Wednesday, March 12, Bethany had school without school, or Virtual Learning Day. Teachers posted assignments on Haiku ranging from reading articles and discussion boards to taking pictures to create a photo essay. Peter Shetler, the technology director, recorded people’s reactions to the Virtual learning day through a survey, and I asked a couple people what they thought about it in a single word (or phrase).
Here are the positive words: awesome, great, easy, paid to work from the couch, freedom, pets, flexibility, and productive.
And here are the negative words: annoying, horrendous, too much computer, tedious, no, pointless, unmotivated, eh…, shme…, uuuugh…, oblivion, lame, stupid, exhausting, stressful, consuming, long, suicide, antisocial, modlin, complicated, conspiracy, sickening, aggravating, waste of time, and a shallow grave.
According to Vice Principal Tim Lehman, the Virtual Learning Day was an academic success. Bethany even got some positive press focusing on Krysten Parson’s physical education snow shoveling assignment. However, with 27 negative words and phrases and only eight positive ones, it is clear that the student body (and some of the teachers) did not particularly enjoy Virtual Learning Days. There were several problems with the delivery of the VLD, even if students still learned. For one, the assignments for different classes were so similar to each other that they started to be repetitive. One of the most used assignment formats was a combination of reading and writing in a discussion board. While this is an effective way of getting students to think critically and interact on an otherwise isolated day, doing it several times in a row can get boring.
On the other side of the spectrum, some students were receiving too much work. According to Tim, high schoolers have around five to seven classes that they received assignments in, while middle schoolers have seven to ten. This meant that quite a few of middle schoolers did not have enough time to complete all the assignments.
There are two ways to drastically improve Virtual Learning Days in the future. One, vary the assignments a little bit more. One great example is Krysten Parson’s shoveling assignment; things that are specific to each class, but involve more than reading and discussing. Two, balance the workload. Middle Schoolers ended up with too much work, while high schoolers were all over the board depending on the classes they were taking. There should be a certain amount of work to make a VLD an actual school day, but not so much that students don’t have time to do anything else.
The Virtual Learning Day received an academic grade of an A-, but an overall fun grade of a D. Although there won’t be any more VLD’s next year due to Indiana State laws, if there is another this year, there are definitely things that could be improved.
-Corey