The online school operated by Southeast Cornerstone School Division, Cyber Stone Virtual School, has been growing, and is seeing success stories for students who would not do well in a traditional bricks-and-mortar school otherwise.
The Cornerstone board of trustees heard a presentation on the virtual school at their first meeting of the new school year on Wednesday with Jeff Walters, co-ordinator of instructional technology, and Cyber Stone principal Susan Wilson.
“We do have a lot of students struggling with things like anxiety, and can’t go to a brick-and-mortar school. They are able to express themselves with an outlet to help them deal with some of these issues,” said Wilson.
Cyber Stone has grown from its early beginnings in 2006 when only a few subjects were offered to a few students in an online format. It received a burst of growth with the official launch of Cyber Stone in the 2012-13 school year. The growth continued in 2016-17 to include Grade 8 and 9 classes. Up to that point, it had only been offered to the three more senior grades. Now students can fulfill all graduation requirements through Cyber Stone if needed.
Cyber Stone currently offers 46 courses, with a 47th course, Creative Writing 20, to start in the second semester. In the first semester currently, there are 363 students registered in 533 courses.
In the 2018-19 school year, there were 220 credits earned in the first semester and 430 credits in the second semester. Of those credits, 178 were for Practical and Applied Arts, 169 for math, 120 for Social Studies, 95 were for science, 61 for ELA, five for Phys.Ed (which was Wellness 10) and 22 were for additional courses.
“Some schools register their students for the entire year, but many will wait till the end of January to register second-semester students,” noted Wilson.
“I want to say the cyber school is great, like their flexibility. I think they’re doing a great job, they’re very helpful,” said trustee Elwood White, who was listening in on the meeting from his home.
Of the students who enroll in Cyber Stone, 65 per cent are successfully completing their courses during the school year, with four per cent extending to the next school year, and 20 per cent are student-initiated withdrawals from a course.
There were a number of students who had a “never started” note, but Walters explained these were students who signed up in June for a course, but decided by September they don’t want to take it.
Wilson noted that credit recovery is at 35 per cent, as they give students the summer to work on the course. The graduation rate from Cyber Stone is 89.7 per cent, only slightly lower than the Cornerstone rate of 91.2 per cent.
Of the students taking courses through Cyber Stone, 86.2 per cent are in Grades 10-12, 7.2 per cent are in Grades 7-9, and the balance are adults.
Asked in a survey why they were taking Cyber Stone, about half of the students said it was for a course not offered at their school, 13 per cent said they prefer to take courses on-line, and about 8.6 per cent said they attend a small school that doesn’t have some of these courses available.
Asked if they feel online learning works for them, 58.4 per cent said it does, while 37.4 per cent said it worked “somewhat”, but would prefer to take it in a classroom, and a very small number said they are not suited for online learning.
Students who enroll in Cyber Stone must take an introductory course first, and they get support from base-school teachers and transition meetings to help go from the classroom to working online.
Wilson showed examples of how students at home interact with teachers, such as examples where a teacher asks to see the work in a physics or math equation, or if a student has a question on how to do the work, the calculations are shown written out as they explain the process to the student.
Showing other examples of students work, one photo showed a student’s special project, showing a steer at the Creelman Fair over the summer.
The trustees also heard there are widely-varying reasons why some students take Cyber Stone. One student had to go to Dubai to take care of her grandmother, and took online courses via Cyber Stone to keep up with her school work. The student is still there and is currently taking another course.
Another explained that she is a mom to a 15-month-old girl with a job, so she found going to a traditional school was not really very feasible for her. Her goals are to graduate and then to go on as a continuing care assistant or office administrator. Still other students had health issues that prevented them from being able to attend school on a regular basis.
One student from Midale loves physics, and was able to attend the Quantum Cryptography School for Young Students at the Perimeter Institute at the University of Waterloo. She had sent a group photo, and was the only student from Saskatchewan in the group, as well as being the youngest one there.
