Wyoming "e" Academy of Virtual Education
A distance education program offered by Fremont County School District #21, Fort Washakie High School
Method(s) of course procurement
Class.com, Inc. (www.class.com) provides most of the courses that we offer students through WeAVE. Class.com, Inc. is an on-line course/ curriculum provider based in Lincoln, NE. Four years ago highly detailed methods and processes were employed and devoted to selecting an on-line curriculum/ course provider that would best meet the needs of our then prospective students. Class.com’s researched-based courses were aligned to Wyoming and standards were some of the first courses available that were totally on-line (no textbooks required) and they were designed to be taught by real teachers (they weren’t just assessment-based tutoring programs). Their courses and curriculum were developed by experts at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.
In addition to Class.com courses, WeAVE has developed some of it’s own research-based on-line courses- Digital Photography, Art 1, Native Am Studies, Fitness4Life, English 5, and Computer Essentials. All of our courses are research-based, developed by staff that are highly qualified in the content area of the course. In addition, our course writers have ample training and experience in writing on-line curriculum. We provided courses in on-line curriculum/ course development for staff and teachers that are interested in developing courses. Qualified staff must submit their course proposals to the FWCHS for approval. Detailed course proposals must indicate a need for the course and they must show how they’ll be developed to meet Wyoming State Content Standards.
Course evaluation and improvement
Informally, through teaching the courses, our high qualified teachers are constantly engaged in evaluating their courses and maintaining course quality. Research supports our more formal annual evaluation process. Annual a curriculum review committee evaluates our curriculum. The committee considers mid-course and final student survey results/ annual community survey results, completion rates and post graduate interview data to determine how well existing curriculum is meeting the needs of our students. The committee annually reviews other on-line course/ curriculum options as well- comparing them to the existing courses. In addition an outside distance/on-line education expert consultant (David Glick - Glick Consulting) is employed by FWCHS/WeAVE to conduct an annual summative evaluation of the entire program. Much of the his research-based evaluation focuses on the effectiveness of our chosen curriculum and allows for ample input from all stakeholders.
All of our courses have been aligned to Wyoming content standards. They also meet NACOL national standards for on-line courses. Recently teachers have begun more detailed work with standards alignment in an effort to better communicate to districts across the state how our courses will fit into their BOE systems. Assessments are being aligned to specific standards and benchmarks, mechanisms for higher inter-rater reliability are being employed and system to report how students have met certain standards per content areas was implemented.