Early Online Learning: A Surprising Discovery
In the mid-2000s, a quiet experiment began in a remote city in North America, with little to no fanfare. A small independent school in British Columbia, Canada, had the crazy idea of trying to better serve the growing homeschool population by beginning a distance learning arm of the school. They set up a copy of Moodle and had hoped to get at least 50 students in the first year to make the venture sustainable. They ended up getting 400! The anticipated groundspring of desire for online learning was actually more like a geyser. And I’m pretty sure they hadn’t even read the Moodle manual yet.
As the school’s online arm quickly ballooned, what became apparent was that creating a successful online education experience for students was hard, especially in complex subjects like math and science. Simply taking the pedagogy, methodology, and proven resources from traditional classrooms and repackaging them for the online world failed miserably. Using text-heavy resources originally designed for teacher-led instruction, but now placing the instructional burden on the student, didn’t result in great learning. Shocking. Apparently, students don’t learn best through the ancient art of staring at paragraphs. This was especially true for underperforming students, who most needed things like clarity and scaffolding. Sadly, these kinds of failures and realizations were still relatively unknown during Covid-19, where many school classrooms unknowingly repeated the same failure all over again, mistakenly concluding that online learning just doesn’t work.
Eventually, the discouragingly high dropout rates and low standardized test scores led the frustrated internal team to sigh in unison: “There must be a better way!” That statement would lead to the birth of StudyForge.
StudyForge Begins
What happened next was an active search for how others were teaching math online, and a video-based approach was found, which seemed to have real potential. After a failed attempt to partner with this provider, and with limited resources available, the only remaining option was for this school to do it themselves. A few teachers worked together with a student animator and began creating video-based online courses, thus officially launching StudyForge. The approach shifted from “read about math” to “watch math unfold.” Students would complete a printable fill-in-the-blank note package while watching video instruction, work on questions that were licensed from another teacher, and play with the odd interactive thrown in.
The result? Student engagement increased, course withdrawal rates fell, and standardized test scores improved. Students were clearly learning better than before! And math course enrolments went way up the following year.
Despite the relative success, however, there were still many problems to be sorted out with online learning, such as:
- How do we handle students who are motivated at the start but fade after the first few weeks?
- How can we know whether students are actually going through all the content? Are some students merely skipping to the answers and moving on?
- How do we prevent students from feeling isolated, anonymous, or forgotten?
- How can student issues be identified sooner so that the teacher can intervene in time?
- What can be done with prior learning gaps in an online environment? How can we make pinpointed resources available to such students?
How do we make learning feel human when the default experience can just feel like me and a screen?
And that’s just the short version.
These were critically important questions. But where were the answers?
The Experimental Research Phase: StudyForge Learns The Hard Way
Without the benefit of established models or research, StudyForge and a few other adventurous curriculum providers who were seeking a better way for online students to learn were essentially pioneers.
The joy of pioneering, I suppose, is that you get to forge your own way, invent new solutions, and relish those rare but game-changing successes. The dream can be captivating and all-consuming. The downside of pioneering, unfortunately, is that you can feel alone at times, especially when you encounter significant problems with no known solutions.
With big hopes and an incomplete map, StudyForge started building a full online high school suite, beginning with math. The years that followed were full of experiments, missteps, and breakthroughs that taught the team what it takes to make good — and bad — online courses.
Learning From Early Mistakes
As mentioned, creating a positive and successful online learning experience is much harder than it looks. StudyForge was no exception. We had a team that was passionate and capable, but we were also early in the discovery process, and we made our share of confident mistakes. The old adage proved true: We didn’t know what we didn’t know. With little research to lean on or others to glean from, we learned most things through trial and error.
Below are some of the mistakes we made, and if you’ve ever tried making online courses yourself, you will probably relate to many of these:
Poor alignment
- Activities and assessments weren’t sufficiently aligned with the instructional content, leading to frustration and discouragement.
Less engaging
- Authors who loved the material tended to overestimate the students’ interest and stamina.
Incorrect assumptions
- Overestimating students’ prior skills, language level, interests, etc., led to material that was too big of a jump from where they were at.
