Publication Date

2020

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Tonks, Stephen M.

Degree Name

Ed.D. (Doctor of Education)

Legacy Department

Department of Leadership, Educational Psychology and Foundations (LEPF)

Abstract

This case study evaluating three high schools’ blended online credit recovery programs spanned the course of three years. The first part of the study examined the student demographics and outlined the basic structure of the programs. The demographics showed a disproportionate number of students of color and students receiving Free/Reduced Lunch in the online credit recovery programs at each school when compared to the school population. Each program shared the blended structure – online instruction with teacher facilitation. While there were over 24 online courses offered in the program, this study focused on the core courses that all ninth graders are required to take in the district: Algebra I, Biology, and English I.

The second part of the study analyzed student success within the program. Most students in the online credit recovery course passed, regardless of whether they were taking one course, multiple courses, or multiple courses simultaneously. Additionally, the PSAT assessments of the students in the online credit recovery course were compared to the scores of all students in the district. However, the study focused on student success on the PSAT/NMSQT assessment series. Results showed students who took an online credit recovery course scored well below the district average on every PSAT assessment. Moreover, some cohorts made little to no growth from their 8th grade PSAT/NMSQT 8/9 assessment to their 11th PSAT/NMSQT assessment.

The last part of the study compared attributes of this online credit recovery program to two frameworks: Bloom’s Learning for Mastery (Bloom, 1969) and Best Practices for Blended Learning (Sturgis & Patrick, 2010; Puzziferro & Shelton, 2008). Through on-site observations and interviews with the site coordinators, it was noted that each program, while implemented differently, utilized the attributes of the conceptual framework (i.e., teacher involvement, teacher feedback, goal setting, personalized learning, self-paced learning, and flexible learning). There were also discrepancies between the theory of self-paced learning and the implementation within the brick-and-mortar walls of a high school. In the end, all of the schools implicitly followed the concepts outlined in the conceptual framework; however, the differences among the three schools may have created drawbacks with skill alignment.

Extent

131 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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