Chinook Cyber School has stable enrolment and high completion rate
Enrolment in the Chinook School Division’s Cyber School has stabilized and the completion rate compares well with those of students in face-to-face classes. Cyber School Principal Shelby Budd spoke about the school’s activities during a presentation to board members at a regular Chinook School Division board meeting, Feb. 11.
“I'm really proud of our Chinook kids,” she said after the meeting. “They've really taken to online in a really great way. So for the most part our completion is good. Our averages are comparable to face-toface classes. That says a lot about our kids accepting this kind of learning.”
The completion rate was 97 per cent in 2017-18, which compared well with previous years, when the rate has varied between 96 and 99 per cent.
“The 97 per cent is usually our typical kind of year,” she said. “So the students who stay in courses for the most part are completing them successfully, which is great news because it is such a massive shift in the way that they’re familiar with learning.”
Cyber School enrolment has stabilized at around 1,100 seats per year, which represents between 400 and 600 students who are learning online. Some are taking multiple online courses while others might only take up one seat.
“Of course, we don’t have the number in for this year, but probably we’re going to be somewhere between 900 and 1,100 seats again this year,” she said. “There was a time a few years ago when we saw a real growth there. I think that we’ve levelled off now and we’re not likely to see a whole bunch more seats required, because everything like our staffing in our schools are pretty solid now.”
In 2017-18 the Chinook Cyber School offered 57 courses. New courses include Earth Science 30, AgTech Crop Production 10, Construction 10, Environmental Science 20, Sports Psychology 20, Information Processing, and a hockey themed English Language Arts 30 course.
The highest enrolments for core class courses were in English Language Arts and for the elective class courses the highest enrolments were in Sports Psychology 20, Accounting 20, and the AgTech programs.
The Cyber School has six full-time and 14 part-time teachers located in 11 schools within the Chinook School Division. Some restructuring took place last year due to staff changes and courses were reassigned.
“Several part-time staff went back to their school as full-time teachers,” Budd explained. “We had to do some reassignment so that we could still cover off a fair number of our classes and then we just did a shuffle with our own teachers.… We did a realignment and made sure that people for the most part were teaching in areas that they were really comfortable with, because the better you know that content the easier it is to design an online environment.”
The Cyber School has benefitted from the rollout of Chromebook laptops in division schools and it assists teachers to communicate with online learners. The laptops have built-in microphones and cameras. Staff from the Chinook School Division’s information systems department have installed a green button on each laptop to make it easier for students to communicate with teachers. That button is in the same position on each Chromebook and clicking on it will give a student access to a teacher.
“It has just freed us up so much in terms of making communication easy,” she said. “Students have really grabbed onto that, certainly in terms of the whole notion of everything to do with Google Docs, with Google Sheets and Slides and everything that you can do within Google. It allows for sharing and then real-time collaboration.”
When students work in the Google Chrome browser, whether on a Chromebook or another computer, the Cyber School teachers can follow their progress. “It allows us to watch the learning happen instead of waiting until the end and then hoping they got it right,” she said. “It let us see it in progress and that’s been really beneficial for teachers and students.”
Budd felt the Cyber School’s high completion rate for online courses is to a large extent due to effective communication between online learners and teachers.
“It just goes to the importance of the relationship when it comes to teaching,” she said. “The more we get them talking to us, the more likely they are to be successful in their courses.… We can be pretty sure about how successful a student will be in a course, even just in that first unit, if they start talking to us right away. We can see their learning process. We see that they’re growing in their learning.”
The Chinook Cyber School is different from most other online schools, because it has been set up to work in partnership with other schools within the Chinook School Division.
“Our enrolment only includes students within Chinook,” she said. “Those students in Chinook have to be enrolled in their own schools within the division and if courses are available within their own school, then they're expected to be taking those courses face to face with the staff there. The Cyber School was really meant to come in and supplement those smalltown schools. We're able to allow students a choice in an interest area.”
According to Budd the engagement of online learners remains an ongoing challenge for Cyber School teachers. “When we first started, we could rely on technology for that, but now what we're finding is that students are really looking for depth in their courses,” she said.
While communication will remain an important part of the engagement process, the goal now will also be to build online learning communities that will make it possible for students to learn from each other.
“The strength of being in a classroom with other students is often hearing the other students ask questions, answer questions, turn to talk to your neighbour, that kind of thing,” she said. “We struggled with that and certainly that's an area we're focusing on, because that's a great skill. As students move forward, a lot of what they do is going to be done online, even working in teams at a distance, depending on what kind of career they're going into. The skills that come with being involved in a learning environment like that are really critical for our students.”