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ABSTRACT
Online education continues to attract interest as the advantages of distance learning technologies are recognized by more and more individuals, school districts, higher education providers and for-profit companies. This article discusses Virtual High School, a consortium of schools offering online learning opportunities. Benefits, as well as the drawbacks, of distance learning are considered.
INTRODUCTION
Online learning is attracting increased attention from individuals, school districts, higher education providers and for-profit companies. There is a wide range of Web-based opportunities available to enroll in both high school and college courses, to earn continuing education and training credits or to complete professional certifications in a variety of skill areas.
At the pre-college level, according to Lucille Renwick, editor of Scholastic Administr@tor (March, 2003), there are online high school programs now operating in at least twelve states and cyber Charter schools in approximately thirty states. The demand for such programs continues to accelerate, as students and teachers gain more experience with the technology and as online teaching methods improve.
One successful initiative is Virtual High School (VHS). VHS (www.govhs.org) is a consortium of schools that first began offering online courses in 1996. This article will describe the background of VHS, its educational programs, as well as, discuss benefits and disadvantages of online teaching and learning.
VIRTUAL HIGH SCHOOL
Virtual High School began with a $7.4 million Federal Technology Innovation Challenge Grant (# R303A60571) to the Hudson Public Schools in the state of Massachusetts. The charge was to build an online high school as a consortium of participating schools to allow classes to be offered twenty-four hours-a-day, seven days-a-week. The five-year grant expired in 2001, and since that time, VHS has continued as a non-profit organization sustained by its membership. Today, according to VHS, there are almost 200 member schools in 24 states and nine other nations offering more than 120 NetCourses (see partial list below). There are more than 140 teachers involved and approximately 2000 students enrolled each semester.
NetCourses (the term, NetCourse, is used by VHS to designate their course offerings) are offered online throughout the consortium by teachers at any of the participating schools. Students may access material at school or from home and are able to...