When Robert Tinker and I first created VHS five years ago, we knew it had the potential to benefit a wide range of schools and students. Our goal was to design online courses that were compelling, challenging, and personal. VHS was not meant to be just a good use of technology, but rather a new medium that merged the best in technology with the best in instructional methods. Four years into the Virtual High School Cooperative, we have exceeded all of our expectations.

This year, with 87 courses online and over 1,800 students enrolled, we have turned theory into practice and created a new educational environment that broadens curriculum and teaching practices nationwide. As a result of its success, VHS is growing rapidly. One hundred and fifty teachers are preparing to add their courses to the 2000-2001 VHS catalog. Next year, we anticipate 4000 students in 30 states will be enrolled in 200 VHS courses. Three hundred and fifty teachers will be in training or teaching VHS courses. Within four years we estimate that over 1,000 schools will be part of this collaborative effort.

As a result of our success, The Concord Consortium and Hudson Public Schools are planning to continue VHS beyond 2000-2001, the last year of the U.S. Department of Education grant that funded VHS as part of its farsighted Technology Innovation Challenge Grants program. We will continue to expand the VHS cooperative through a member fee that will cover operational expenses. Because VHS will remain a collaborative effort, we will be able to keep the membership fee to one that is reasonable for all schools.

We are also creating an abbreviated version of our yearlong VHS teacher professional development course for those who want to teach existing online courses. New teachers who complete the short course during their pre-service training will be able to teach a VHS Netcourse during their first year in a high school classroom. As part of the pre-service curriculum, new teachers will receive extensive training in online pedagogy. And VHS faculty advisors will continue to mentor those teachers during their initial year of online course delivery.

We're also creating a less demanding self-paced, moderated professional development course for teachers interested in online instruction. Additional training modules will provide teachers with technology tools for their online as well as face-to-face classes. As we grow, we'll enable teachers to collaborate in teaching sections of courses that they co-create, thereby expanding the opportunities for professional development and collaborative growth.

VHS is already the largest web-based high school in the country. Given the rapid growth we're experiencing, we anticipate VHS will offer the widest range of courses available to secondary students anywhere. Most importantly, as we move from one point in our history to the next, we believe that VHS will continue to stimulate educational improvement, both technological and instructional. Sheldon Berman is co-principal investigator for the Virtual High School and superintendent of the Hudson (MA) Public Schools.
shelley@concord.org

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