogers, 1995, p. 26).
Virtual programs are rapidly gaining popularity in North America and especially in Alberta (Alberta Education, 1998a; Alberta Education, 1999). Currently, the number of students attending virtual grade schools in Alberta has stretched from zero to over
5,000 in a period of six to seven years. However, the students attending virtual school programs comprise less than one percent of the total population of students in Alberta
(Alberta Learning, 1999c, Government of Alberta, 1998). In a recent newspaper article,
Marshall (1998) recounted how, "Alberta Education figures show the number of students in fully virtual programs jumped from 596 two years ago to 1,702 last year. 'We expect this growth will continue,' said spokeswoman Janet Harding" (p. B3). Students choosing virtual schooling may have compelling reasons to do so. For example, a newspaper 51 article outlined how one particular virtual school in Alberta not only attracts "hockey players, figure skaters and other high-performance athletes who need a flexible school schedule," but also "children with minor health problems also benefit from a schedule that accommodates medical treatment and doctor's visits" (Lau, 1998, p. 11).
Virtual schools are perceived as existing on the periphery of mainstream education (Alberta Teachers' Association, 1999; Flower 1999). Some of the terminology that has been used to describe that portion of a population that is particularly attentive to a technological innovation draws from language utilized in the world of statistics
(Rogers, 1995) and from the realm of mythology (Clifford, Friesen, & Jardine, 1995;
Hyde, 1998). These descriptions include such terms as fringers, outliers, and coyotes.
For example, the Alberta Teachers' Association (1999) stated its position on virtual grade schools in the following manner.
The Association believes that while on-line training may be appropriate for adult learning, it is not appropriate for the education of children expected to become responsible, caring citizens in a democratic society. Teachers recognize that there may be special circumstances which prevent particular students from attending their neighborhood school; however, on-line education cannot replace the richness of face-to-face education with a professional teacher. The Department of Learning should not encourage the use of technology to increase the delivery options of education when the research does not support this method of delivery as an appropriate form of instruction for school-aged children. This trend may also be designed to undermine public education as it exists today ... (http://www.teachers.ab.ca/policy/papers/paper20.html)
Consistent with this position of virtual grade schools existing on the fringe of education, one parent participant offered the following description of students attending virtual schools, "There are students who do not fit in a traditional school. If you are an average student you will do well in a traditional school. But if you are extremely bright or need a lot of help you will not" (Barbara, parent with two children attending Virtual Grade
School 4, Second round email interview, February 9, 2000). When population numbers or statistical terminology are consulted to offer descriptions of students attending virtual grade schools, these students are defined as living on the periphery of education and are represented in very small numbers. This view of virtual students has been taken from the perspective of looking in from the outside.
The origins of online schooling in Alberta today can be traced back and are partially due to home schooling. The first to attend virtual grade schools were a small number of students who were home schooled children. The parents of students who are home schooled made a decision to educate their children in this manner for a variety of reasons. Consider the following account of a Grade 8 student attending Virtual Grade
School 2.
KM: Do you know why your parents originally chose to home school their children?
Charlene: Yes. It was because mom and dad did not want the negative influences that the environment gives, and they wanted to teach us Christian values.
KM: Can you tell me a bit more about that?
Charlene: My parents did not want us to be subjected to peer pressure, foul language, etc. until we were able to resist such influences.
KM: How has this worked for you?
Charlene: It has helped to build a stronger character. (Third round chat room interview, March 21, 2000) 53
This excerpt from a chat room interview suggests that students who are away from traditional schools, can build strength of character in relative absence from other people.
This is the one of many ironies that showed themselves throughout the interviews.
Virtual schools in Alberta have evolved over the years since their inception and so have the characteristics of students attending these schools. Several patterns relating to general descriptions of virtual students have emerged from an exploration of the four schools in the study. Over the years, grade school students have been attracted to virtual schools, or moved by the tides of technology, in three separate waves. The cresting of each wave was influenced by combinations of the developmental turns of virtual grade schooling. The years that correspond with these series of waves have been outlined in
Figure 1. 54
Figure 1
Population Patterns of Virtual Grade School Students
First Second Third Wave Wave Wave
1993/94 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97 1997/98 1998/99 1999/00 2000/01
|li&f£| 25 100 180 218 360 400 537 450
(7 to 9) (7 to 9) (7 to 9) (6 to 10) (5 to 11) (5 to 12) (5 to 12) (5 to 12)
VGS#3 76 75 67 121 325 650 564
(4 to 9) (4 to 9) (4 to 9) (4 to 12) (1 to 12) (1 to 12) (1 to 12)
VGS#2 1570 1809 1827 1946 1924
(1 to 12) (1 to 12) (1 to 12) (1 to 12) (1 to 12)
VGS#1 105 266 436 364 432
(7 to 12) (5 to 12) (5 to 12) (5 to 12) (5 to 12)
First Wave: Students Virtually at School
The time frame for the first wave of students attending virtual schools in Alberta spans approximately a four-year period, including the 1993-1994 to 1996-1997 school years. The firstwav e may be considered to be the result of combining the developmental turns of virtual grade school that involved virtuality, appeal and promotion. Students 55 attending the oldest online schools in Alberta were predominantly represented by home schooled children. Three of the four schools in the study began as an extension of home schooling; the fourth school enabled children to take their classrooms home with them.
In the beginning, three of the four schools drew from their home school population in order to populate their virtual schools and the fourth school enabled students to take schooling at home. Three schools had access to a growing number of home schooled students who eased the start up of their new online school ventures. This new brand of educational delivery appealed to parents, who were involved with home schooling, by offering the ability to access the expertise of teachers in specific content areas (e.g., high school mathematics and physics). During this first wave, approximately 13 virtual schools were in operation and potentially available to students.
Second Wave: Movement Toward Virtual Schools
The beginning of the second wave occurred when the number of virtual grade schools increased dramatically. The increased number of virtual schools was due in part to the developmental turns involving continued appeal and sustained promotional efforts, followed by answerability for a new type of schooling that had recently been established.
KM: OK. Was it your choice to leave public school and attend virtual school?
Lewis: Kinda. Well, my mom and dad were seriously considering it. And I said I would like to try it, so we jumped! (Lewis, Grade 7 student, Virtual Grade School 2, Third round chat room interview, March 11, 2000)
Students attending virtual schools during this wave of increasing student enrolments jumped at the opportunity to leave their previous educational arrangements.
As students moved to attend virtual schools, this population began to increase, in many 56 cases doubling in number. By the end of 1998, approximately 23 virtual schools or virtual programs were operating in Alberta (Alberta Education, 1999). The time frame for the second wave of students attending virtual schools in Alberta spans a three-year period, including the 1997-1998 to 1999-2000 school years. While the second wave may be considered to be the result of the combined effect of the developmental turns of appeal, promotion, and answerability, it is to be noted that a funding opportunity for technology in schools became available in 1996. During the second wave, an additional
13 virtual schools opened, while three previously operating virtual schools closed.
Why was there such a dramatic increase in the number of virtual schools, as well as student enrolments in virtual schools during these years? As students and parents became aware of the existence of the online school option, a movement toward virtual schools became evident, as the numbers of students attending virtual schools began to grow. One common theme running throughout students' comments about their reasons for leaving traditional school was in order to restore life to grade school education.
Students who desired to attend virtual schools made an escape from regular school due to reasons that were many and varied. For example, some students chose to attend based on the availability of advanced or specialty courses. Other students had concerns about the physical distance to traditional school. Some students wanted the opportunity to spend more time pursuing interests, such as, the performing arts, memberships with organizations and sports. Still other students' motives centered around social issues, such as, avoiding negative social influences (e.g., peer pressure to smoke, swear, engage in substance abuse) and escaping being bullied by other students. For some, traditional school had become boring, mundane, and lifeless. In some cases, parents may have 57 initiated their children's move to virtual school due to undiagnosed learning issues (e.g., a specific learning disability or giftedness) or social-emotional issues. For example, consider the following teacher's account:
A "typical" online high school student is working on a computer from his home while his parents are at work. This child is between 15 and 18 years old, and is completing high school curriculum in a largely unsupervised environment. Calvin Cyber, as we call him, is more motivated by television and chat rooms than by schoolwork, and therefore requires lots of contact and encouragement from teachers if he is to be successful. Calvin is agreeable, amiable, and pleasant in general. He may very well repeat a course a second time if he is to be successful. I believe that in many cases, Calvin may have undiagnosed or untreated social and/or academic difficulties. (Cindy, teacher in her second year of teaching online, Virtual Grade School 3, First round email interview, February 16, 2000)
According to data presented in Figure 1, there was significant movement towards virtual schools during the 1997-1998 to 1999-2000 school years by students who were attending other forms of schooling including public education or home schooling.
During this time frame, an increase in students from public education was evident, rather than students exclusively from home schooling backgrounds or involvement in pilot projects. One online grade school administrator noted something that corresponded with the time frame for the second wave,
Overall, the general public is not that aware of virtual schools - some associate the word 'virtual' with not real, or not as good as a traditional school. Most people in the general public however, are fascinated by the concept, once it is explained to them. Adults generally respond with, "Wow - I wish that was around when I was in school!" Still, many family, friends, and neighbours aren't really sure about the whole concept, and want to put a label on the students that attend - they must be geeks, or kids who are socially inept in a traditional environment. I've also found a greater degree of perfectly 'normal' children in our program, who are not socially inept, or physically different from other students. They are choosing this program for flexibility, greater parental involvement, and for some, a way to remove some of the negative 58
influences that are present (real or perceived) in a traditional school environment. (Sara, Administrator, Virtual Grade School 1, Second round email interview, February 20, 2000)
The administrator Sara's notion of "normal children" attending virtual grade schools suggests that it is not only those students with undiagnosed learning or social-emotional issues that are attracted to virtual grade school. Rather, typical students who merely want a chance to pursue other activities are also drawn towards virtual grade schools. Another layer of meaning hidden within her comment regarding students is the acceptance of virtual grade schools by 'normal' children. If normal children seek to attend a virtual grade school, then virtual schools must have some semblance of being accepted by the general public.
For many students coming away from traditional school environments to attend virtual schools during the second wave, traditional school had become lifeless. Much of the language used by participants to describe those students attending virtual school in the latter part of the second wave drew from terms referring to life and growth. These students were searching for a schooling alternative to counter that which had grown to become something that school was never meant to be ... lifeless. For example, consider one parent's response to a question from the first round of email interview questions,
The number one reason my son chose to attend virtual school is that he was 'totally bored' at school in Grade 10. Every day when my kids come home from school I would ask them how school was, what they did that day, anything exciting or fun, and so on. My son answered in two ways: 1) it was school, Mom or 2) Boring. He was often frustrated with the other students (usually the clowns & goof-offs who wasted class time) and the teachers. (Kelsey, parent with one of her three children attending Virtual Grade School 4, First round chat room interview, January 29, 2000). 59
During a third round interview in the chat room, I asked Kelsey if attending virtual school was a good choice for her son, rather than for her other children. She responded,
Yes it really seems to be. He is no longer frustrated by a system that doesn't work on his timetable. It is really difficult for a kid who can focus intensely to live with the interruptions of the regular school day. His marks are excellent from the first semester. 79%, 84%, 95% & 3 100%. The lowest is English, which has always been his struggle. He actually seems much happier as a person as well. Perhaps it's the absence of the daily frustrations? :) (Kelsey, parent with one of her three children attending Virtual Grade School 4, Third round chat room interview, March 4, 2000)
For Kelsey's son, a move to virtual school seemed to allow him the right kind of environment to focus on his schoolwork rather than being led astray by disruptions in the regular classroom. Kelsey's son required the relative isolation of virtual grade school in order to achieve a higher level of success. Success for Kelsey's son was measured in terms of grades and happiness.
Another parent, Barbara, described why her daughter began to attend Virtual
Grade School 4,
My daughter was getting teased at school by the boys. This was severely effecting her self esteem as she could not slough off their comments. They would call her fat and comment on her clothes. At the time she was not overweight. She is now though ... like a self fulfilling prophesy. In grade 7, the last year my daughter attended regular school, my daughter complained that the teacher spent too much time reprimanding the students who were not working and offered little help for those who were interested in learning. When she was upset with the unruly kids she would assign extra homework. This was perceived by my daughter as being grossly unfair. My daughter works well with few distractions so working at home by herself was considered as a way she could concentrate more. (Barbara, parent with two children attending Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, January 18, 2000) 60
For these particular students, the tides of technology had delivered the promise of what virtual school could potentially offer them; virtual school seemed to assure a restoration of life and vitality to the schooling experience.
The appeal of virtual school is still present among students attending virtual schools. This appeal also extends to potential students, who may be influenced by friends currently attending virtual schools. In the interview transcripts, several students mentioned they had shared their stories of being virtual students with their siblings and friends or were influenced by them. Barbara, described how her son chose to attend virtual school, as follows.
My son chose virtual school after a year of watching my daughter. She would still be in bed in the morning as he left for the bus and she would be finished her work when he got home in the afternoon and still had homework to complete. Probably not the most sound reason in the world but because it had worked for my daughter I felt that it would also work for my son. (Barbara, parent with two children attending Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, January 18, 2000)
Sheila, a Grade 10 student with Virtual Grade School 3 explained how she came to select virtual school by stating, "Some of my friends were doing it, so they always talked about how great it was and they wanted me to do it" (First round email interview, February 4,
2000). These friends, in turn, who had chosen virtual schooling, may have been influenced by similar stories offered by other friends.
However, does the appeal of virtual school last with students? How do the expectations that students had before attending virtual school measure up, now that they have experienced virtual schools? Do they have any regrets about leaving traditional school to attend virtual school? Consider the following accounts from students 61
One of the drawbacks of being on a virtual school is that you don't mingle as much with other people. Talking to people over email is different from meeting them face-to-face, because through email, all you know about a person is based on what they tell you, you can't see what kind of clothes they wear, mannerisms they have, or how they act in front of others.
There are also some social things that cannot be offered in a virtual school, such as drama classes and school dances. These are opportunities to mingle that are often missed out on by students that attend virtual schools, so cyber students have to look elsewhere for social activities. (Rebecca, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, February 24, 2000)
KM: Leaving public school to attend virtual school must have been an important decision for you?
Lewis: In grade 5 my focus wasn't really on starting another school but leaving the one I was at. The bullying wasn't THAT bad, but uncomfortable. I wasn't the most popular kid there and I didn't really fit into one of the friend categories. There weren't many guys there mainly girls, and guys and girls didn't get along as friends like at that age. Plus I started getting migraines, but I haven't had once since public. I have bad hearing so the classroom was slowly getting harder to concentrate in.
KM: Do you enjoy school more now that you are in virtual school?
Lewis: Ya. (Lewis, Grade 7 student, Virtual Grade School 2, Third round chat room interview, March 11, 2000)
One thing that can be a problem with the virtual school is the lack of certain social activities. Things such as group activities are something that I miss from conventional schools. Perhaps in the future we'll be able to take more field trips and have more get to know your class mates times. Another thing that can be a problem for unmotivated students is the lack of structure in the virtual school. With a conventional school your days and weeks are pretty much planned out for you while at the virtual school the deadlines are set up but you have to decide how much to do each day which can be a problem for some people. (Rob, Grade 12, Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, January 20, 2000) 62
These particular students were drawn towards virtual grade schools and after experiencing this type of schooling for a time reached their own conclusions. Virtual grade schooling may appear to be appealing to interested students. Potential problems that students may have encountered in traditional school might be averted by attending virtual grade school. While certain aspects of pedagogy can be digitally represented in virtual grade schools, the complexities of face-to-face interaction cannot readily be replicated in the same manner.
Third Wave16: Online Schooling as Viable Alternative
The beginning of the third wave occurred when student enrolments in virtual grade schools began to decrease. The time frame for the third wave of students to virtual schools in Alberta began during the 2000-2001 school year. The third wave may be considered to be the result of combining the developmental turns of virtual grade school that involve promotion, answerability and presence. This third pattern arising from students attending virtual schools is the beginning of social acceptance for virtual schools, which has been described as a viable alternative to regular school.
A strong characteristic of this third wave originating from the tides of technology relates to stabilization. Three of the four virtual schools had slight decreases in student enrolment for the 2000-2001 school year. Perhaps this plateau of student enrolments suggests that the novelty of virtual grade school is disappearing and students who just want to experiment with schooling options are no longer choosing virtual schools? Or maybe students and parents are making more thoughtful moves regarding schooling
16 Information to inform the possibility of a third wave for virtual student enrolment appeared after the official period for interviews with participants had ended (December, 1999 to April 2000). However, participating virtual schools continued to send their enrolments figures for the 2000-2001 school year. 63 options rather than jumping at a new opportunity? During the Third Wave, currently still in effect, as the general appeal of virtual grade schooling continues, the types of students who attend online schools has become increasingly diverse.
In addition to virtual students who attend on a full-time basis, this third wave of students has also extended to include part-time and adult students within their enrolments. Many new high school students attending virtual school are part-time students involved in integrating a course or two from the local virtual school into their traditional school program. For example, the superintendent of one of the four schools in the study announced that all students in that particular school division would take at least one course in their grade school career from their virtual school. An edict like this may provide an example of how online schools have been slowly gaining social acceptance from the larger educational establishment.
During the 2000-2001 school year, online schools had been alive long enough in
Alberta so that students in the various school districts and divisions were aware of this option. So what led to the plateau, or even the slight decreases, in student enrolments?
Perhaps students seeking to acquire more social interaction partially explains the decrease in enrolments between the end of the second wave and the beginning of the third wave?
Perhaps during this period, virtual school administrators are attempting to control the growth of their student populations in order to increase the emphasis toward offering improved instruction? Or perhaps the decreases in student enrolment may be due in part to the clashing of promotional words, or what virtual grade schools claim to be able to do, with pedagogical experiences, or how those people directly involved describe their experiences in virtual grade schools? The third wave continues at present. 64
Chapter Summary
Virtual student enrolment trends correspond to three waves. These waves find their origins in the development of virtual grade schooling and how these developments turned the tides of technology. Students attending virtual schools during the First Wave were home schooled children involved in virtual school pilot projects. Within the years that spanned this First Wave, the oldest virtual schools in Alberta had opportunities to refine and expand their course offerings. Proponents of education at home began to talk about the benefits of virtual education and this free form of advertising helped disseminate the message to other potential online candidates. Student enrolment numbers in newly opened virtual schools began to increase dramatically. These oldest virtual
schools then began to appeal to other students, rather than students with backgrounds in home schooling. Additional school districts began to plan their virtual schools and were to offer their virtual programs in the last school year of the First Wave, which was the
1996-1997 school year. Students attending virtual school in the First Wave were viewed as existing on the fringe of mainstream education.
The jumps in student enrolments attending virtual schools during the Second
Wave were due to students arriving there with backgrounds in traditional school. These new virtual school students were among the first to be offered an educational alternative, the likes of which had never been seen before in publicly funded education. The conceptualization and development of virtual schools were intrapreneurial ventures, whereby teacher innovators employed by school districts were given the freedom to create something new within the confines of their particular school districts. Students swept up by rapid technological changes were able to escape the peer pressure and other 65 threats of traditional school by attending virtual schools Students were then able :o spend more time developing their interests. Student enrolment numbers in newly opened virtual schools during the Second Wave began to increase dramatically as well, some of the newer virtual schools experienced a doubling of their student population during the second year of operation. Students attending virtual school during the Second Wave were still viewed as fringers, while at the same time virtual schools were trying to gain more respect from their colleagues and from society as a whole.
Students attending online schools during the Third Wave are from a variety of backgrounds. Enrolment numbers in the more established virtual schools were reaching a plateau, while some declined slightly. Newly opened virtual schools during the Third
Wave have the benefit of noting the trials and errors of their older counterparts. Students now attending virtual school, although representing less than one percent of the student population in Alberta, are considered to be more of the in group with technology rather than the exception as fringe students.
Reflection
1 was swept into the virtual grade school movement after it had already started and after my arrival, I was soon overcome by the swells caused by using the current technologies. Our principal holds a strong opinion about teachers at our school creating their own lesson plans, rather than using materials that are available for purchase. I develop lessons from scratch, because the courses that I teach are new offerings at our school. Lessons are created as text documents and sent to students as email attachments on a daily basis. Completed assignments from students are sent back the same way. Students' assignments are assessed according to how well they can meet the requirements outlined in the particular lesson. For the most part, lesson content draws from resources found in textbooks and from materials free for the finding on the web. It is to be noted that finding suitable materials on the web to enhance lessons is excruciatingly time consuming and severely limits the time available for lesson planning! (I can't imagine a lesson for students attending virtual school that does not include the use of the web as a resource. So, I search the web for materials and bookmark the useful sites that I hope will exist for a time.) In addition, assessing the learning of students is limited by the delivery of the lessons, which is dominantly a "word processor" or digital correspondence/independent study model. Lesson content comes to students by way of documents created with a word processor. That which can be included in a text-based lesson provides the basis for assessing learning. Questions from students and parents are many and to be expected. It is common to be swamped with over two hundred email messages per day. This combination of developing lessons, delivering as creative instruction as possible, dealing with approximately two hundred email messages daily and evaluating the learning of students all lead to very long work days. During this first semester, I work in excess of 14 hours each day during the week and weekends are similarly absorbed. If this is my experience as a virtual grade school teacher, than what of my students? More questions came to mind. How do my students experience school in virtual environments? What is going on at the student end of the Internet connection? (Journal entry, October 8, 1998) CHAPTER FIVE: VIRTUAL PEDAGOGY AND THE LIFEWORLD
Lifeworld
Attending to the question of research has led me to explore the lifeworld of students' attending virtual grade schools. The lifeworld has been described as the world of lived experience (Husserl, 1970; Ihde, 1990; Schutz & Luckman, 1973; Van Manen,
1997). Husserl (1970) explained how the lifeworld is the world of immediate experience, the world as already there or "pregiven," the world as experienced in the "natural attitude," that of original natural life (p. 145). For Husserl, that which is "natural" is original and naive, before the experience is put to critical or theoretical reflection. The natural attitude of the lifeworld is always directed at the world "toward this or that, being directed toward it as an end or as a means, as relevant or irrelevant, toward the private or public, toward what is daily required or obtrusively new" (Husserl, 1970, p. 281).
