class.com overview_2-25-09

8/7/2019 Class.com overview_2-25-09

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Help for At-Risk Students, Adult Learners, ELL, and Accelerated Learners


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About Class.com

MissionClass.com provides innovative educators the tools they need to reach every child. Class.com makeslearning possible anytime, anywhere by combining the best of academia and cutting-edge technology. Our mission is to deliver research-based online high school coursesin a way that helps every teacher and student succeed. Our customers include highschools, school districts, state departments of education, and a variety of otheragencies that serve educators and young people.

HistoryClass.com began as part of a research project at the University of Nebraska-LincolnsDivision of Continuing Studies. In 1996, the University, with a 75-year history of

serving distance learners around the world, was awarded a USED grant to researchand develop an effective Internet-based high school curriculum. The project wasdesigned to harness the power and resources of the Internet to educate at-risk andreluctant learners. Cross-disciplinary teams of instructional designers, subject-matterexperts, classroom teachers, multimedia developers, and software engineersdeveloped the original courses.

Class.comhasbeen

invaluablein

helpingestablishour

virtualhighschool.

Thequalityofthe

coursewareandthe

helpfulnessofthe

staffareexceptional.

Wehavebeenable

tohelpmany

studentsgraduate

ontimeandwith

theirclass,greatly

improvingourfour

highschools NCLB

reportcards.

MargaretB.Walden

Instructional

Programs

Coordinator

Richland

School

District#2

Columbia,SC

Class.com,Inc.

www.class.com

8884825598

[email protected]

In 1999, Class.com was founded to deliver these new media-rich courses to schools.Still headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska, but with users throughout the country, ourprivately held company, now a technology spin-off of the university, develops anddistributes high-quality online content for secondary learners.

Classrooms Without WallsClass.com helps make quality education available anywhere and at any time. Inschool or out, face-to-face or at a distance, Class.com offers access to an excitingnew learning community where students can succeed. Class.com will expand theuniverse of teachers and learners worldwide, helping to eliminate the achievementgap, giving confidence to reluctant learners, and energizing teachers with theopportunity for one-to-one instruction.

Students can take needed courses for credit recovery or for remediation and/oracceleration. For learners who do not fit the traditional classroom, working one-to-one with a teacher may be the perfect solution.

Our Internet-based courses provide a variety of options for educators. Class.com can

make a difference for administrators who must stretch limited resources to servemany types of learners. Class.com can be the solution, helping a school restructure avariety of programs to assure adequate yearly progress for every learner.

Our goal is to make high-quality learning accessible and affordable. We will not letyou fail the students you serve.


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Class.com Philosophy

A mechanism whereby students receive remediation only in weak areas of study can certainly beappropriate for those students who require reinforcement of academic conceptsalready learned, or when a straightforward credit recovery is whats required; theeffectiveness of such an approach is greatest when the targeted population has

well-defined, distinct, andlimited skill deficiencies thatcan result in marginal testfailure. However, Class.combelieves that the mostappropriate remediation forsignificant skill deficienciesthat may result in broader

academic and test failure isa comprehensive approachthat provides appropriatecontext, scaffolding (thestudent moving from knownto unknown material), anda bridge from simple recallto more sophisticated

application and synthesis. Class.com courses are based on both cognitivist andconstructivist theories that stress building from simple to complex, anchoring newknowledge to old, and providing advance organizers to help students makecognitive links to prior knowledge and real world experience.

Class.comhasbeen

anactivepartnerin

ourPlanoISD

eSchoolsinceits

beginning.The

qualityoftheir

coursesandthe

ongoingdialogueon

howwecanwork

togethertoimprove

ourservicestostudentshasbeena

cornerstoneofour

success.

Dr.DougOtto

Superintendent

PlanoISD,TX

Class.com,Inc.

www.class.com

8884825598

[email protected]

This Class.com American History course includes video

interviews with WWII veterans.

Class.com courseware combines direct core instruction with guided practice andexploration. The Class.com approach has evolved beyond the 1960s pre-Internettechnology known as computer-based education or CBE, which stressed individualdrill-and-practice, and which often lacked any context. The Class.com coursewareintegrates technology, appropriate media, and learning tools within the academiccontent, creating a seamless learning environment designed to help studentsorganize their learning and realize whats important. Students can go back andreview, move ahead to explore, and collaborate with students and teachers tolearn in a way that works best for them.Class.com courseware enableslearning in context, individualization within a pre-designed course structure, and opportunities for students to choose activities andassessments that increase engagement and retention. The Class.com approach

gives failing students an opportunity for test success, course success, and theoverall academic success that comes from true mastery and integration of learning.


