Completely Virtual High School: My Experience

Many of my peers are surprised that I have a legitimate diploma after I tell them that I went to school online. I’ve been asked if I actually graduated, if I’m “mentally challenged” and that’s why I made the switch, and even if I meant to say I was homeschooled. The answers are invariably yes I have, no I’m not, and no I didn’t.

I enrolled in an online school following a significant move from Nebraska to Georgia. The school curriculums were so different that I had learned most of my math and science lessons already while at my former middle school, but my new one refused to let me test into more challenging courses. On top of my academic boredom, I was frustrated by the process of trying to make friends as the “new kid” in a district where everyone already knew each other. After two months of this, my parents saw that things weren’t improving for me and they began researching alternatives. We chose a public school hosted entirely online, with students and staff from every part of the state. I happily stayed at that school until I graduated in 2018.

Making that change was the best choice I could have made for myself, but not enough students understand what online school is like – if they’re even aware that it’s an option. That said, it may not be for everybody, because rarely anything ever is. Here, I briefly go over my favorite perks of online school, then over the most prominent (in my opinion) drawbacks, all from the perspective of a long-term former student.

Pros

I spent a total of just under five years enrolled in an online school, and after the first week, I was already thrilled with the changes evident in how I learned. Ask me about why I stayed in an online school for so long, and these are the first reasons that come to mind.

Take A Road Less Traveled A statewide school on the Internet eliminates some of the traditional limitations of formal education. It doesn’t matter how many buildings you have when your school is actually digital, and there are thousands of potential instructors who can be hired from anywhere in the state. Labor and effort cost the same and there are price tags attached even to digital infrastructure, but when your staff can work from home and you don’t need to maintain a large building, everything gets a little bit easier. Those freed-up resources can go towards making new and varied offerings for the students.

The most obvious result of this was the large variety of classes that were available. I took a course on human physiology, which taught me even before I reached college that biological science was not in my best interests. (This realization saved me both time and tuition dollars.) And to this day, I don’t know a single person in my state from another school who was able to take two years of Japanese language. Another positive consequence was the extensive list of clubs and extracurriculars that my high school was able to offer with the help of its large and diverse collection of teachers.

No Watching the Clock… A watched pot never boils, and a watched clock never ticks. Don’t lie; we’ve all passed the time in a lecture by looking at the clock every five minutes (it’s really only been that long?).

It’s easy to get bored by an hour of being talked at, especially when the content begins to feel repetitive. How many students have wished they could go in, learn the lesson, and leave when they’re done? With an online education, you can.

The modules in every well-constructed online class put the student through a process facilitating full comprehension of the lesson. The lessons are organized in a sequential order, where one can’t be accessed until its prerequisites are completed. At the end of the module, which may include text-based reading, multimedia inserts, virtual textbook links, and practice slides, there is usually a short quiz to confirm content understanding. Completion of the quiz signifies the end of the lesson.

Using this format means that a math class could be 10 minutes instead of 50. Conversely, if math is not your strong suit, you can take as long as you need. There were some days when I would get all of my daily lessons done in a quarter of the time my brother spent at his school! The flexibility of the online format gives students the ability to take as long as they need to master content and to move on when they are finished.

I took this on vacation in San Francisco. I had just finished a lesson for class while having ice cream on the pier! With online education, there’s no need to scramble to complete homework before or after a personal trip.

Lessons online can be completed from anywhere with Internet access (case in point: see Figure 3!). I took a lot of trips and vacations during high school, and I rarely fell behind in homework. When I did, I could make it up easily because most classes don’t have daily deadlines. Of course, that sounds great, but wouldn’t it be awful to go on a relaxing beach vacation just to wake up at 8:00 for classes?

Yeah, it totally would. But it’s not necessary.

Because the lessons build upon one another and are not dependent on the physical presence of an instructor, a student can work on lessons at a pace suitable for them. If you’re better able to focus in the morning, then you can knock out chunks of your schoolwork before lunch. If your brain prefers to focus between the hours of midnight and three in the morning, that’s also an option. (But your teachers probably won’t respond to emails right away.)

Cons

If online education had no positives, then it wouldn’t be utilized by a growing number of public and private institutions of primary and higher education. Unfortunately, all good things come at a price, and I reveal the two greatest flaws of online schooling here.

High school is punctuated by first-times and traditional teenage experiences. Unfortunately, although online schooling can boast a lot of advantages that make it comparable to a physical school, they can’t totally recreate those experiences. (Not that they don’t try.)

My classmates generally weren’t as excited about school dances as my friends from physical schools, but that may be because we accepted that when we chose a school where we had more options and more freedom, we were forfeiting a few aspects of the more “normal” high school experience. Among those were prom (obviously), but also sports games, Senior Ditch Day, flirting and dating with our peers, and socializing in the halls between classes and in the parking lot after the last bell. Students who look forward to the cultural hallmark of high school should carefully evaluate their priorities before deciding whether they will be content with sacrificing those experiences.

It’s worth pointing out, though, that an online school doesn’t preclude having a social life. Students can meet in web conference sessions and email with each other to form friendships. Further, online schools usually try to make sure there are in-person experiences for students to seize. I once went on a field trip to a cinema where about 20 of us watched the final Hunger Games movie, then had an analytical discussion about the franchise over milkshakes.

Whatever device may be used to complete educational activities is most likely flat. In a way, so is the instruction. When technology is used to send all of the messages, it can be hard to reap all the benefits of a teacher’s instruction. For instance, some courses are significantly enhanced by the Internet, but foreign languages are not among them. There is no adequate replacement for clearly hearing a native speaker or regularly practicing speech and aural comprehension.

It’s also important to think about the learning style of the student considering online education. Without the more dynamic in-person supervision of instructors, students have to be able to be their own managers, making sure they meet deadlines, do their homework, and study before their tests. If they are visual or aural learners, able to focus on a screen, and dedicated to exerting some self-discipline, then they will have significantly fewer problems adjusting to online schooling than students who are kinetic or tactile learners and dislike working independently.

Conclusion

High school is an important part of our adolescence which usually teaches us empirical knowledge, practical academic skills, sociocultural rules and cues, and how to express ourselves truthfully and healthily. If that time in our lives is customized for our unique personal needs, we can skip the dramatic, oft-televised misery of high school and instead learn and socialize in a way more productive for our academic and emotional development. Online schooling is one way to change the format of formal education to provide increases in freedom, flexibility, rigor, and individualized experiences. It comes with drawbacks, but whether or not they outweigh the advantages depends on the student who is considering making the academic move to the Internet.