Multiple writers
- Different voices, tones, styles and emphasis resulted in a lack of “flow” and a disruptive experience for students, as well as courses that were too long.
Not personal enough
- Content experts would often move through the material in sequence but miss the important connective tissue, such as transitions, clarifications, common misconceptions, and the human touch.
Lack of variety
- Over-reliance on a single medium results in instructional issues such as long videos, long readings, too few interactive breaks, etc.
Not realizing we were already two strikes down
- Many students start out unsure whether they can actually learn online. They are used to a teacher guiding them in real time, and they worry about getting stuck without help nearby. So the course begins “guilty until proven innocent,” and early missteps such as unclear instruction, surprise assessments, or a first unit that’s too hard, only confirm their fears. And many quit.
Great Teacher ≠ Great Course Writer
These were just a few of the hard lessons learned in that early season. One of the biggest lessons we learned, though, which caused a lot of problems, was this:
Just because someone is a great classroom teacher does not mean they will be a great online course creator.
While a great classroom teacher has many strengths that help students learn, we found that many of those strengths don’t actually translate to the online learning environment.
Consider what often makes a teacher “great.” Some teachers shine because they feed off of the room’s energy and improvise brilliantly, seizing learning opportunities in the moment. Others stand out through their charming presence and charisma or their fantastic sense of humor. Others excel because of how well they manage a room, quickly noticing confusion and offering a second or even third explanation. For some teachers, it’s the relationship that makes the difference, and they’re able to expertly motivate students by making them feel known and cared for. And some teachers have the incredible ability to “repair” things on the fly, rescuing disjointed materials or making assessments feel fair again by clarifying expectations in real time.
While these qualities are amazing, most only surface in face-to-face interactions, a feature less prominent in the online course environment. In the classroom, the teacher is the interface. They keep a consistent tone, ensure clarity, keep the overall sequence in mind, and constantly fill in the gaps with instructions to keep it all moving. In an online environment, the course is most of the interface, and it doesn’t notice the blank stares. It just… keeps going. Clarity, sequencing and instructions all have to be baked into the instructional design.
Even if a teacher’s superpower is being a content expert, that doesn’t mean they are also skilled media designers. Online courses require separate skill sets like creating accessibility, multimedia pacing, interactive design, pedagogically-consistent visuals, and built-in supports. For example, traditional textbooks certainly have excellent content, yet they have proven insufficient as the core of an online course.
For all these reasons and more, StudyForge came to the sobering conclusion that building highly effective online course experiences for students and teachers is remarkably challenging.
But we didn’t give up.
Still in the Forge, Asking Questions
As StudyForge continued to evolve its course design, key questions remained, such as:
- What kind of course design reduces confusion instead of multiplying it?
- What skills, qualities, and attributes are essential to being a great course writer?
- How do we know when struggle is productive versus overwhelming?
- How do we chunk, scaffold, and pace learning to prevent overload and keep momentum?
- What is effective video pedagogy when it comes to graphics, animation, and guiding student focus?
- How do we design supports so that more students can access the learning without lowering the standard?
- How do we create an experience that still feels human, even when the student is by themselves?
These were the kinds of questions StudyForge kept asking, as it patiently innovated, iterated, and improved on its courses over the following 15 years. It was almost like trying to build a better plane while still flying in it.
But eventually, after numerous bouts of turbulence and unscheduled setbacks, the plane flew. And far!
Where did it land? What did StudyForge discover in regards to effective online course design? How well does StudyForge’s model align with what we now know about effective online learning?
Stay tuned for a future article that will answer these questions and more!
About the Author
Bruce Merz, M.A.
(Curriculum & Instruction), M.Sc.(Math)
Bruce is a passionate educator who has taught for over 25 years at both the secondary and post-secondary levels, in the classroom and online, and in the public and private/independent educational sectors, including educational work for the government. Bruce is the STEM Curriculum Specialist at StudyForge. He loves designing courses that create amazing learning experiences for students and help them achieve their potential. He also loves seeing how digital curriculum can help students in developing regions such as in the townships of South Africa, where he was able to see this firsthand, and is excited about what the future holds for education around the globe.