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Research & Results:Designing & Evaluating Online Instruction

BackgroundThe online courses offered by Class.com are the result of five years research conducted at the Universityof Nebraska under the auspices of a $17.5 million U.S. Department of Education grant. The grant fundedthe design and implementation of what would eventually become the first complete line of coursesdesigned from the ground up for online delivery.Goals: Helping At-Risk Students With Credit RecoveryBecause the Class.com curriculum was designed from the start for Internet delivery, rather than beingmade up of brick-and-mortar courses that had been rehashed for the Web, our goal from the start was todesign and create effective, media-rich courseware that could be delivered 100% via the Internet: Thus,with the exception of novels that an instructor might wish to require in some English courses, no

additional texts or workbooks are required, and no additional diskettes or CDs are necessary.1

Credit recovery is one key use for Web-based courses. The Class.com curriculum was designed to enableschools and districts to offer concentrated Web-based courses to students who have failed (or had towithdraw from) courses that they need for graduation. Thus, credit recovery was a major impetus behindthe design and implementation of each of the Class.com courses.In addition, more and more schools and districts are showing positive results using Class.com courseswith accelerated learners, in before/after school programs, with adult learners, and to help students withscheduling conflicts or special needs, including ELL and homebound students.Research In designing the courses, we looked to current research to help us determine best of breed approaches

in pedagogy, media, and human-computer interface design. Since Class.com courses were designed forthe Web from the start, we had (and maintain) an advantage over curricula originally designed for face-to-face brick-and-mortar presentation and then adapted for the Web. This approach makes Class.comcourses extremely effective, regardless of whether theyre being used for credit recovery, virtual schools,homebound students, or alternative education.Beginning in 1996, educators, subject matter experts, instructional designers, and media specialistsworking under the Federal grant conducted their own research and also surveyed extant work in the areafrom such researchers as Doherty, Clark, Kluger, Wofford, Merrill, Druckman & Bjork, Harp & Mayer,Loman, Lorch, and others.2

Many of those researchers, of course, concentrated on distance learning, but its obvious that bestpractices in teaching often cut across delivery methodologies, just as they often cut across disciplines:Allowing students to practicea skill to which theyve recently been introduced, for example, is a strategythat applies regardless of how the material is delivered and, indeed, regardless of the subject matter.

1 Some Class.com foreign language courses may reference textbooks that the instructor may wish to utilize.2 See, among others: Lorch, R.F., Educational Psychology Review, 1, 209-234 (1989); Loman, N.L. & Mayer, R.E.,

Journal of Educational Psychology, 75, 402-412 (1983); Harp, S.F. & Mayer, R.E., Journal of Educational

Psychology, 89, 92-102 (1997); Druckman, D. & Bjork, R.A., Learning, Remembering, Believing: Enhancing

Human Performance, National Academy Press (1994); Merrill, M.D., Component Display Theory, in

Instructional Design Theories, C.M. Reigeluth (Ed.) (1983); Clark, R., What Works In Distance Learning,

Strategies Based on Providing Learner Control of Instructional Navigation (2003)


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Thus, essential learning strategies in Web-delivered courseware sometimes turned out, not surprisingly,to be identical to essential learning strategies used in a brick-and-mortar classroom. For that reason,researchers such as Marzano in works describing both Web-delivered courseware andtraditionalclassroom interactions were extremely helpful and illuminating. Weve found, therefore, that Marzanosnine essential learning strategies are just as appropriate and useful in Web-based curricula as they are ina face-to-face classroom situation. And, as we would expect, much prior research from Dewey to Bloom also applies regardless of the environment.3

Best PracticesSo, what doeswork best in online courseware? The list is long (and its implementation complex), but wecan certainly point out a few of the most important research findings:

1.If a course is to be delivered on the Web, it should allbe delivered on the Web; use of additionalmaterials (texts, workbooks, CDs, etc.) should be minimized.

2.Instructors are important. The notion (often popular in the 1980s) that passive CBI can beeffective on its own is nave; teachers mustbe involved to guide, to facilitate, to help evaluate,and to enhance and customize the learners experience. Related to this, instructors mustbe ableto modify, enhance, add to, or delete course content.

3.Some skills transcend subject matter; students in eve ycourse should be required to read andwrite.

r

4.Learning must be personalized and made relevant; the question, But why does this matter tome?mustbe answered. Thus the inclusion in Class.com courses of what weve labeled RealWorld Connections.

