Enter the School Online Promoter for Online Course Success

Abstract

Often schools are unable to offer a wide curriculum at the Pre-tertiary level (16-18 year olds) because of small cohorts or limited finance to employ the full-time specialist. Some schools, however, have incorporated alternative online instruction instead of conventional direct instruction. However, these online Pre-tertiary learners have to negotiate with working in an unfamiliar virtual working environment, lack of sustained motivation, and the sense of being anonymous and not accountable in any meaningful way. Using data based on 20 interviews with international Pre-tertiary students, school staff, and online provider administrative staff, we propose the Online Partnership Model that has the potential to address these motivational and accountability challenges. In this model, the online provider formally trains and continually works together with an “Online promoter” who is a designated member of the school’s staff that is in regular face-to-face contact with the online student. The findings indicate that the motivational role of the Online promoter is welcomed by students, schools, and the online provider as being crucially supportive to student motivational well-being in the virtual environment. With such support, online delivery could well be a viable means of enabling schools to widen their curriculum without having to employ additional staff. For schools, this means that they can offer more specialized subjects (for example, Economics, Psychology, Film Studies, Mandarin) in their curricula where the small number of students does not justify employing a specialist teacher.