E-Learning's Gender Factor

Guiding Principles

When Brad Rathgeber, the president of the Online School for Girls, was thinking about how to design courses for the Bethesda, Md.-based virtual school, which was opened this academic year, officials looked closely at research surrounding girls’ use of technology, he says.

A review of the material helped school leaders develop some guiding principles for course development, which include an emphasis on collaboration and use of the technology to forge connections with fellow students and teachers.

Officials of the school also say they want to push girls to be creative with technology and to apply what they’re learning to the world around them. “The way girls use technology and learn best is when it’s applied to real-world scenarios,” Rathgeber says.

The school will have about 100 students this year, from the four private girls’ schools that started the school. This school year, six courses are being offered, but Rathgeber says that number will increase and eventually the school will be open to a wider pool of female students.

But he says that, unlike the baseball math course, the Online School for Girls’ courses don’t have content that is “geared toward girls.”

Instead, the emphasis has been more about girl-friendly access to the material, he says.

“This is all about the pedagogy and trying to help find ways that girls learn best,” Rathgeber says, “not about trying to give them content that may be appealing just to them in some way.”

Critics say trying to use topics that appeal to one gender can create problems.

Building content toward a perception of what girls are interested in or boys are interested in can leave some students alienated. Not all girls care about shopping, for instance, and not all boys are into sports, says Leonard Sax, the founder and executive director of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, based in Exton, Pa.

“We don’t believe there are profound differences in learning between boys and girls,” he says. “We’d be very concerned about someone trying to establish a program based on some stereotype.”

Having those online courses open to both boys and girls—as the baseball math course is—would make a difference, Sax says.

“The key point is customization,” he says. “Customizing and differentiating instruction and the online digital approach is a natural match.”

That’s where virtual classes may have real success when it comes to gender, says Tom Carroll, the founder and chairman of the Brighter Choice Charter School for Girls and the Brighter Choice Charter School for Boys, brick-and-mortar schools that are both based in Albany, N.Y. Today’s students are used to customizing everything from their music-listening preferences to their TV-viewing choices, he says, and virtual schools may allow boys and girls to customize their own learning by offering, for example, a variety of ways to experience an online class and a variety of subject matter to tackle.

But, Carroll cautions, it’s also important to make sure that students learn material that might not appeal directly to one sex or the other. “We want to allow some choice, butthere is a common core of knowledge that all students have to be exposed to regardless of gender,” he says.

Beyond Preconceived Notions

Even though some of the largest virtual schools are thinking about gender and how it relates to learning, it doesn’t mean they’re developing courses just for girls or for boys.

At the Orlando-based Florida Virtual School, Chief Development Officer Joy Smith says the school is looking closely at how to tailor courses to make them more successful with both boys and girls. Customization, she says, is key.

The school is looking at allowing students to customize, for example, both the background colors for the course interfaces and organizational features for presenting information. In addition, the school is developing avatars—online representations of the students—that could be tailored to their preferences. For example, an avatar might be “a big beefy man, or a scientist,” Smith says.

“We’re going to give them the opportunity to say how they want this information presented,” she says, “and then let them personalize it.” But the Florida Virtual School is being careful not to jump to conclusions about what boys will like or girls will like.

When it launched a new American history course called Conspiracy Code, which is an educational video game, most staff members assumed boys would be most interested and successful because they’re typically more interested in video games, Smith says. It turns out that some of the most successful students in the course have been girls. “We realized that there may be preconceived things we may be holding on to,” Smith says.

Ferdig, of the Research Center for Educational Technology, says he’s developing a virtual course to encourage girls and minority students to go into careers involving science, technology, engineering, and math—the so-called STEM areas.

Research had shown that a social stigma and a lack of mentoring and role models often prevented female and minority students from planning to study in those areas. Research on online STEM courses, however, has shown a spike in the number of girls taking those virtual classes.

To bolster those efforts, Ferdig is working on a STEM-appreciation course for middle school students that would allow them to see a significant number of virtual characters and role models in those fields who would talk about their careers, what they do, and how they got there. Those are interactions the students might not get otherwise.

“This will give them a sense of their possible future self,” Ferdig says. But Ferdig cautions that “we don’t want just female and minority students taking this class. Male students need to come in and see positive female and minority role models, too.”

Vol. 03, Issue 01, Pages 18,22,24

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