However, "our modern theoretical attitude tends to turn us into non-participating spectators, surveyors of the world. And even more importantly (or ironically) the theoretical attitude in its modern scientific sense often silences or kills our sense of wonder" (Van Manen, 1997, p. 182). According to Husserl, each lifeworld has a certain structure that needs to be studied. Van Manen (1997) explained how, all phenomenological human science research efforts are really explorations into the structure of the human lifeworld, the lived world as experienced in everyday situations and relations" (p. 101). In order to attend to the question of research further, I will explore how virtual students experience certain aspects of virtual pedagogy that take place in the lifeworld. 68
Virtual Pedagogy in the Lifeworld of Students
The term virtual pedagogy is the result of the modifications that teachers and administrators in virtual grade schools have made to pedagogy, which was originally designed and developed for traditional grade school environments. In general, the modifications that were required in order to offer instruction through virtual grade schools were based on a traditional formulation of teaching, involving, instructional research, instructional delivery, and evaluation of learning. Each of the three elements in this pedagogical formulation had to be somewhat altered in order to offer instruction to virtual students through various combinations of computer-mediated communications.
For example, without considerable efforts on the part of the teachers, administrators, and technicians, combined with consistent availability of bandwidth, not all of the instructional delivery strategies typically used in traditional school classrooms are possible to replicate in virtual school. In addition, teachers in virtual schools may not have ready access to the range of assessment and feedback techniques that are available to teachers in traditional environments. For example, teachers and students are physically distant from one another, so it may not be possible for teachers to assign grades to students based on observation. Due to the altering of a traditional model of pedagogy for virtual grade school environments, the students participating in this research study add their experiences of virtual pedagogy to the lifeworld.
The lifeworld may be broken down into, "the four fundamental existentials of spatiality (lived space), corporeality (lived body), temporality (lived time) and relationality (lived other) that may be seen to belong to the existential ground by way of which all human beings experience the world" (van Manen, 1997, p. 102). Exploration of the lifeworld structure of a virtual student requires an inquiry into these component parts, which will be used as a guide for reflection in the research process. For the purposes of this section, these four elements will be separated, and addressed in turn, although it must be understood that descriptions of lived experiences offered by research participants will involve some overlapping involvement of the four elements. The following four sections offer an exploration of online students' lifeworlds and the existentialism of lived space, lived body, lived time, and lived other.
Lived Space
"Lived space (spatiality) is felt space" (Van Manen, 1997, p. 102).
Elements of lived spaces for students attending virtual grade schools are characterized by an interplay of safety and isolation. Students attending virtual grade schools are working alone, for the most part, although a parent is often home with younger students. Virtual students may be alone at home, but they are in a potentially safer environment than traditional schools.
KM: Has your daughter found that virtual school is a safer place than traditional school?
Barbara: Yes, she is much happier right now. She feels much better about herself because she is not hearing the negative comments and teasing from the boys at school. (Barbara, parent with two children attending Virtual Grade School 4, Third round chat room interview, March 1, 2000)
Consider also the following description from George, a Grade 10 student attending
Virtual Grade School 4.
There is a reduced risk of physical danger to students if they are in virtual school. I can read about mindless shootings occurring in regular schools all over the place and can have little fear. Also, something that is 70
particularly relevant to me, students are less prone to being criticized for their appearance and dress. (George, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 4, Second round email interview, March 12, 2000)
Many students noted within their individual interview series' how virtual grade school can be, at times, an isolated and lonely experience. Senior high students, along with many junior high students, may not have the privilege of having a parent home with them to assist in their studies. One student's account of these feelings of isolation that can accompany virtual school was noted in a newspaper article. Petrie (1998) explained,
Most school days are six to seven hours long, depending on the length of the lessons teachers give. As for homework, if you work hard during the day, you usually won't have any. There is a down side. To be honest with you, by the end of the first week, I was discouraged and feeling a bit lonely. But before I gave up, I found that the help and encouragement of great teachers and fellow students got me back on track. One student decided to break the cycle of isolation often involved with Internet learning, so he organized a dance. I think everyone is looking forward to associating faces with names, (p. 26)
The issues of safety and isolation face virtual grade school students and come to be addressed at some point within their enrolments in virtual school. Students' homes become the predominant physical space for virtual students, rather than school buildings.
Physical Space
Virtual students attend to their duties and responsibilities as students without having to be physically present at school. However, students still require a working space complete with all of the necessary school supplies, including access to a computer with an Internet connection. The student's computer desk is physically situated at home and not in a classroom at school. The computer sitting on the desk has a modem connected to a telephone line or cable that offers a ready link to the virtual school. Even though virtual students do not attend school physically, they do access a digital version of 71
school buildings by way of the World Wide Web. Designers of virtual schools' web sites
have attempted to replicate various aspects of traditional school buildings in an effort to
instill a certain familiarity among their students. Web sites offering digital versions of
school buildings, hallways, lockers, classrooms, and common areas imitate their physical
counterparts found in more traditional settings. A virtual student may still make use of binders, paper, textbooks, pencils, and pens in the regular fashion while sitting at a
computer desk. Virtual students occupy a unique space as they attend grade school. This
particular space has a physical, as well as a non-physical, component. The most notable
physical component of a virtual grade school is a monitor that opens to the vast unknown, where online schooling takes place in cyberspace.
Cyberspace
In addressing the lifeworld existential of lived space, Van Manen (1997)
described how, "In general, we may say that we become the space we are in" (p. 102).
How does this statement relate to online students? The Internet, or the information highway, like a regular highway or road, "are not places where we can feel at rest - they are really no place to be, they are means for travelling from one place to another" (Van
Manen, 1997, pp. 102-103). Hence the information highway, is a means for travelling from one place to another and those places that online students travel, from digitally created school walls, hallways, lockers, and classrooms, to visiting with a friend in a chat room, all occur by way of the Internet. The information highway allows students and teachers to create a number of places where teaching and learning can potentially occur.
These various learning places can collectively be termed grade school cyberspaces. 72
The Internet or World Wide Web allows the grade school cyberspaces to exist.
Student participants are provided with the opportunity to have virtual grade school brought to them by way of the Internet. However, these students understand the World
Wide Web in different ways, as demonstrated by their offerings of various descriptions of what the World Wide Web means to them.
What the www means to me is a classroom. Because all of my classes are on the web, it means I use it for my lessons, just like I would use a classroom for them in a conventional school. (Andrew, Grade 9, Virtual Grade School 1, First round email interview, January 27, 2000)
Another research participant considered the World Wide Web, the backbone of online grade schools as, "a theatre for the best and worst of man's thoughts and deeds" (Gail, parent with one child attending Virtual Grade School 2, First round email interview,
February 4, 2000). Monica, a Grade 11 student attending Virtual Grade School 2, also described how,
The Internet is nice to have, but in a way it isn't. It is nice because I can e-mail friends and look thinks up. However, it is often slow and there is an awful lot of stuff on it that is wrong and of no use. So, the World Wide Web means little to me besides a way of communicating with friends and looking up a few choice things, basically only Christian sites. (First round email interview, January 10, 2000)
Other students presently attending online grade schools offered their descriptions of the
World Wide Web. Many of these descriptions showed enthusiasm for the World Wide
Web's capabilities, as follows.
An underexplored, scary, exciting, fascinating, rapidly changing vast world of its own. (Lewis, Grade 8, Virtual Grade School 2, First round email interview, December 9, 1999)
I believe that the World Wide Web makes me feel small in the scheme of things. I also believe that it's opened my mind to what the world has to 73
offer and makes me a better more informed person. (Rob, Grade 12, Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, January 20, 2000)
Mostly it means email to me, because I can write people in Germany, England and Edmonton, when it would be a lot harder to maintain contact if we were only writing letters. Of course it also means better schooling for me and others. It also provides an easy way to get information and pictures on things that I like (Sheila, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 3, First round email interview, February 4, 2000).
It is the coolest thing ever. I would die without it. I love the information I can get off of it. It helps me a lot! (Doreen, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, January 5, 2000)
To me, the Web is the only link that I have with my classmates. Very seldom do I ever see them. It is also the fastest way to talk to my teachers. The phone and fax lines are often busy. It also provides me with all the research material I need. It is very useful. (Emily, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 2, First round email interview, January 26, 2000)
It is a chance to meet people on the other side of the world, a great research device, and good for a lot of fun things, like games. (Michael, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 1, First round email interview, February 7,2000)
In addition, other students presently attending virtual grade schools offered their descriptions of the World Wide Web. Many of these descriptions seemed to lament the
World Wide Web's capabilities, as follows.
It is a very confusing, but available library. I have found some information, but usually with my mom's help. It would be really hard if she wasn't computer literate. (Bonnie, Grade 8, Virtual Grade School 3, First round email interview, February 2, 2000)
The World Wide Web doesn't really mean anything to me. It's just a huge information source and it doesn't mean anything to me emotionally and I'm definitely not addicted to it. I look at it as a huge library and that's all. (Michelle, Grade 9, Virtual Grade School 1, First round email interview, January 13, 2000)
The World Wide Web means that the whole world has access to it. I also think that it means that anyone can put things on it. (Dwight, Grade 9, Virtual Grade School 3, First round email interview, February 8, 2000) 74
The World Wide Web is a delightfully anarchic mess of broken links and illegal and redundant sites, whose lack of streamlining or functionality is a mighty testament to freedom of speech. (George, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, March 11, 2000)
The very system of wires that allows online grade schools to exist, offers students to experience much freedom and flexibility in their work schedules. Monica, a Grade 11 student attending Virtual Grade School 2 attested to the degree of flexibility with working at home by describing how, in addition to completing her school work at home, she completes other duties. She stated, "I do get up and do stuff around the house a lot. I can't seem to sit still" (Third round chat room interview, February 29, 2000). Other benefits of attending virtual grade schools include the following, described by Rebecca, a
Grade 10 student enrolled in Virtual Grade School 4,
In my experience, students who attend online schools are more mature and have less discipline problems that students who attend public school. They are also able to learn better, as there are less distractions around them, and have more contact with their families" (Second round email interview, March 20, 2000).
Virtual grade school students experience a variety of cyberspaces where much of their education occurs, which are possible by way of the information highway. The lived spaces, or spatiality, that virtual students experience are combinations of physical spaces and cyberspaces.
Lived Body
"Lived body (corporeality) refers to the phenomenological fact that we are always bodily in the world" (Van Manen, 1997, p. 103). 75
Virtual students' corporeality involves still being themselves but without the need of a physical presence at school because they no longer attend traditional schools, in the physical body, as they once did. Students attending online grade schools communicate with each other in various textual forms. DiGiovanna (1996) described how, "we must note what people give up of self in order to affirm themselves on the Net. They lose their bodies. They lose their voices. They often lose their names" (p. 448). However, Argyle
(1996) explained how the textual communication on the Internet somehow uncannily extends to the physical body, and even though people are online, they feel as though they meet in the physical. Consider the following responses when virtual students were asked what the World Wide Web means to them.
Well it means freedom and is a form of self-expression that enables us to be ourselves and to explore our world around us without leaving our homes. (Doreen, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, January 5, 2000)
To me, the World Wide Web is a basis for obtaining and giving information. It connects people from all over the world, and allows them to share themselves without having to travel long distances to meet another person. (Rebecca, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, February 24, 2000)
Students attending virtual grade schools remain bodily in the world, but in ways that vary from past experiences attending traditional school. A benefit for some virtual students working from home rather than having to be physically at school is that they save valuable travel time by attending virtual school. The time saved can be reinvested, as virtual students may then devote more time to their interests and to their individuality.
Consider the following descriptions, one from a parent and the other from a student. 76
KM: Now that she does not have to physically travel back and forth in order to attend traditional school, what does your daughter do with this time?
Barbara: She has been able to take on a part time job working in childcare drop in for a local gym. She gets to deal with both children and adults she has gained a lot of confidence there. I think kids in a virtual setting are really allowed to be who they want to be without peer pressure to conform. (Barbara, parent with two children attending Virtual Grade School 4, Third round chat room interview, March 1, 2000)
I think if you attend virtual school, you become more your own person. When you are in school, everyone is trying to pressure you to do things you don't want to. But when you are at home you are more likely to do what you would like to do, instead of what your friend does. (Sheila, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 3, Second round email interview, February 4, 2000)
Virtual students adopt a different type of identity that resonates the characteristics of a presence online. Students attending virtual grade schools experience corporeality as they adopt a self without body, in order to interact with teachers, administrators, and other students in their invisible communities.
Self Without Body
In cyberspace, students have an opportunity to personalize computer-mediated communications with others by assigning unique email nicknames or including a meaningful or enlightening quotation as a signature file. Giese (1998) referred to this type of textual self-representation in an electronic community as self without body. The signatures serve to "produce and project an identity in an environment that lacks 'normal' social cues" (Giese, 1998, p. 10). Consider the following account from Barbara, a parent with two children attending Virtual Grade School 4. 77
Barbara: I don't know if you have heard about this, but the kids have their own way to sign their name or identify themselves.
KM: No, I didn't know that. Please explain more!
Barbara: For example my daughter will sign her name (with her nickname) others have little sayings behind their names.
KM: Oh, on their email addresses? I've seen several students' email addresses from [a certain free email domain name17]. They give themselves a name that is not their own, at least not officially.
Barbara: Some are really cute. Let me give you some examples. I have to ask the kids it does not go on their email but are used in identifying themselves to other students. [She proceeded to give several examples.] From what I've seen it's more of a combination of nickname combined with a saying sometimes.
KM: Barbara, do the students in your virtual school have to find their own email domains? How come everyone seems to use [a certain free email domain name]?
Barbara: The school provides an internet provider for people who do not have their own ... because this address will only be good for the 10 months of school they go to [a certain free email domain name]. They also use [a certain free email domain name] so their parents can't read their mail.
KM: Do you think that this form of self-expression is good or bad? Is this encouraged by the teachers?
Barbara: The teachers don't encourage this but tolerate it as far I know except for high school where teachers expect a greater level of responsibility from students and ask them not to use it when they send assignments in.
KM: Oh, ok. So this email account issue is a social thing, where some students started with an interesting signature file, complete with words of wisdom and a pseudonym and it caught on. Right?
Barbara: Right. I'll email you some examples because I think it's a very different phenomenon in that regular school because kids are
17 "A name that identifies an electronic post office box on a network where e-mail can be sent. Different types of networks have different formats for e-mail addresses. On the Internet, all e-mail addresses have the form:
trying hard to fit in with the crowd and in virtual they are trying to be an individual. (Third round chat room interview, March 1, 2000)
This parent's last observation suggests that, whereas students in traditional schools are often struggling with social conformity, or "fitting in", students in virtual schools are attempting to assert their individuality. The expression of students' individuality in a textual environment may begin by adopting a unique signature block, which reflects their self-representation. However, the self-representation of virtual students does not end here.
On another level of interpretation, students attending virtual grade schools, just as students in traditional schools, are subject to conforming to the status quo of the group.
This type of conforming could be thought of as a form of online peer pressure. If someone that a particular virtual school student corresponds with online has a unique email address and a signature file that states something interesting or in an alternate form, then that student receiving the message will be influenced to adopt a small representation of self as well. Virtual grade school students and friends email each other, thus email addresses and signature blocks will be dispersed. In addition, often an email message that has arrived to a student has already been forwarded to one or more people. Thus, email addresses and messages that include signature blocks may circulate amongst a larger audience than originally thought.
In addition, many students have more than one email account each with a different address. Students may use particular email accounts for various purposes. For example, during data collection, participants were asked to provide an alternate email address. Many student participants provided an alternate email address, in addition to 79
their school issued email address. Some of these addresses included names that were not
the students' legal names, but were nicknames or a combination of numbers and symbols.
Possessing multiple email addresses for different purposes also provides students with an
opportunity to establish a presence in cyberspace when communicating with others.
Invisible Communities
Research participants were asked, "What can you do now in your virtual/online
school that you couldn't do in your conventional/regular school? Rebecca, a Grade 10
student attending Virtual Grade School 4 offered this response,
In this school, you get more of an opportunity to see people as they actually are. In a conventional school, students sometimes feel that they have to talk, act, or dress a certain way in order to be accepted. However, in a virtual school, that is not required, because we only meet over email. (First round email interview, February 24, 2000)
This student's description of her new membership in an invisible community was
somewhat ironic in that even though she does not interact with others on a face to face basis, she still relies on seeing people "as they actually are" in order to "know" them.
She claims to be able to extract at least some of the personal qualities of those people she
contacts through her online communications. However, this same student mentioned that, "getting to know people online is difficult, because you only know what they tell you. It's fun to try to guess what a person is really like simply by what they say in a chat
or email message" (Rebecca, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 4, First round email
interview, February 24, 2000). Students making use of email messages and chat room
sessions must discern the tone and integrity of communication only from the text
provided, as other visual cues included in face to face communication are absent.
Rebecca's descriptions of her experiences leave the reader wondering if it is possible to ever gain a sense of knowing another person through the use of email or chat rooms, without meeting in person.
There are several conventions used for communicating with members of invisible communities. For instance, much of the written word used in email messages and chat room sessions may be somewhat altered, in order for a sender to quickly convey a notion to the receiver. Giese (1998) identified how "the written word on the Net is built for speed, not for show" (p. 9). Acronyms and emoticons18 convey a high degree of nonverbal meanings within email messages and chat room sessions without occupying much text. For example, acronyms include "lol" to represent laughing out loud, "hagd" for have a good day, "ttyl" for talk to you later and emoticons include ":-)"to represent smiling, ":-D" for laughing, ";-)" for winking, ":-I" for wondering, ":-t" for angry. In computer mediated communication, spelling and punctuation are not considered to be as important as they are in physical communities (Giese, 1998; Markham, 1998). Varying uses of the English language for different purposes may have implications for students attending virtual schools. It may become difficult for students to switch between formal
English usage for assignments and informal English for use in chat rooms and email messages, especially when students are still learning about spelling and punctuation in school. People involved in virtual school who correspond with each other primarily through text-based computer mediated communications may find that they are involved in a highly complicated undertaking, if combinations of text and symbols are to take the place of in-person communication.
18 "An acronym for emotion icon, a small icon composed of punctuation characters that indicates how an e- mail message should be interpreted (that is, the writer's mood). For example, a :-) emoticon indicates that the message is meant as a joke and shouldn't be taken seriously. An emoticon is also called a smiley" (Internet.com Corporation, 2000, http://webopedia.mtemet.eom/TERM/e/emoticon.html). 81
Lived Time
"Lived time (temporality) is subjective time as opposed to clock time or objective time. .. The temporal dimensions of past, present, and future constitute the horizons of a person's temporal landscape" (Van Manen, 1997, p. 104).
Virtual students spend a lot of time working with technology, hence students experience some of their lived time, or temporality, within the confines of language associated with computer time. Terminology such as "asynchronous," "synchronous," and "real time" are used to describe the nature of the computer mediated relationship between online school and online student. Email messages with attachments, including lessons, answer keys, questions, or finished work, can be sent at one particular time and may be received by students or teachers, at another time. Other text-based activities can be centred around synchronous chats with a teacher and students, which take place in real time. These notions of time that are computer dependent have been included within the virtual students' temporal landscape, which already includes past, present, and future dimensions.
Past
First of all, it should be noted that there is no clear difference between "virtual students' and "real life students" in the way of characteristics, especially considering the fact that most likely all of the members of the former group at one point belonged to the latter. (George, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 4, Second round email interview, March 12, 2000)
In the future, there may be students who receive their entire grade schooling exclusively in a combination of various cyberspaces devoted to education. However, students presently attending online schools arrived there with backgrounds in either regular public schools or home schooling. Research participants drew from past 82 experiences with other forms of schooling to help explain their present experiences in online school in order to, "take measurements in relation to other realms of being" (Ihde,
1990, p. 14).
Students choosing to attend online grade schools have indeed entered another realm of being, compared to past educational experiences in traditional school settings.
Each research participant was asked, "What could you do in a conventional/regular school that you can't do now in your virtual school?" This question allowed students to voice what they missed about regular or traditional school and students had an opportunity to lament. Students participating in the study offered the following responses,
I could go to the teachers directly and talk to them about things right away, rather than having to wait. I also had direct contact with other students. Also, we would have extra (group, posters, etc) projects to do that I don't have now. (Monica, Grade 11, Virtual Grade School 2, First round email interview, January 10, 2000)
In a conventional school I could do more school-related organized sports and could continue with my education in French. (Michelle, Grade 9, Virtual Grade School 1, First round email interview, January 13, 2000)
I could hang out with other kids. My social life was "bigger", but not necessarily better. The library was closer. (Lewis, Grade 7, Virtual Grade School 2, First round email interview, December 9, 1999)
I could immediately ask my teacher for help, now I have to ask my mom, who sometimes doesn't know exactly what the assignment is asking for because she doesn't have time to read every single thing, or I can try and call my teachers, but I often get their answering machines. Usually they call right back or answer my email pretty quickly, but it isn't the same as just asking the teacher and getting a response right away. Next year, when I am out of virtual school, my mom will be more aware of what I need (Bonnie, Grade 8, Virtual Grade School 3, First round email interview, February 2, 2000).
