Online learning is not easy, says Maureen Cottrell, a science teacher at iHigh Virtual Academy, a fully-accredited virtual public high school in San Diego, California. “Many students fully expect it to be easy and then bomb out.”
Cottrell, who’s been teaching for a decade, has spent the last two years at iHigh, the first completely online, diploma-granting school in the San Diego Unified School District.
“Sure, everyone wants to cut costs,” she says. “Virtual learning is seen as a tool for that. But I don’t think any educator just wants to cut costs” at the expense of quality. “One of the things we address from the ground up is keeping rigor in place.” Getting WASC accreditation and recognition from the University of California Doorways system was a rigorous process. “We fought a hard battle. We don’t want to lose that! We want to keep the rigor high.”
Can online education be the rock that disturbs the placid waters of American higher education? Several industry experts believe it will have a significant ripple effect on colleges and universities of all sizes in coming years—but only if it's subject to regulation, governed by a common set of accreditation standards, and widely accepted by institutions who have long clung to the traditional face-to-face model of instruction.
Citing the vast online enrollment gains made by for-profit institutions like the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University, Louis Soares, director of postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress, recently dubbed online education a potential "disruptive innovator" in the higher ed landscape. Much in the way cell phones disrupted the traditional landline-based model or discount retailers like Wal-Mart revolutionized the nation's retail market, the for-profit sector—though a subject of intense scrutiny in recent years—has driven changes that could greatly affect the world of higher education, Soares argues.
"A disruptive innovation always starts out at a lower quality," he says. "[But], if you take that for-profit energy out of higher education, online [education] wouldn't have grown the way it has in the last 10 years."
According to the IEEE, the service "The convenient learning system delivers nearly 200 courses in core and emerging technologies, providing professionals, faculty and students across academic institutions, corporations and government agencies a better way to learn.
IEEE says its eLearning Library "offers advanced technology content only IEEE can provide… [It] selects the best educational courses from IEEE conferences and workshops around the world and delivers them in engaging, instructional and interactive online courses.
IEEE says that each course was developed and peer-reviewed by subject experts and awards continuing education units (CEU) or professional development hours (PDH) upon successful completion.
"Users can choose between introductory, intermediate and advanced levels for many subjects, learn on their own schedule, and resume a course where they left off at any time. Courses range from one to three hours in length and include notes, a glossary of terms and a post-test. Topics range from smart grid and biometrics to telecommunications and green engineering."
It’s 2010, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the American school system. Technological advances that we all take for granted in our homes, offices, and cars have yet to fully make their way into our children’s classrooms. But online education can open doors of opportunity to children around the nation.
In school, most children are being taught in the same classrooms where their parents and grandparents learned. Despite a few computers in the back of the classroom, instruction happens the old-fashioned way.
\