5.Students must be given frequent and useful feedback and the chance to practice what theyvejust learned.

Rich Media: Instructors vs. Students View sWhile the presence of rich, interactive media is notoften cited by instructors as being all that importantto the success of online courses,the students see it differently.

An algebra animation helps explain the concept of negative slope.

Instructors, understandably, tend

to be more concerned with theadministrative and functional as-pects of courses and their deliverymechanisms than with the idea ofrich media. Theyre much moreinterested in navigability, tracking,and customizability than in whatthey perceive as flash andsizzle.4 From the instructorsperspective, this makes perfectsense: All the bells, whistles, andvirtual frog-dissection labs in theworld mean little if the courses

3 See Marzano, et. al., What Works in Classroom Instruction, Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning

(2000); U.S. Dept. of Education, What Works: Research About Teaching and Learning, U.S. Govt. Printing Office

(1987); and Bloom, B., Human Characteristics and School Learning (1976, McGraw-Hill)4See, among other studies, Standards for K-12 Distributed Learning in British Columbia, BC Ministry of Education(June, 2007) and Quality On The Line: Benchmarks for Success in Internet-Based Distance Education, The Institute

For Higher Education Policy (April, 2000)


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themselves are shoddy, the implementation flawed, delivery unreliable, or the assessment inconsistent or

nonexistent.But students love rich media. Having gown up in a world of personal computers, plasma television,satellite radio, and instant Internet access, they expectthat online courses will exhibit what they considernormal production values. That is, todays students assume that information delivered via the Web even information in the form of a high school course will include sound, visuals, movies, and a level ofinteractivity similar to that to which theyve already been exposed. In order to learn, students must beengaged, and engaging students means, among other things, the inclusion of media.Class.com courses are professionally designed by teams of teachers, subject matter experts, mediaspecialists, and instructional designers, all working together to provide teachers with the tools they needand students with the enjoyable experience they desire. Portions of that experience derive from theinclusion, when appropriate, of media-rich displays and activities such as the virtual microscope used in

our Biology 1A course:

The virtual microscope lab from a Class.com biology course.

A portion of a reactant animation from a Class.com chemistry course.


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How Effective?In the end, results are what matter. In an age in which accountability and standards have become thebywords by which educational institutions are judged, any pedagogical approach must be able to justifyitself by pointing to positive real-world results. If students dont learn, then all the flash and sizzle andresearch in the world means nothing.

VSOL Math ExamIn Virginia, 1000 students who failed the VSOL math exam on the first attempt then took Class.comsAlgebra and Geometry courses. When they retook the VSOL exam, their pass rate was 97%. (Someimprovement was no doubt due simply to increased familiarity with the exam [generally known as thepractice effect], which can amount to several percentage points, but which wouldnt normally lead to a97% pass rate.)5

Virginia math exam results.

Credit Recovery in Algebra RepeatersIn the Los Angeles Unified School District, 63% of 156 students who had previously failed retook the

course and passed with a C or better after taking a Class.com course; only 34% passed with a C or betterusing more traditional methods. The failure rate with Class.com courses was 17%, compared to 47%with traditional courses.

Credit recovery results in Los Angeles Unified School District.

5See Koretz, D., Mitchell, K., Barron, S. & Keith, S., Perceived Effects of the Maryland School PerformanceAssessment Program (1996); Bird, Papadopoulou, et. al., TestRetest Reliability, Practice Effects And Reliable

Change Indices For The Recognition Memory Test, British Journal of Clinical Psychology (2003); and Oliver, R.

& Williams, R.L., Direct and Indirect Effects of Completion Versus Accuracy Contingencies on Practice-Exam and

Actual-Exam Performance, Journal of Behavioral Education, Vol. 14, No. 2, (June 2005)


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Kansas Summer School Completion Rates

Class.comworked

withourschoolto

make

the

entire

high

schoolcurriculum

availabletoour

students.Adult

studentstendtostop

outofschoolwhen

family,jobs,orlifeget

intheway.With

Class.com,wehave

seenstudent

persistenceincrease,as

wellasthequalityof

studentwork.We

wereinitiallyconcernedthatwe

wouldlosestudents

whohadnocomputer

experience,orwho

thoughtthecourses

weretoodifficult.The

oppositehasoccurred.

Inoursecondyear

usingClass.com

courses,wehave

increasedthenumber

ofcomputersinour

lab,aswellasthe

numberofhourswe

areopen.

EvelynLenton,

DiplomaProgram

Coordinator,Antelope

ValleyUnionH.S.