In a conventional school, I could meet a lot more people. I spent all day with people my age, which I don't do here. I also had a gym class and we were forced to go to gym nearly each day. (Sheila, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 3, First round email interview, February 4, 2000)
Well, I can't be teased. I can't be afraid to walk down the hallways. I can't be ignored by the teachers. I can't fear going to school. (Doreen, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, January 5, 2000)
Talk to your classmates face to face. Most of my classmates I have met in the school's chat rooms. I don't know what they look like. Also, I could talk to teachers right away. I usually have to wait for busy phone or fax lines to become available. (Emily, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 2, First round email interview, January 26, 2000)
There isn't as much of a social life (gossip). Also, I am used to writing everything down on paper, so with the virtual school I have to type everything out on the computer once I have written it. Less creative projects (posters, models) because everything has to be on the computer. (Denise, Grade 11, Virtual Grade School 3, First round email interview, February 1, 2000)
You can't do art that easily like as a course and that was my favourite thing to do. (Hillary, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 1, First round email interview, March 1, 2000)
I could do more practical and instructive science labs, as well as participate in a wider variety of group activities, particularly in Phys. Ed. I could take music classes, something that seems completely out of the questions here at virtual school. (George, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, March 11, 2000)
In a virtual school, you can't take mechanics because it is not possible. Also, in a virtual school it is not possible to make real friends unless they live near you. You can still have friends though, you can't share all the same classes the same as in conventional school. (Andrew, Grade 9, Virtual Grade School 1, First round email interview, January 27, 2000)
Although online students have entered into another realm of being, by enrolling an online grade school, they were quick to point out those activities that do not lend themselves to being offered in virtual school. Not all of the functions of conventional school can be replicated in order to fit a virtual school setting. 84
Present
Many accounts from participants offer comparisons of past experiences in conventional school in order to help explain and illustrate their present experiences in online school. Students also compared their present experiences in virtual school to past experiences in traditional school or in home schooling. Each research participant was asked, "What can you do now in your virtual/online school that you couldn't do in your conventional/regular school?" This question allowed students an opportunity to celebrate their attending virtual grade schools. Students participating in the study offered the following responses,
I have started my own business, which I wouldn't have had time to do otherwise. I can go places during the day, whereas before I would have had to stay at school. I don't have to worry about being distracted by other students, and I don't have to worry about homework that night, although I can do work at night if I want to. I can work on one subject without having to worry about the period being over, which is really nice for when I am writing essays or anything else. (Monica, Grade 11, Virtual Grade School 2, First round email interview, January 10, 2000)
In a virtual school I can learn about using computers more than I would in a conventional school and I can be involved in more extra-curricular activities without my schedule conflicting with those activities. (Michelle, Grade 9, Virtual Grade School 1, First round email interview, January 13, 2000)
Get to know my family better. Found out that there is more to life than peer pressure and materialistic goods. Inner peace. Appreciation for good work, achievement, I don't know -1 just appreciate everything more. I have more flexibility - if I work hard and I have more free time and I am in control of it. I also have more flexibility in the courses I take and in the Phys Ed that I do. (Lewis, Grade 7, Virtual Grade School 2, First round email interview, December 9, 1999) Stay home. I don't have to get up every morning at 6:30 a.m. to catch the bus and I get better rest because I don't have to get up so early. I can listen to music as I work and not get in trouble for it. Become independent. You become the master of your own studies and you have the choice when you want to work and when you want to play. It helps you understand the responsibility of what school really is and why it's so important. (Rob, Grade 12, Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, January 20, 2000)
I can wear my pyjamas to school and I can take breaks whenever I want. If I am hungry I can take a break or grab a snack and eat it in front of the computer. 1 don't need permission to go to the bathroom. I can sleep in if necessary. I can decide when I do the assignment. My mom gives me a weekly plan and I lay out the daily assignments. I can do the week's math all in one day and get it over with or I can spread it out over the week if I want. When I am finished my assignments for the day, I can do whatever I want, I don't have to wait for a bell to dismiss me. I can send email whenever I want. (Bonnie, Grade 8, Virtual Grade School 3, First round email interview, February 2, 2000)
I can work at my own pace. At regular school it was really slow and we never did any work in class. We had a lot of homework, even though it was one of the better schools. I can also spend more time doing things that I like, such as playing violin or piano, or reading. I spend more time with my family and my brother, and I have more time to be available when my friends need me. (Sheila, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 3, First round email interview, February 4, 2000)
Well, I can freely talk with everyone in the school. I can get personalized help from the teachers. I can be free to be myself and say and think what I want. I can talk to different people without being judged first by how I look or how I talk, but by what I say and how well we all click on the basic level! (Doreen, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, January 5, 2000)
Search the World Wide Web: To research, we can use the Web. Talk to fellow students in chat rooms: You meet more people that way. Work as fast as you can: I need more time for arithmetic and less for social studies. Stay at home: That is a plus when it is really cold out! Take school with you: That is not too good! Move in the middle of school year: We move a lot. We can stay with the same school. (Emily, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 2, First round email interview, January 26, 2000) 86
I can get up at whatever time I please and work later into the night, since I work best at night. I have the freedom to go to functions that would be during school time, for example Farm Fair. I would be able to continue with my work and not have lots of homework to catch up on. Spend more time during the evening and have time to do other things during the day like going to the gym. (Denise, Grade 11, Virtual Grade School 3, First round email interview, February 1, 2000)
Piano lessons in mid-afternoon. Get out of the house a little while on nice afternoons. Work ahead, knowing that you won't have to do extra work the teacher forgot about when you're back from holidays, etc. (Desiree, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 1, First round email interview, February 19, 2000)
I can berate people without thought, in that in a real school I would often try to remain innocuous and perhaps roll my eyes at most if someone's words or actions disgusted me, but in virtual school, I go out of my way to insult people, being that I did not have the freedom to insult my peers whom I so loathe until I came to virtual school. (George, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, March 11, 2000)
Some of the students in this study chose to attend virtual schools due to the perceived saving of time. One student explained that now that she is attending an online school she has "more time to practice violin and less time spent wasted at school, walking to it, and doing home work" (Sheila, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 3, First round email interview, Febuary 4, 2000). Other students reported that they left regular school due to some type of peer pressure that forced them to do other than they would have done on their own. These instances of students acting with their peer group were in direct conflict with their own individual values.
A few students shared that they were drawn to virtual schools because these schools sounded promising. One student's account of her recent enrolment in virtual school was noted in a newspaper article. Petrie (1998) explained, 87
Virtual school has put a whole new spin on learning for me. It's challenging and for once in my life, I'm excited about school. Lots of people ask me, 'What's so special about virtual school?' My answer is, 'When I'm in virtual school, the world is my classroom and there are no limits to learning, (p. 26)
Attending virtual grade schools may have been the choice for students participating in this study who were searching for something more interesting than regular public education, thereby seeking that which is new and exciting. For example, a virtual school administrator commented about the characteristics that virtual students possess as, "the only commonalities I can think of are perhaps an interest in computers/technology, and a willingness to try something new and different (Sara, administrator, Virtual Grade School
1, Second email interview, February 2, 2000). A student described "I like the idea of doing and trying new things. I also thought it would be neat to be one of the first to try out some next generation schooling" (Rob, Grade 12, Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, January 19, 2000) Another student remarked, "I chose virtual schooling because I have been home schooled all of my life and I wanted to try something new
(Charlene, Grade 8, Virtual Grade School 2, First round email interview, January 28,
2000). Lyle described his reasons for attending virtual school as follows,
I chose to attend virtual school because of challenge and because of the experience it would give me. I've always liked challenges because it is fun to be able to overcome them. I like computers, and being on a virtual school would give me a chance to get even more used to them than I already was. (Lyle, Grade 7, Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, March 5, 2000)
Hillary, a Grade 11 student attending Virtual Grade School 1 described why she was attending virtual school as, "because my friend was going to try it and I thought this would be kinda cool. My mom and dad thought it would be ok for grade 9 because if I did not like it I would be going to high school any way" (First round email interview,
March 1, 2000). For some students, online schooling can indeed be "kinda cool" and a low risk experiment at that, as the student may perceive that a return to regular school is always a possibility.
Future
Based upon their choice of schooling for the present, students participating in the study gave some consideration to the future of virtual grade schools in relation to traditional schools. These considerations were based on students having experiences in both traditional and virtual schools. If time permitted in chat room interviews, virtual students were asked about what the future might hold for traditional and virtual forms of schooling. Consider the following responses from students.
I think that in the future, virtual schools will become more and more common. As technology becomes more advanced, people will use it to provide better and better programs for learning. As for traditional schools, I think they will always be there. (Rebecca, Grade 10 student, Virtual Grade School 4, Third round chat room interview, March 23, 2000)
I think that traditional schools will be gone and virtual schools will become the main schools. (Hillary, Grade 11 student, Virtual Grade School 2, Third round chat room interview, April 5, 2000)
I think that regular schools are going to be less popular. In the discussion group that the school has, we were talking about the recent shootings, and lots of the people said that they were going to educate their kids at home. Because public school is becoming so violent. I think this is a way of reaching out to kids in a better way, being home with parents more. (Monica, Grade 11 student, Virtual Grade School 2, Third round chat room interview, February 29, 2000)
In addition, some of the students who choose virtual schooling did so due to the impression of receiving some kind of a future benefit as a result of their choices. For example, one student stated the following about virtual school. 89
I think that most people think that virtual school is very new and is very much the way of the future, as my neighbour thinks this is very neat and she would have liked to do this when she was my age.
In the future everything is going high tech and the web helps us be ahead of most people. (Hillary, Grade 11 student, Online Grade School, Second round email interview, March 1, 2000)
The perceived promise of receiving a benefit in the future as a result of attending virtual grade school may be realized by the small number of students who attend them.
Virtual grade school students who have become familiar with the use of computers, along with adapting to many changes in technologies over the years, might be considered as slightly ahead of their time due to being carried by the tides of technology before the larger population of students.
Lived Other
"Lived other (relationality) is the lived relation we maintain with others in the interpersonal space that we share with them" (Van Manen, 1997, p. 104).
Virtual students, who participated in this study, experience the lived other within their virtual grade schools. However, some of the pedagogical occasions necessary to interact with other people in the here and now can be severely limited for virtual students.
The greatest concern among those improperly versed in the field is that one does not get enough social interaction in this school setting. Truth be told, this is a valid concern, but should be noted that those who desire and are comfortable with social interaction will seek it out elsewhere, whereas the prerogative regarding whether to speak to a single person outside one's home while attending school is a very comforting one to some or to me, at least. (George, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 4, Second round email interview, March 12, 2000)
Parents, teachers, and administrators are sometimes concerned about the socialization of students attending virtual grade schools. Virtual students can potentially spend a lot of time by themselves and not around other people. How do online students, who are in front of a computer monitor all day long "keep in touch" with friends and learn those generally accepted social skills that we use in our culture? The answer may be partially found within the students' educational background. For example, children who participated in the study and had been home schooled were found to establish contacts with organizations of interest and draw from social contacts with adults. It was also found that, among the students participating in this study with backgrounds in traditional public education, that may or may not have established similar contacts when they reach virtual grade school. Other issues relating to virtual students' relationships with other people involve anonymity, pseudonymity, and accountability.
Anonymity
Students attending virtual schools have opportunities to meet with their teachers and administrators in various school-sponsored events. Each of the schools that participated in this study offer opportunities for students to meet teachers on different occasions including, picnics, sporting events, home visits, call backs, parent/teacher interviews, and high school graduations. Although these in-person events are scheduled throughout the school year, some online students attending virtual schools rarely, if ever, meet their online teachers in the various venues that occur on a face to face basis.
When asked to "describe what it is like for you to maintain educational relationships with online teachers that you rarely, or never, meet in person" one student responded, "It is easier to communicate with teachers online because you would not have people coming up to the teacher's desk all the time" (Beth, Grade 7, Virtual Grade 91
School 3, First round email interview, March 11, 2000). Consider these other responses to the same question.
They aren't as personal as conventional relationships with teachers, but you do get a more personal and direct answer when you ask a question. Contact is minimal, since they (teachers) live all over. However, it was nice to meet most of them a while ago, as I can now put a face to the voice. (Monica, Grade 11, Virtual Grade School 2, First round email interview, January 10, 2000)
My biggest problem with the interactions with the teachers is that those who don't use a great deal of emoticons can often come across as emotionless. I know that this isn't the case, but still it is even more difficult to recognize the humanity of teachers whom I don't get into extra-curricular conversations with. This is, however, a minor qualm, and most of my teachers manage to come across as quite warm in spite of the limitations of the scholastic medium. Yes. Another problem is that one need not necessarily ever communicate, even by e-mail, with a teacher. One can read the mass-distributed assignments, do the work, then upload it to the hand-in folder, not needing to reply to the corrected work as sent to you by the teacher. I think that I am having such a curious relationship right now with my social studies teacher, but really, it is just a way to get rid of redundancy - not to say that social contact in general is a redundancy. (George, Grade 10, Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, March 11, 2000)
My associations with my son's teachers have been similar to regular school. I met some of the school personnel at the introduction to school day, established contact with his teachers through e-mails regarding his assignments (usually they e-mail me) and if I have a question about his assignments or my responsibilities they are very prompt at replying to my e-mails or phone calls. At the end of November we had a parent-teacher night which was very similar to our previous school. The teachers seem to be as familiar with the students work as a regular teacher, however it was neat to see their expressions and probably ours too as we finally put a face to the name on the e-mails! (Kelsey, Parent with one of her three children attending Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, January 29, 2000)
Students participating in this study stay in contact with teachers by way of email, fax, discussion groups, chat rooms, and telephone calls. The notion of a student being able to "put a face to a voice" is a description that summons this student's past experiences in traditional school and with human interaction in general. Before, the student was attending traditional school, where teachers had a bodily presence as well as a voice. Now in virtual school, students receive telephone calls from disembodied voices offering assistance with assignments or offering advice. Virtual students with previous experience in regular schools have only semblances of what once was present in the schools of the past. Currently, virtual students receiving telephone calls from teachers have become one of the only forms of human contact within their pedagogical relationships. Barring any type of school-sponsored event that is held with the expectation of meeting in person, students and teachers involved in virtual schooling can be relatively anonymous to each other. Students and teachers alike attend to their respective pedagogical duties within their own immediate physical environments and interact with each other in primarily text-based communication. In general, students participating in this study were aware of how the condition of anonymity accompanies virtual grade school and calls for a degree of honesty in communicating with other people online.
Pseudonymity
Pseudonymity deals with online students adopting another persona that they use online. A person's online identity can differ compared to that of physical life (Giese,
1998; Markham, 1998; Turkle, 1995). Likewise, a virtual student's identity online can differ compared to that of physical life. Virtual students occasionally are presented with the opportunity to take on the persona of someone else entirely. Consider this excerpt from a chat room interview with Michelle, a Grade 9 student attending Virtual Grade
School 1. 93
KM: Do you use a chat room in your school?
Michelle: Educationally or socially?
KM: Yes, educationally.
Michelle: Not really, but last year we set up a chat room at [a certain free email domain] to get a project done and the teacher for that subject came to answer our questions. But we haven't used the school chatrooms educationally yet.
KM: How about socially, then?
Michelle: The students use the school chat room socially all the time. The only problem with it that way is people come on under aliases19, which is breaking the conduct and sometimes when real teachers come on, no one listens to them. That actually happened today. It was entertaining...but not a good thing.
KM: What happened?
Michelle: A teacher came on while this guy was talking about hacking into other email accounts...and he said, that's not really a teacher, it's my friend... but apparently it was really a teacher and this guy wouldn't go off when the teacher asked him then another teacher called me and said I was the one told to go off, which WASN'T true at all.
KM: Tell me more.
Michelle: Yeah. But he said that he had the transcript. So I don't know what he was talking about.
KM: Probably best to be oneself in a chat room and not someone else, eh?
Michelle: Exactly. (Third round chat room interview, February 29, 2000)
19 Note: This and other third round interviews occurred by way of the chat capabilities of WebCT™, which were protected by previously assigned user names and passwords. However, in the case described by the student, users of a different type of chat room were prompted to enter a global username and password, then were prompted to enter their own names. The technicians and administration associated with Virtual Grade School 1 expected students to operate on the "honour system" and were expected to type their own names when prompted, rather than any other possible name. As it turns out. any words entered in the particular fields in question would then represent the student in the chat room. 94
Students attending virtual schools may not understand the serious repercussions of impersonating another person when communicating online. An important developmental task for adolescents is that of establishing an identity. Virtual students are afforded with many opportunities to learn with web-based resources that are educational. Some of these resources allow for role-playing activities. Perhaps an opportunity to role-play would provide a safer environment for students to experiment with their senses of self.
The ability of students to use other names rather than their own names for the purpose of communicating online suggests that technologies used within virtual grade schools are still very much in their infancy. What keeps teachers and administrators of virtual schools in this stage is the constantly changing technologies and their efforts at learning and applying the new technology to virtual school contexts. How can pedagogy flourish in such an unstable environment? Such a situation may suggest that the gatekeepers were not watching as the waters rushed through.
Accountability
Issues of accountability in virtual grade schooling address the absence of teachers' physical presence, especially for those students who have previously experienced life in the traditional classroom. The teacher's physical presence in a traditional classroom serves many purposes, including, delivering instruction, encouraging students to ask questions in order to enhance learning, facilitating the interaction between groups of students in an appropriate manner, and guiding students in their efforts to meet stated deadlines. Students who know the difference between the traditional classroom and grade school cyberspaces are very aware of the absence of a teacher's physical presence in the virtual environment. Students may take certain 95 liberties within these voids created by virtual grade school. For example, one student explained how, "One of my aunts who is a teacher is horrified because it is supposedly so much easier to cheat in virtual school than it is in a 'normal' school" (Monica, Grade 11,
Virtual Grade School 2, Second round email interview, February 9, 2000).
Emily, a Grade 10 student with the Virtual Grade School 2, explained how the quality of honesty is high among the characteristics that virtual students should possess.
She explained that "You need to tell your teachers the truth. They can't tell if you cheat or not" (First round email interview, January 26, 2000). In addition, Rebecca, a Grade 10 student attending Virtual Grade School 4 described how "there is no teacher looking over the student's shoulder in case they need help" (Second round email interview, March 20,
2000) These students' comments suggest that the pedagogue who is physically absent from the traditional pedagogical equation may be perceived as an advantage for those virtual students who may want to devote their attention elsewhere, rather than to the particular task at hand. For other students, the absence of a teacher in a virtual student's immediate physical environment may instil a sense of responsibility.
Chapter Summary
To further attend to the question of research, this chapter explored how virtual students experience certain aspects of virtual pedagogy that take place in the lifeworld.
Van Manen (1997) explained how, all phenomenological human science research efforts are really explorations into the structure of the human lifeworld, the lived world as experienced in everyday situations and relations" (p. 101). In order to act as a guide for reflection in the research process, the lifeworld was broken down into "the four fundamental existentials of spatiality (lived space), corporeality (lived body), temporality 96
(lived time) and relationality (lived other). These parts "may be seen to belong to the
existential ground by way of which all human beings experience the world" (van Manen,
1997, p. 102). Descriptions of lived experiences offered by research participants
involved some overlapping involvement of the four elements.
Virtual school continues to evolve and grow and online teaching practitioners, as
part of the virtual grade school movement, have begun to generate questions and possible
solutions to help them come to terms with the many unknowns that face them. A great
number of these unknowns have involved how best to replicate the basic functions of
traditional school environments. These pedagogical functions of traditional schools also
are present when establishing the image and credibility of a virtual school to onlookers,
including prospective students and the general public, who may compare virtual schools
to traditional schools. Students attending virtual grade schools arrive there with
backgrounds in regular schools or home schooling and may have grown accustomed to a
particular way of doing things. That which is most recognizable to students in their face
to face interactions during past school experiences must be present in a virtual school of
choice. Many virtual grade schools in Alberta have adopted a kind of presence on the
web that establishes a sense of place, even though it is digitally generated. Thus, students
choosing the alternative of online instruction, rather than continuing in a traditional
school, may be presented with a virtual school that simulates school buildings, hallways,
classrooms, and lockers in order to instill familiarity. Several aspects inherent in
pedagogy for traditional school environments that are carried out by teachers include, taking students' attendance, making daily announcements, delivering instruction to a group of students, distributing assignments, answering students' questions, and offering 97
meaningful feedback. Each of these school functions can be simulated, with varying
degrees of success, within a virtual grade school environment. Other aspects of
traditional schooling that can be replicated in virtual schools involve instructional issues.
Online teachers are concerned about how best to maximize the utilization of the World
Wide Web and software applications for students, when each student has his or her own
individual computer sitting in front of them.
Other uncertainties that concern virtual grade school teachers involve many
aspects of traditional school that can not be replicated, but that can be altered in
cyberspace. Developing and maintaining pedagogical associations with virtual students
has been a challenge for online teachers (Cavanagh, 2000; Zak, 2000a; Zak, 2000b).
Students and teachers are not physically present, as in more traditional formulations of
pedagogy. This "absence of presence" necessitates a high degree of ethical action by those individuals involved, including, teachers, students, and parents. In addition,
students' socialization issues also fit into this category of non-replication in virtual
schools. Issues relating to the replication model of virtual grade schooling, especially
associated with the development of asynchronous types of instruction, involve various forms of instructional development and delivery. The replication model of virtual grade
school may be partially linked to the bandwidth available to virtual grade school students
dispersed over a large geographical area.
Reflection
Virtual grade school is indeed an "experiment" with pedagogical and technological components. However, students, parents, teachers, and administrators all seem to be willing to take a chance with something that sounds as promising as virtual school does. I also know that as we go along, we are creating virtual grade school. There is not a large body of research on virtual grade schools for us to draw from and thereby inform our teaching practices. So how is the cause advanced? Occasionally our virtual school may do something that perhaps hasn't been done before or sometimes we hear about what other virtual schools are doing and then react to that. Often, we try to alter what post-secondary education has done with online course development and adapt it to suit a grade school environment. For the most part, our emphasis is on replicating the functions of traditional school and that which cannot be replicated is given a spin in order to fit the model. If the virtual grade school movement has experienced any resistance from the public and from teacher counterparts at all, it has come by way of promoting and using this model of replication. Virtual grade schools in the province have developed further by reacting to the public's perception of what virtual schools should be, or could be, based on advances in computer-mediated communication and then spreading the word by way of newspaper articles. As long as the emphasis for promoting virtual school remains on the model of replication, we will find it difficult to compete with traditional schools for prospective students. What will become of these newly created grade school cyberspaces? (Journal entry, November 12, 1998) CHAPTER SIX: CELEBRATION AND LAMENTATION
"We will always be pioneers in cyberspace, for as we explore it, we create it, and as we create it, we explore it" (Zaleski, 1997, p. 31).
