Policy Issues 11: Virtual Schools and E-Learning in K-12 Environments

E-Learning in the Real World:

Findings on Student Participation, Satisfaction, and Learning

The Virtual High School© (see "America's First Public Virtual High School") is the oldest and best-documented virtual high school in the United States. An evaluation of the Virtual High School's third year, conducted by SRI International (Kozma et al., 2000), examined VHS© students' participation in and satisfaction with online courses. An online student survey was administered to all students participating in selected online courses and to students in face-to-face classes serving as control groups in identical locations. The following findings from the student surveys were reported:

"Comparing the VHS and face-to-face groups, VHS students were more likely to be 11th graders, and face-to-face students were more likely to be 12th graders." . "VHS students were more likely to be enrolled in six or more courses than were face-to-face students. Consequently, their VHS courses were often taken on top of a full course schedule."
"Students in both groups expressed interest in and enjoyment of their courses."
"VHS students were likely to agree that their VHS courses were of high quality and required hard work, but face-to-face students were more likely to agree strongly with these statements about their courses."
"VHS students were more likely than face-to-face students to use the World Wide Web, but there were no significant differences between the groups in their other computer, e-mail, or general Internet use."
"There were no reported differences between the two groups in the use of computers to do research projects or write reports as part of their course work."
"Face-to-face students were likely to agree strongly that discussion was a regular part of their courses, that they frequently communicated with other students, and that communications with other students were an important part of their learning. VHS students were likely to disagree with all of these statements."
"There were no significant differences between the two groups in the reported frequency with which they communicated with their teachers. On the other hand, face-to-face students were more likely than VHS students to agree strongly that communications with teachers were an important part of their learning and that they got their assignment grades back from their teachers in a timely manner." (Kozma, et al., 2000, iv-v)

In addition to the student surveys, the SRI evaluation considered teacher assessment of students' performance on two types of measures: teacher-developed key assignments and Internet research skills. Key assignments included an important test and a paper or project selected by the respective teachers. These assignments were selected from available choices in the respective online and face-to-face courses in the cooperating schools.

According to the SRI evaluation, the analysis of student assessments indicates that the participants in the VHS online courses apparently had learning experiences that were similar in many ways to students in parallel face-to-face courses. In portions of the courses that were common to both online and face-to-face sections, VHS sections had nearly identical goals and objectives, structure, content, and assignments as the parallel face-to-face sections of the same classes.

Face-to-face and VHS courses were taught by matched pairs of similarly experienced, high-quality instructors. There were no apparent differences in the grades awarded to the students in two out of three parallel courses. More students in the VHS course sections passed a "technology use" portion of the required Internet assessment; in addition, "many more" VHS students than face-to-face students passed all the skill areas of the Internet assessment (Kozma et al., 2000, p. v). In only one course and in one skill area (reasoning with information), did face-to-face students significantly outperform VHS students.

Conclusions about similarities and differences between the parallel VHS and face-to-face courses showed "there were few student dropouts from either. Face-to-face and VHS students received similar grades in the two types of course. In addition, VHS students acquired the technology-based reasoning and communication skills needed for the 21st century information society" (Kozma et al., 2000, v).

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