AltEd+&+E-Learning

= What is Alternative Education? =

Alternatives to mainstream education take a variety of forms which can include home-education, distance or correspondence school, residential units, community providers, and virtual or cyber schools. de Jong & Griffiths (2006) define Alternative Education Programmes (AEPs) as “those programs designed to support students who are unlikely or unable to access mainstream education programs for a number of reasons and often as a result of a combination of factors.” Such programmes can be categorized in three ways; services which are supplemental to regular classrooms, education means which are outside the bounds of regular classrooms, and school-wide initiatives (United States General Accounting Office, 2002: Cited in Watson & Gemin, 2008). Students who seek an educational alternative, generally fall into one of the following categories (Chen & Hirumi, 2004): Another type of learner neglected by Chen & Hirumi’s categories is the learner who cannot physically due to disability, geographical location, or outside commitments attend a traditional classroom. The use of e-learning as a tool for delivering education to such students listed above is the topic of this paper and while relevant to all four types of alternative learners, will focus on the at-risk students.
 * Gifted students – These students may be bored and in danger of becoming disengaged because of the lack of challenge they find in mainstream school.
 * Students seeking credit recovery – Those students who have failed one or more courses and are looking to ‘catch up’ on the credits that they have missed out on.
 * At-risk students – Students who are in danger of not finishing mainstream school due to behaviour, health, or social reasons.

= ﻿What is E-Learning? =

Similarly to alternative education, E-learning also takes many forms and variations. Laurillard (2006) defines e-learning as “...the use of any new technologies or applications in the service of learning or learner support.” Commonly cited contexts in which we find e-learning in compulsory schooling range from using technology and multi-media within a bricks and mortar classroom, accessing curriculum support materials online, to enrollment in a wholly virtual school. E-learning is not intended to replace educational theory and sound pedagogy, but rather can creates new possibilities and opportunities for applying the established educational and interpersonal theories (Nichols, 2008).

The US has a strong movement towards virtual schooling with many states requiring that all students must take at least one online course each year. iNACOL, the International Association for K-12 online learning, commissioned a report into at-risk learners and online education and found that a significant number of enrolled students were “at-risk” amongst “cyber-charter schools” (Archambault, Diamond, Brown, Cavanaugh, Coffey, Foures-Aalbu, Richardson, & Zygouris-Coe., 2010). The report identified that schools that had positive academic and social results with at-risk students were those that had supportive faculty and staff, provided individualised instruction, and used instructional strategies that supported learner achievement.



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