“Shepherding” at an Online Charter High School
PROCEEDINGS
Jered Borup, George Mason University, United States ; Jeff Drysdale, Charles Graham, Brigham Young university, United States
Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference, in Jacksonville, Florida, United States ISBN 978-1-939797-07-0 Publisher: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), Waynesville, NC USA
Abstract
This descriptive case study examined an online facilitating program at an online charter high school. Each teacher at the school acted as a facilitator for 20-25 students who were drafted by teachers at the start of semester. The facilitator then contacted her students once a week for the first month of the semester and every other week in the months following. The interactions were primarily social and were meant to develop positive relationships with students. Using teacher focus groups, we found that teachers perceived the program to be effective in improving their relationships with students and increasing student engagement. However, several teachers believed that the program was most effective for the middle performing students because the high performers were already engaged in regular interactions with their instructors and low performers tended to avoid or ignore teachers’ attempts to engage them in the course.
Citation
Borup, J., Drysdale, J. & Graham, C. (2014). “Shepherding” at an Online Charter High School. In M. Searson & M. Ochoa (Eds.), Proceedings of SITE 2014--Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (pp. 1527-1533). Jacksonville, Florida, United States: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved March 28, 2024 from https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/130985/.
© 2014 Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)
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