Newfoundland and Labrador is one of Canada's larger geographical regions with a long coastline. Even with resettlement and with school busing to larger schools, there are still small schools which have to necessarily exist in some communities. These necessarily existent schools mostly offer multi-grading from Kindergarten to Grade 9 and a skeleton high school program.
Teleconferencing with telewriters is the Distance Education delivery system funded by the Newfoundland Department of Education to address the difficulty in offering Advanced Mathematics in the small rural schools. Now students have the option, if their rural school is set up for it, to take high school courses in Advanced Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, and French. The Department of Education uses the Telemedicine system from Memorial University of Newfoundland's Faculty of Medicine.
Presently, Newfoundland's DE follows a 14 day cycle with five 56 minute periods each day. Each course has 10 periods every 14 days and the course lasts the whole year. In Math DE there are five "on-line" and five "off-line" classes per cycle. On-line classes are when students from a few communities, or sites, and the teacher come together via computers, phone lines, microphones, and telewriters. Off-line classes are when students within each site work alone or together on homework, work samples, prepare for tests and the like.
This study attempts to allow students to identify what they consider to be the advantages and disadvantages of learning Math through telelearning and how they would improve on it.
My first year teaching was in a small rural Newfoundland school where six of the fifteen high school students took Math, Chemistry, and Physics by DE. Next, I had a term position as a DE Math teacher. I became more intrigued by this telelearning system of course delivery. I had no picture of my students, nor they of me; only a voice. So I visited my students in their school. I felt that something happened after the visit as the level of student-teacher interaction increased in the on-line classes, in the telephone calls, and in the faxes. During my visits, all were saying that the DE classroom is a good option for them to receive a wider selection of courses.
I wondered how do they perform in post-secondary Math as compared to students who took the same courses in the traditional manner? What are some of the pedagogical implications of teaching by DE? by telelearning? How do the students feel about DE? about the telelearning technology? What would they do to improve it? Did my visit to the schools really make that much of a difference?
After consultation, I posed these three questions:
I decided to fax and ask each class at each site to meet as a group, to discuss the questions and to give a group response. There were responses from four of the eight sites. There were at least four clusters that emerged from the advantages, four from the disadvantages and two from the improvements.
ADVANTAGES
DISADVANTAGES
IMPROVEMENTS
Perhaps the lateness in the school year, with exams commencing soon after I faxed the questionnaire, was a contributing factor to the rate of response. I had been out of touch with the students for a few months as I was no longer their teacher. The use of the fax machine may have limited establishing the communication I needed with the students. Perhaps if I were to phone first and make my request more personal, I may have gotten a better rate of response. Also phoning would allow for clarifying any questions they might have had concerning my request. Perhaps taking some on-line time could also clarify questions since they are all together and improve the response rate.
From the comments it is apparent that Newfoundland’s DE has a socialization process inherent in it. Just as there are ways in the traditional classroom to meet new people and develop friendships, the medium of telelearning also provides the same. Several of the suggestions for improvement were for the teacher to visit regularly, perhaps monthly, and for the students to meet one another at least once or twice during the year. This would put a person to a voice. These visits would be a further enhancement of socialization. Responsibility and independence plus cooperative learning are further aspects of a student's socialization that DE is able to nurture.
The students thought that DE enhanced their independent working. They could learn the subject without being in the classroom. On the other hand they struggled with having so much independence and wanting more time with the teacher to be the guide. Also to be noted is that their answers did not reflect learning about Math, but more about the medium of learning through telelearning. All responses were about how they learned, not what was being learned.
Perhaps DE administrators should seriously attempt to increase visits by DE teachers and have DE students come together at least once. Administrators need to continue to improve on the DE technology and increase on-line time.
This study was a confident start on my project for my Masters to be completed over the next few years. DE is a major aspect of my career. I want to continue to study and improve upon DE.