Many schools which serve traditional, home school, and TCK students are faced with unique challenges year to year, and often the solutions to these challenges must also be unique. One such solution that several overseas schools are now looking at is the online learning solution where the course, the instruction, and the tutoring come to the local school via the internet.
NorthStar Academy is a set of online schools that offer grades 7-12 in our USA and grades 5 - 12 in our Canadian programs and is currently serving over 700 students in 32 countries. The USA and Canadian programs are both accredited academic programs. Schools and home school students can use NorthStar Academy for just one course or for a full-time student’s course needs. NorthStar Academy has been effective in helping Christian schools in the following four scenarios:
- teacher recruitment shortfalls and teacher attrition: NorthStar courses can be used on a "just in time" basis for those courses whose teacher has either resigned or was not able to be replaced.
- school growth: many schools offer grades K-8 but can not offer high school grades and so the students are forced to consider boarding school. With NorthStar courses, a school can add, say grade 9 and 10, and use NorthStar courses to expand their services so that their students may look forward to remaining at the local school for the duration of their academic preparation.
- school expansion: many schools are able to offer high school grades but do not have the resources to offer a variety of electives or advanced placement level courses. These schools can use NorthStar courses to augment their existing course offerings. (NorthStar currently offers advanced placement (AP) courses in computer science and calculus)
- resource allocation: in smaller schools, there is often student interest in a particular subject, but there may be only 2 or 3 students who are interested in that subject. The school can not afford to allocate a teacher to teach a class for only 2 or 3 students, so the students are forced to either go without or find a snail-mail correspondence program which offers this subject as an independent study option. With NorthStar courses, the school may provide these students with the desired course without having to allocate a teacher to teach the course or needing to rely on snail-mail correspondence courses.
NorthStar delivers the course(s) to the student(s), complete with lessons, assignments, rapid feedback, student-to-student-to-teacher interactions, etc. while owning the responsibility of providing report cards and transcripts for these students. Teachers send their lessons and assignments over the internet through the conferencing software called FirstClass, lead group discussions, evaluate students' assignments, and engage in most of the same teacher-student interactions that occur in traditional classrooms. Students complete their assigned work using printed material and software provided to them as part of the program. Completed assignments and exams are sent back to teachers for marking and then returned to the students, all by e-mail.
Students "attend" school through the software, FirstClass®. Once the student has logged on with FirstClass, he/she will see the school graphically represented on the screen. Each subject area will have its own symbol, or icon, and the student simply double-clicks on this icon to get to his/her classroom. Within each classroom, the student will see assignment and lesson folders and conferences, complete with classroom discussions and teacher instruction in the form of posted email messages with attached documents. Together with the students’ subject areas are social areas for students, parents, and teachers. And each student and parent has his/her own personal mailbox for either school-related or personal email. NorthStar Academy has a parent advisory committee and a student council, each with their own "meeting place"!
I hope that the listed four scenarios have helped to give you ideas of how a local school can utilize our online courses and integrate them into the existing school program. Please let me know how I can be of more help to you in this matter.
Sincerely,
Brett Bowers