How+to+Start+an+Online+Program

=How to start an online program= First and Second Level Decisions Nature of your organizations Target audience Funding Need active plan of collaboration w/ stakeholders – without this, the program will go down.

Illinois Virtual HS Nature of: State-wide supplemental program Created by policy action of Illinois State board of ed, but no formal legislation Mission – focus on providing opps to those trad underserved Beliefs: Importance of teacher in online learning exp Local schools are partners/ non competitive Target audience 9-12 Funding: state allocation, fed grants and fees Collaboration w/ stakeholders: active steering committee

Question: How can we fund this?

Discussions of up front costs in developing courses ….time ….cost being higher than traditional student costs. Analogy used of counting the cost of building a new school and counting that cost in the total cost per students during the first year.

Policy Regulations
 * 1) 1 Determine the political and regulatory landscape
 * 2) 2 Understand the different types of programs
 * 1. State-virtual schools
 * 2. State-led online initiatives – offer resources and tools, but no centralized student base (ex: South Carolina’s online program,
 * 3. Full time online programs – cyberschools (ex: Insight, Connections Academy, K12)
 * 4. Single District programs – for students who reside within the district
 * 5. Multi-district programs – state-led, sonsortium or network

Virtual Schooling, book by Elizabeth Kanna, http://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Schooling-Optimizing-Childs-Education/dp/0230614329

If not allowed ….what needs to be done….
 * Legislative action
 * Amendment to the Education Code
 * Creation or amendment of local board policy
 * Designation of district program

Learning Management Systems Scalability, Total Cost, Integration with other systems (SIS, content, etc), Extra Tools (collaboration), Data/Reporting, Reliability, Customization

Choose it right the first time, think about scalability, painful to change later Ask about total cost… Be sure they are IMS and SCORM compliant (Common cartridge ??? replacing SCORM) ???

Think FLEXIBILITY! No matter what and why you decide on what you decide now….it is likely going to change as time goes on.

Administrative Systems Student Information Systems Registration Content Management Systems – curriculum development Development Technical Support Email Communication – IM, Skype, Phone Synchronous Tools – Elluminate, WebEx, etc

Quality Assurance & Evaluation --- Make sure you are looking at both internal and external evaluations.

Curriculum Development Virtual – Blended – Traditional Developed program that allowed students to transition in and out of traditional program. Extending the program across the 24 x 7 school day Course Types - Grad requirements, p, credit recovery, strategic intervention and support, web enabled courses

Content management – house the curriculum LMS – how you deliver the system

Needs Assessment – Course Creation- Course Distribution-

Hippo campus – many text books already have online content…..developed by To be used to support classroom instruction – http://www.hippocampus.org/

Content Decision Point – What are the options for acquiring courses?
 * Develop your own
 * License
 * Purchase

Influencing factors include – time, personnel, $$$, instructional plans, courses to be offered, what do you already have access to?

(gave story of moving to second …. Found best courses, but concentrated on the best instructional model and not focus on developing courses right away ….) Now coming to us from vendor side (SAS – http://www.sas.com/govedu/edu/k12/index.html ) which allows us to build our own courses I think.

If you’re spending time on developing courseware in the beginning, then that’s less students you’ll be able to service..

Do not put text books online and use that. Use high quality engaging online content.

Access to FREE content is increasing for developing … lower cost of development and be sure to tap into all the free resources available.

Open Educational Resources: Hewlitt Foundation started it….resources being developed Free Teaching. Learning and research resources

Public domain Released under a license that permits free use or re-purposing by others See creative commons.org They have selected some of the best open content and putting it together for teachers to use.

Hippo Campus - see various links from here More Open Educational Resources here.

High School Code Request Form (CEEB Code Application) High School Information Form Something about making sure that your courses are …..eligibility for NCAA…if course is labeled different….make sure it is added to the NCAA ….

NCAA Eligibility Center https://web1.ncaa.org/eligibilitycenter/common/index.html

NCAA does not want to be stamping ‘content providors’. They do give guidelines of how to have listed on transcripts.

Teachers

Going Virtual! Research Series http://edtech.boisetate.edu/goingvirtual/goingvirtual.htm

Who’ teaching online?

“Get the right people on the bus!!!” HIRE the teachers that are the most interested in STUDENTS and NOT the content! Someone who sees students first.

Think about teaching…9 month vs 12 month contracts

First Year Online Teaching Experience – Isolation, Technology and Time Management Unless you hire the right people, your turnover will be very high.

2 key tips when hiring: 1. *The person doing the interview MUST have ONLINE experience. It is very different than hiring for a bricks and mortar teacher. 2. For the first month of a new hire, have a mentor teacher help facilitator ….grades, communications…etc….ALL everything for 30 days

Move administrative team to move to virtual/online path for all of their communications.

Teacher Preparation

Before teaching online 30 hours of training (DPI uidelines posted July 2009) Onine Facilitation: taming the World of Online Learning

As begin to teach online Just in Time (teacher training) Mentors!!!

Layers of Support Formal – training, PD, mentorin Informal – Who are they going to call?, Just in Time

An eHandbook created as a resource for support Really look at student needs.

www.HopeOnline.com Community-driven student recruitment, support and access Hope Online Learning Academy Co-Op, k-12 charter available to all Colorado students 3,000 students attend community-based learning centers Over 50 Learning Centers are located across the state to foster learning within the communities they serve.

Student Recruitment Encourage to start small….pay attention to what you do successfully and start replicating in the following years. How will you recruit students to participate in your program? Will you market directly to students and parents? What are the requirements for a student to participate in your program?

Manage student expectations! – do the diff where you’re using virtual worlds…..be looking at the actual using gaming engines to begin to create links to learning outcomes…..make sure it is being used to impact student instruction.

One dude….Mentions that the online teachers are putting in far more time than in their f2f clases and that students claim that they get more support from their online teacher than their f2f teachers.

Questions for me to follow up on: Are learning management systems covered by eRate funds? Is there software to allow us to develop our own courses ….so that the content matches our current curriculum? Any good checklists anyone has found for starting up a program?

iNacol is starting a place on their site of how to start an online program. Evaluation tools will also be available there.

Lots of discussion of evaluation of online teachers needing to be different than traditional.

Idea: Monthly webinar of teachers showing a sample of what they are doing …..create a virtual environment for support.

Panel that was here Cindy- pearson Alison – vp inacol Dave – principal riverside Bruce – SAS Jonathan – Illinois virtual school Sarah - ? Trina – dir of elearning …. Heather – founder of Hope Online learning

Some terms I didn’t know ….. ID – instructional design OER – Open Educational Resources LO – learning object CEEB Code – NCAA to identify schools requesting courses be approved for collegiate eligbility