The Best of Both Worlds: Online Curriculum in a Classroom Setting

The brick building at 231 North Pine Avenue, on Chicago's West Side, was once a public high school with more than 3,000 students.

Serving a population in which nearly all of the student body was living under the poverty line, the Austin neighborhood school faced challenges -- high drop-out rates, low academic performance and the constant threat of violence.

As a result, Austin High School was shut down at the end of the 2006-07 school year with a new vision in mind: smaller class sizes and more specialized learning.

As part of the city's 2010 Renaissance Project, the building was morphed into three separate schools -- Austin Business and Entrepreneurship High School on the first floor; Austin Polytechnical Academy on the second; and VOISE (Virtual Opportunities Inside a School Environment) Academy on the third.

The latter program is the only one not yet open, but when it enters its first school year this fall, all eyes in the educational world will be watching. At VOISE, every student will be equipped with a laptop in the classroom and a refurbished desktop computer at home, giving the Austin students -- and their families -- access to technology most of them have never known. And with an entirely online curriculum, the students' progress can be tracked more easily, allowing them to learn at their own pace.

But the high school students won't spend all their time buried behind a computer, as each school day will be balanced with classroom discussions and group projects, providing the latest and most advanced blueprint for the blended learning -- or hybrid -- model.

The VOISE slogan touts the program as "the best of both worlds," combining the greatest elements of online and face-to-face learning.

"I think that's where the future of education is going," said Allison Powell, vice president for the North American Council for Online Learning. "This is a pilot to see if it works and how it works."

While computers in the classroom is hardly a new concept, never before has a school offered 24/7 online access to its students, whether it be in a low-income or high-income neighborhood.

"It's pretty much one of a kind," said Dr. Sandi Atols, the founder of VOISE. "We feel that our blended model is probably going to take off and be replicated across the country."

In the meantime, the people at VOISE must work their way through the unknowns and inevitable kinks that coincide with first-year programs in order to set the tone for a revolutionary learning experience.

Welcome to VOISE

In some respects, VOISE will be like traditional high schools. There will be sports teams -- the three schools in the building will pool their athletes together -- and extracurricular activities, such as the refurbishing computers club.

For the students at VOISE, they'll have plenty of opportunities to shape and mold what programs exist. That's presumably part of what made the school so attractive to the parents of the 275 students who applied. (Only 150 to 175 students -- all freshman -- will be accepted the first year. Administrators plan to expand the student body to 600 within four years.)

"(We'll provide) just about anything the kids would want to do," Atols said. "If there wasn't a team, we'd let the kids start a team. Our 'After School Matters' program is going to provide different activities. We'll survey parents and kids in the community to see what they'd like to do."

During the school day, however, the schedule will be strict. Students will begin the day with the equivalent to homeroom, picking up their wireless-enabled laptops and getting situated for a full slate of block classes. English class, for example, will last 100 minutes, with half the time devoted to individualized work on the computer and the other half centered on class discussions and group work.

"This is our teachers' time to be teachers," VOISE principal Todd Yarch said. "To do some things that you would get in a good, traditional classroom. Project-based things, like full class discussions and small group discussions. I envision a classroom where I walk in and can't find a teacher because they're sitting next to the students."

During the block sessions, teachers and students will also be able to take advantage of interactive white boards, on which they can project any student's laptop for the entire class to see. They'll even be able to save and print what is written on the white board.

After lunch, students will be granted a half-hour of free time to check e-mail, meet with teachers or hold a student council meeting. Yarch feels this will help ebb the students' temptation to goof around on their laptops when they are supposed to be doing schoolwork.

"The reason why kids play around on the computer is because we don't ever give them the time to do things they want to do, or because we're always hogging them," Yarch said. "I just think if we give them the time to go to ESPN.com or shop, that they'll be more focused the rest of the day."

There will also be a limit to what students can do online, as the Chicago Public Schools firewall is a strong one.

Along with designated computer time, VOISE students will have designated time for project work. In the school's first year, the initial school-wide project, developed in conjunction with Northwestern University, will take a look at the positive and negative effects of hosting an event such as the Olympics or World Fair. Chicago is one of four finalists for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

This project will allow students to take a closer look at their community, while also interacting with peers.

