The Maryland Virtual learning Opportunities Program provides two types of online courses and resources to support student achievement:

1. Online courses for high school credit
2. Online course/curriculum resources to support success on the High School Assessments

MVLO Online Courses Program Description

The Maryland Virtual Learning Opportunities Program, an educational service managed by the Maryland State Department of Education, is designed to expand the access of Maryland public schoolstudents to challenging curricula aligned to the Maryland Content Standards as well as to other appropriate standards through the delivery of high quality online courses.  The Maryland Virtual Learning Opportunities Program (MVLO) offers online courses for high school credit in collaboration with the local school systems.  The teaching is conducted online with the teacher physically separated from the student.  The teacher communicates with student online and via the telephone and a School Site Coordinator provides site-based support.  MVLO is not a school and does not offer a complete high school diploma program online.  The credit earned by taking an MVLO course is entered into the student’s record by the local public high school or school system.  Students may take a course through MVLO only with the permission of the local system and the school principal.

Online courses are being used by other states and by school systems across the nation and within Maryland to address these issues. Specifically, states and school systems are using online courses to:

• Expand the range of courses and opportunities offered to students;
• Offer courses for students when there are no qualified teachers to teach the courses;
• Allow students to take a course when there are too few students who need a certain course to be able to assign a teacher to teach that course;
• Provide courses for students who have schedules that prevent them from taking a course when it is offered;
• Present high quality instruction to students who are in special settings or on home and hospital instruction;
• Provide additional support and extended time to students who failed to achieve in regular courses;
• Allow students who are juniors or seniors and need a course to be able to graduate within the four-year period to make up that course.

Online Course/Curriculum Resources to Support Success on the High School Assessments

MSDE has developed two and is developing two additional online courses/curriculum resources that can be used by schools and teachers as part of their regular class instruction, as part of intervention or remediation efforts, as an extension to the instruction for students who have been absent, need extra practice, extended time or a additional way of learning the materials, and/or part of outreach efforts with parent and community support groups.  The courses can also be used as a regular credit bearing online course.

Timeline:
Algebra/Data Analysis and Government are being used currently.
Biology will be ready for fall 2006 and English 2 for fall 2007.

The Online Courses/Curriculum Resources are designed to be flexible so that teachers can use them as a whole course, use whole units within course, or just use some of the lessons and assessments.  The content of the courses is directly aligned with the Core Learning Goals in Algebra/Data Analysis and the Voluntary State Curriculum in Government.  The pedagogical design, content, and assessments replicate the requirements of the High School Assessments.  Each course is designed to provide students with the kinds of reading, writing, mathematical calculation and problem solving, and analyses tasks that they need to be successful on the associated high school assessment.  For example, in the Government course, students are asked to read, analyze, and write about Supreme Court cases as well as charts, graphs, and political cartoons.

Formative and summative assessments and student self checks are included each unit.  Using the reporting features of the course management system and the embedded assessment, teachers are able to use formative data to target and differentiate instruction.  The unit summative assessments provide feedback on how well the students have mastered the content of the unit and the associated CLG or VSC indicators.  These unit assessments align with the High School Assessments for the content items covered in the unit and mirror the question types.  Teachers can get three types of reports from the assessment results:  whole group performance, individual student performance on the assessment as a whole and on each question, and a question analysis.

The online content can be used with a variety of audiences and in a variety of settings and ways.

Possible audiences include:

• Whole class
• Small group
• Student in need of intervention
• Student who has been absent
• Student in need of remediation
• Student who needs extra practice or extended time
• Teachers
• Instructional assistants
• Parents
• School-based tutors

Possible uses include:

• Remediation
• Intervention
• Differentiation
• Study groups
• Whole class demonstration
• Whole class assignment