Online Courses: Set Up For Success Or Fated For Failure?
Photo Credit: Sara Maya Budhiraja
As in-person courses fill up and students focus on fulfilling their graduation requirements, online classes have become a popular choice for many Hamber students. While online platforms offer a multitude of options, popular classes include Career Life Education 10 (CLE 10), language classes, and First Peoples courses.
Transitioning from grade 9 to 10, students consider taking CLE 10 online as a way to reserve space in their schedule for elective classes. Will Zou (10) takes online classes as a way to gain greater flexibility over his learning, while still completing required classes.
Zou has taken four grade 10 classes online so far: two academics and two electives. Zou shared that online classes can also be an alternative to summer school, where he can still get ahead while being able to follow his own timeline. However, he added that he “took Mathematics 10 [online] just because I missed the summer school deadline.”
Zou first learned of VLN through his older sister and grade counselor, but later on, he did some of his own research online and found other online class platforms. After some proper evaluation of both platforms, he shared that he “prefers NIDES because VLN [can] require in-person exams, which I don’t like.”
Online learning platforms also give students more opportunities to take classes based on personal preferences and interests. Chloe Yoo (10) has taken six online classes as a way to get ahead, but also to branch out and explore her interests.
“Some of these courses, like Korean 11, were not offered at [Hamber],” Yoo said. “Since I had a full schedule, I couldn’t just drop something for something else, as they are all equally important.”
Yoo felt that taking online classes was a more fun experience and was a space where she could “go at [her] own pace,” which felt comforting for her since she “didn’t have [the] pressure of comparison with other people’s pace and their work as well.”
Similar to Zou, Yoo did her own research about the different online learning platforms. There is another online learning platform, similar to VLN and NIDES, called SIDES. As Yoo has taken a variety of courses online, ranging from languages to mathematics, she has learned that “NIDES has [...] a lot more electives and languages than SIDES does because SIDES offers more regular courses, like math and sciences.”
To graduate, students must also complete four credits worth of Indigenous-focused coursework. Marc Solymosi (12) took English First Peoples 12 online to fulfill his English language graduation requirement. “A lot of my friends took VLN to get their First Peoples credit,” Solymosi said. “We were able to discuss coursework on our own time, so there was still a social aspect, even though it wasn’t an in-person class.”