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An online school (virtual school or e-school or cyber-school) teaches students entirely or primarily online or through the Internet. It has been defined as "education that uses one or more technologies to deliver instruction to students who are separated from the instructor and to support regular and substantive interaction between the students. Online education exists all around the world and is used for all levels of education (K-12, college, or graduate school). This type of learning enables the individuals to earn transferable credits, take recognized examinations, or advance to the next level of education over the Internet.

Virtual education is most commonly used at the high school or college level. Students who are of the age 30 or older, tend to study online programs at higher rates. This group represents 41% of the online education population, while 35.5% of students ages 24–29 and 24.5% of students ages 15–23 participate in virtual education.

Virtual education is becoming increasingly used worldwide. There are currently more than 4,700 colleges and universities that provide online courses to their students. In 2015, more than 6 million students were taking at least one course online, this number grew by 3.9% from the previous year. 29.7% of all higher education students are taking at least one distance course. The total number of students studying on campus exclusively dropped by 931,317 people between the years 2012 and 2015. Experts say that because the number of students studying at the college level is growing, there will also be an increase in the number of students enrolled in distance learning.

Contents

 * 1 Instructional models
 * 2 History
 * 3 Pricing and location
 * 4 See also
 * 5 References

Instructional models
Instructional models vary, ranging from distance learning types which provide study materials for independent self-paced study, to live, interactive classes where students communicate with a teacher in a class group lesson. Class sizes range widely from a small group of 6 pupils or students to hundreds in a virtual school.

The courses that are independent and self-paced are called asynchronous courses. Typically for this type of learning, the students are given the assignments and information and are expected to complete the assignments by the due date. This is done on their own time. There is no scheduled time when the class meets. Usually, the only interactions that take place are through discussion boards, blogs, and wikis.

On the other hand, synchronous online courses happen in real-time. The instructor and students all interact online at the same time. This is done either through text, video, or audio chat. Therefore these lessons are socially constructed. In addition to the scheduled class time, there are usually additional assignments to complete.

Hybrid, sometimes also referred to as blended courses are when students learn and interact both in-person and online. Theses classes meet in person during the semester in addition to computer-based communication.

History
The mid-1990s saw the advent of completely virtual schools. Many of today's virtual schools are descendants of correspondence schools. The earlier online schools began in Australia, New Zealand, North America and the UK, generally in areas where low-density population made schooling by conventional means difficult and expensive to provide. In 2008, an assessment found high dropout rates. As in other computerized environments, once the glamour of the new methods wore off it became clear that human skills were paramount to success, in this case, teaching and welfare expertise. Where this is recognized, retention is good, i.e. in the synchronous, socially structured models; in the huge MOOC style courses, the same isolation problems as correspondence learning are found.

Sometimes referred to as "distance learning", correspondence schools offered students an alternative to the traditional brick and mortar meetings within a schoolhouse. These schools utilized the postal service for student-teacher interaction or used two-way radio transmissions, sometimes with pre-recorded television broadcasts. Students were expected to study their learning material independently and, in some cases, meet with a proctor to be tested.

Virtual schools now exist all around the world. Over the past decade, K-12 online instruction has dramatically increased in both Canada and the United States. Some of these virtual schools have been integrated into public schools (particularly in the United States), where students sit in computer labs and do their work online. Students can also be completely home-schooled, or they can take any combination of public/private/home-schooling and online classes.

The International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) developed a set of standards released in September 2007 and updated on October 12, 2011. These standards will help monitor online programs and ensure that every provider of education is accredited.

The COVID-19 pandemic spurred a dramatic increase in online schooling. Governments around the world instituted stay-home mandates and many schools closed their doors to prevent infection from spreading through some populated spaces.

 The Affects of Virtual school 

Virtual school uses the internet to teach students online. It has been a resource used for many years and now more than ever before. Virtual school is a different approach to learning compared to formal education (Young, Birtolo, & McElman, 2009). Students can work at their own pace, receive instant responses/support, and learn technological skills. (Hart, Berger, Loeb, & Hill, 2019). Due to the fact that virtual school is a different approach to education there are many underlying factors that can affect high school students' grades. Some examples that can influence students' overall grades are their personal characteristics, interaction, and virtual school size. Student characteristics effect student success in virtual school. A student's characteristics can affect their overall grades in formal education. But in cases like that there is still a teacher

