What's Full-Time for K-12 Online Teaching?--a Dilemma

By Patricia Deubel, Ph.D.

After reading Keeping pace with K-12 online learning: A review of state level policy and practice (Watson & Ryan, 2006), I became concerned that policy makers need to take a closer look at the K-12 online teaching scenario itself. Based on Lawrence Tomei's (2006) post-secondary finding that "14 percent more hours were required to teach the same number of students online at a distance than in the traditional classroom" (p. 539), there is reason to suspect that per virtual course or virtual classroom, the time commitment for K-12 online teaching is also greater than teaching face to face. Yet states have not fully determined what constitutes full time for that environment, most likely because sufficient research is lacking for comparison. At the present time, most states are employing online teachers on a part-time basis, with Florida Virtual School (FLVS) being the exception. I'd like to elaborate on some of the realities, based on my experiences with traditional and online teaching.

Class size and course load matter and ultimately will affect the quality of instruction provided. At the post-secondary level, Tomei (2006) concluded that the "The ideal traditional class size was 17 students while the ideal online class size was 12 students" (p. 540). An average teacher assignment in a traditional secondary setting might be five to six classes with about 25 to 30 students in each class, depending on school district. The ratio is even higher in some K-12 online environments, although some states are setting limits on teacher-student ratios. For example, Minnesota's maximum is 40 students in any one online learning course or program, unless waived by the commissioner. In Alabama, class size is to be the same as for courses not taught online (Watson & Ryan, 2006). At FLVS, full-time instructors generally teach five courses; adjuncts teach one course; and each course has about 35 to 40 students. FLVS also indicated that an adjunct instructor generally spends about 15 to 20 hours per week teaching one course (FLVS personal communication, December 18, 2006). Using FLVS only as an example, it would then appear that three courses would take about 45 to 60 hours to meet the needs of all students appropriately. Reasonably, three courses would then constitute full-time with student load about 105 to 120 students.

The online environment features greater use of individualized instruction. Instruction in traditional settings is at best in small groups, rarely individualized, on a regular basis. In an asynchronous online environment with either virtual classrooms or virtual courses, providing highly individualized quality instruction for 175 to 200 students in five courses, as current numbers appear to indicate, would be an overwhelming task.

Why might this be?...

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