Virtual grade schools are present among us and, as a teacher, I have attempted to understand the relationship between virtual schools and the people who participate in them. Part of this relationship involves the developmental turning of virtual grade schools and how this development attracted three different waves of students to virtual school over the years. Another part of the relationship involves the adaptations that virtual teachers and administrators made to pedagogy that was originally intended for traditional schools. As I attended to this topic of research, my goal was to gain a deeper understanding of how virtual schools have affected those people who participate in them.
My endeavour was an exploration and this chapter offers a discussion of the significant issues arising from this hermeneutic phenomenological human science project as exploration. The topics to be addressed in this chapter include a discussion of the implications of grade school cyberspaces and the future of virtual grade schooling.
Implications of Grade School Cyberspaces
The sections that follow outline the implications of grade school cyberspaces by discussing certain aspects about them. First, the ethical significance will be addressed, followed by implications for society, parents, students, teachers, and administrators and regulatory agencies. Lastly, the future of virtual grade school will be discussed.
Ethical Significance
In the past, virtual grade schools were initiated and implemented by innovative educators. The first virtual school in Alberta began as a pilot project in 1993. This first 100 initiative was started because the technology to do so was readily available. However, should virtual schools have ever been started in the first place? Now that virtual schools exist, what are the ethical implications in this act of creation? As educators who have propagated the operation of virtual grade schools, what consequences can we expect to experience in the near future as a result of our actions? For example, is it ethical to allow students to attend virtual grade schools, thereby withdrawing them from mainstream society, and then expect these students to be ready and able to come away from their retreat to pursue career goals after high school? In addition, what affect will attending virtual school have on the adulthood of students? Virtual grade schools have only been present in Alberta since 1993 and the long-term effects on the well being of students are not currently known.
On the positive side, virtual grade schools can offer a safer environment for students than traditional schools. For example, Michael stated, "I attended virtual school in hopes of getting away from negative peer pressure and from drugs. Also at a virtual school you can't exactly get bullied or pushed around ..." (Michael, Grade 10 student,
Virtual Grade School 1, First round email interview, February 7, 2000). Also consider the following students' responses to questions from various rounds of interviews online.
I chose virtual school because I didn't like the school that I was going to previously. At the Junior High School that I went to was a gross and disgusting school. About 85% of the school were smokers and the quality of the school was horrible. There were no doors on the bathrooms, the fountains were filled with gum or sunflower seeds, and the place stunk. (Dwight, Grade 9 student, Virtual Grade School 3, First round email interview, February 8, 2000)
I started virtual school for a couple of reasons. The first one is I was teased and taunted at school and I was on the verge of suicide. I was not a happy girl, so I had to get a way from it all. I also started virtual school because I love computers and I love being at home with my mom, but really my main reason was the horrible situation at my other school. That and the fact the teacher didn't care they let kids do this to me. (Doreen, Grade 10 student, Virtual Grade School 4, First round email interview, January 5, 2000)
Even though virtual schools may remove students from traditional school settings that are potentially violent, immoral, or unsanitary, there are implications for making such a move. Particular issues related to accountability arise as a result of teachers being removed from the immediate physical surroundings of their students. Noticing the absence of a teacher is especially evident with students attending virtual schools who have backgrounds in traditional schools, as these students participating in the research study noted these differences. For example, the lack of a teacher's physical presence allows a greater possibility for students to cheat on assignments and examinations.
Alternatively, this lack of teachers' presence also calls upon the morality of virtual students. Some students attending virtual grade school become more responsible, as virtual school sometimes involves a high level of honesty and integrity from students.
In the course of this research project, I noted how virtual teachers often asked the question, "who is really doing my students' homework and writing their exams? Further, if teachers elect for their students to write a closed book examination while they are online, do the books truly remain closed in the students' immediate physical surroundings? On a related note, in the case of an examination being "closed" to resources, such as web sites, reference materials, electronic communications from other students during the writing of examinations by way of email, 102 chat, ICQ20, telephone, fax, does this really occur? All of these possibilities for dishonesty call the virtue of virtual grade school students into question. The conversation regarding these issues continues.
Society in General
The presence of virtual grade schools in our society says much about the current state of public education and "the development of virtual programs in Alberta illustrates the potential for alternatives to site based schooling within the K-12 sector" (Haughey &
Muirhead, 1999, p. 25). The existence of virtual schooling may perpetuate society's failure to meet the educational needs of some students through traditional schools.
Students that simply do not fit in with traditional schools may be moved to attend other educational options, including virtual schools. Many students participating in this research study remarked how they left traditional schools due to reasons that involved, but were not restricted to, problems with schools and teachers, concerns about secular curriculum being taught to students with particular religious affiliations, constant bullying, or the presence of weapons or drugs in school. Students in traditional schools are sometimes faced with a struggle that embodies the "survival of the fittest." In order to survive in traditional school settings, students sometimes require the acquisition and execution of survival strategies that involve securing a higher place than other students through intimidation by the threat of violence. Perhaps some of the "weaker" students that could not survive in a traditional school setting or students unwilling to conform to
:" "Prounounced as separate letters, so that it sounds like "I-Seek-You," ICQ is an easy-to-use online instant messaging program. It is used as a conferencing tool by individuals on the Net to chat, e-mail, perform file transfers, play computer games, etc. Once you have downloaded and installed ICQ onto your PC, you can create a list of friends, family, business associates, etc. (who also have ICQ on their PC's). ICQ uses this list to find your friends for you, and notifies you once they have signed onto the Net. You can then send messages, chat in real time, play games, etc." (Internet.com Corporation, 2000, http://webopedia.intemet.eom/TERM/I/ICQ.html). 103 this type of mental set, removed themselves from this situation, or were removed by their parents, in order to attend virtual school, once this educational option became available.
Some of these students may have mild or undiagnosed social-emotional or learning disabilities. Cindy, a teacher in her second year of teaching online with Virtual Grade
School 3 described, "I believe that in many cases, virtual students may have undiagnosed or untreated social and/or academic difficulties" (Third round chat room interview,
March 6, 2000). Now that virtual schools exist as an alternative, that which is inherently wrong with traditional schooling may be perpetuated. For example, those students who do not well in traditional school environments seek, or are strongly advised by adults to seek, other educational options, such as virtual grade school.
Grade school cyberspaces originated out of the larger technological currents within society. Now that virtual schools exist, society in general is once again implicated. Students attending virtual schools have interrupted the social order by affecting some of the most basic tenets of human interaction. As online students attend to their duties in virtual school, they are not as likely to interact with other members of society in the usual manner. Due to this lack of face-to-face contact with other people, students attending virtual schools begin to question the relevance of social acceptance in cyberspace related interactions. It can be an advantage for students to ask questions of their teachers in a relatively safe environment, questions that might not have been asked in a traditional classroom setting. However, virtual grade school students have the freedom to act relatively anonymously, or worse yet, act with pseudonyms, within their interactions with other people by way of computer-mediated communications on the
World Wide Web. This could have serious implications for human interaction in the 104 future, considering that students currently attending virtual schools will enter the work force at some point and some of them may become the leaders of tomorrow.
Recently, an article appeared in newspapers entitled, "Youth grow bored with
Internet - web fails to change lives" (Uhlig, 2000). The article outlined how university students are beginning to consult the Internet less and less when it comes to utilizing web-based communications. The virtual grade school movement in Alberta, predominantly comprised of members associated with primary and secondary levels of education, has recently connected itself with post-secondary institutions. A few years ago, there was a dearth of research in the area of virtual grade schools, but there was much research flowing out of post-secondary settings. In some cases, research involving online students in post-secondary educational institutions was consulted in order to help inform teaching practice for primary and secondary teachers associated with virtual schools. If trends occurring in post-secondary settings have any bearing at all on virtual grade schools, then the influence of university students loosing interest in the Internet may eventually filter down to grade school students.
In addition, many students participating in this study remarked how attending virtual grade school and making extensive use of various forms of computer-mediated communications would help them advance in their future careers. However, a newspaper article citing the result of recent research suggests that email, "has contributed to the depersonalization of the work force" (McGovern, 2001, p. WS1). Current trends of email use in the workplace are such that employees are emailing each other, rather than speaking on a face to face basis, even if their offices are beside each other. Computer 105 skills are indeed necessary for people to acquire for use in employment, but the acquisition and use of interpersonal skills are imperative in our social world as well.
Parents
Parents celebrated the arrival of virtual schools, as this new educational option restored their obligation and entitlement to play a larger role in their children's education.
Virtual schools also allowed parents to continue the modelling of family values, along with creating opportunities for their children to pursue their interests to a greater extent.
Virtual students require a high degree of parental support. Reputable virtual schools require that a parent be present at home for potential online students before students are enrolled. However, not all students who want to enrol in an online grade school program can afford the privilege of having immediate access to a parent, as parents may have previous work related commitments.
Even if a student has access to and the support of a parent, parents must learn the technologies that a particular virtual school utilizes for instructional purposes. This has been a cause for alarm, in some past cases. Depending on the parent's level of technological expertise, this extra learning may be time consuming and cause some grief.
Virtual teachers may also expect an increased workload, due to the added and necessary responsibility of educating parents about the available technologies in a virtual school.
Parents learn to be proficient with the use of a particular instructional technology not only to assist their child, but also to become wise to the potential "tricks" that may be played on them by their children. For example, a student may miss a deadline for an assignment and the teacher may telephone or send an email message reminding the student to send the assignment. It is currently possible for a student to reset the time and 106 date on a computer to reflect the particular due date for the assignment and to then complete the homework. The student may then send the assignment and blame the computer or Internet connection for the tardy assignment. In other instances, the student may have a parent watching them send completed assignments to teachers. However, in this case, the student might attach another document rather than the expected homework assignment only to make it appear that the assignment was completed and then sent.
Students have also been known to tamper with their computer so that it doesn't work, thereby rendering it impossible to complete assignments. The computer and the Internet connection can serve as a convenient "scapegoat" for the student who decides to misuse these important elements of virtual grade school.
In a few isolated cases, some parents have used the relative anonymity of virtual grade schools for their own particular purposes and these types of parental interventions within virtual grade schooling would not ordinarily be done in traditional school settings.
Parents have the opportunity to use virtual school as an "escape" for their children's mild or undiagnosed special needs, such as learning, social, or emotional difficulties. Parents with children in virtual school may avoid having their children's special needs identified, and thereby evade the stigma of the corresponding label that may be attached to these difficulties A few parents have sought to protect their children by excusing them from doing schoolwork. In the past, parents have also completed their children's homework assignments and forwarded the work to virtual school teachers, giving credit to their children. Parents have also contacted virtual teachers in order to change due dates on assignments for their children or inquired into altering assignments somewhat to better suit their child's individual situation. 107
As educators, our role in the past has been to assist parents in instilling those human qualities in their children that have been deemed as valuable by society. While this is certainly the job of the parent, first and foremost, educators have been in a position to inform parents of their childrens' behaviours (e.g., both positive and negative, including lying, fighting, cheating) and qualities (e.g., learning experiences, playing on a team, conflict resolution, friendship skills) that have been exhibited by children outside of the home. It is essential that parents and virtual teachers continue to be in frequent contact with each other in the service of educating children. However, this is not possible in virtual schooling to the extent that it is when teachers spend many hours per week in physical proximity with students in traditional school settings. By being attentive to the technology, and honest in their efforts as educational partners, parents can assist in ensuring virtue is established within virtual grade schooling.
Students
Students attending virtual grade schools in Alberta may potentially dwell anywhere in the world, from large cities to rural locations. Each student also has a particular combination of preferred learning modalities. While virtual schools may appeal to many students, not all students' learning styles are addressed with the level of technology currently used in the virtual grade schools that participated in this study. For example, much of the instruction offered in virtual schools in previous years consisted of materials developed for traditional school settings. These lesson plans previously used in traditional school classrooms were adjusted, with varying degrees of success, for virtual learning environments. These newly adjusted web-based materials offered text, pictures, and animated features where possible. However, materials that were designed to stimulate other learning modalities, such as visual, auditory, and spatial, often required more bandwidth. As virtual grade schools attract students from all over the map, including rural students, the requisite bandwidth had to facilitate these web-based features. Currently, there have been a number of technological improvements in bandwidth (e.g., high speed Internet access from local service providers), and delivery capabilities (e.g., commercial software that has been developed for delivery of online courses in post-secondary educational institutions) that may improve teaching and learning strategies in virtual grade schools.
After several years of operation, the characteristics of "successful" virtual students have recently been emphasized by the virtual schools that participated in this study. These characteristics have been described by virtual school teachers and administrators to interested parents and prospective students. In order for virtual schools to remain successful, they require stringent screening processes before potential students are allowed to enrol. However, virtual grade schools are publically funded educational institutions and cannot set policies regarding student entry. Virtual schools may appeal to many students, however, several indicators of successful virtual students have emerged from past students' successes and failures. Over time, teachers and administrators of virtual schools have gathered their impressions of those characteristics that successful students possess. Successful virtual students have been noted to possess various combinations of the following characteristics: curiousity, adventure, honesty, enthusiasm, organization, diligence, motivation, and discipline. Successful virtual students also have been described as possessing a good work ethic, desire to succeed, independent study skills and good communication skills. In addition, 109
Schooling for the successful virtual student is integrated into his or her lifestyle; it is neither an annoyance to the schedule at hand, nor does it take over his or her (or parents') lives. Because virtual schooling allows such infinite opportunities for schooling throughout the week - work, independent interests, added family responsibilities - students who cannot organize their world so that virtual schooling is simply a part and parcel of their lives will not be successful. (William, teacher in his fourth year of teaching online, Virtual Grade School 2, Second email interview, January 25, 2000)
Several students who participated in this study offered their own opinions on what characteristics virtual students should possess in order to be successful. For example,
Michelle, a Grade 10 student attending Virtual Grade School 1 stated, "I think that in this school having good communication skills is very important and that's because what you say might be taken another way. Especially in a Christian school, you have to be really careful" (Third round chat room interview, February 29, 2000). With regard to computer-mediated communication and being responsible about the time involved to respond, another student described how, "I like using email, because it is easier to not procrastinate writing back like there is with snail mail" (Monica, Grade 11, Virtual Grade
School 2, First round email interview, January 10, 2000). For virtual grade school students, as for all students, communication remains an important social skill, no matter how computer-mediated communications used in virtual schooling environments have altered human interaction.
Teachers
In traditional pedagogical formulations, teachers act in loco parentis (in place of the parents). Parents send their children to school each day. Once the child leaves home on the way to school and reaches the school grounds, the passing of care and concern for the child falls on the shoulders of teachers and administrators. This passing of 110 responsibility for children from parent to teacher is somehow changed in the virtual school context. While care and concern for students are both certainly present with virtual grade school teachers, the student does not physically leave home to attend school and the teacher is not in the student's immediate presence. Thus, one of the most critical aspects inherent in a traditional pedagogical formulation has been altered in the case of virtual schools.
It is lamentable that a lack of formal educational opportunities at the teacher preparation level in faculties of education at universities has led "regular" teachers to become "virtual" teachers. The demand for professional development at both the pre- service and in-service levels has been growing as one further implication of the presence of virtual grade schools. Thus, by necessity, the training and education necessary for becoming an online teacher has become a survival issue for teachers arriving at a virtual school. Much time, effort, joy, and angst characterize the experience of the first year virtual grade school teacher.
Layton (1996) forecasted that, "the cyberteacher of tomorrow will have to be technologically savvy and will spend a significant portion of their time constantly retraining themselves" (p. 223). Currently, that which is necessary for becoming
"efficient and effective" virtual school teachers is either learned on the fly during the course of every day events, or has been organized according to a "generational model of professional development" (Caverly, Peterson, & Mandeville, 1997). With this form of mentoring, the senior teachers in virtual school offer assistance with technological applications and pedagogical issues to the newer teachers through their junior year and then the cycle continues the following year. Ill
It is possible for new teachers who have not created their own lesson materials for virtual school to access lesson plans that other teachers have previously used. This ready availability of prepared lesson plans may impose a potential threat to the development of teachers new to the teaching profession, in general, and to virtual school, in specific.
Materials that can be quickly altered to become one's own lessons may prove to be a disservice to teachers and students alike, as the time and effort necessary to produce thoughtful materials will not be present for student or teacher. In addition, there is potential for teachers to take a "hands off" approach when making use of readily available materials and not to take responsibility to ensure that students are really learning. Through trial and error, pioneer teachers have learned to modify the lesson expectations and presentation of material for students enrolled in virtual schooling.
Many teachers hired in virtual grade schools are new to the profession, and often, outside of required university experiences in practica, have not taught students in traditional classroom settings during their careers. New teachers making use of materials that have been previously tried and tested by other virtual school teachers may be doing themselves a disservice when they leave to teach in traditional school settings. New teachers may find themselves in a situation where they are new to the traditional classroom and are developing lesson plans for the first time.
Teachers of virtual school experience many of the same benefits that students realize from this form of schooling. The most notable of these benefits is the flexibility that virtual school offers teachers. Virtual teachers often have the opportunity to work from the their own homes or are housed together in a common work space. Either of these arrangements allow virtual teachers to become removed from the busyness of the 112 environments associated with traditional school and thereby add increased focus to instructional duties. For example, in responding to asynchronous email messages, virtual teachers may compose meaningful responses, as they can consult particular sources of information and potentially take their time before students' questions are answered. In addition, teachers may spend long blocks of uninterrupted time to devote to instructional tasks, such as grading assignments and then offering students feedback on their work.
Despite the benefit of flexibility, teaching in a virtual school has peculiarities.
Teacher participants were each asked, "Drawing from your experience as a teacher in an online/virtual school, please describe what it is like to maintain pedagogical associations with online students that you rarely, or never, meet in person?" Consider the following responses from teachers.
Total honesty and trust. Because we are "online" and students get to keep a bit of anonymity, we find that students are free to be who they are, there is no pressure from other students. There is a sense of honesty and trust between teacher and student, as each is dealing with the other as an individual and the relationship can be better than if it were a face-to-face type of association. (Susanne, teacher in her fourth year of teaching online, Virtual Grade School 2, First email interview, January 23, 2000)
The students that you are in contact with most often, you find out how they are doing and what they are doing by the contact. If you don't have contact with them very often, then it is the same as it is in a regular school. You don't really find out much about them. In some ways it is easier by not seeing them because you don't have any prejudices against them because of the way they look or dress. (Glenn, teacher in his second year of teaching online, Virtual Grade School 2, First email interview, January 18, 2000)
Non-traditional. The virtual teacher must find new ways to communicate what is expected in a lesson. All aspects of the virtual teaching experience are delivered in new ways. Pedagogy is rarely changed in online teaching, but the delivery and communicative processes are altered to compensate for the nature of a virtual school. (Gerry, teacher in his third year of teaching online, Virtual Grade School 1, First email interview, February 9, 2000) 113
I find that regular contact with students is essential in a virtual school, as the lack of face-to-face contact can feel frustrating and isolating for teachers and kids. The virtual school process holds some mystery for teachers and students, alike. There is little acknowledgement of success by students and teachers in virtual school, largely because it is not noticed in the same way as it is with face-to-face interaction. (Cindy, teacher in her second year of teaching online, Virtual Grade School 3, First email interview, February 16, 2000)
More intimate/less intimate. Friendlier/cooler. In some cases in virtual school, a teacher will find that students respond mere freely through the medium of email. This might be what the students want in a traditional setting, but are constrained by peer pressure - of appearing to be a "teacher's pet" or by feeling like he or she is asking stupid questions or making ridiculous statements. In virtual school the teacher/student relationship is one-to-one. In other cases, students can choose not to participate and can get through with a minimum of communication during the year. Some students take to writing quickly and happily and they form strong, friendly relations with the teacher. On the other hand, some students feel awkward when writing and can sometimes sound terse and impolite in the email medium. (Peter, teacher in his second year of teaching online, Virtual Grade School 1, First email interview, January 17, 2000)
In a virtual program, some students are like so many ships passing in the night. You may get certain assignments from them, but that is it. If one takes the time to reach out to students, however, through email, a phone call, or letter or two, a relationship - that of student/mentor certainly can develop. Some of these mentor/student relationships can be truly a joy for the virtual teacher only because unfortunately, they are rather infrequent. It would be interesting to see if the virtual student similarly feels this negative aspect of virtual schooling as well. (William, teacher in his fourth year of teaching online, Virtual Grade School 2, First email interview, January 25, 2000)
More disclosure. Students seem more willing to add personal details to assignments and email communication as it is appreciated as a one-one- one relationship with the teacher without the eyes and ears of classmates "listening in." More intimate. Same as above. The teacher becomes privy to the day-to• day thoughts and experiences of individual students in much more detail than with traditional school. 114
More remote. Opposite of above. Some students prefer to remain at a distance and have little response to teacher other than in just returning work. Strong geographical (physical and cultural) associations. Online teachers get a very real sense of the physical surroundings of their students as they are from such different areas, this includes everything from the local weather to where in the home the student does computer work, as well as their emotional well-being and social settings within a community. (Jill, teacher in her third year of teaching online, Virtual Grade School 1, First email interview, February 15, 2000)
These descriptions suggest that celebrations and lamentations exist at the same time within each of their experiences as virtual school teachers. This seems to be the case with the teacher participants in this study especially when the teachers had teaching experience in traditional settings before they joined a virtual school. Teachers, as well as students, describe their current experiences in virtual school according to what they once knew about schooling.
Another implication for teachers of virtual grade school involves the amount of work necessary to replicate the functions of traditional classrooms and schools, ranging from the most basic tenets of human interaction to the complexities of curricular content.