face-to-face that can help a student stay focused and get them back on track with the class. Whereas in virtual school this is not the case and is not the case and self-directed learning is a necessity to keep up with the material and grades for each course (CIGDEM & YILDIRIM, 2014). A student's self-motivation and readiness is a requirement but even if one is self-motivated students who do not have technological skills see a greater affect in classroom success (Hart, Berger, Loeb, & Hill, 2019). This creates confusion, frustration, and the feeling of failure. But those who are more technologically advanced and can self-direct use the unique approaches of virtual school to get a passing grade for their course. They repeat material until mastery or go ahead of their current material in which they probably would not be able to do so in a regular class. virtual school, online communication can affect student grades. From a constructivism's point of view, “Learning is participating in and interacting with the surrounding environment,” (Park & Kim, 2020). Students use their environment and peers as a motivation which can make or break them in a class. Loneliness can truly affect a student. Teacher expectations also provide self-motivation through smiles, eye contact, and gestures such as thumbs up which is a different form of communication. But through online education there are many ways for students to interact with teachers and peers as well. Students use so many communication tools to interact which is what virtual school implements. They use phones, laptop's, ipad's and many different apps to stay connected. Virtual school is the same approach but education-based communication (Young, Birtolo, & McElman, 2009). They have websites like zoom and google classroom to ensure there is access to communicate virtually. In the same view, class sizes can affect students' overall grades as well. In a formal classroom, students do better with smaller class sizes. In virtual school there is a bit more freedom and teachers are not succumbed to a small class. They can enroll so many more children without the building being a problem as there isan endless amount of space virtually. But the relationship between class size and student achievement still matters in virtual school (Olsen & Kalinski, 2017). Students need to have equal access to a teacher and a teacher needs to be available for students but there is no way for one to be available with grand classes and still be equally accessible. This is what is shown in the case study for southwestern schools. Which of course identified that online courses do perform better with smaller class sizes (Olsen & Kalinski, 2017).

Focusing on undergraduate and graduate programs, virtual school is far from a foreign experience. Many universities have had online classes offered, and there have been many successes come from this. One of the biggest issues in virtual school for higher education is participation and sense of community considering most online students participate through a cell phone or laptop screen. Some universities and professionals on virtual school have attempted to come up with ways to encourage students to participate, for example “distance learning tuition has depended on engaging the student in active learning by embedding activities in the course readings, with feedback on the assessment task providing the opportunity for interaction with a tutor.” (Robinson 2009). Another example of participation and student engagement would be “the study by Chen et al. (2010), based on data linked to the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) in the United States, argued that there is a positive relationship between the use of learning technology, student engagement and outcomes of learning.” (Kahn 2016). Student engagement is simply referring to how hard students try in school, in this instance when it is online versus in person. The experiment found that higher education students try harder when their classes are taught through the usage of technology. Virtual school has also been considered informal in some systems, considering face-to-face learning is the more traditional education option. There is a difference seen between in person and virtual schooling, however, and higher education has come to help both succeed. In the example of higher education utilizing both in person and virtual schooling or online education, “It has likewise become a platform for both campus based as well as open and distance universities to reach a global audience, breaking down traditional geographic and spatial–temporal barriers to professional development and learning by offering convenient and flexible programming.” (Peters 2019). In Australia during 2011, one college facility worked on integrating “Second Life” into their online education to promote student engagement in an online classroom, essentially into virtual school, as well as into face to face learning. “Second Life” is essentially a virtual reality style system that uses a 3D environment to engage the students and help feel more involved and intrigued. The journal study published on it explains Second Life, “Developed by Linden Labs, users can access SL through the Web for no cost, as the software is free to download. Users create an avatar, a computer-generated persona of themselves (Childs 2010), that represents both their presence in SL and their identity (Dickey 2003). It also acts as the ‘camera’ (Dickey 2003, 107) or eyes of the user to view the 3D virtual environment.” (Matthews 2012). In regards to how virtual school came to be, one graduate program known as U21Global  took advantage of upgrades needing to be done to help integrate virtual schooling more seamlessly into their curriculum back in 2008. This graduate program approached it from a technological standpoint to allow the students to utilize the system without fear of a poor system crashing, as well as having it be more sustainable and having a smaller hardware footprint. The implantation of their system called Red Hat Enterprise Linux  allowed the system engineer to publicly state, “we met our goals for a high-performance virtualization implementation that is stable, reliable, scalable and secure .” (Virtual graduate school exploits data center visualization 2009). This is an excellent example that fully online courses and programs for higher education have been in place for more than a decade.

