The no-room schoolhouse known as Cyber Stone is growing in popularity and results.
The educational courses available from the South East Cornerstone Public School Division’s online school system, are showing pretty positive results said Cyber Stone principal Cathy Webb.
The cyberschool system employs teachers who fill 6.2 full time equivalent positions with four of them being totally dedicated to the online delivery of education. Another two also work in physical schools within the 38-school division.
“We have a wide variety of students, several who attend smaller schools, others who have scheduling conflicts, exchange visitors, homeschooled students, others who have long-term illnesses, adult students and some who just need some credit recovery to complete a grade,” said Webb. About two dozen of the students are even from outside the Cornerstone geographic boundaries, but have enrolled in their courses due to the variety the school offers. Currently there are 34 course options.
Enrolment in Cyber Stone has climbed from 588 last school year to 650 in the current academic year, but those numbers obviously fluctuate, said Webb, who was accompanied by Peggy Lawson, co-ordinator of instructional technology for the school division, who added that Cyber Stone is expecting to add more Science 20 and Computer Science 20 courses as the increasing level of student knowledge dictates. The online system is already popular with students taking mathematics courses.
“There are different paces, too, we have rabbits and turtles,” said Lawson, “and that’s not bad since the programming can be more flexible than in a physical classroom setting with restricted time frames.”
Webb said the teaching staff at Cyber Stone is very dedicated, since they often end up taking calls or responding online during the evening or early mornings. She added that many students work in “chunks of time” such as evenings or weekends, so the cyberschool teachers make themselves available in the event some mentoring or additional instruction is required to move the student forward at pretty well any given time. Local facilitators in the Cornerstone schools will also check in with cyber students to help them along and also, to keep them in line.
“It’s not for everyone,” said Webb. “it requires independence and self-discipline.”
The principal said exit surveys with graduating or departing students has helped assess teacher performances and course designs, as the product gets more defined each year. Knowing that a full course credit requires about 100 hours of input, Cyber Stone is not an easy way around a school subject, just another way. The input demands from the students remains constant. The survey even allowed the students to grade themselves, as well as their educator; and it was done anonymously, said Webb.
Data is also collected from those who dropped out.
Last year, there were only 37 of the 588 registrants who ended up with failing marks and 14 of those were granted extensions on a course. These were not credit recovery courses, Webb explained, but rather time extensions of four weeks for a few who had been stymied by exceptional circumstances. “We don’t do it for those who simply didn’t do the work or ran out of time,” she said. Only five Cyber Stone students ended up inactive or withdrew, and, in a couple of cases, it was just a matter of the student moving to another school division’s jurisdiction while a couple more just “changed their mind,” said Webb.
Withdrawals numbered over 100 in 2014-15 courses and they are down to 90 this year with 76 of those never starting after signing up. Student progress is tracked through a colour-coded graph and “they get to demonstrate their learning in many ways, through blogs, video demonstrations, emails, all kinds of ways,” Webb said.
“It’s still important that they get contact with their teacher though, and they need that all the way through,” said Lawson.
