Distance Learning Helps Motivate

The Harvey School successfully launched its second year of distance learning classes this past summer, giving students an opportunity to take courses through this new and exciting medium.

The distance learning program, first brought to the school last year by coordinator Michelle Christie and her husband, Chris Kelly, was expanded this year to include four courses: Pre-calculus, Algebra 2, Biology, and Writing. Instructors Chris Kelly, Marty Bernstein, Jason Hill, and Erica Stark all found the program advantageous to their teaching, and especially liked the interactive aspects of the software.

Its real-time nature makes this learning initiative stand out from the rest, says Ms. Christie. “Most other distance leaning programs are conducted asynchronously and don’t allow for the high-level of interactivity between the teacher and student,” she says.
“This is not a self-study program where students only have access to their teachers via email or message boards,” Ms. Christie says. “The Harvey program is about a teacher present in an online classroom with a group of students, all working and communicating together.”
“This is great for students who are motivated to do well,” says Ms. Stark, who taught the six-week writing workshop. “The learning environment fosters an independent work ethic, and that’s important for high school students.”

“Students are able to focus for considerably longer periods of time,” said Mr. Kelly. “In addition, the direct messaging [chat] feature allows every student to answer a question simultaneously, which creates a continuous interactive and dynamic exchange in a completely controlled environment.” Mr. Kelly added that the best feature might be the student’s ability to ask the teacher questions privately. “This healthy anonymity provides an opportunity for students to ask questions without the fear of embarrassment that sometimes exists in a traditional classroom.”

Mr. Kelly had nine students in his Pre-calculus class. His teaching tools included an online textbook and a graphing calculator emulator. He was able to talk to students throughout the class and used a digital tablet to demonstrate complex math problems on the classroom’s whiteboard. His students were also equipped with tablets, allowing them to show their work as if using a pencil and paper.
The classroom’s whiteboard is shared by the students and the teacher, and the room also allows application-sharing, which means that the teacher can share a website or software program, such as the graphing calculator, with the students, allowing them to not only see the application, but also use the application themselves.

“People think that because students are online, they’re too removed from the teacher, but with this system that is not true at all,” said Mr. Hill, who taught Honors Biology. Mr. Hill was able to use an online textbook and share multimedia files to convey his course content effectively. Mr. Bernstein, who taught Algebra 2, said that, in many cases, students can learn even better than in the classroom due to the lack of social distractions that can disrupt the traditional learning environment.

Mr. Kelly is currently developing an online SAT prep course, which will start at the end of November and a number of other teachers are planning to conduct online review throughout the year. In addition, Ms. Christie plans to establish online sessions where students can meet to study and do work collaboratively.

For more information about Harvey’s distance learning program, go to www.eharvey.org; you can also contact Michelle Christie at (914) 232-3161 x 400 or mchristie@harveyschool.org.