When the classroom is online

Much has been written about how technology enables adults to cram more activities into the workday. Online high-school classes are enabling teenagers to do the same. Drastic school budget cuts in the coming year are likely to drive more high-achieving teenagers to take advanced-placement courses online, as I report in today’s Work & Family column.

Critics say high-school students who take online courses lose out on face-to-face teacher contact and stimulating class discussions. On the other hand, several parents and students I interviewed for this story say students save time by not having to plod through the traditional school day – moving between classes, waiting for announcements and attendance-taking, and messing around at lunch.

Many of these high-achieving students are also highly skilled multitaskers. Taking classes online frees students to splice in coursework, lectures, exams and homework in the late evening or early morning. This leaves more time for juggling internships, extracurricular activities and community-service work.

One 17-year-old Indiana student has raced through high school in three years and will enter college with as many as 24 credits next fall – all while spending several hours a week volunteering at a program for special-needs kids. Asked if he worries about his daughter spending too much time online, this teen’s father says he and his wife both spend up to eight hours a day on their computers working, “so it would be pretty hypocritical to condemn” his teen for doing the same.

Another online student, a Massachusetts senior, says taking an AP course online has helped her fit in cheerleading for two sports, a communications internship, and volunteering at a camp for special-needs children.

And the mother of a 16-year-old Pennsylvania student, a dedicated cellist who aspires to becoming a professional performer, says he would never be able to fit in his usual three to four hours of daily practice unless he was able to take one of his AP courses online. If he were enrolled in traditional courses, “he would be up extremely late and extremely early in the morning” studying, she says.

Readers, do you think moving more high-school classes online is a partial solution? Or do students miss too much by not discussing subjects in class and meeting face-to-face with teachers?

How much virtual coursework do you think is good for kids, and how much is too much? And what do you think about students trying to cram so much into their days?

The Wall Street Journal