Virtual teachers participating in this study devoted substantial amounts of time to developing their teaching practices. Each of the teacher participants taught with their respective virtual grade schools for one or more years. Within this relatively short time frame, virtual teachers spent seemingly countless hours converting important elements of the many forms of communication generally employed in traditional classroom settings to text-based formats for use in early forms of virtual school. Some of these conversions involved curricular content, while other altering related to the medium of communication that was utilized. For example, daily announcements have to be typed out by teachers 115 and sent to students, rather than reading them aloud to the class. Each virtual student may have their own questions about the content of a particular lesson. Students ask questions in email messages or chat rooms and teachers' responses are provided primarily in text. These queries are often answered by teachers on an individual basis in separate email messages, which can be time consuming. In addition, virtual students do not have the same opportunities to benefit from class discussions as do students in traditional schools, as the complexities of human interaction cannot be readily reproduced within text. Teachers wishing to enhance the synchronous contact with their students use chat rooms for one-on-one instruction and for group work. However, chat rooms work best with small groups of students and in order to allow each student to benefit from chat room sessions, teachers must schedule chat room sessions more frequently. These pedagogical adaptations for virtual grade school, as well as many others, are made by teachers and lead to long hours sitting in front of a computer station. The long term physical and psychological effects of working in this manner must be considered.
Administrators and Regulatory Agencies
Virtual grade schools are governed by the same rules as traditional schools, by way of the School Act, but not all of the activities in these two types of schools are comparable. Hence, virtual grade school administrators operate their virtual schools in an environment where adaptations are routine. These adaptations may be common for virtual grade schools and they have been noticed by regulatory agencies. While Alberta
Learning has started to develop policies that relate to virtual grade schools, the Alberta
Teachers' Association has just begun to investigate the implications of virtual grade schooling. For example, there are currently no regulations for virtual teachers in areas 116 such as, suggested class sizes, teacher workload, and substitute teachers, just to name a few. While these regulations will eventually be streaming in from the Alberta Teachers'
Association, as well as policies from Alberta Learning, virtual grade schools have been operating in Alberta since 1993 in a relatively unregulated and work intensive environment.
Many of the educational innovators who started the virtual schools that participated in this study have since moved on to follow other career opportunities.
Hence, the presence of a pool of experienced virtual school principals from which to draw likely candidates to steer these schools has been relatively scarce. The role of the virtual school principal has been evolving, alongside the development of virtual schools.
The duties of administrators that are carried out on a daily basis include identifiying those technologies appropriate for virtual grade schools, student monitoring and discipline issues, evaluating online teachers, and curriculum leadership. Each of these duties has been guided by principals in the absence of regulation and an absence of a strong research base to inform virtual teaching. The reliance on information arriving by way of best practices in virtual schools has been one source to inform principals. Generally this type of information has only been helpful to a point, due to the variability of virtual school models, and the software and hardware utilized in virtual schools. Collaborative efforts between Alberta Learning, the Alberta Teachers' Association, and members of the virtual school movement are necessary in order to establish appropriate guidelines for operating virtual grade schools. For example, the development of a particular type of teacher evaluation that is suited for the virtual grade school environment is necessary. Adjusting current practices used for evaluating teachers in traditional environments does not necessarily translate readily to online settings.
Virtual grade school administrators, including superintendents, principals, and vice-principals, along with officials from Alberta Learning and the Alberta Teachers'
Association are involved in the virtual grade school movement. These administrators, like virtual grade school teachers, are creating virtual schooling as they explore, and are exploring virtual schooling as they create. However, unlike teachers in most virtual schools, these virtual school administrators have opportunities to gain insights into the operations of other virtual schools. Many administrators from the oldest virtual schools share their experiences with other people belonging to the Alberta Online Consortium.
However, not all administrators have membership with this organization. Virtual school administrators, government officials, and regulatory agencies create larger circles of influence as they explore and create, create and explore. These cycles continue and form isolated tidal pools, while growing competition between virtual schools due to the relentless tides of technology roar in the background.
Future of Virtual Grade Schooling
" ...a virtual school with a human face" (A Revelation in Learning, 2000).
Currently, new virtual grade schools or online learning programs have the benefit of observing the agonies and ecstasies of their virtual grade school predecessors. The developmental turns of virtual grade schools, including virtuality, promotion, appeal, answerability, and presence, continue. Virtual grade schools have gone through an evolution in recent years and a remnant of this evolution has been documented in the various media. By being attentive to the developments of virtual grade schools in past 118 years, people involved in establishing a new virtual grade school have the privilege of being eclectic and gathering the best ideas from existing schools. Recent articles in newspapers have announced some new virtual programs in Alberta (A Revelation in
Learning, 2000; Derworiz, 2000, http://www.calgaryherald.com/education/stories/000802/4518855.html; Online Learning
Program Unveiled, 2000). These particular news releases announce how the new virtual school programs were in pilot status for a number of years before introduction (Online
Learning Program Unveiled, 2000). The articles also outline how the new virtual schools are to be internally organized and call upon terminology that has come to mean unity in fellowship by using the term "consortium" to describe the arrangements (A Revelation in
Learning, 2000). The once overused descriptor "virtual" is used sparingly, if at all, to describe these programs of learning in various grade school cyberspaces.
New additions to the virtual grade school movement have been following a similar sequence of events established by their forebearers including, opening a virtual school, utilizing the local media for advertising, praising the flexibility of programming for students, and reporting dramatic increases in student population, such as, a caption stating "virtual school population triples" (Barraclough, 2000, p. 6).
Currently, online adult education has been identified as a lucrative business opportunity within a multi-billion dollar industry (Michaels & Smillie, 2000; Schofield,
1999). There is such great potential in the Webucation market that for one company to succeed "others don't have to fail" (Michaels & Smillie, 2000, p. 94). Many American corporations that offer educational services have a division that is dedicated to online education for grade schools. Several of these companies experienced accreditation 119 challenges in the past when private virtual grade schools opened. Now these companies offer educational services, such as, tutoring and advanced placement courses to high school students. Currently in Alberta, a battle rages between proponents of traditional education and the creeping danger of public education joining free enterprise (Alberta
Teachers' Association, 1999; Booi, 2001; Hanna, 2001). For the time being, the consumer-driven demand for virtual grade schooling in Alberta has been satisfied, as evidenced by the number of virtual schools in the province and the growing population of interested students in attendance. However, with the increasing use of enhanced computer-mediated communication technologies in post-secondary educational institutions, more traditional schools will offer an online component in order to give high school students a head start in their careers. Until government regulations change, virtual grade schools will remain as an alternative education option for students offered by local school divisions.
In the near future, forecasts for future generations that will soon occupy our grade schools have suggested that students will have certain characteristics. Some of these characteristics include,
Profile of the generations that will lead us through the 21st century: They will have greater intellectual ability because of their exposure to electronic learning at a young age. They will be genetically-enhanced as biogenetics develop. They will likely go to highly specialized virtual schools. They will be more reliant on technology, perhaps constantly tapped into a networked computer that they carry around. They may have fewer social skills because of this. (Builders of the 21st Century, 2000, M18) 120
The characteristics mentioned above may help inform future teachers as they develop and deliver instruction to their students occupying various grade school cyberspaces, in whatever form they may take.
Chapter Summary
This chapter offered a discussion of the significant issues arising from the current research project as exploration. The topics addressed in this chapter included a discussion of the implications of grade school cyberspaces. The ethical significance was addressed, followed by implications for society, students, parents, teachers, and administrators. The future of virtual grade schooling was also discussed.
Reflection
A considerable resistance to the virtual grade school movement exists. Seems to me that the opponents outnumber the proponents, because there are so few virtual schools compared to traditional schools. Teachers in traditional schools that point fingers at virtual schools are doing so out of the safety that accompanies belonging to the majority. It must be easy for the main body, so to speak, to disregard or belittle the "fringers" in virtual schools. Why do those representing the majority in education feel threatened by virtual schools? What do the opponents of virtual schools have to lose by virtual schools being around? Is it because of the perceived premise underlying virtual schools that draws from replicating or replacing traditional schools thereby replacing human teachers with computers? But is this even true? With this growing resistance and lack of understanding of how virtual schools operate, how will virtual grade schooling ever develop to a point where it will acquire a pedagogical identity of its own? (Journal entry, December 18, 1998) 121
CHAPTER SEVEN: TOWARD A PEDAGOGICAL IDENTITY
The currents of technology have been changing education, as evidenced by the presence of virtual grade schools (Booth-Reed, 1999; Branigan, 2000; Zak, 2000a; Zak,
2000b). Despite the lack of a research base from which to inform teaching practice, virtual grade schools have developed over time by experimenting with pedagogy that was originally designed for various settings including traditional classrooms and adapting online teaching methods developed for the post-secondary level. Thus, in the early years of its inception, virtual grade schooling did not have a pedagogy of its own. During the early years, a certain level of competition between virtual grade schools in the province precluded the sharing of information necessary for establishing and operating a successful virtual school.
During these early stages, some proponents of the virtual grade school movement attempted to eventually replace traditional classrooms and were involved in initiatives to carry out this mission. Other trials, not so radical by design, were carefully implemented within a particular virtual school and then virtual schools in other school districts countered with a similar initiative simply to stay competitive in order to attract students.
I believe that most of these ideas were implemented in a spirit of integrity, however some virtual grade schools may have been motivated by other factors. For example, a few newly opened online facilities in several school divisions simply offered distance education materials to students and called themselves virtual schools, while a few other virtual schools were forced to close due to low student enrolments or due to a lack of planning at the administrative level. Unfortunately, the public at large was watching and 122 may have included all virtual schools within the same category, as opinions about this new type of schooling were forming.
In the past, the virtual grade school movement has endorsed the use of many different types of computer-mediated technologies in order for virtual schooling to become possible and each of these developmental phases were necessary. Despite this early pedagogical experimentation, it was found that the basic components of human interaction that underpin traditional classroom pedagogy could not be digitally replaced with a replication model of virtual grade school. I believe the next developmental stages for virtual school will not involve the replicating, or replacing of, traditional schooling.
In addition, something more enduring than being engulfed by, or reacting to, every technological opportunity in order to lend credibility lies in wait for virtual schools.
Establishing a pedagogical identity for virtual grade schools involves a gradual transformation and merging of both pedagogy and technology. This chapter offers a discussion of early formulations of technology and pedagogy that have transformed my teaching practice and reflects efforts toward establishing a pedagogical identity for virtual grade schools. The following sections will outline several transformational formulations for virtual school from the past and present, as well as for the future.
Initial Iteration
My first semester as a virtual school teacher was the beginning of a technological and pedagogical transformation for my teaching practice. In my experience as a virtual teacher, I have witnessed many of the evolutionary turns that were ushered in by the virtual grade school movement. However, the most influential changes that I have experienced involving technology and pedagogy occurred within the first five months of 123 my time as a virtual teacher. I was challenged about what I knew of classroom pedagogy, as I was engaged in teaching students attending virtual grade schools using the computer- mediated communication technologies that were in fashion and readily available at the time. For example, in September 1998 the majority of my virtual teaching practice was something that could be termed digital correspondence or guided independent-study on the web. Word processing documents containing lessons for students were sent as email attachments. The main difference between traditional correspondence and virtual grade school was the availability of a teacher at the other end of a student's Internet connection.
I considered teaching virtual high school for a few years before applying for a teaching position. At that time, I had certain expectations about how the promise of technology would appear in a virtual school. I became a virtual teacher partially because
I understood that technology was now a permanent part of education and I looked forward to increasing the use of various technological applications within the scope of my teaching practice. For example, teaching in traditional school settings has become increasingly submersed with computer applications by way of the Career and Technology
Studies curriculum (Alberta Learning, 2000a) that represents some of the possible option classes and the Information and Communication Technologies program of studies
(Alberta Learning, 2000b) within core courses. However, these particular curricula were designed for students and teachers to interact on a face-to-face basis. My experimentation with the use of technology in a virtual grade school context was somewhat of an exercise in extremes, due to the constant emphasis on computer- mediated communication taking the place of human interaction. During my first semester as a virtual school teacher, I continued applying concepts of classroom 124 pedagogy to virtual schooling by planning for instruction, delivery, and learning assessments. In addition, I made extensive use of reflection while I engaged in each of these aspects of pedagogy.
Planning Instruction
My first teaching assignment in virtual school involved teaching business education options to large groups of high school students. When I started teaching virtual school, I already had several years worth of resources on hand, but not all of these resources were suitable for this new environment. I spent considerable time thinking about how best to reach my students, while considering that our school used email and frequent telephone calls as the primary methods of communication.
At this point, our school did not have a chat room. I sought for additional ways to contact my students and was aware that several of my colleagues were also searching. I knew that some of the other teachers had made use of web sites that offered chat room capabilities and these sites were free for the charge of registration. Chat room encounters with junior high school students were possible, as these students attended to their school duties during the day and had a parent standing by to guide them through their virtual school studies. However, part of the attraction for high school students to attend our school was our emphasis on instructional delivery primarily by asynchronous communication. Many of our students would attend to their lessons at times other than the immediate school day, due to commitments that included athletics, business, dance, or music. Thus, I set out to plan instruction for students whom I had not met and were available for communication primarily through email. I corresponded with a very large number of students. I had over twice as many students that first semester in virtual school, compared to any of my previous teaching assignments in traditional schools. In order to get to know my students in virtual school,
I exchanged email with each person on a daily basis. The quantity of email was enormous. However, not all of my students were so readily reached by email. In addition to the hundreds of daily email messages that were arriving from students, I was frequently on the telephone initiating contact with other students who had not yet been in touch by email.
I spent considerable time and effort during this first semester searching for different computer-mediated methods in order to keep in touch with my virtual school students, keeping in mind how some of the possibilities were constrained by the school's existing computer hardware. For example, in addition to the asynchronous delivery of content that had attracted many of our students, I was also concerned about the bandwidth limitations realized by rural students, the prohibitive cost of the computer- mediated communication software, and problems with installing a new type of software on students' computers after the computers had already been shipped out to them. In the past, maintaining contact with students attending traditional school was something that I had taken for granted. I could count on seeing my students on a daily basis, as we were physically present in the school buildings. Something that I had assumed would always be present to me in my past teaching assignments was all but absent to me now in virtual school. During that first semester, I often lamented that the most basic element of the student-teacher relationship was somehow corrupted by absence in this early form of virtual grade schooling. Still, the promise of technology moved me to continue. 126
Instructional Delivery
I continued to draw from my past teaching practice, as I planned instruction for virtual grade school. Indeed, as there was no pedagogical foundation for teaching virtual school, comparing it to that which was once done in traditional settings continued to provide a possible starting point for me. I made extensive use of this type of beginning and I was actively engaged in how best to digitally recreate most aspects of traditional school for application to virtual schooling. For example, as a teacher in a traditional school, I was accustomed to generating a daily lesson plan for each of my classes. In the plans, I outlined daily objectives, resources, activities, and assessment. In my absence, a substitute teacher would have been able to read the plan and deliver the lesson to students. In both cases, the teacher would have directed the lesson based on the plan.
Students would be apprised of the lesson's objectives and activities and assessment strategies, but would not usually view the document that was the lesson plan. For virtual school, I created lesson plans that would be read and directed by the students themselves in the absence of my physical presence. During the first semester, students received lesson plans on a daily basis.
As lesson plans were not available from previous years, I started each new course that semester from scratch. Generally, I worked all evening in order to generate lesson plans for students to address during the next day. The lessons were attached to email messages and sent to students early each morning. Here, the sending of lessons to students via email was akin to distributing handouts in class. However, the major difference on the part of virtual schooling involves a question of delivery. The student who accepts a pile of documents just handed to him by the teacher, will take one copy, and pass the rest of the materials to the next student. As a teacher, I could see that the handouts were being circulated. Likewise, the messages and lessons were sent to virtual school students by email. However, I sometimes wondered if students received my messages. In order to address this situation, I requested that students confirm the receipt of the assignment, once it reached them, before they started their daily work sessions. I understood that what I had just requested would manifest itself in a tidal wave of email messages from students. The idea of obtaining messages of confirmation from students was an effort to establish a pattern of contact with students, in order to get to know each of them better. Hence, I anticipated receiving confirmation messages from each student in each class, on a regular basis.
After the students had received and read the particular lesson, I would then receive messages from students asking questions about the lessons themselves. A type of one-on-one instruction developed, as far as the capabilities of email would allow. Often the back and forth between student and teacher would result in several email messages.
If I did not hear back from a student after an exchange of email, I would assume that particular students had understood the additional instruction and then proceeded with the lesson.
On other occasions, students would contact me about matters involving lesson plans. I made certain to edit the lessons thoroughly, before sending the materials to students. For example, students would not hesitate to let me know if the lesson included an incorrect page number for referencing a particular textbook, or a typographical error somewhere in the document. I appreciated receiving students' feedback of this sort and endeavoured to keep the human error showing itself in lesson plans to a minimum. 128
The majority of instructional delivery that occurred during these first five months was my use of email attachments to deliver the lessons to students. All other instruction was included in the lessons that were designed for self-study. A typical lesson plan for virtual school included all of the usual components, such as, objectives, resources, activities, and assessments. Students engaged in self-study activities with the resources that were available, including, textbooks, workbooks, web sites, and community-based resources. Activities in the lessons were varied, spanning working alone to collaborating with others in small groups, and ranging from reading textbook excerpts and answering questions to using the World Wide Web as a research tool. For example, students in small groups contacted each other by email, in keeping with the asynchronous delivery strategy of our school. Group work generally consisted of completing assignments and each group member contributing something to the assignment that the group was responsible for generating. During the first semester, group work was kept to a minimum, as class sizes were large and classes were many.
Learning Assessments
During the first semester, assessing the learning of students was limited by the use of an asynchronous type of instructional delivery. I regularly used several different types of assessments, including, essay responses, reading comprehension checks, individual projects, short answer questions, experiential descriptions, and multiple-choice questions.
On occasion, after searching on the web for resources, I would find a web site that featured various types of assessments that were available online, such as a true-false quiz or a collection of multiple choice questions. In the case of these assessments that were online, students reported their progress to me after engaging in the activity. 129
Students submitted their assignments to me on a daily basis. I kept track of students' assignments as they arrived in my inbox and moved the messages to folders for unmarked assignments. I devoted time during each day to mark assignments and to offer students feedback on their work. I created my own spreadsheets in order to keep track of students' submissions, to provide a place for raw scores and percentages to be recorded, and to calculate students' grades. Giving students feedback on their assignments during the first semester was challenging. Due to the high numbers of students in option classes,
I was only able to offer feedback to students on a quarterly basis. However, students often contacted me to ask what their grades were. I was always able to give updates to students in between the official reporting periods.
I have often wondered, in the midst of wading through the many assignments pouring into my email inbox, if students are really doing their own work that I assign to them? Or, perhaps, students obtain assistance with homework assignments by contacting other students or talking to their parents? The verity of students' assignments is one matter of honour in virtual schooling, as are examinations. Examinations are a routine part of life in our virtual grade school and these documents are generally distributed to students and parents as email attachments. Students write examinations, in the presence of an adult supervisor, according to the instructions for particular examinations. Some of these instructions involve closed-book exams. Students are to act ethically in situations involving examinations and the duty of supervisors is to assist students in this manner.
The supervisors are bound to act ethically in their capacity as supervisors and, by so doing, help to instill the "virtue" in virtual schools. 130
Pedagogical Thought
An important function of instructional planning is the opportunity for reflection.
Even though I was extremely busy during my first semester as a virtual school teacher, I was constantly thinking about teaching in the context of virtual schools. I did not have ready access to applicable teaching resources for the virtual school environment and so I entertained many of my own questions as I planned for instruction. When I thought about pedagogy for students attending virtual school, I was aware of the opposing arguments that were held by those against virtual school. These included such notions as virtual school not being considered as a real form of schooling, the ease with which cheating on assignments and tests in virtual school could occur, and the belief that students attending virtual school were doing so as a school of last resort. Were these arguments valid or not? Either way, what could be learned from them?
This space in between the views of the opponents and the proponents is where I began to learn more about virtual grade schooling within the first five months as a virtual teacher. I gave consideration to what the supporters of virtual grade school had to gain.
Alternatively, I thought about what those opposed to virtual school had to lose by the existence of virtual school. In addition, what were these groups tempering about their respective positions on virtual grade school? I thought about, and attempted to, answer these questions in order to inform my teaching practice as I planned instruction for my virtual school students.
Recent Reiterations
After my initial semester as a virtual school teacher, I continued to combine pedagogy and technology in various ways over the next five successive semesters. After 131 the initial iteration, each successive reiteration offered a separate cycle of understanding that built upon the cycle that came before. Each reiteration afforded many opportunities to further experience pedagogical trials that led to both lamentation and celebration for teaching and learning in virtual environments.
My early time as a teacher in virtual grade school was characterized by constantly striving to reclaim the basic tools for teaching in traditional classrooms. In order to teach in traditional settings, I required several tools. Some of these items included applicable teaching resources, access to productivity software (e.g., word processing software, grading software), allocation of ample time for planning, and students present in classrooms. However, as a virtual teacher, I did not always have access to resources that were web-ready and thus my time as a virtual school teacher was a constant pursuit of resources that were not only applicable to a virtual environment, but that were credible.
It has been laborious for me, because some of the tools that I require as a teacher in a virtual school have been out of reach due to budgetary constraints, technical incompatibility, or possible solutions that arrived too late in the school year. As for late arriving solutions, virtual school teachers have little time during a semester to search for answers to their subject-specific challenges in a virtual environment. In addition to more immediate types of planning, virtual teachers are expected to deliver instruction, evaluate the learning of students, and address a variety of exigencies that only virtual school could bring (e.g., teachers attending district or school-level planning sessions, students experiencing a variety of technical problems, problems with local ISPs, students not submitting assignments, students and parents expecting immediate replies to email messages, etc.). 132
Planning Instruction
During my second semester, I replaced the daily lesson plans with weekly plans.
Initially, I created daily lesson plans for students in virtual school just as I had prepared for my students in traditional classrooms. When I sent my students copies of daily lesson plans, I felt organized as a teacher. However, the classes were very large and sending daily lesson plans to students eventually became troublesome. Many students received the lesson, completed the requisite assignment, and then sent me their work. Other students, however, did not receive each daily plan, and tracking which students had completed what particular assignment for a particular day became agony. Over time, I realized that I would meet the students' needs much better by sending them one lesson plan that included activities for daily work sessions. The weekly lesson plans, which were sent to students on Monday mornings, included separate components for each day of the week.