Virtual school environments utilizes the use of technology with different resources to ensure the success of its virtual student. Since it is not set up like a traditional face to face classroom, certain resources like the internet, gamification, and web videoconferencing are used more frequently in the virtual learning environment. Through the use of the internet, different resources can be accessed by the virtual student. The internet itself can be credited on what enabled modern distance learning to be developed (Berg 2016). The internet can allow the virtual student to have access to resources such as “course management systems that incorporates digital reading materials, podcasts to allow the student to have easy access to the lectures, chatrooms, and virtual test taking functions “(Berg 2016). Services such as e-tutoring and e-mentoring can be offered in the virtual learning setting. The utilization of web videoconferencing allows a student to communicate virtually with their teacher or any other mentor through the use of the apps zoom and WebEx cisco. Zoom is a web videoconferencing app that is free of download on a mobile device, laptop, or desktop. Through the use of zoom, one on one or group meetings can occur between the students and teachers virtually. This app allows the teacher to share their screen to show exactly what they are teaching and even gives the option to screen record their lectures to make it accessible to the student for future use as a resource (Mukhopadhyay et al., 2020). Cisco Webex offers a lot of the same features as zoom by it being a web-conferencing app as well. To engage virtual students even further a process known as gamification is used. Gamification is the use of “game mechanisms and designs to make a student’s learning experience more fun and engaging” (Doumanis, Economou, Sim, & Porter 2018). The first gamification resource that is utilized in the virtual learning environment is the REVERIE VP which stands for Real and Virtual Engagement in Immersive Environments Virtual Parliament. The REVERIE VP is set up with different tools that consist of realistic 3D environments and human-like avatars (Doumanis et al.,2018), to give virtual students the most realistic experience. Another known gamification system used in virtual learning is called Secondlife and Open Simulator 3D. Both online virtual worlds have learning settings that mimics collaborations and social interactions that goes on in a typical face to face classroom (Stefan, Hermon, & Faka, 2018). Gamification can help positively motivate a student to succeed in a virtual learning setting. The use of rewarding points and receiving badges while playing an e-learning game can “elevate internal motivation in the student to succeed and encourage them to achieve the learning goals imposed on them from the game’s objectives” (Gafni, Achituv, Eidelman, & Chatsky 2018 p.39 & 40). Technology plays an important role in virtual learning because without it, virtual learning would not be possible. Through technology, the internet can be used as a means to learn and utilize other resources that are offered there. Zoom and Cisco Webex gives another form of communication and learning through web videoconferencing. Gamification can give the virtual student the opportunity to learn through a system that has game-like features to enhance the learning process. Although the virtual learning environment is not like the face to face learning environment, it still holds the capability of running like a traditional classroom through the resources it offers

Virtual school has a vast array of uses, ranging from grades schools to graduate school for master’s programs. There are many different online resources ranging from Zoom  that can be used by everyone of all ages, to the original setup of Red Hate Enterprise Linux utilized in a graduate program. High school and collegiate virtual schools can resemble each other in a way, however, the biggest difference in the teacher’s involvement in guiding the students to focus as well as the difficulty in material. In college, virtual school is he easiest way to view a lecture and ask questions. Most high school zoom classes are more interactive, with questions ranging from math one on one help, to breakout groups to do the PowerPoint equivalent of a posterboard project. The concept from virtual school isn’t new, however, due to the technological advancements, the virtual school system is far more prepared to be utilized by a mass crowd than ever before.

Pricing and location
Where online methods are integrated with State provision, costs follow state school standards. Otherwise, fees must be met by the student or parents. Many US school district s are now creating their own online services to avoid paying external providers. Such students can graduate from their home district without ever leaving home. In most of these cases, students are given computers, books, and even Internet service to complete coursework from home.

With the resources of the Internet as a library, and the ease of making online study materials, there is usually a comparatively small requirement for textbook s. Most courses will provide electronic materials free of cost, or included in the course fee. Textbooks are most often required for an exam syllabus course.An online school (virtual school or e-school or cyber-school) teaches students entirely or primarily online or through the Internet. It has been defined as "education that uses one or more technologies to deliver instruction to students who are separated from the instructor and to support regular and substantive interaction between the students. Online education exists all around the world and is used for all levels of education (K-12, college, or graduate school). This type of learning enables the individuals to earn transferable credits, take recognized examinations, or advance to the next level of education over the Internet.

Virtual education is most commonly used at the high school or college level. Students who are of the age 30 or older, tend to study online programs at higher rates. This group represents 41% of the online education population, while 35.5% of students ages 24–29 and 24.5% of students ages 15–23 participate in virtual education.

Virtual education is becoming increasingly used worldwide. There are currently more than 4,700 colleges and universities that provide online courses to their students. In 2015, more than 6 million students were taking at least one course online, this number grew by 3.9% from the previous year. 29.7% of all higher education students are taking at least one distance course. The total number of students studying on campus exclusively dropped by 931,317 people between the years 2012 and 2015. Experts say that because the number of students studying at the college level is growing, there will also be an increase in the number of students enrolled in distance learning.

Contents

 * 1 Instructional models
 * 2 History
 * 3 Pricing and location
 * 4 See also
 * 5 References