The Virtual High School @ PWCS (Prince William County School, Virginia) has been offering online courses to students since 2000. In recent years they experienced a surge of interest in their online courses and are exploring ways to embed them into the student’s schedule with blended options. SoftChalk Cloud allowed them to create Master Versions of courses with the ability to have multiple collaborators working at once. Learning content authors, instructional designers and editors can all access and update the lessons on the Cloud and changes are immediately pushed out to all versions of the courses being used in the schools. This collaborative method creates a scalable model allowing them to have a single learning content author make all edits within SoftChalk without ever needing to access each course shell. This saves time, money and contributes to a more secure version of the master course. Student scores can be reported from SoftChalk content directly into the Desire2Learn course gradebook where teachers manage student grades. PWCS will share their experience with creating an English 12 and US/VA Government Master Course utilizing SoftChalk Cloud with Desire2Learn. The learning content author, as well as the instructional designer will share strategies and benefits.
Presenters:
Gina Jones
Administrative Coordinator
The Virtual High School, Prince William County Schools
Kim Devine
Instructional Design Consultant
Courseworks