Virtual Teaching Network expands courses for students

Loughrey said the Network would eventually offer a full range of courses, but at present, TEA is working to develop a set of standards for the program to meet accreditation standards. One of the main goals is to make sure that courses meet the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills curriculum standards and the National Standards for Quality Online Courses endorsed by the North American Council for Online Learning.

Many school districts will only receive courses for their students, she said, but many will also be providers of content to the network, extending the reach of specialized instructors for courses that are difficult or too expensive for some districts to offer.

"To that end, the state is going to set standards for the quality of these classes," she said. "We went though a competitive request-for-proposal process to find agencies qualified to host the network, review courses and train online instructors."

Through that process, TEA has partnered with several Education Service Centers (ESC) and other entities around the state to provide the service. Those partners include:

• The Region 10 ESC in Richardson and the Harris County Department of Education as headquarters for network operations;
• The Region 4 ESC in Houston, to review Internet courses and ensure they meet state standards; and
• Five professional development providers to train educators to teach electronic courses, including the Education Development Center, Inc.; ESC Region 4; ESC Region 11 in Fort Worth; Harris County Department of Education; and Texas A&M University Center for Distance Learning Research.

Loughrey said course offerings are designed to be more than a passive learning experience.

"The course designed will include a great deal of, in effect, virtual classroom discussion," she said. "The courses will have an extensive amount of interaction between the teacher and the student over the course material."

She said the state's rural school districts would be one of major beneficiaries of the program.

"Some rural or small districts just can't offer the same courses as the 'big boys,'" Loughrey said. "They often have a very thin course catalog while others have a very thick catalog. They can, over time as the network grows, expand their curriculum so that their kids can have the same choices that the kids in bigger schools have."

She said some districts are unable to offer the basic courses for graduation because of limited funds or a lack of qualified teachers, so this will eventually help all schools to offer the state's high school graduation plan.

Loughrey said that even though there are big plans for the Network, they are starting small.

"The money that we have is much, much less than we calculated it would take to implement the entire program," she said. "So we are starting small. We are starting with the pieces we can put in place with the money that we've got."