A study—“Going Virtual: Unique Needs and Challenges of K-12 Online Teachers,” conducted by Boise State University in partnership with iNACOL—found that most online teachers have seven to 15 years of traditional classroom teaching experience. Many still are teaching fulltime and online part-time, while others have moved into full-time online teaching. “They are teachers who know their subject content but want the flexibility or the interactive and dynamic environment of a virtual classroom,” Patrick says.
INACOL has published “National Standards for Quality Online Teaching,” a document designed to provide a set of quality guidelines for online teaching and instructional design that districts can implement and monitor on their own. The Southern Regional Education Board has a similar publication, “Standards for Quality Online Teaching.”
While documents like these detail what teachers should know and be able to do to teach effectively online, it’s still up to district administrators in most cases to be sure they are properly qualified, then monitor their work and assess how they perform.
Training and Feedback Are Key
In the Cobb County (Ga.) School District, about 190 out of 6,838 teachers teach online courses during regular school days and participate in two or three faculty meetings annually—also held online—and one face-to-face meeting with administrators that focuses on district policies and procedures. “We closely monitor teacher involvement with course statistics that tell us how often they are in their classes and how long they spend there,” says Cheryl Rowley, a program administrator in the Cobb Virtual Academy. “We also look at their grade books and the feedback they give their students.”
And 20 percent of the online teachers are stay-at-home mothers or retirees, and the other 80 percent are regular Cobb County classroom teachers who teach online in the evenings and on weekends.
Cobb’s online teachers are required to archive their e-mail, Rowley explains, so “if there are any issues, we can get proxy access to the folders for student or parent communication with that teacher.” Such issues can involve the amount of time teachers spend online with students, as well as the feedback they give students. Cobb also surveys students and parents at the end of each term, although, says Rowley, “it’s more about how they feel about online learning than about individual teachers.” Still, she continues, “if a parent isn’t happy with an online teacher, we are going to find out.”
At Florida Virtual School, founded in 1997 as the country’s first statewide Internet-based public high school, teachers undergo four days of initial training face-to-face with administrators and students, including a day and night so they can get used to working later hours, says Jeff Murphy, director of instruction in the Florida school, which serves students in grades 6-12 throughout Florida and other states. They undergo four additional training days in the first 60 days.
For the first year, each new online teacher also is assigned a mentor—an experienced online teacher with a reduced teaching load. Most teachers have three to 10 years of traditional classroom experience in Florida schools, although some are recruited from out of state “if there is a critical need,” Murphy says. “It’s not easy to find Latin teachers, Mandarin teachers, AP calculus teachers,” he explains. All FLVS teachers possess a valid Florida teaching certificate and are certified specifically in the subjects they teach. And Florida’s certified teachers will also teach for the newly created Florida Virtual School’s Connections Academy, which is a partnership between the state’s public virtual school and the Florida Connections Academy. It was created last summer to meet a new state law that requires all districts to offer full-time, online learning to public elementary and middle school students.
Although online teachers work from their own homes, “we get tons of data” about their performance, Murphy reports. It comes from electronic surveys and other feedback from students and parents. “We ask them what communication with the teacher is like and whether they think the teacher cares about them,” Murphy says.