District,Lancaster,CA

Class.com,Inc.

www.class.com

8884825598

[email protected]

Historically, summer school completion rates (partly due to the very nature of thestudents whom it tends to attract and toward whom it is directed) are not as high

as one might like; its not unusual to see completion rates in the 80% range orless.6 Yet, students and teachers using Class.com courses in a recent University ofKansas study reported a 95% summer school completion rate.

Summer school completion rates in Kansas.Engaging At-Risk StudentsMany students achieve at a very high level in traditional educational environments.But students who struggle working within those traditional educational modelsneed alternatives. Dropout prevention and recovery programs, alternative schools,and special needs programs provide focused and student-centric interventions toimprove student achievement. Class.com offers differentiated and individualizedalternatives to schools and districts seeking to improve student retention andincrease graduation rates.

Opportunity at a DistanceIn the end, teaching is teaching: Given a solid curriculum, good instructionaldesign, and knowledgeable and caring instructors, students canand do learn,regardless of (and occasionally in spite of) the mode of delivery. What Web-delivered courses provide is the ability to offer that curriculum and that all-important interaction with the instructor over a distance and at a time convenientto both learners and instructors. As it happens, the transactional distance overwhich this sort of learning occurs, while it means laboring under certain constraints,also provides for the delivery of exciting, innovative, media-rich courses, often tostudents who otherwise would not have the opportunity to take those courses.

6 For example, a recent face-to-face summer school session in the Lincoln, NE public schools had a completion rate

of 81%, while a recent session at a school in Frankfort, IN resulted in a 79% completion rate.


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Class.com Course List

MathematicsAlgebra 1A Expanded!

Algebra 1B Expanded!Algebra 2A Expanded!Algebra 2B Expanded!Essential Math 1AEssential Math 1BGeometry 1A Expanded!Geometry 1B Expanded!Pre-Algebra 1APre-Algebra 1BPrecalculus 1APrecalculus 1BMath Models with ApplicationsCAHSEE Math 1ACAHSEE Math 1B

ScienceBiology 1ABiology 1B Expanded!Chemistry 1AChemistry 1B

Health Science 1AHealth Science 1BLife Science-OceanographyPhysical Science 1APhysical Science 1BPhysics 1APhysics 1BIntegrated Physics &

Chemistry 1AIntegrated Physics &

Chemistry 1B

Language ArtsBeginning CompositionEnglish 9AEnglish 9BEnglish 10AEnglish 10BEnglish 11A (Am. Literature)English 11B (Am. Literature)English 12A (Adv Composition)English 12B (World Literature)CAHSEE English - New!Language LearningSpanish 1ASpanish 1BSpanish 2ASpanish 2BConversational English:Everyday English

Conversational English:Explore Your World

Personal GrowthCareer PlanningStudy Skills

Business & Technology

Business CommunicationBusiness and Personal ProtocolBusiness and Consumer MathIntroduction to Technology

Expanded!

Personal Economics and Finance

Social Studies

American History 1A Expanded!American History 1B Expanded!American GovernmentAnthropologyCivicsMacroeconomicsPsychologyWorld Civilizations 1AWorld Civilizations 1BWorld Geography 1A -New!World Geography 1B New!

Developmental Education

Math Skills ReviewPre-Algebra 1APre-Algebra 1BAlgebra 1AAlgebra 1BEssential Math 1AEssential Math 1BStudy SkillsBeginning Composition

Reading Comprehension


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Technical Specifications

Minimum System Requirements

Operating System Windows 2000 or higherAnd Browser with either Internet Explorer 6.x or higher

Or Firefox 2.x or higher

Macintosh OSX withApple Safari or

Firefox 2.x or higher

Plug-ins Java 1.4

ShockwaveFlash 7.0.19 or higher(Some versions prior to 9.x may not work properly)QuickTime 7.0 or higher(If possible, please use latest versions of all plug-ins)Browsealoud (optional for screen reading)

Connectivity Direct Internet connection;

56kbps modem (High Speed 256K+ recommended)

Memory 128 MB Ram (512MB recommended)Display 800 x 6 00 required (1024 x 7 68 recommended)Peripherals Keyboard, mouse, sound card and speakersAccessories Microphone (headset recommended)

for language coursesSupported Learning Management Systems (LMS)

Blackboard ASP and Self Hosted site options (7.x or 8.x)Moodle ASP Hosted Site (1.9)Angel Learning SP and Self Hosted site options (7.2+)


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Class.com330 South 13 th St.Lincoln, NE 68508

402-441-3050888-482-5598www.class.com

class.com overview_2-25-09

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