For Coral Springs Charter school students, passing the Edgenuity course is a graduation requirement. With this extensive course on top of school work, students find themselves spending long hours at home not retaining any information about the course and letting the videos just play while they do other things to finish this course. This brings up the question of whether the course would be more useful to students if implemented as an actual class taught by teachers or as it already is as an online course. This article will go over students who have gone through the course or are currently doing the course opinions on the topic.
“I think it’s not effective and it should be an actual class because most students do not take it seriously and some even end up cheating using AI” said junior Gaby Mason. These students see this course as a task and approach it with the mindset of not to learn something and gain knowledge about what is being taught but instead how they can finish it fast and move on to other pieces of homework or activities they have to do. The course is treated like this because it is an online course that is seen to students as just extra work that needs to get done and with this mindset they are not understanding what is being taught.
“I took the course last year and believe that the course being an online class is a lot less effective because the course is taught by videos, and teachers are not there to help you if you don't understand a topic.” Stated senior Santiago Garcia. The advantages of being taught by an actual teacher are lost when the course is taught online. Everyone learns differently, and if the video does not match your style of learning, it can be hard for those who do not like the style of learning the course provides to understand the information.
“The course is a burden to many students. Since it is an online course and not done in school, the workload of the course starts to pile up. Upon homework and extra curricular activities it starts to become something that kids just get done without knowing what they are doing or what it is being taught.” Said junior Shane Borbet. The class itself teaches very important life skills. These are skills that will be applied in real life when we turn older. If taught in an actual school and learned by the students instead of students just letting it finish while they do other things, these students could retain the information much better and be able to be more prepared to apply this information in there lives.
As students do this course, a clear trend has emerged. Many feel that the course being taught as an online class is preventing them from getting the full extent of the course's knowledge. Although the information the course teaches is very good, the current structure is holding it back from being as effective as it can possibly be.