As the semesters passed, I gradually created a collection of lessons from past years. By drawing on these documents, I was able to plan for current lessons more quickly. In the beginning semester, there were many unknowns. For example, when I started as a virtual teacher, it took trial and error to determine how much work students could complete within a given time frame for a lesson. Once I understood how much homework students could reasonably be expected to accomplish in daily work sessions, then I began to include this amount as an expectation within the weekly lesson plans.
Eventually, I began to include enrichment activities along with the lessons in order to help students further develop their knowledge and understanding of important concepts within lessons. Over time, I noticed that even if lessons were pristinely planned, complete with references to applicable resources, one nagging question remained, "Are the students attending to their daily duties, as outlined in lesson plans?" How do I know students are doing the work that I assign to them? Teaching in virtual grade school was characterized by a daily attending to a plethora of contradictions, when compared to traditional classrooms. Some of these contradictions were remedied, or somehow minimized, by strategies that virtual school teachers acquired in order to survive in this milieu. For example, teachers were constantly on the telephone to ascertain that which could not be resolved through contact with email, including, resolving technical concerns, teaching concepts that were difficult to understand in a print-based format, confirming students' attendance, checking for the presence of a supervisor during an examination, and reiterating particular details to students who did not take time to read the email messages and lessons.
Teachers working in small groups to help each other during their first years in virtual school began to define virtual pedagogy as they went along. Decisions on aspects of pedagogy that were encountered in virtual school, but that had no apparent solution, were made by consensus. In addition, in the midst of trials and frustration, virtual teachers constantly reminded themselves that virtual school had never existed before and as one of our administrators would say, "there is no manual for a virtual school." The role, duties, and responsibilities of virtual school teachers was a subject of discussion at the beginning of each year and became further defined as the semesters rolled on. 134
Instructional Delivery
In September 1998 the majority of my teaching practice was something that could be termed digital correspondence/independent study and word processing documents containing lessons for students were sent as email attachments. However, technology held many promises and improvements for the semesters to follow. During the next semester, our school administrators and the technology department developed a download page for lessons. Generally, teachers uploaded lessons on Monday morning, or before, and then created email messages to inform students that lessons for the week were available. Students accessed the download page and acquired copies of the lessons.
Students, in turn, accessed the download page and obtained a copy of the lesson. The advent of the download page was cause for celebration! The presence of this new online resource promised a few less email messages and allowed our school to become more efficient. For example, students who joined the class late or who were actively engaged in a catch-up effort for a particular class could access lessons directly from the download page, rather than requesting teachers to determine which plans students required and then sending the lessons to students. The download page was password protected and students were issued login and password identification. The combination of lesson plan, created with the capabilities of a word processor, and made available to students from a download page, provided the basis for our virtual school. The lessons were, however, still primarily print-based in format and independent study in orientation. With the help of the World Wide Web, our lesson plans assisted students to learn anything about a particular topic within the curriculum according to a constructivist approach to teaching.
Constructivist notions of learning start with students constructing their own 135 understandings of the world in which they live and searching for technological tools to help them understand their educational experiences (Riel, 1997; Riel & Fulton, 1998).
Presently, my teaching practice has evolved to using more advanced computer- mediated technologies that are designed to enhance my teaching. Besides the ever present email messages, I now have access to other online teaching options due to the use of secure chat room features and calendar capabilities. These two additions have assisted me in my goal of partially restoring the teaching tools that I once had access to in traditional classrooms. However, even with the addition of new online instructional tools, I wonder if "virtual school" can ever really live up to its namesake. Several years ago Kramarae (1995) noted, "virtual reality programs and promises are attracting a great deal of attention and funding, and they say a lot about visions of the future" (p. 36). Part of the nature of the relationship between virtual grade schools and the people who participate in them relates to technological promise. The promise of new technologies that would be employed in virtual grade school environments and would assist in solving pedagogical challenges that emerge in these environments could potentially lie within our grasp. The promise of technology has fuelled the impetus for virtual grade school movement for many years, and will, no doubt, continue for many years to come.
Learning Assessments
In the semesters that followed my first term at virtual school, I included a few more forms of assessment within my teaching practice, including the introduction of self- assessments for students to assess their overall progress in a unit of study. Because I could not see my students' progress through observing them in class, I relied upon their honesty to inform me of their progress. My move from emphasizing observation in the traditional classroom, which was something I did not give up lightly, toward trust in the virtual school, was a significant change in my teaching practice. However, I began to understand how some of the students pursuing virtual schooling take a greater ownership and responsibility for their own learning. Once I made this realization, I moved on to other aspects of my teaching practice that involved the assessment of learning.
During my second year as a virtual school teacher, our school added a marking program to the software that was available to teachers. Up until this point, I had been using spreadsheets of my own design to track students' assignments. My keeping students informed of their progress in classes was a time consuming, but very necessary, pedagogical task. Keeping students apprised of their progress was much easier with the new software, as individual progress reports could be sent to students and to parents. My course outline included a paragraph that outlined the timeframe for students to receive feedback, once their assignments had been sent to me. I claimed a three-day turnaround time and I worked diligently to keep this arrangement.
Students sent their homework to me as email attachments and as the assignments arrived, I would place a check mark beside the student's name under the appropriate column. Then, I moved the assignment to a folder for unmarked work. I made up a feedback template that included a break down of assignments, along with the allocation of marks. When my designated time of the week to grade assignments drew near, I would turn my attention to the folder containing unmarked assignments and open my marking book to the appropriate page. In the binder for grades, each students' check mark that indicated an assignment had arrived also included a grade for each assignment.
I sent each student a form that outlined the allocation of grades on particular assignments. 137
I toiled with my "three-day homework turnaround policy." Remaining consistent with this policy became much easier with improved assessment strategies and class sizes that eventually became smaller.
Pedagogical Thought
Even with the addition of new instructional tools, I wonder if "virtual school" can ever really live up to its namesake. For example, Baym (1995) described the effect of making use of computer-mediated communication as follows.
Because computer-mediated interactants are unable to see, hear, and feel one another they cannot use the usual contextualization cues conveyed by appearance, nonverbal signals, and features of the physical context. With these cues to social context removed, the discourse is left in a social vacuum quite different from face-to-face interaction, (p. 139-140)
Perhaps an alternative type of grade schooling that draws heavily from computer- mediated communication, rather than making use of virtual reality, should have been named something other than virtual school and thus would have been expected to develop quite differently? Several years ago, when the earliest virtual grade schools were being developed, virtual reality programs were predicted to hold great promise for the future (Kramarae, 1995). However, several years later, virtual reality programs are still not readily available for use within virtual grade schools and practitioners continue to develop instruction by other means.
As a virtual school teacher, I continue to make use of computer-mediated communications within my teaching practice and I have accepted that virtual reality programs will not be used in virtual grade school in the near future. Hence, a few years ago, I called upon a model of instructional development that was suited to my teaching practice in virtual school. Willis (1995) put forth a model of instructional design that 138 involves recursion and reflection. I first read this article before I became a virtual school teacher. Even though I had experience teaching students in secondary and post- secondary educational settings, I felt that I had just begun teaching when I arrived at virtual school. When I was in my undergraduate teacher preparation program, I learned about a general instructional process that provided a model of teaching involving planning, delivery, and evaluation. When I started teaching virtual school, I began to understand how the "instructional process" was not linear, but really more of a cycle that had to be experienced initially and then grew to become richer and fuller with each successive cycle after the initial iteration. I realized that the instructional process became a cycle when "reflection" was added to the end of the instructional process, which was originally presented as a linear model. Reflection added a feedback loop to each item included in the instructional process, and with the help of the World Wide Web, became a cyclical rather than linear process.
Future Cycles
This section is devoted to eventually establishing a pedagogical identity for virtual schools. Now that I have experienced the challenge of teaching virtual grade school, I have some recommendations about that which is necessary in order to establish a pedagogical identity for virtual grade schooling. The forecasts for the future of virtual grade schooling may be partially based on the developmental turns of the past, as well as trends that are presently occurring.
The possibilities for establishing a pedagogical identity for virtual grade school show themselves in the spaces between the celebrations and lamentations held by those people involved in virtual schools. What the future holds for virtual schooling may be partially based by what virtual grade schools are at present, as what virtual schools will be in the future has yet to be revealed. The following recommendations are based on past developmental turns and represent an initial step toward the establishment of a pedagogical identity for virtual school.
• Grade schools that offer instruction to students by way of computer-mediated
communication technologies should be called something other than virtual
grade schools. The term "virtual grade school" implies that this is nearly
school, or suggests the use of virtual reality programs to deliver instruction
and these programs are not presently used. A more apt name would clearly
imply that these alternative schools make use of computer-mediated
communication technologies and allow for flexible delivery of instruction.
• In the future, virtual grade schools will move away from the model of
replicating traditional schools. Past developmental turns have suggested that
virtual schools have not cultivated a pedagogical identity of their own if they
continue to draw from that which was once considered to be traditional
school. Constructivist notions of learning may be more applicable to students
attending virtual grade schools than attempting to replicate that which occurs
in a traditional school. The replication model of virtual grade schooling has
confounded the public's understanding of this type of alternative education.
Continued attempts by virtual grade schools to replicate traditional schooling,
that involve low levels of technology, will ensure that replication remains not
only impossible, but beyond comprehension. The race for proponents to quickly harness technology "just because they can" has been like a chasing of the wind for the virtual grade school movement.
Only when pedagogy has been restored as the foundation for virtual grade schooling, will the virtual grade school movement begin to cultivate a pedagogical identity.
Virtual schools may find a pedagogical identity once the essence of pedagogy has shown itself once again. The essence of pedagogy has been eluding the virtual grade school movement, as this movement has been moving rapidly to adopt different technologies, rather than focusing on pedagogy. Virtual grade schools can no longer continue to mutate the enduring qualities of pedagogy in the service of a possible fit with continuously emerging technological innovations, which have no seeming end. Currently, there are more advanced computer-mediated technologies that are available or that are being developed and implemented. These new technologies digitally restore teacher and learner into each other's presence, by virtual means. These new technologies are helping virtual schools restore the origins of the student - teacher relationship, as student and teacher are together in the same place and at the same time, or are together in a cyberplace according to a computer-mediated timeframe. What is different about these technologies is that physical space and time may be compromised in the interest of information and communication. Newly developed computer-mediated communications may assist in the creation of a pedagogical identity for virtual grade schools only if some of the essential qualities of pedagogy are restored. The propagation of virtual schools has been due, in part, to a reaction to the hegemonic nature of problems currently found in traditional schools.
Traditional public education has become resistant to any type of significant change. Virtual schools have become the marginalized creation of the main body of education. Virtual grade schools might be considered as a legitimate extension of main stream education that provides a space for the many challenges that public schools cannot resolve.
Pre-service and in-service teachers should draw from the tools of technology, including a range spanning chalkboard to World Wide Web, in order to assist in the education of students. This range of tools includes elements from traditional as well as virtual environments. Continued research in the broad area of pedagogy in virtual grade schools may assist teaching practitioners inform their teaching practices, whether the practitioners are site-based or online.
Virtual grade schools cannot remain as one end of the "traditional school - virtual school" polarity. A combination of course offerings from both virtual schools and traditional schools will work well in educating students, as these separate parts integrate. Students attending traditional school will be given the latitude to take online courses during high school, with the goal of obtaining a well-rounded education. Online and traditional schooling offer possibilities to foster life-long learning beyond high school.
Students seeking to attend virtual grade schools must do so as a carefully planned educational endeavour that involves parents and teachers. A student 142
moving to attend virtual schooling may involve the potential to restore life to
learning, rather than serving as an escape from traditional school that may
involve hiding a mild or undiagnosed social, emotional, or learning disability.
• Continued research is necessary in the area of students' success for those who
attend virtual grade schools. The definition of student success includes
different elements, including academic , non-academic, and social factors.
These elements should be explored within the context of virtual grade schools
in studies that are short-term, as well as longitudinal.
Chapter Summary
This chapter offers a discussion about moving toward a pedagogical identity for virtual grade school. Something more enduring than jumping and reacting to every technological opportunity in order to give credibility lies in wait for virtual grade schools.
In the past, the virtual grade school movement has endorsed the use of many different types of technologies in order for virtual schooling to become possible and these developmental phases were necessary. Despite these early pedagogical experiments, the basic components of human interaction that underpin traditional classroom pedagogy could not be completely replicated by digital means. I believe the next developmental stages for virtual grade school will not involve finding the quintessential formula for replicating or replacing traditional schools. Time has shown that there is nothing virtual about virtual grade schools, as these schools do not employ virtual reality programs.
Pedagogy for grade schools that offer instruction to students through the means of computer-mediated communication has been slowly emerging in our midst. Reflection
Today I completed my first semester as a teacher in virtual school. I just finished calculating a final grade for each of my students and then copied the grades to a floppy disk. While I didn't meet all of my students in person, I did manage to get to know them throughout the semester by way of their assignments and as much as email-based communications would allow. I delivered the disk to the school office and then an administrator asked me how my first semester went. I recounted several of the positive aspects of the semester. However, I was concerned about some negative parts of my encounters over the last five months that involved the number of students that teachers were assigned, the number of hours that were necessary to develop lessons, and the amount of grading that went along with the number of students. I have to admit that in general I am always somewhat gleeful at the end of a research project or a university term or after writing a paper, but at the end of this particular semester I was very tired. The administrator promised that things at our virtual school could only get better as new instructional technologies became available and class sizes were eventually decreased. I guess the promise of new technology that will arrive and have applications for use in virtual grade school, coupled with the hopes and expectations of teachers, can be a dangerous combination. The promise of new technology beckons teachers to continue using it, to hang in there, because things can only get better - more efficient. However, learning to use the technology itself may increase workload. On the way back to my workstation, I wondered what would happen to virtual grade schools in the future when new technologies that may make instructional delivery much better suddenly became available? I was relieved at the idea that solutions would eventually arrive, but weary about the time commitment to learn and apply their use, as the forecasted improvements were unknown. I didn't think about it too much longer because I had a second term to plan for that was starting in a few days time. Perhaps teaching in virtual grade school would be easier during the next semester? My new class lists will be waiting for me at the office on Monday morning, as well as the certainty of engaging in new mixes of technology and pedagogy within our virtual grade school. (Journal entry, January 29, 1999) 144
CHAPTER EIGHT: CONCLUSION
"All understanding has a circular structure .... The more movement in this circle, the larger the circle grows, embracing the expanding contexts that throw more and more light upon the parts" (Gallagher, 1992, pp. 58-59).
By way of this dissertation, I inquired into the nature of the relationship between virtual grade schools and the people who participate in these schools. The study was organized around the extended metaphor of technology being compared to the manner of an ocean. The text brought the experiences of students, parents, teachers, and administrators involved in virtual grade school into presence in order to allow the reader to recognize the experiential possibilities of life within education. In order to invite the reader into a conversation that addressed the topic, my dissertation was structured like a series of concentric circles that moved and spiralled around each other in order to present various cycles of meaning. The first sets of circles addressed an introduction to the study and how this dissertation attends to the question of research. Next, the development of virtual grade schooling in Alberta was explored. Beyond this, another cycle offered descriptions of the virtual student population. The next circle took the reader through an exploration of virtual students' worlds of immediate lived experience with certain aspects of pedagogy in virtual grade schooling. The next larger circle entertained a discussion of the implications and future of virtual grade schooling. The outermost circle presented a beginning effort towards establishing a pedagogical identity for virtual grade schools.
What is the nature of the relationship between the emergent phenomenon of virtual grade schools and those people who participate in them? This relationship involves the three interrelated themes of identity, time/space, and the ongoing tension between "what is" compared to "what could be". In order to explore this question of research, I attended to the question with Van Manen's (1997) approach to "Researching
Lived Experience." Van Manen (1997) noted how phenomenological research projects require, "that we not simply raise a question and then possibly soon drop it again, but rather that we 'live' this question, that we 'become' this question" (p. 43). For the last three years, I have been a teacher of students attending virtual grade school. Thus, I have experientially "lived" and indeed "become" my research question. The availability of this particular perspective guided my choice of research approach, in the midst of other possible methods of inquiry.
The tides of technology carried the Internet to the teacher-innovators of the oldest virtual schools in Alberta. This was the beginning of the relationship between virtual grade schools and the people who participate in them. The first of three elements involved with this relationship addresses the development of virtual grade schools and includes virtuality, appeal, promotion, answerability, and presence. The evolution of virtual grade schools assisted in the attraction of three different waves of students to populate virtual school over the years. The development of virtual grade schools, along with the student population patterns, relate to the theme of identity.
The second element of the relationship involves the adaptations that virtual teachers and administrators made to pedagogy that was originally intended for traditional schools. This research suggested that as virtual grade schools evolved, teachers and administrators altered the use of pedagogy that was originally designed for traditional classroom settings. Thus, the phenomenon of virtual grade schools has evoked both lamentation for what was once considered "schooling", as well as celebration for the possibilities of what schooling could be. The development of virtual pedagogy relates to the theme of time/space.
The third part of the relationship between virtual grade schools and the people who participate in them relates to technological promise. The promise of technology has led to the ongoing tension between "what is" compared to "what could be." The promise of new technologies that would be employed in virtual grade school environments and would assist in solving pedagogical challenges that emerge in these environments could potentially lie "around the corner." The idea that new and better technological solutions will soon arrive may keep those people involved in virtual grade schools motivated.
Technological solutions that would allow virtual teachers to do their jobs better allows for the "what could be" to be compared to the "what is." The promises that are often perceived to be associated with new technologies may have provided the impetus for the virtual grade school movement in past years, and will, no doubt, continue for many years to come.
Technology in education may be compared to the character of an ocean. An ocean of technological applications in education may be alluring to behold in its sheer vastness. This environment may seem to be tranquil at times and could lead to a calming effect on those people watching a gentle rippling motion on the surface. An ocean is capable of renewing life and adding growth to that which is dependent upon it. Oceans can, however, be dangerous places. The surface may seem to appear calm, but there are strong forces churning beneath the surface among the depths. Oceans defy control and their waves can often be unpredictable. The power of an ocean may contribute to water moving in a slow trickle or in a sudden swell. Technology, like an ocean, deserves respect from the people involved.
Participating in a virtual grade school as a student, parent, teacher, or administrator, holds both joys and agonies. Those people that would be moved by technology and wish to become involved in virtual grade schools should be cautioned. The allure of virtual grade schooling can also hold many challenges. Celebrations and lamentations coexist within the educational experiences of those people involved in virtual grade schools and the current study has explored the presence of this duality.
With this dissertation, I have contributed to a discussion on virtual grade schooling that has been ongoing for a few years. I offer an invitation to other people to continue this discussion by contributing in various ways. More research on the many aspects of virtual grade schools is strongly urged. The option of teaching specific course offerings in virtual grade school for pre-service and in-service teachers, is another possible contribution. In addition, an exploration of the larger rhythms inherent in any kind of change in education, such as, initial change, suspicion, euphoria, realism, re- intrigue, and recommitment, may contribute to the ongoing discussion. 148
References
Alberta Education. (1995). Technology integration in education discussion paper. Edmonton, AB: Alberta Education.
Alberta Education. (1998a). Opening and operating a virtual school or program in Alberta. Calgary, AB: Alberta Education, Regional Office Branch.
Alberta Education. (1998b). A proposal for the establishment of the Online Consortium of Alberta [CD-ROM]. Proceedings of 1998 Virtual School Symposium. Edmonton, AB: Alberta Education.
Alberta Education. (1999). On-line learning: Best practices for Alberta School Jurisdictions [On-line]. Available: http://ednet.edc.gov.ab.ca/technology/bestpractices/pdf7onlinelearning.pdf [July 7, 1999].
Alberta Learning. (1999a). Guide to Education: ECS to Grade 12. Edmonton, AB: Alberta Learning.
Alberta Learning. (1999b). Home Education Regulation [On-line], Available: http://www.learning.gov.ab.ca/educationguide/pol-plan/polregs/adobe/5homeEd.pdf [January 5, 2001]
Alberta Learning. (1999c). Home Education Total Enrolment 1991/1992 to 1999/2000. Edmonton, AB: Alberta Learning.
Alberta Learning. (2000a). Career and Technology Studies Curriculum [On• line], Available: http://www.learning.gov.ab.ca/k_12/curriculum/bySubject/cts/ [February 15, 2001]
Alberta Learning. (2000b). Information and Communication Technologies Program of Studies [On-line]. Available: http://www.learning.gov.ab.ca/k_12/curriculum/bySubject/ict/ [February 15, 2001]
Alberta Online Consortium. (1999). June 1999 Newsletter [On-line]. Available: http://www.albertaonline.ab.ca/news/jun99.pdf [February 15, 2001]
Alberta Online Consortium. (2000). March 2000 Newsletter [On-line]. Available: http://www.albertaonline.ab.ca/news/march2000.pdf [February 15,2001]
Alberta Teachers'Association. (1999). Technology and Education [On-line]. Available: http://www.teachers.ab.ca/policy/papers/paper20.html [November 28, 2000].
Appignanesi, R., & Garratt, C. (1995). Introducing postmodernism. New York: Totem books. 149
Argyle, K. (1996). Life after death. In S. Shields (Ed), Cultures of the internet: Virtual spaces, real histories, living bodies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
A revelation in learning. (2000, September 13). Edmonton Sun, p. 57.
Ayto, J. (1990). Dictionary of word origins. New York: Arcade Publishing.
Barker, K, Wendel, T, & Richmond, M. (1999). Linking the literature: School effectiveness and virtual schools. Kelowna, BC: Society for the Advancement of Excellence in Education.
Barker, K., & Wendel, T. (2001). e-Learning: Studying Canada's virtual secondary schools. Kelowna, BC: Society for the Advancement of Excellence in Education.
Barraclough, K. (2000, May 23). Virtual school population triples. Strathmore Standard, p. 6.
Baym, N (1995) The emergence of community in computer-mediated communication. In S. Jones (Ed), CyberSociety: Computer-mediated communication and community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Benedikt, M. (1993). Cyberspace: Some proposals. InM. Benedikt (Ed), Cyberspace: First steps. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Booi, L. (2001, January 30). Alberta Teachers' Association responds to AOC. The ATA News. 35 (12), p. 5.
