Nova Scotia Virtual School presentation july 9, 2015
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Presentation from July 9, 2015 Canadian eLearning Network Halifax Summit
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Nova Scotia Virtual School presentation july 9, 2015
- 1. 2014 - 2015
- 2. Overview of Nova Scotia • 122,643 students K-12 (2013) • 8 school boards • 942,688 total population of NS (July 2014)
- 3. NSVS has three main goals: • To provide online high school courses • To promote online professional learning communities • To provide resources for teachers and students
- 5. NSVS Courses are housed in “Moodle”. There is also a synchronous video conferencing platform for weekly e-chats, collaboration and teacher office hours.
- 6. NSVS Teachers • Staff who teach NSVS courses represent all school boards around the province • There are 13.5 FTEs teaching 60 different courses • They are either full-time within a semester or full-time within a school year
- 7. • Conditions for distance education in Nova Scotia schools • Written in 1996 • Maximum class size = 25 students • Coordinating teacher at each site NSVS and Article 49
- 8. NSVS Management Board • Stakeholders – representation from each school board • Cooperative – history - RBTS • Policy / HR decisions • Course development priorities
- 9. Support • Virtual Team Meetings • Administrative Support (Graphic Design, resources, Team moodle, Help Desk, Moodle Customization) • Standards for teaching and learning • Instructional Lead • Registar / Instructional Design
- 10. Support • Virtual Team Meetings • Administrative Support (Graphic Design, resources, Team moodle, Help Desk, Moodle Customization) • Standards for teaching and learning • Instructional Lead • Registar / Instructional Design
Editor's Notes
- Four years ago we began to centralize online delivery in the province. Several smaller initiatives merged together and dedicated funding was allocated provincially to support one online learning inititiative for the province. Our courses follow the public school curriculum and available to students in grades 10-12 who are registered in a public school in the province.
- One of our advantages is our size but this is also one of the drivers for online learning in the province. As our student enrolment continues to decrease we want to ensure that some of smaller rural high schools can remain viable. With expand course offerings through online learning this is possible. The Nova Scotia Virtual School serves all boards in the province. It operates with a management board structure where each school board has one member on the board. The board is co-chaired by a Superintendent of a school board and the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. The Department funds teachers in school boards to deliver online programming and with the exception of the French first language school board, all teachers teach students from any board in the province. Teachers are all full time in the semester in which they are teaching NSVS courses. Teachers are provided with courses developed in Moodle, support and professional learning opportunities through the Department. All infrastructure for NSVS is provided through the Department and this also includes people to support NSVS: including a help desk, program coordinator, instructional lead, server administrator, instructional designer and graphics designer. In addition grants are provided to school boards for technical support and hardware and materials to ensure ease of student access in their schools to their online courses. As I mentioned, Students are all registered in Nova Scotia Public Schools. If they are not a registered student then they are directed to an alternate delivery program through our Correspondence Studies.
- This means that we utilize the resources that we have for multiple purposes.
- In a three year time period we have more than doubled the number of students taking online courses and have done the same with course offerings. The majority of students report in student surveys that they are taking a course because it is not available in their school but a growing number of students have started to indicate that they are looking to the future and feel that an online course will better prepare them for learning opportunities they expect to find in post secondary and the workforce.
- NSVS Courses are all public school courses with the same outcomes as face to face courses. They have all been developed in a learning content management system called Moodle. Students engage with course material in an asynchronous content management system (Moodle) and meet with their teacher and fellow classmates at least once a week using a synchronous platform for video conferencing. Courses are designed to be approximately 20-30% synchronous and 70-80% asynchronous. All courses follow a consistent template design and the design process is managed through the department with the exception of the french first language school board. Teachers have office hours where students can make an appointment or drop in and out for support. We use a video conferencing platform from Quebec- called VIA for the synchronous portion of the program and for the teachers virtual offices. At each school site there is a contact teacher who supervises the students and who maintains contact with the online teacher as needed. Course size is capped at 25 students as per our Teachers’ Provincial Agreement. Our teachers provincial agreement also regulates some other aspects of distance learning including that courses must be offered during the school day and during the school year. This has limited us at this stage to offering NSVS courses based on the semester.