The next big thing: Covering online education
by EWA public editor Linda Perlstein

Every education reporter has heard the mantra: If you want to know what’s going on in schools, get into the classroom. But if you want to understand one of the fastest growing trends in American education, here’s a new imperative: Sit in front of the computer.
This holds true no matter what part of the educational spectrum you cover. Three million post-secondary students and more than 1 million K-12 students haven taken online courses, according to the Sloan Consortium, a Needham, Mass.-based nonprofit that supports distance learning efforts. Michigan and Alabama require students to take an online class before they graduate, and a couple of other states are considering similar rules.

Distance learning is, by its nature, often invisible to education reporters. The most obvious line of coverage is to explore what the online course experience looks like and feels like-and how it differs from taking classes face-to-face. This may require you to spend time not in the lecture hall but in the computer lab, or the Wi-fi coffee shop with a 50-year-old career changer, or even-heaven help us-the bedroom of a 16-year-old AP student or recovered dropout. (Do teenagers have the discipline to do their work without teachers in their faces every day? Let’s look.)

Probably the best way to see what online learning is all about is to take a class, or classes, yourself. At the very least, set up some demonstrations. Do so in various subjects, because certainly the experience is different in a course such as Intro to Calculus versus Historical Linguistics, Ancient Inscriptions and Archaeology. (Yes, that is a distance learning class, at Harvard.) Do so at various institutions, because there is a such a wide range, from online-only schools, such as the University of Phoenix or Monroe Virtual Middle School, to traditional school systems and colleges that have set up classes based on their own curricula. Check out an online class that is also offered in person, so you can compare the experiences.

As you explore how online learning differs from traditional coursework, be careful of preconceived notions. There are probably students who study for four years on campus and never interact with a professor, and people who study online and communicate with their instructors almost daily.

Beyond the actual course-taking experience, look at the teaching. How are those who teach online trained and evaluated? Do teachers and professors devote the same amount of effort to their online classes as they do to their face-to-face classes? When Erin Jordan of the Des Moines Register started investigating bonuses paid to University of Iowa professors teaching distance classes-one health science professor’s online courses brought his total load to 14 classes in a year-the school capped how many classes each person could teach. It wasn’t just about the money, but about how the extra load might affect students.

Look into other questions: Do states and districts and schools have the capacity to meet the demand for courses and ensure their quality, and are the courses aligned with state standards? (New Jersey recently abandoned a planned K-12 online requirement because of a lack of courses.) Does some students’ lack of access to the Internet hinder an institution’s goal of expanding access through online courses?

And, as always, follow the money. Why is a school offering online instruction? If the sole reason is to save money, it’s worth looking at whether that is really happening. In some cases, building an online class can cost as much or more as offering a course face-to-face. Or, as Kevin Carey shows in this terrific piece about innovative online math instruction at Virginia Tech, savings from a low-cost model may not reduce an institution’s bottom line, depending on how else officials choose to spend their money.

There’s the question we always must ask at the onset of any trend: Who is benefitting from the boom? In January, Elliot Mann of the Rochester, Minn., Post-Bulletin, wrote an interesting piece about how per-pupil funding follows students out of their districts into the ones where online academies are based. Of course there are finances to track on plenty of legitimate efforts, but a true scam is good to find, as Bill Morlin and Jim Camden found last summer when the Spokesman-Review reporters investigated a Spokane diploma mill-and named names.

To get up to speed on online education, look at the Sloan Consortium’s news feed of stories related to online learning and their recently completed national survey of K-12 online education. Check out the International Association for K-12 Online Learning’s fact sheet. Read this Education Week online chat with three promoters of online learning.

Above all, get yourself out of the classroom-you don’t hear me say that often!-and get yourself in front of a computer.
Public editor Linda Perlstein is available to help you. Contact her at 410-539-2464 or lperlstein@ewa.org.