Three Interesting Facts

I was surprised at how much I didn't know as I read distance education and eLearning. Here are three things that stood out for me in this article:

1. There are one million high school students enrolled in courses via the Internet not including those students who are enrolled in higher level courses at junior colleges and universities.

I'm surprised at how many students are enrolled in these online high schools. I work for San Diego Unified School District, one of the largest districts in the nation, and they only recently introduced an online high school. I'm wondering what kinds of opportunities these students get and how successful these programs are. I imagine the type of students who enroll in these schools are the type that don't flourish in a traditional school setting. It takes a great deal of intrinsic motivation, independence, and discipline to take an online course. If these students don't flourish with the daily guidance of teachers, how successful can they be in online environments? Just curious.

2. The so called "corporate universites" that provide continuing learning opportunities for the work-force will exceed traditional public universities in numbers sometime in the next decade.

The fact that these "corporate universities" or eLearning schools are growing doesn't surprise me. It's how fast they are growing that does. It makes sense though. Corporations can offer on-demand training to their employees, simultaneous training sessions to employees in different geographic locations, and much more. It eliminates the need for "sit with Fred" trainings and the cost of employing the instructors for these trainings. I'm currently trying to schedule myself for staff development/training with the new i21 equipment I received--mainly a Promethean interactive smart board and students netbooks. However, I'm finding it difficult to do since all the trainings are held on Wednesdays from 4:00-6:00 pm. I'm a student and mother. If I were offered online options for training, I'd have completed this training months ago.

3. Workers can received academic credit for learning experiences in non-academic arenas, such as work, through "autonomous" virtual institutions such as the Western Governors University.

I've never really considered this idea until now. How many classes did I take in college that were essentially "useless" to my career choice, i.e. physics and chemistry. I would rather earn credit for experiences that directly relate to my career or academic field. I think forcing ALL students to complete general education requirements is dated. We live in the era of information technology and information is available at our fingertips. Our work-force would be much more valuable if students studied their academic field in depth for four years instead of two.