Early High School ProgramEast Carolina University, Pitt County Schools, and Pitt Community College began a partnership to establish an Early College High School Pilot Program sited on the ECU campus. While planning, the partnership was confronted with the challenges of space and funding. In order to work around the existing problems, ECU selected an innovative approach called Second Life to provide academically rigorous college course work to high school students.The Virtual Early High School Program is a good fit because of:
ECU launched a new e-learning pilot for high school students in January of 2009. The program offers high school students the opportunity to earn college credits by taking completely virtual and dynamic courses through Second Life. In the initial stage of this pilot, the VEHS program offered two courses. Eighteen junior level students (three from each Pitt County high school) have been selected to participate in this pilot for the Spring semester. The families and the students have shown strong enthusiasm and great initiative in starting the students’ virtual avatars. The Program Second Life is a 3-d virtual world that is created by those that inhabit it. Second Life is being used to create a true virtual learning community that is designed for high school students. The students have a virtual presence (an “avatar”) and attend a synchronous real-time class, different from any other college credit online course for high school students. Components to ensure success include trained school-level facilitators; a laptop to ensure access at school and home; technical support at ECU and Pitt County Schools; and college instructors with experience in teaching in Second Life. In the Fall of 2009, there will be 36 students and four courses offered in the Teen Grid of Second Life. First Year Support ProjectThe First Year Support Project is using a combination of “Web 2.0” tools to better engage and inform the class of 2012. The project also engages the parents of these students. The project is split into 2 distinct areas: the student area and the parent area.Student AreaStarting in August 2008, we engaged the incoming freshmen in a Facebook Group. We already know that a large percentage of students use Facebook in their social lives. Our idea was to meet them in this social space and engage them with information and answer any questions. When this project was started, a group called “ Class of 2012” already existed. At the time it had around 400 members. We interfaced with the group administrator and told him of our intentions. He was happy to give us admin access to the group. We stressed that we only wanted to answer questions and would not interfere with the social aspect of this space.To date the group has over 1,800 members. We have sent weekly emails and answered commonly asked questions that arise such as university dates, ECU support schedules, community events and happenings. Along with this space, we also created a Twitter Account. Parent AreaThe parent site is managed by a software platform called NING. The site is a social network (SN) with all of the typical SN tools such as: discussion boards, email, blogs, chat, and a member area. The idea behind this site was the premise that many parents feel disconnected to the university once they send their children off to school. This sites focus is two areas:
For more information, contact Matt Long at longm@ecu.edu. |
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