On Wednesday afternoons, when the students have gone home for the day, the teachers will become pupils. With the VOISE model so new and unique, teachers will spend this time in professional development training to further understand the curriculum they are teaching.

That curriculum is primarily drawn from Apex Learning, a Seattle-based organization that specializes in differentiated learning. The digital curriculum addresses different learning styles and provides multiple instructional representations that incorporate audio, video, graphics, images and animations.

This should make the learning process easier on the Austin students, many of whom will enter high school at the third- or fifth-grade reading level. Ultimately, though, VOISE must fall in line with the standards of Chicago Public Schools, gearing students for the ACT, as well as state and college-readiness standards.

Learning, not teaching

With Apex handling a bulk of the teaching load, teachers may feel as if machines are taking over their jobs. And, to some degree, that's true. In the VOISE program, teachers will be more like facilitators than instructors. And while that may not sound appealing to many in the profession, the teachers at VOISE believe it will benefit the students more than, as Atols puts it, "a sage on the stage."

"To just stand up and impart knowledge doesn't work," Atols said. "We want students to be as active in their own learning as possible."

That's a big reason why Atols and Yarch looked to hire teachers at VOISE who previously taught special education or worked as coaches.

"You knew they had to build relationships and bond with individual students -- not just teaching content," Yarch said. "They have a little bit more invested in kids. You want to have some place where bonds are built. And we have teachers now personalizing with the students not just in their academics, but their social and emotional side as well."

Instead of making the advanced students wait for the others to catch up -- or making the struggling students stay after class -- the VOISE program will cater to each student's particular needs. And Yarch said that's exactly how it should be.

"Especially in low-income communities, kids don't have time to do a whole lot of extra things," Yarch said. "We should be taking it upon ourselves to help bring them up. I think using the online curriculum is really what's going to allow students to be comfortable with where they're at."

An opportunity for every student

When Atols originally came up with the idea for VOISE, she envisioned a school made up of high-level students. She felt their advanced knowledge and general familiarity with technology would make them a natural fit for the program.

It didn't take long for her to discover that the model would better serve students behind the learning curve.

"We realized it's a perfect model for students who are behind," Atols said. "Instead of a factory model where the students are lock-step with the teacher, we really believe students will be more engaged with this program. We expect there will be better attendance, less dropouts and higher graduation rates."

Not that it wouldn't work for more successful students, too, Atols said. She just believes the VOISE program can provide a greater need for those struggling to stay on track.

And one of the advantages to having a technology-based curriculum is that it better prepares the students for the college level. In more affluent areas, attending college is the norm. In Austin, it's the exception.

But at VOISE, each student will be expected to attend college. One of the school's requirements will be that each senior apply to at least one college.

"They're not leaving without getting accepted to at least one school, but it doesn't fall on them," Yarch said. "That's something that we're going to make sure of. It could be a trade school, it could be a college, but they're going to have somewhere to go in September after they graduate."

While applying to college may be a novel concept for many in the Austin neighborhood, the students at VOISE will have a leg up. With a laptop in every student's hands, the campus will already resemble a college campus in many ways, and that's the environment the staff at VOISE is trying to promote.

And with the fixed goal of advancing to college in sight, Atols believes that will only further motivate the students.

"I think that expectation is going to make a big difference," she said.

The future of blended learning

What happens when a laptop breaks? Or when the network goes down? Or when the teachers struggle to adjust to such a dramatically different learning environment?

Those are just a few of the concerns of Yarch, who realizes the school's first year will be a learning process for everyone. He also knows the successes and failures of VOISE may dictate how future schools create similar programs.

According to NACOL, data suggests that 10 percent of high school courses will be taught online within six years, and by 2019, about 50 percent will be delivered online. This trend began with virtual charter schools and distance learning programs -- students study via the Internet, but away from the classroom -- though neither can offer the human interaction that the blended learning model affords.

And that is why it's so critical for VOISE to set the example for the rest of the learning world.

"We feel it's so important to be part of something that's revolutionary in the way we're teaching," Yarch said. "I don't even think any of us can even think about what it's going to look like when 150 kids have laptops. The kids probably won't even know it's for real until the day that they have them."

It's for real, all right. And it's coming soon.

*This story is from Converge magazine's Summer 2008 issue.