This week has been somewhat of an epiphany, because I did not realize how many "moving parts" were involved in an online school. I'm sure this is partially because we are still in the early adopter stage, both on the part of the schools and the potential students/parents. In most early adopter situations, a product is more easily defined thus the "sale" of the concept becomes easier to those who understand and want to be first. In this case, the schools are experimenting with various methods of many components. Teachers, methods of teaching, platforms, teacher/student interaction, curriculum, instructional design - in fact it would be really interesting to look back at the same schools in five years and see how they have changed and gelled.
When it comes to potential students, we are still not sure of the audience. There are the obvious candidates - the home schoolers. But there are others - the travelers, the athletes, etc. and possibly markets they haven't defined yet. I was aware that we were in the early stages of the adoption curve, but wasn't aware of how they were tackling it at the beginning. I suppose like many other businesses, using the equivalent of outside contractors (content providers or part time instructors) is a viable option without the long term obligation if the business pivots course.
It is interesting how an entirely new type of industry has evolved from these issues - the suppliers, content providers (including AP and credit recovery facilitators,) marketers, and administrators of a new type of program.
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