Anoka-Hennepin ramps up online learning classes

May 11--After testing the waters, Anoka-Hennepin high schools will take the plunge into online classroom learning next year.

This year, the district has offered only one online course -- Advanced Placement art history. In the fall, it will offer eight.

There are a couple of reasons for offering more online courses, said Jill Somrock, Anoka-Hennepin teaching and learning specialist for secondary online learning.

For one thing, it prevents classes from being canceled because of low enrollment. Staffing demands aren't as great for an online class. All but one of the AP courses on the online schedule for next year would have gone by the wayside if they weren't being offered via computer, Somrock said.

Also, many of the students would be introduced to online learning anyway when they got to college.

"We really feel it's important for students to have these 21st century skills," Somrock said. "Their world is online. It's good preparation for college.

"Many colleges have some of their courses online. ... My personal opinion is that eventually, most students will be required to take an online course before they graduate from high school."

Anoka-Hennepin isn't the first district to ramp up its online learning capabilities.

"Lots of school districts are venturing into this," Somrock said. "I came from Forest Lake, and Forest Lake has some online learning."

Some AP classes go all-online

Six of the courses to be offered next year will be taught completely online: AP art history, AP calculus-enrichment, AP computer science (computer programming), economics, health, and statistics/probability.

The other two courses -- AP European history-enrichment and AP U.S. history-enrichment -- will be offered as "hybrids," combining classroom and online learning. That is because all the students signed up for those courses are Coon Rapids High School students, and their teacher is on the Coon Rapids faculty, Somrock said. Students and teachers in the other courses are scattered among different high schools.

In an online course, students do their course work and assignments on computers. They are still assigned an Anoka-Hennepin teacher and must report to that teacher, although most of those communications are online.

The student logs on to a site that may include the course syllabus, assignments and discussion forums. Gradebooks also are available online so students can follow their progress.

Somrock hopes that students also will do online conferencing, in which all the students are logged in at the same time to create a virtual classroom. Students could plug into their courses anytime they have access to a computer. That could mean from home, study hall or a public library.

"Just because these are online courses doesn't mean all the work is online," Somrock said. "There may be reading or other kinds of things they're doing as well." Students will be allocated class time during the school day to dedicate to their online course work, she said.

Self-starters needed

There's a catch to all this online learning emphasis: Without the more tightly structured regimen of the classroom, the online student must be a strong self-starter able to work outside the close supervision of a teacher.

Somrock said students who signed up for online work were questioned about their learning characteristics and advised if they were lacking in traits that could make them successful.

Also, information about the courses was sent home to parents, and students under age 18 had to get their parents to sign off on their taking the online courses.

"It's easier for highly motivated students to do the work," Somrock said.

Norman Draper --612-673-4547

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