Some More Notes from the VSS

Some notes from one of the sessions that I attended that actually spoke to some of the research aspects of virtual schooling.

Landscape of K-12 Online Learning: Past and Present
- Tom Clark and Cathy Cavanaugh

• K-12 Online learning: education in which instruction and content are delivered primarily via the Internet (Watson, Winograd & Kalmon, 2004)
• Growth of K-12 Online Learning
• steady enrollment growth, from 40-50K in 2000-01 to 300K in 2002-03
• considerable room for growth in KL-12 – 1.97 million OLL enrollments in higher education 2002-03
• better tracking needed of enrollments, course, programs
• K-12 Online Learning Growth Factors
• a tradition of distance education/computer-based ed
• emergence of the WWW
• computer and Internet access/use in schools
• government policies and funding
• interest in OLL
• Global Reach of K-12 Online Learning
• primarily a North American phenomenon, but potential for expansion
• most nations currently focused on building SchoolNet activities
• Research in K-12 DL: How Much Can There Be?
• Cavanaugh, 2001
• Cavanaugh et al., 2004
• NCREL studies

In the next day or two, I'll have a re-post from the AECT BlogTrack, and then I'll come back to the content of Opening the Virtual School Symposium.

Tags: VSS2006, virtual school, cyber school, high school, education