DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Steve Baxendale, director of the PRELStar program for Pacific Resources for Education and Learning, talks to people in Saipan via a computer and television monitor. He has been named board vice chairman of the North American Council for Online Learning.

Educator sees great
potential in online learning

Steve Baxendale Board appointment: Vice chairman of the North American Council for Online Learning Day job: Directs the PRELStar program at Pacific Resources for Education and Learning. Council mission: Funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to promote high-quality online education for K-12 students.

How did you get involved in the council?

PREL has been involved in distance education for 10 years. We are (Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications) members because PREL provides distance education for students as well as higher education, primarily geared toward teachers. So we straddle both areas. I serve on some national boards and work closely with other online providers nationally, so I was nominated to be involved with the board. Also, I direct a project here that provides distance learning services to educators in Hawaii and throughout PREL's areas of operation in the Pacific.

So your position on the board is closely related to your work at PREL?

It's very close, yes. I direct the PRELStar program. We provide online courses for teachers and students and we do a lot of consulting with educators and administrators here and in our region, which includes American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau.

Have you been involved with Hawaii's online charter school, the Myron B. Thompson Academy?

I haven't, although I know the principal, Diana Oshiro. We were recently on Jay Fidell's ThinkTech Hawaii together talking about virtual schools and online learning.

What do you think of the idea?

I think we should look at all aspects of education. For some students, online schooling is great. What online schooling does is it allows you to offer classes to all students that they otherwise wouldn't have access to. For example, you could have four students at a small Big Island school who want to take advanced calculus. The school can't devote resources to a class for four students, but those students can take the course online. I don't think we've explored it enough or used it enough.

Is online education ever an ideal solution, or is it just a good alternative when logistics make face-to-face classroom time impractical?

I hesitate to answer that because it may be a solution for some students in some situations. For some students, it works very well. It depends on their interests. It can work for students who are self-motivated learners and are involved in real-world work, for instance student athletes. If you're training for the Olympics, you're training six or eight hours and day and you're going to meets. It's great for them, or for actors, or young people with other kinds of work. It also might work well for students with illnesses or physical disabilities. And I can see it for regular students, again it depends on the individual.

How does the quality of education delivered online compare to traditional schooling?

That's a tough question to answer. If you're taking an online course that has a certified teacher and that's standards based, the quality can be equal to or better than traditional education. If you're going to teach a class online it needs to be interactive. It needs to follow the principles of engaged learning. It's not the "sage on the stage." The teachers need to be engaged with the students. For students who are engaged, the quality of online courses can certainly equal or exceed the quality of face-to-face courses. What people need to understand is technology is a tool. You don't use a hammer when you need a screwdriver, but it is a powerful tool and I don't think we've gotten to the point in education where we're using it as effectively as we can.

Has the idea of learning online been faster or slower to catch on than you would have expected?

It's been a little slower than I would have expected. There are a lot of issues, but one of them is supervision. For parents who work, one of the things the schools do is child care. If you're a parent who works outside the home and you send your child to school, you know where he or she has gone. If your child is engaged in online learning, you don't necessarily know that.

Will we eventually see a world in which most learning takes place at a computer terminal rather than in a classroom?

I don't think that's going to happen. I think the societal pressures are going to slow that down.

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