Dr. Robert Roehrich

Heather, Thank you for your response. Please review the threads for this course and you will find some agreement with your reasons for offering online courses and some additional support. However, keep in mind that delivering online instruction in much more labor intensive and requires a high degree of oversight to insure the quality and integrity of the coursework and delivery. I find it interesting that one of the main reasons for offering online courses is that "today's students have full time jobs and can't afford to..." How did so many students, prior to the availability of online instruction, complete… >>>

Veronica, Thank you for your insightful response. In my experience, the decision to offer online courses was not strongly influenced by responding to student characteristics or "learning styles." Given recent controversy over the credibility of "labeling" learning styles, I'm further convinced it should not be a primary consideration for offering online courses. The factors you identified are some of the "realistic" considerations that a school has to take into account when making the decision to offer online coursework. Other factors to consider are: which learning platform to choose; level of technical support required; the cost of developing and maintaining courses;… >>>

Januarius, Thank you for your comments. I have also found "non-traditional" students to be more receptive to online courses and I would add the following hypothesis to your observations. Adults are challenged in the workplace to perform, which is not the case in many of our high schools. I submit that working adults who want to advance are more accustomed to taking on responsibility for their behaviors, whereas many recent high school graduates have not internalized that. Most recent high school, graduates are accustomed to other people being responsible for their lives, especially parents. This is reinforced by a public… >>>