Booth-Reed, J. (1999, December 16). Education succeeds in cyberspace The News-Press [On-line]. Available: http://fhs.net/FHS_Misc.nsf708fc45d98ed7a6118525664100689091/916d0dab932fbde08 625684a005c5645?OpenDocument [December 14, 2000].
Branigan, C. (2000, May 15). 'Virtual high schools' challenge the precepts of traditional schooling [On-line]. Available: http://www.eschoolnews.com/showstory.cfm?ArticleID= 150 [May 18, 2000].
Builders of the 21st century. (2000, January 1). Calgary Sun, p. M18.
Campbell, T. (1998). The first e-mail message: Who sent it and what it said [On-line]. Available: http:/www.pretext.com/mar98/features/story2.htm [November 4, 2000].
Cavanagh, C. (2000, April 4). How do I teach virtual phys ed? The ATA News. 34(16), p. 4. 150
Caverly, D. C, Peterson, C. L., & Mandeville, T, F. (1997). A generational model for professional development. Educational Leadership, 55 (3), 56-59.
Clifford, P., Friesen, S., & Jardine, D. W. (1995). "Whatever happens to him happens to us": Reading coyote reading the world [On-line]. Available: http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~jardine/publish/COYOTE.html [July 6, 1999].
Derworiz, C. (2000, August 2). Students net Net school. Calgary Herald [On• line]. Available: http://www.calgaryherald.com/education/stories/000802/4518855.html
DiGiovanna, J. (1996). Losing your voice on the Internet. In P. Ludlow (Ed), High noon on the electronic frontier: Conceptual issues in cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Featherstone, M, & Burrows, R. (1995). The design of virtual reality. InM. Featherstone & R. Burrows (Eds), Cyberspace/cyberbodies/cyberpunk: Cultures of technological embodiment. London: Sage.
Flower, D. (1999, January 19). Government tight-fisted when it comes to studying public education. The ATA News. 33 (10), pp. 2, 12.
Fraser Report on Schools. (2000, May 5). Calgary Herald, p. A15.
Fraser Report on Schools. (2001, May 6). Calgary Herald, p. Al 1.
Gallagher, S. (1992). Hermeneutics and education. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Gibson, W. (1984). Neuromancer. London: HarperCollins.
Giese, M. (1998). Self without body: Textual self-representation in an electronic community [On-line]. Available: http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_4/giese/index.html [March 3, 2000].
Government of Alberta. (1998). Virtual schools symposium highlights growth [On-line], Available: http://www.edt.gov.ab.ca/acs/199811/7021.htm [April 4. 20001.
Hanna, P. (2001, January 30). Alberta Online Consortium disagrees with ATA. The ATA News. 35 (12), p. 5.
Harrington, C. (1998, April 17). Cyberschools attract Alberta students. Calgary Herald, p. 114.
Haughey, M, & Muirhead, W. (1999). Virtual education: Implications for society. Open Education Research. 2/3, 13-18. 151
Heim, M. (1995). The design of virtual reality. In M. Featherstone & R. Burrows (Eds), Cyberspace/cyberbodies/cyberpunk: Cultures of technological embodiment. London: Sage.
Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology. Evanston, JX: Northwestern University Press.
Hyde, L. (1998). Trickster makes this world. New York: North Point Press.
Ihde, D. (1990). Technology and the lifeworld: From garden to Earth. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Internet.com Corporation. (2000). Webopedia: Online computer dictionary for Internet terms and technical support. [On-line]. Available: http://www.webopedia.com/ [October 28, 2000].
Interrogate the Internet. (1996). Contradictions in cyberspace: Collective response. In S. Shields (Ed), Cultures of the internet: Virtual spaces, real histories, living bodies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Knoke, W. (1996). Bold new world: The essential road map to the twenty-first century. New York: Kodansha America.
Kramarae, C. (1995). A backstage critique of virtual reality. In S. Jones (Ed), CyberSociety: Computer-mediated communication and community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Lau, M. (1998, October 10). Virtual school a hit with kids. The Calgary Sun, p. 11.
Layton, T. (1996). Some implications of cyberschool. Minneapolis, MN: Proceedings from the 1996 National Educational Computing Conference (pp. 222-223). (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 398 877)
Litke, C. D. (1998). Virtual schooling at the middle grades: A case study. Journal of Distance Education, 13 (2), 33-50.
Markham, A. N. (1998). Life online: Researching real experience in virtual space. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Marshall, A. (1998, September 3). Enrolment booming at 'virtual schools'. The Calgary Herald, B3.
McGovern, S. (2001, April 14). Forget e-mail, let's do lunch. The Calgary Herald. WS1. 152
McGowan, G. (1999, November 28). St. Albert Catholic remains popular education choice. Edmonton Sun, p. HI5.
Michaels, J. W, & Smillie, D. (2000, May 15). Webucation. Forbes. 92-93.
Muirhead, W. D. (2000). Teachers' perspectives of online education in Alberta. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB.
Online learning program unveiled. (2000, August 2). Calgary Sun, p. 21.
Petrie, M. (1998, September 26). Virtual classroom for on-line students, the whole world serves as a classroom. Calgary Sun, p. 26.
Riel, M. (1997). Learning in the networlds of tomorrow [On-line]. Available: http://www.iearn.Org/webtour/2/ [November 12, 1998].
Riel, M., & Fulton, K. (1998). Technology in the classroom: Tools for doing things differently or doing different things [On-line]. Available: http://www.gse.uci.edu/vkiosk/faculty/riel/riel-fulton.html [November 12, 1998].
Roblyer, M. D. (1997). Predictions and realities: The impact of the Internet on K-12 education. Learning and Leading With Technology. 25 (1), 54-56.
Rogers, E. M. (1995). Diffusion of innovations (4th ed). New York: Free Press.
Rushkoff, D. (1996). Playing the future: How kid's culture can teach us to thrive in an age of chaos. New York: HarperCollins.
Santoro, G. M.. (1998). What is the online classroom? In Z. L. Berge & M. Collins (Eds), Wired together. The online classroom in K-12 (Vol. 1). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
Schutz, A., & Luckmann, T. (1973). The structures of the life-world. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Schofield, J. (1999, September 6). Welcome to the wired classroom. MacLean's. 112 (36), 22-29.
Smith, D. (2000, May 5). Educators won't like Fraser report. Calgary Herald, p. A15.
Smith, D. (2001, May 6). Don't rely soley on achievement tests. Calgary Herald, p. All.
Smith, R. (2001). Virtual schooling in the K - 12 context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. 153
Speidel, G. E. (1995). Taking a giant step into our technological future: A talk with Diana Oshiro. Kamehameha Journal of Education, 6 (Summer), 127-133.
Statistics Canada. (1996). Access to the information highway [On-line]. Available: http://www.statcan.ca/english/ads/ceo/dec96.htm [November 27, 1998].
Sytnick, P. (1999, January 3). Virtual schools now a reality. Edmonton Sun, p. S3.
Tapscott, D. (1998). Growing up digital: The rise of the Net Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the internet. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Uhlig, R. (2000, December 4). Youth grow bored with Internet. National Post, pp. Al, A10.
Unland, K (2001, February 15). Virtual school no cheaper than conventional one. The Edmonton Journal [On-line]. Available: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/technologyl/stories/010215/5062698.html [February 27, 2001]
Van Manen, M. (1997). Researching lived experience: Human Science for an action sensitive pedagogy (2nd ed). London, ON: Althouse Press.
Van Manen, M (2000). Phenomenology online [On-line], Available: http://www.phenomenologyonline.com [October 25, 2000]
Virtual school gets mixed reviews. (1999, January 26). USA Today [Online], Available: http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/ctb387.htm [April 11,2000].
Willis, J. (1995). A recursive, reflective instructional design model based on Constructivist-Interpretivist theory. Educational Technology, 35 (6), 5-23.
Zak, K. (2000a). Education to go. Teach, January/February, 7-10.
Zak, K. (2000b). Some it thrills, other it chills: Is teaching online for you? Teach. March/April, 27-29.
Zaleski, J. (1997). The soul of cyberspace: How new technology is changing our spiritual lives. New York: HarperCollins. Appendix A Initial Information Supplied to Participants
Kevin J. MacLeod, M.Ed. Doctor of Philosophy Candidate Graduate Division of Educational Research Faculty of Education
UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
Current Research Curriculum Vitae Links Information for participants!
Last Update November 1999, by Kevin J. MacLeod 155
Current Research
Introduction
Research Approach
Participant Selection
Information for Participants (Teachers)
Information for Participants (Administrators)
Information for Participants (Students)
Information for Participants (Parents)
Report on Research Outcomes
References
Introduction The online, or virtual, grade school is recent technological innovation in education and has been in great demand by students, parents, and teachers over the past few years (Alberta Education, 1999; Layton, 1996; Litke, 1998; Roblyer, 1997; Speidel, 1995). A shroud of mystery presently surrounds the virtual grade school community in Alberta and teaching practitioners have been generating a plethora of questions in order to help them come to terms with these many unknowns. For example, online schools, in their relatively short existence, have been attracting a growing number of students each year. But what types of students are drawn to online schools? Attempts to answer this question would be of tremendous benefit to teachers, as they strive to assist in the education of their students.
The purpose of this project is to inquire into the nature of the relationship between virtual schools, as a new type of technological innovation, and the students who choose to attend these schools.
My dissertation research will investigate the nature of the relationship between virtual schools and virtual students by addressing the following research questions: 156
• What are the characteristics of the students choosing virtual schools? • What is the relationship between technology and these students? • What are the images involved with this relationship?; and • How does the topic of the current research study help us (students, parents, teachers, administrators) to better understand the phenomenon of virtual schools?
Back to top of page
Research Approach The research approach used for the purpose of this dissertation will draw from van Manen's (1997) "Researching Lived Experience" and will include the following elements: using the personal experiences of the writer as a starting point, tracing etymological sources of terminology (that are particularly germane to the World Wide Web and to cyberspace), obtaining experiential descriptions from participants, protocol writing (lived-experience descriptions), interviewing (the personal life story), observing (the experiential anecdote), experiential descriptions in literature, biography as a resource for experiential material, diaries, journals, and logs as sources of lived experiences, art (digital representations of music, cinematography, paintings, sculpture) as a source of lived experience, and consulting phenomenological literature. Back to top of page
Participant Selection For the purposes of this inquiry, the researcher will ask a purposeful sampling of student and adult participants from four online/virtual schools to offer their personal descriptions of the student population in virtual schools. Participants will include six students, four parents, two teachers, and two administrators per participating school. Eligible student participants must be full-time, junior or senior high school students, enrolled full-time in an online/virtual school in Alberta. Parents, teachers, and administrators will be selected on the basis of their interest in the study.
Subjects in the study will respond to the ideas presented in interview situations in terms of their own experiences, in whatever way that is appropriate to the topic. For example, students will describe their experiences in virtual schools (and may involve samples of their work in school - textual or artistic representations - to help illuminate their responses), while parents, teachers, and administrators will offer descriptions of students who are involved in virtual schooling (and may also involve samples of students' work in school - textual or artistic representations - to help illuminate their responses). Participants from each category who are interested in the study will be included as participants
Participation in the study will be voluntary and a subgroup of the respondents from each group of participants will also be randomly chosen for a more in-depth exploration of core themes, as assessed through transcripts of lived experiences. 157
The parents/guardians of the potential student participants and the potential adult participants will be fully informed by the researcher as to the nature of the study, any risks or benefits, the procedure used to ensure their own and their children's/adolescents' anonymity, and the measures taken for maintaining confidentiality of the data obtained, the storage and disposal of the raw data, and feedback on the results of the study, and their right to withdraw their own, or their children's participation from the study at any time. The parents of the student participants and the adult participants will be given some time, at least one day, to make a decision as to their own or their children's involvement in the project prior to signing the appropriate informed consent form. Parents/guardians and adult participants will be informed that they or their children are free to withdraw participation at any time. Once parental consent has been obtained, the children/adolescents will be fully informed in age-appropriate language as to the nature of the study and will be given the choice as to whether or not they wish to participate. The voluntary nature of their involvement is crucial to achieving optimal results. Their teachers also will be fully informed as to the nature of the study.
To ensure anonymity, each student and adult participant, at the outset of the study, will be assigned a personal identification number and a pseudonym. These naming conventions will be used to identify all audiotapes, transcripts, and samples of work. These numbers and pseudonyms, along with the participants corresponding real names, will be kept on a master list and this list will be kept within a locked storage file along with all transcripts and samples of work. Only the researcher and his supervisors will have access to the master list. Segments of transcripts and portions of work, along with the participants' pseudonyms, may be used to present the findings to professional and academic groups. All personal identifying information will be kept confidential and will not be released without the prior knowledge and written consent of the adult participant, or the parent/guardian in the case of the student participant. Back to top of page
Information for Participants (Teachers) In order to participate in the study, please compose an email message to kjmacleofSjucalgary.ca Copy the information below and paste it in the body of your email message. Then, fill in the required information in your email message and send it to the researcher.
Subject Line: Grade School Cyberspaces Study
Name of Participant: Name of Participating School: Number of Years Teaching in an Online/Virtual Environment: Grade Levels Taught: Mailing Address (In order to send letters of information and consent forms to you): Email Address: Alternate Email Address (If applicable): 158
Please note that teacher participants will be selected on the bases of senior online teaching service (2 years or more) and their interest in the study. In addition, all eligible teacher participants will be selected on a "first come, first serve" basis.
Upon receipt of an email request for consent forms, each teacher participant will receive the following documents from the researcher:
• 1 copy of "Letter of Information for Participants", • 2 copies of "Consent for Research Participation: Teachers", • 1 self-addressed and stamped envelope. • (Note: Color copies of completed consent forms are to be mailed to the researcher in the self-addressed and stamped envelopes.)
Once the researcher has received the consent form, he will require some general demographic information from each participant. After the initial email or telephone interview, participants will engage in online conversations with the researcher on 2 or 3 separate occasions by way of email, chat room, or telephone. If necessary, additional data may also be collected in various other forms including samples of students' school work, journal entries, narratives, and stories.
Participants in the study must be aware that all personal identifying information will be kept confidential and will not be released without the prior knowledge and written consent of the adult participant.
Data collection will take approximately three months time, from January to March 2000.
Back to top of page
Information for Participants (Administrators) In order to participate in the study, please compose an email message to [email protected] Copy the information below and paste it in the body of your email message Then, fill in the required information in your email message and send it to the researcher.
Subject Line: Grade School Cyberspaces Study
Name of Participant Name of Participating School: Number of Years of Administration Experience in an Online/Virtual Environment: Mailing Address (In order to send letters of information and consent forms to you): Email Address: Alternate Email Address (If applicable): 159
Please note that administrator participants will be selected on the bases of senior online service (2 years or more) and their interest in the study. In addition, all eligible administrator participants will be selected on a "first come, first serve" basis.
Upon receipt of an email request for consent forms, each administrator participant will receive the following documents from the researcher:
• 1 copy of "Letter of Information for Participants", • 2 copies of "Consent for Research Participation: Administrators", • 1 self-addressed and stamped envelope. (Note: Color copies of completed consent forms are to be mailed to the researcher in the self-addressed and stamped envelopes.)
Once the researcher has received the consent form, he will require some general demographic information from each participant. After the initial email or telephone interview, participants will engage in online conversations with the researcher on 2 or 3 separate occasions by way of email, chat room, or telephone. If necessary, additional data may also be collected in various other forms including samples of students' school work, journal entries, narratives, and stories.
Participants in the study must be aware that all personal identifying information will be kept confidential and will not be released without the prior knowledge and written consent of the adult participant.
Data collection will take approximately three months time, from January to March 2000.
Back to top of page
Information for Participants (Students) In order to participate in the study, please compose an email message to [email protected] Copy the information below and paste it in the body of your email message. Then, fill in the required information in your email message and send it to the researcher. Don't forget to ask your parents if they are interested in participating in the study! (Please refer to the "Information for Participants: Parents" section of this web page.)
Subject Line: Grade School Cyberspaces Study
Name of Participant: Name of Participating School: Grade: Number of Years Attending Online/Virtual School: Mailing Address (In order to send letters of information and consent forms to you): Email Address: Alternate Email Address (If applicable): 160
Please note that student participants must be full-time, junior or senior high school students, enrolled full-time in an online/virtual school in Alberta. In addition, all eligible student participants will be selected on a "first come, first serve" basis.
Upon receipt of an email request for consent forms, each student participant will receive the following documents from the researcher:
1 copy of "Letter of Information for Parents/Guardians", 1 copy of "Letter of Information for Participants", 2 copies of "Consent for Research Participation: Parents/Guardians", 2 copies of "Consent for Research Participation: Students", 1 self-addressed and stamped envelope. (Note: Color copies of completed consent forms are to be mailed to the researcher in the self-addressed and stamped envelopes.)
Once the researcher has received the consent form, he will require some general demographic information from each participant. After the initial email or telephone interview, participants will engage in online conversations with the researcher on 2 or 3 separate occasions by way of email, chat room, or telephone. If necessary, additional data may also be collected in various other forms including samples of students' school work, journal entries, narratives, and stories.
Participants in the study will be advised that all personal identifying information will be kept confidential and will not be released without the prior knowledge and written consent of the parent/guardian in the case of the student participant.
Data collection will take approximately three months time, from January to March 2000.
Back to top of page
Information for Participants (Parents) In order to participate in the study, please compose an email message to [email protected] Copy the information below and paste it in the body of your email message. Then, fill in the required information in your email message and send it to the researcher.
Subject Line: Grade School Cyberspaces Study
Name of Participant: Name of Participating School: Student's Grade: Number of Years that Student has Attended Online/Virtual School: Mailing Address (In order to send letters of information and consent forms to you): 161
Email Address: Alternate Email Address (If applicable):
Please note that eligible parent participants must have children, who are full-time, junior or senior high school students enrolled full-time in an online/virtual school in Alberta. Parents will be selected based on their interest in the study and on a "first come, first serve" basis.
Upon receipt of an email request for consent forms, each parent participant will receive the following documents from the researcher:
• 1 copy of "Letter of Information for Participants", • 2 copies of "Consent for Research Participation: Parents", • 1 self-addressed and stamped envelope. (Note: Color copies of completed consent forms are to be mailed to the researcher in the self-addressed and stamped envelopes.)
Once the researcher has received the consent form, he will require some general demographic information from each participant. After the initial email or telephone interview, participants will engage in online conversations with the researcher on 2 or 3 separate occasions by way of email, chat room, or telephone. If necessary, additional data may also be collected in various other forms including samples of students' school work, journal entries, narratives, and stories.
Participants in the study must be aware that all personal identifying information will be kept confidential and will not be released without the prior knowledge and written consent of the adult participant.
Data collection will take approximately three months time, from January to March 2000.
Back to top of page
Report on Research Outcomes Participating schools will receive feedback from the researcher concerning the results of the study once the project has been completed.
Back to top of page
References Alberta Education. (1999). Common practices in on-line learning: A best practices study of integrating technology in learning [On-line]. Available: http://ednet.edc.gov.ab ca/technology/bestpractices/pdf/onlinelearning.pdf [July 7, 1999]. 162
Layton, T. (1996). Some implications of cyberschool. Minneapolis, MN: Proceedings from the 1996 National Educational Computing Conference (pp. 222-223). (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 398 877)
Litke, C. D. (1998). Virtual schooling at the middle grades: A case study. Journal of Distance Education, 13 (2), 33-50.
Roblyer, M. D. (1997). Predictions and realities: The impact of the Internet on K-12 education. Learning and Leading With Technology, 25 (1), 54-56.
Speidel, G. E. (1995). Taking a giant step into our technological future: A talk with Diana Oshiro. Kamehameha Journal of Education, 6 (Summer), 127-133.
Van Manen, M. (1997). Researching lived experience: Human Science for an action sensitive pedagogy (2nd ed). London, ON: Althouse Press.
Back to top of page
Main Page | Curriculum Vitae | CurrenTResearch ~|~ Links
Last Update January 2000, by Kevin J. MacLeod ("1" Is' email interview, "2" Td email interview, "3" chat room interx'iew, "+" additional information supplied) Virtual Grade School 1 Virtual Grade School 2 Virtual Grade School 3 Virtual Grade School 4 Administrator Participants Administrator Participants Administrator Participants Administrator Participants 1) Lome 123+ 1) Donna 123+ 1) Brent and Colin —+ l)Nick —+ 2) Sara 123+ 3) Wes —+
Teacher Participant s Teacher Participants Teacher Participants Teacher Participants 1) Jill 123+ 1) Fred 123+ 1) Cindy 123+ 2) Peter 123+ 2) Glenn 123+ 3) Gerry 123+ 3) William 123 4) Susanne 123+
Student Participants Student Participants Student Participants Student Participants 1) Michelle (Gr. 9) 123 1) Lewis (Gr. 7) 123 1) Beth (Gr. 7) 12- l)Lyle(Gr. 7) 12- 2) Andrew (Gr. 9) 1 - 2) Charlene (Gr. 8) 123 2) Bonnie (Gr. 8) 123 2) Ian (Gr. 7) —+ 3) Desiree (Gr. 10) 1- 3) Emily (Gr. 10) 123 3) Lori (Gr. 8) 1- 3) Karen (Gr. 9) —+ 4) Michael (Gr. 10) 1- 4) Monica (Gr. 11) 123 4) Jane (Gr. 8) —+ 4) Rebecca (Gr. 10) 123 5) Hillary (Gr. 11) 123 5) Dwight (Gr. 9) 123 5) Doreen (Gr. 10) 123 6) Sheila (Gr. 10) 123 6) George (Gr. 10) 12- 7) Denise (Gr. 11) 1- 7) Rob (Gr. 12) 123+ 8) Joel (Gr. 12) —+
Parent Participants Parent Participants Parent Participants Parent Participants l)Gail 123 1) Kimberley 1- 1) Kelsey 123 Summary 2) Dawn 123 2) Alice 123 2) Barbara 123+ Participant Finished Partial 3) Melissa 123 3) Anne 123 Admin 03 06 4) Wendy 123 4) Marie 123 Teachers 08 08 5) April —+ 5) Patrick —+ Students 12 24 6) Betty 1- Parents 09 13 Totals 32 51 Appendix C First Round Interview Questions (Email)
"Grade School Cyberspaces" Study Questions for Student Participants (1st Round - Email) (GSCQ1S 09/12/99) Instructions: Before we start, please be assured that all personal identifying information will be kept confidential and will not be released without the prior knowledge and written consent of the adult participant, or the parent/guardian in the case of the student participant.
