This paper describes a study of success factors in the introductory semester of liberal studies blended courses offered at the bachelor of science level. The influence of student participation in the online course environment was examined, as measured by the number of times students logged into the learning management system (LMS) and average…

This paper describes an observational study of the introduction of Sakai's Learning Management System (LMS) into several liberal arts courses at a women's college in the Middle East. Student participation in the CLE was tracked over the course of the semester and summarized by their number of logins and average session length. These measures were…

For students with disabilities who are at risk of leaving high school without graduating, virtual schools have become a popular alternative to traditional schools. One promising approach to increasing graduation rates is to design learning environments that serve students with disabilities through the 5 Cs framework designed to increase school…

Situated in the theoretical perspective of phenomenology, the purpose of this study was to understand the experiences of three preservice teachers who voluntarily participated in a field placement in a virtual school in the southeastern United States. The preservice teachers were paired with online teachers for four weeks. Their experiences were…

Parental involvement has been recognized as an important factor for student achievement in traditional school settings. The lack of research regarding the effect of parental involvement on student achievement in virtual schooling is, in part, due to the absence of a valid and reliable instrument to measure this construct. This paper provides an…

This paper describes the effect of teacher comments, students' demographic information and learning management system utilisation on student final scores in algebra courses in a K-12 virtual learning environment. Students taking algebra courses in a state virtual school in the Midwestern US region during 2007-2008 participated in this study.…

School and district leaders are commonly faced with diverse student needs and interests that could be effectively addressed with a course that is not currently offered in local schools. Virtual schools have grown up over the past 15 years in different policy and budget ecosystems, but most online course programs can be classified in one of six…

The purpose of this issues brief was to obtain a better understanding of how online programs are dealing with students who have been identified as at-risk. The first section, "Strategies for Working with At-Risk Student Populations in Online Environments," documents a sampling of K-12 online programs currently working with at-risk…

This paper describes a study of success factors in high enrollment courses in a K-12 virtual school learning environment. The influence of variables: time student spent in the learning management system (LMS), number of times logged into the LMS, teacher comment, participation in free or reduced lunch programs, student status in the virtual school…

This study of student performance in an online Algebra course looked at the development, implementation, and evaluation of interactive tools for graphing linear equations. The study focused on an interactive tool that was evaluated with virtual school Algebra students for a challenging component of the course. The performance of these students in…

The number of students taking online courses in K-12 has increased exponentially since the inception of virtual schools in 1996. However, K-12 virtual schooling is a relatively new concept for those involved in teacher education. As teacher education departments build pre-service preparation programs, in-service professional development…

Online teaching is a complex professional practice. In addition to their content knowledge and pedagogical skill, online teachers must be qualified in methods of teaching the content online and have experience in online learning. This document examines some of the aspects of online teaching, specifically those related to communication and…

This document describes the mentoring relationship from the perspectives of several virtual schools that have built mentoring programs to assist their new teachers. Each school's mentoring program is unique and has been designed specifically for the school's staff, size, and instructional approach. These schools have learned that a successful…