As Online Ed Grows in BC, Who's Left Behind?

Kids in B.C. can now take almost every course required in K to 12 online, from math and science to social studies and art, even physical education, thanks to the Ministry of Education's Distributive Learning initiative. But public education advocates say pushing online learning for everyone could erode the universal access and quality of education in this province.

Helesia Luke is one such advocate. She had her first experience with online learning when her daughter took Planning 10 online this summer.

"The things she was doing online, they were pretty demanding in terms of understanding how online learning works, and actually things that aren't necessarily obvious when you're in Grade 10, like going to the Conference Board of Canada's website, for example, or getting a question like 'Think of a time when you had a conflict with a coworker and how did you handle it?'" Luke told the Tyee.

"I very much acted as a kind of interpreter for her, so by the end of this course -- she spent like 125 hours, it was not a small thing -- my conclusion is that this is not something someone could succeed at unless they had someone like me intermediating."

Luke's daughter passed the course, but her friend was forced to drop it, Luke contends, because her parents were not computer savvy and therefore unable to help their daughter with her homework.

"I am on a computer 18 hours a day, they're not, it's not what they do. So there's a lot of built in middle-class values that are built into online learning," she says.

53,000 BC students added in five years

Online education, or Distributive Learning (DL), in B.C. has grown from a service provided in the early 1990s to home schooled children and students in rural districts who couldn't access all their necessary courses, to over 70,000 students enrolled in at least one course in the 2009-10 school year -- an increase of more than 53,000 students since 2005-06. According to the ministry over 25 per cent of students in grades 10 through 12 are enrolled in at least one online course.

"The vision for Distributed Learning is to create a quality, dynamic and engaging learning environment that all students in the province can access," a ministry spokesperson told The Tyee via email. "Instruction through e-learning methodologies offers possibilities for sophisticated, interactive, and engaging learning options that address the ideals for a B.C. graduate, and provides students with more flexibility."

BC Federation of Teachers (BCTF) president Susan Lambert is suspicious of the government's motives in introducing online education for K to 12, and warns that if the ministry sees online learning as a replacement for teachers, it could affect students' ability to learn.

"We know from research that the key factor for a positive learning experience for children is that one-to-one relationship with a teacher, it's that teacher nurturing the inquisitive or inquiring spirit in kids, that allows kids to learn, and you don't do that through the impersonal virtual school," Lambert told The Tyee. "If the ministry's motivation is to reduce costs and replace teachers with machines, then I think the consequences of that would be a significant erosion in the quality of public education."

"Technology is a tool, it's not the solution," Lambert said.

Online learning is part of the ministry's proposed 21st Century Learning education reforms, which highlights self-directed and independent study by students and the ability to communicate effectively with technology. In a power point presentation given by the Ministry of Education last August to the B.C. School Superintendents Association about 21st century learning, the ministry stated that: "New forms of schooling will be developed to provide greater choice. . . Smarter approaches will allow more resources to be focused on students learning needs while less is spent on administrative costs."

Accessibility issues

Lambert sees the validity in online learning but thinks it should be limited to secondary students, particularly kids in rural districts who don't have access to courses available in urban centres, such as Mandarin lessons. But according to Statistics Canada, in 2009 17 per cent of British Columbians didn't have internet access at home.

"We don't have internet access in many of those small, rural communities, except for through dial up, and dial up crashes and there's not the connectivity, there's not the bandwidth," said Lambert, who told The Tyee that distributed learning could be used to provide access to courses not otherwise available in more remote towns. But that's not happening enough "because we don't have the technological architecture in this province."

In an email statement to The Tyee, a ministry spokesperson said DL schools can lend computers to families that need them, or in cases where there is no internet access some courses can be completed via correspondence.

David Wees, an information technology learning specialist at Stratford Hall, a private school in Vancouver, also believes online learning is desirable to the ministry because of its cost saving capabilities, saying it is easier to reuse online materials. But he says there are concrete benefits for students as well, including freedom from the traditional timetable and greater interactivity in the lessons.

"You can interact with a computer more than you can a white board or a chalk board. I guess even more than you could with an individual teacher," Wees told The Tyee. "If you're accessing certain information from a computer, you have anything a computer could do, so simulations, videos, conversations, discussions with people in the field, etc., these are all things that are open to you with online education that actually you can't do in a classroom setting very easily."

Schools also benefit, according to Wees, in their ability to offer more classes to kids than enrollments or funding would normally allow. According to the ministry, kids who take part in distributed learning have access to 56 online learning schools in the province, both private and public, with a variety of courses. Unlike home schooling, each course is taught by a certified B.C. teacher and must meet the curriculum outcomes. Plus, students still write exams and receive letter grades and report cards.

A heavier workload

But Wees agrees there are some downsides, including a lack of motivation displayed by middle and high school kids to work without teacher supervision, and the cost to DL teachers in both time and expensive equipment.

"When I go in to do my lessons I can get by with just pretty much something to write with and something to write on," he says. "Whereas with the online courses, (there is) both the expense of time in getting it set up, so that it functions at least as smoothly as the pen and piece of paper, but also the expensive equipment -- every kid has to have equal access to the right hardware to be able to access the courses, as well as a fast enough internet connection."

The workload for DL teachers is of particular concern to the BCTF, who released a report earlier this month on a survey they conducted of 147 DL teachers in the province. The report indicated one of the largest sources of dissatisfaction for the teachers was their workload, with 55.8 per cent of those surveyed reporting working through the summer in addition to the regular school year. Just over 68 per cent of those surveyed also developed their own courses and course material in addition to their teaching duties.

"(The ministry) wants a cap of 200 to 210 (students) on secondary load limits for distributed learning teachers," Lambert told the Tyee. "I think that's too much. That's what our secondary teachers sometimes have to deal with now, and that's way too much."

Another downside according to Wees is online learning fails to take into account kids who thrive on different learning styles, or kids with disabilities such as blindness. However he says a lack of accessibility, be it barriers for kids with disabilities or kids without internet access, is not reason enough to stop online learning.

"If we said that that was the reason that we could never push forward with any initiatives, then we'd really never get anywhere, would we?" he told The Tyee. "We don't have to go very far back before equal access meant ability to even get to the school. . . Then schools couldn't do after school clubs because some kids couldn't participate because they couldn't get on the bus? That would be kind of ridiculous."