President's Column: Online learning: an effective tool for board members

By Carol C. Brown

10/14/03 -- As the growing popularity of K-12 "cyber schools" shows, there are lots of different ways of learning. Online learning also is becoming an increasingly effective means for school board members to keep informed about the latest developments in public education and school board leadership.

With online courses, board members can connect to the instructional program whenever it is most convenient -- without taking time from their jobs or spending money on travel. Participants can often engage in a dialogue with the course facilitator and the other students. And they can spend some time practicing what they've learned before proceeding to the next lesson.

While on-site learning opportunities are still important, NSBA believes online learning is an excellent alternative.

NSBA developed the Online Learning Center in 2001 as a collaborative with the state school boards associations that make up the NSBA Federation.

The 36 state associations that have joined the Online Learning Center Consortium can develop online courses that are distributed through the Online Learning Center. They also can use courses developed by other members of the consortium and customize them for school board members in their state.

For example, the Texas Association of School Boards created an online course called "Introduction to Parliamentary Procedures for School Boards." Other state associations in the consortium, including the New York State School Boards Association (NYSSBA), have made that course available to their members and have added material pertinent to their state laws and regulations.

NYSSBA also offers online courses on "Communicating Effectively with Your Governance Team," "Governance Team Roles and Responsibilities," and "Systems Thinking = Board Excellence."

Examples of other online courses include "The Board and Superintendent Team -- Building Strong Relationships" and "Key Work of School Boards" offered by the Idaho School Boards Association; "Creating Successful Change Strategies" and "Tools for Reaching Consensus with Your Board" from the Arkansas association; and "Leaders for Student Learning" from the Arizona association.

NSBA supports the state associations in their efforts to create and deliver the training materials. Courses that are made available for exchange for members of other state associations must be approved by a quality review committee.

There is a great deal of variety in how the courses are set up. For example, most of the courses are self-paced, and people can sign up to take them any time. Others are scheduled at specific times with participants engaged in facilitated group discussions and problem-solving activities.

Some courses take just two hours; most are open for six months. Fees generally run from $75 to more than $200 per course. Some of the courses give professional development credits in states with school board member certification programs.

All state associations have the opportunity to offer online courses. To find out if your state is participating in the Online Learning Consortium, visit www.nsba.org/olcenters.

Online learning will never replace the face-to-face learning that goes on in a workshop or conference session. But it can be an effective supplement to extend the kind of learning that takes place in real-time experiences.

A school board member who attends a conference session on boardsmanship, for example, can expand upon that experience by digging deeper in an online course on that issue.

Bev Frank, president of the Stillwater Consolidated Board of Education, says an online course she took through NYSSBA is "far more intensive than being a passive participant in a room of 100-plus people. I'm learning a lot more this way and it forces me to be an active part of the discussion. Guess it won't be long before we see our students doing more coursework from their home computer, especially as costs for education continue to escalate as revenue continues to drop."