The following pages include ten questions. Please read each question and then offer your response on the lines below the question. You may answer the questions in any form and length that you deem appropriate including: point form, complete sentences, paragraphs, or pages.
Your responses to these questions will become the topics that will be addressed during the next round of interview questions. Thanks!
First Round of Interview Questions
Name:
Demographic data:
• Age:
• Gender:
• Grade:
• Number of years as an online/virtual student: • Number of years as a student in conventional/regular school:
1) Why did you choose to attend virtual school? (Please list a few reasons and then briefly expand on each one.)
2) Please offer a brief description of yourself. (How would you describe yourself to one of your teachers? What descriptive words would you use? Please list four or five descriptive words and then offer a brief explanation for each.)
3) In general, what qualities do you think that online/virtual students possess? (What descriptive words would you choose to describe these students? Please list four or five descriptive words and then offer a brief explanation for each.) 165
4) What can you do now in your virtual/online school that you couldn't do in your conventional/regular school? (Please list a few characteristics and then briefly expand on each one.)
5) What could you do in a conventional/regular school that you can't do now in your virtual school? (Please list a few characteristics and then briefly expand on each one.)
6) Describe what it is like for you to maintain educational relationships with online teachers that you rarely, or never, meet in person. (Please list several words that capture the essence of these experiences and then offer a brief explanation.)
7) Describe what the World Wide Web means to you.
8) Describe what you think the World Wide Web means to other online/virtual students.
9) Drawing from your experience as an online/virtual student, briefly explain what is it about the World Wide Web that you enjoy. (Please list a few qualities and then briefly expand on each one.)
10) Drawing from your experience as an online/virtual student, briefly explain what is it about the World Wide Web that you do not enjoy. (Please list a few qualities and then briefly expand on each one.) 166
"Grade School Cyberspaces" Study Questions for Parent Participants (1st Round - Email) (GSCQ1P 09/12/99)
Instructions; Before we start, please be assured that all personal identifying information will be kept confidential and will not be released without the prior knowledge and written consent of the adult participant, or the parent/guardian in the case of the student participant
The following pages include ten questions. Please read each question and then offer your response on the lines below the question. You may answer the questions in any form and length that you deem appropriate including: point form, complete sentences, paragraphs, or pages.
Your responses to these questions will become the topics that will be addressed during the next round of interview questions. Thanks!
First Round of Interview Questions
Name:
Demographic data:
• Age of child:
• Gender of child:
• Current grade in online/virtual school:
• Number of years the child has been an online/virtual student:
• Number of years the child was attending conventional/regular school:
1) Why did your son or daughter choose to attend virtual school? (Please list a few reasons and then briefly expand on each one.)
2) Please offer a brief description of your son or daughter. (How would you describe your son or daughter to one of his or her teachers?)
3) In general, what qualities do you think that online/virtual students possess? (What adjectives would you choose to describe these students? Please list four or five adjectives and then offer a brief explanation for each.) 167
4) What can your son or daughter do now in virtual/online school that he or she couldn't do in conventional/regular (or last choice of) school? (Please list a few characteristics and then briefly expand on each one.)
5) What could your son or daughter do in conventional/regular (or last choice of) school that he or she can't do now in virtual/online school? (Please list a few characteristics and then briefly expand on each one.)
6) Drawing from your experience as a parent with a son or daughter in online/virtual school, please describe what it is like to maintain pedagogical associations with online teachers that you rarely, or never, meet in person. (Please list several words that capture the essence of these experiences and then offer a brief explanation.)
7) Describe what the World Wide Web means to you.
8) Describe what you think the World Wide Web means to online/virtual students in general.
9) Drawing from your experience as a parent, briefly explain what is it about the World Wide Web that your son or daughter enjoys as an online/virtual student. (Please list a few qualities and then briefly expand on each one.)
10) Drawing from your experience as a parent, briefly explain what is it about the World Wide Web that your son or daughter does not enjoy as an online/virtual student. (Please list a few qualities and then briefly expand on each one.) "Grade School Cyberspaces" Study Questions for Teacher Participants (Is' Round - Email) (GSCQ1T 09/12/99)
Instructions: Before we start, please be assured that all personal identifying information will be kept confidential and will not be released without the prior knowledge and written consent of the adult participant, or the parent/guardian in the case of the student participant.
The following pages include ten questions. Please read each question and then offer your response on the lines below the question. You may answer the questions in any form and length that you deem appropriate including: point form, complete sentences, paragraphs, or pages.
Your responses to these questions will become the topics that will be addressed during the next round of interview questions. Thanks!
First Round of Interview Questions
Name:
Demographic data:
• Age:
• Gender:
• Number of years of teaching experience in an online/virtual school:
• Grades/courses that you teach in online/virtual school: • Number of years of teaching experience in a conventional school:
1) Drawing from your experience as an online/virtual teacher, why do you think that students choose to attend online/virtual school? (Please list a few reasons and then briefly expand on each one.)
2) Please offer a brief, general description of a "typical" online/virtual student.
3) What qualities do you think that online/virtual students possess? (What adjectives would you choose to describe these students? Please list four or five adjectives and then offer a brief explanation for each.) 169
4) What can students do in online/virtual school that they couldn't do in conventional/regular school? (Please list a few characteristics and then briefly expand on each one.)
5) What can students do in conventional/regular school that they can't do in online/virtual school? (Please list a few characteristics and then briefly expand on each one.)
6) Drawing from your experience as a teacher in an online/virtual school, please describe what it is like to maintain pedagogical associations with online students that you rarely, or never, meet in person. (Please list several words that capture the essence of these experiences and then offer a brief explanation.)
7) Describe what the World Wide Web means to you.
8) Describe what you think the World Wide Web means to online/virtual students in general.
9) Drawing from your experience as a teacher, briefly explain what is it about the World Wide Web that online/virtual students enjoy. (Please list a few qualities and then briefly expand on each one.)
10) Drawing from your experience as a teacher, briefly explain what is it about the World Wide Web that online/virtual students do not enjoy. (Please list a few qualities and then briefly expand on each one.) "Grade School Cyberspaces" Study Questions for Administrator Participants (1st Round — Email) (GSCQ1A 09/12/99)
Instructions: Before we start, please be assured that all personal identifying information will be kept confidential and will not be released without the prior knowledge and written consent of the adult participant, or the parent/guardian in the case of the student participant.
The following pages include ten questions. Please read each question and then offer your response on the lines below the question. You may answer the questions in any form and length that you deem appropriate including: point form, complete sentences, paragraphs, or pages.
Your responses to these questions will become the topics that will be addressed during the next round of interview questions. Thanks!
First Round of Interview Questions
Name:
Demographic data: • Age:
• Gender:
• Number of administrative service years in an online/virtual school:
• Number of administrative service years in a conventional school:
1) Drawing from your experience as an administrator in an online/virtual school, why do you think that students choose to attend online/virtual school? (Please list a few reasons and then briefly expand on each one.)
2) Please offer a brief, general description of a "typical" online/virtual student.
3) What qualities do you think that online/virtual students possess? (What adjectives would you choose to describe these students? Please list four or five adjectives and then offer a brief explanation for each.)
4) What can students do in online/virtual school that they couldn't do in conventional/regular school? (Please list a few characteristics and then briefly expand on each one.) 171
5) What can students do in conventional/regular school that they can't do in online/virtual school? (Please list a few characteristics and then briefly expand on each one.)
6) Drawing from your experience as an administrator in an online/virtual school, please describe what it is like to maintain pedagogical associations with online students that you rarely, or never, meet in person. (Please list several words that capture the essence of these experiences and then offer a brief explanation.)
7) Describe what the World Wide Web means to you.
8) Describe what you think the World Wide Web means to online/virtual students in general.
9) Drawing from your experience as an administrator, briefly explain what is it about the World Wide Web that online/virtual students enjoy. (Please list a few qualities and then briefly expand on each one.)
10) Drawing from your experience as an administrator, briefly explain what is it about the World Wide Web that online/virtual students do not enjoy. (Please list a few qualities and then briefly expand on each one.) 172
Appendix D Second Round Interview Questions (Email)
"Grade School Cyberspaces" Study Questions for Student Participants (2nd Round - Email) (GSCQ2S 24/01/2000)
Instructions: Once again, before we start, please be assured that all personal identifying information will be kept confidential and will not be released without the prior knowledge and written consent of the adult participant, or the parent/guardian in the case of the student participant.
The following pages include six questions. Please read each question and then offer your response on the lines below the question. You may answer the questions in any form and length that you deem appropriate: point form, complete sentences, paragraphs, or pages.
Your responses to these questions will become the topics that will be addressed during the next round of interview questions. Thanks!
Second Round of Interview Questions
Part 1: Questions About Online/Virtual Schools
1) Drawing from your experience as an online/virtual student, what is your understanding of how online/virtual schools began? (Why do you think that online/virtual schools now exist? Please list a few reasons and then briefly expand on each one.)
2) Drawing from your experience as an online/virtual student, what is your understanding of the general public's perception of online/virtual schools? (Please describe what you've learned about online/virtual schools from various sources of information, including: radio, television, newspapers, books, web sites, family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and other sources. If possible, please list these sources of information.)
3) Are these public perceptions of online/virtual schools consistent with your experiences as an online/virtual student? (Please answer "yes" or "no" and then offer an explanation.)
Part 2: Questions About Online/Virtual Students
1) Drawing from your experience as an online/virtual student, what is your understanding of the general public's perception of online/virtual students? (Please describe what you've learned about online/virtual schools from various sources of information, including: radio, television, newspapers, books, web sites, family, 173
friends, colleagues, neighbors, and other sources. If possible, please list these sources of information.)
2) Are these public perceptions of online/virtual students consistent with your experiences as an online/virtual student? (Please answer "yes" or "no" and then offer an explanation.)
3) What are the major differences between students who attend a regular/conventional school compared to those attending an online/virtual school? Drawing from your experience as an online/virtual student, please describe two or three differences between regular/conventional students and online/virtual students.) 174
"Grade School Cyberspaces" Study Questions for Parent Participants (2nd Round — Email) (GSCQ2P 24/01/2000)
Instructions: Once again, before we start, please be assured that all personal identifying information will be kept confidential and will not be released without the prior knowledge and written consent of the adult participant, or the parent/guardian in the case of the student participant.
The following pages include six questions. Please read each question and then offer your response on the lines below the question. You may answer the questions in any form and length that you deem appropriate: point form, complete sentences, paragraphs, or pages.
Your responses to these questions will become the topics that will be addressed during the next round of interview questions. Thanks!
Second Round of Interview Questions
Part 1: Questions About Online/Virtual Schools
1) Drawing from your experience as a parent with a son or daughter attending online/virtual school, what is your understanding of how online/virtual schools began? (Why do you think that online/virtual schools now exist? Please list a few reasons and then briefly expand on each one.)
2) Drawing from your experience as a parent with a son or daughter attending online/virtual school, what is your understanding of the general public's perception of online/virtual schools? (Please describe what you've learned about online/virtual schools from various sources of information, including: radio, television, newspapers, books, web sites, family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and other sources. If possible, please list these sources of information.)
3) Are these public perceptions of online/virtual schools consistent with your experiences as a parent with a son or daughter attending online/virtual school? (Please answer "yes" or "no" and then offer an explanation.)
Part 2: Questions About Online/Virtual Students
1) Drawing from your experience as a parent with a son or daughter attending online/virtual school, what is your understanding of the general public's perception of online/virtual students? (Please describe what you've learned about online/virtual schools from various sources of information, including: radio, television, newspapers, books, web sites, family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and other sources. If possible, please list these sources of information.) 175
2) Are these public perceptions of online/virtual students consistent with your experiences as parent with a son or daughter attending online/virtual school? (Please answer "yes" or "no" and then offer an explanation.)
3) What are the major differences between students who attend a regular/conventional school compared to those attending an online/virtual school? Drawing from your experience as a parent with a son or daughter attending online/virtual school, please describe two or three differences between regular/conventional students and online/virtual students.) 176
"Grade School Cyberspaces" Study Questions for Teacher Participants (2nd Round — Email) (GSCQ2T 24/01/2000)
Instructions: Once again, before we start, please be assured that all personal identifying information will be kept confidential and will not be released without the prior knowledge and written consent of the adult participant, or the parent/guardian in the case of the student participant.
The following pages include six questions. Please read each question and then offer your response on the lines below the question. You may answer the questions in any form and length that you deem appropriate: point form, complete sentences, paragraphs, or pages.
Your responses to these questions will become the topics that will be addressed during the next round of interview questions. Thanks!
Second Round of Interview Questions
Part 1: Questions About Online/Virtual Schools
1) Drawing from your experience as an online/virtual teacher, what is your understanding of how online/virtual schools began? (Why do you think that online/virtual schools now exist? Please list a few reasons and then briefly expand on each one.)
2) Drawing from your experience as an online/virtual teacher, what is your understanding of the general public's perception of online/virtual schools? (Please describe what you've learned about online/virtual schools from various sources of information, including: radio, television, newspapers, books, web sites, family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and other sources. If possible, please list these sources of information.)
3) Are these public perceptions of online/virtual schools consistent with your experiences as an online/virtual teacher? (Please answer "yes" or "no" and then offer an explanation.)
Part 2: Questions About Online/Virtual Students
1) Drawing from your experience as an online/virtual teacher, what is your understanding of the general public's perception of online/virtual students? (Please describe what you've learned about online/virtual schools from various sources of information, including: radio, television, newspapers, books, web sites, family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and other sources. If possible, please list these sources of information.) 177
2) Are these public perceptions of online/virtual students consistent with your experiences as an online/virtual teacher? (Please answer "yes" or "no" and then offer an explanation.)
3) What are the major differences between students who attend a regular/conventional school compared to those attending an online/virtual school? Drawing from your experience as an online/virtual teacher, please describe two or three differences between regular/conventional students and online/virtual students.) 178
"Grade School Cyberspaces" Study Questions for Administrator Participants (2nd Round — Email) (GSCQ2A 24/01/2000)
Instructions: Once again, before we start, please be assured that all personal identifying information will be kept confidential and will not be released without the prior knowledge and written consent of the adult participant, or the parent/guardian in the case of the student participant.
The following pages include six questions. Please read each question and then offer your response on the lines below the question. You may answer the questions in any form and length that you deem appropriate: point form, complete sentences, paragraphs, or pages.
Your responses to these questions will become the topics that will be addressed during the next round of interview questions. Thanks!
Second Round of Interview Questions
Part 1: Questions About Online/Virtual Schools
1) Drawing from your experience as an online/virtual school administrator, what is your understanding of how online/virtual schools began? (Why do you think that online/virtual schools now exist? Please list a few reasons and then briefly expand on each one.)
2) Drawing from your experience as an online/virtual school administrator, what is your understanding of the general public's perception of online/virtual schools? (Please describe what you've learned about online/virtual schools from various sources of information, including: radio, television, newspapers, books, web sites, family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and other sources. If possible, please list these sources of information.)
3) Are these public perceptions of online/virtual schools consistent with your experiences as an online/virtual school administrator? (Please answer "yes" or "no" and then offer an explanation.)
Part 2: Questions About Online/Virtual Students
1) Drawing from your experience as an online/virtual school administrator, what is your understanding of the general public's perception of online/virtual students? (Please describe what you've learned about online/virtual schools from various sources of information, including: radio, television, newspapers, books, web sites, family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and other sources. If possible, please list these sources of information.) 179
2) Are these public perceptions of online/virtual students consistent with your experiences as an online/virtual school administrator? (Please answer "yes" or "no" and then offer an explanation.)
3) What are the major differences between students who attend a regular/conventional school compared to those attending an online/virtual school? Drawing from your experience as an online/virtual school administrator, please describe two or three differences between regular/conventional students and online/virtual students.) 180
Appendix E Third Round Interview Questions (Chat Room)
"Grade School Cyberspaces" Study Questions for Student Participants (3rd Round - Chat Room) (GSCQ3 24/01/2000)
Instructions: Before we start, please be assured that all personal identifying information will be kept confidential and will not be released without the prior knowledge and written consent of the adult participant or the parent/guardian in the case of the student participant. OK?
1 just wanted you to know that for the purpose of data analysis, I will be making a "chat log" of our interview. OK?
As a review, my online research project has been investigating the nature of the relationship between virtual schools and virtual students. OK? More specifically, I have been addressing the following research questions: 1) What are the characteristics of the students choosing virtual schools?; 2) What is the relationship between technology and these students?; and, 3) How does the topic of the current research study help us (students, parents, teachers, administrators) to better understand the phenomenon of virtual schools? OK?
The following interview will include several questions and will last approximately 30 minutes. I will present questions, one at a time. Please read each question and then offer your response. You may take a little time to consider your response, if you think it necessary. OK9
Third Round of Interview Questions
1) (NOTE: The first few questions during this interview will relate to previous responses from the first two rounds. A participant's previous responses may somewhat alter the direction of the following questions.)
2) Just to clarify, what has been your involvement with home schooling?
3) Just to clarify, what situation or circumstances led to the choice of your attending online/virtual schools?
4) What is the connection, or relationship, between students that attend online/virtual school and technology?
5) As an online/virtual student, what is your connection or relationship, with technology itself?
6) Are there any other topics related to this study that you wish to address at this time? 181
"Grade School Cyberspaces" Study Questions for Parent Participants (3rd Round - Chat Room) (GSCQ3 24/01/2000)
Instructions: Before we start, please be assured that all personal identifying information will be kept confidential and will not be released without the prior knowledge and written consent of the adult participant or the parent/guardian in the case of the student participant. OK?
I just wanted you to know that for the purpose of data analysis, I will be making a "chat log" of our interview. OK?
As a review, my online research project has been investigating the nature of the relationship between virtual schools and virtual students. OK? More specifically, I have been addressing the following research questions: 1) What are the characteristics of the students choosing virtual schools?; 2) What is the relationship between technology and these students?; and, 3) How does the topic of the current research study help us (students, parents, teachers, administrators) to better understand the phenomenon of virtual schools? OK?
The following interview will include several questions and will last approximately 30 minutes. I will present questions, one at a time. Please read each question and then offer your response. You may take a little time to consider your response, if you think it necessary. OK?
Third Round of Interview Questions
1) (NOTE: The first few questions during this interview will relate to previous responses from the first two rounds. A participant's previous responses may somewhat alter the direction of the following questions.)
2) Just to clarify, what has been your involvement with home schooling?
3) Just to clarify, what situation or circumstances led to the choice of attending online/virtual schools?
4) What is the relationship between technology itself and students that attend online/virtual school?
5) What is the relationship between technology itself and your child, as a student attending online/virtual school?
6) Are there any other topics related to this study that you wish to address at this time? 182
"Grade School Cyberspaces" Study Questions for Teacher Participants (3rd Round - Chat Room) (GSCQ3 24/01/2000)
Instructions: Before we start, please be assured that all personal identifying information will be kept confidential and will not be released without the prior knowledge and written consent of the adult participant or the parent/guardian in the case of the student participant. OK?
I just wanted you to know that for the purpose of data analysis, I will be making a "chat log" of our interview. OK?
As a review, my online research project has been investigating the nature of the relationship between virtual schools and virtual students. OK? More specifically, I have been addressing the following research questions: 1) What are the characteristics of the students choosing virtual schools?; 2) What is the relationship between technology and these students?; and, 3) How does the topic of the current research study help us (students, parents, teachers, administrators) to better understand the phenomenon of virtual schools? OK?
The following interview will include several questions and will last approximately 30 minutes. I will present questions, one at a time. Please read each question and then offer your response. You may take a little time to consider your response, if you think it necessary. OK?
Third Round of Interview Questions
1) (NOTE: The first few questions during this interview will relate to previous responses from the first two rounds. A participant's previous responses may somewhat alter the direction of the following questions.)
2) Briefly, what is your understanding of home schooling?
3) What situations or circumstances or student characteristics lead to the choice of students attending online/virtual schools?
4) What is the relationship between technology itself and students, in general, that attend online/virtual school?
5) What is the relationship between technology itself and students that you teach attending online/virtual school?
6) Are there any other topics related to this study that you wish to address at this time? 183
"Grade School Cyberspaces" Study Questions for Administrator Participants (3rd Round - Chat Room) (GSCQ3 24/01/2000)
Instructions: Before we start, please be assured that all personal identifying information will be kept confidential and will not be released without the prior knowledge and written consent of the adult participant or the parent/guardian in the case of the student participant. OK?
I just wanted you to know that for the purpose of data analysis, I will be making a "chat log" of our interview. OK"7
As a review, my online research project has been investigating the nature of the relationship between virtual schools and virtual students. OK? More specifically, I have been addressing the following research questions: 1) What are the characteristics of the students choosing virtual schools?; 2) What is the relationship between technology and these students?; and, 3) How does the topic of the current research study help us (students, parents, teachers, administrators) to better understand the phenomenon of virtual schools? OK?
The following interview will include several questions and will last approximately 30 minutes. I will present questions, one at a time. Please read each question and then offer your response. You may take a little time to consider your response, if you think it necessary. OK?
Third Round of Interview Questions
1. (NOTE: The first few questions during this interview will relate to previous responses from the first two rounds. A participant's previous responses may somewhat alter the direction of the following questions.)
2. Briefly, what is your understanding of home schooling9
3. What situations or circumstances or student characteristics lead to the choice of students attending online/virtual schools?
4. What is the relationship between technology itself and students that attend online/virtual school?
5. What is the relationship between technology itself and students that attend your online/virtual school?
6. Are there any other topics related to this study that you wish to address at this time?