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Category: Online Education

  • 7 Reasons to Take an Online Class—3 Reasons to Not

    7 Reasons to Take an Online Class—3 Reasons to Not

    1. Virtual learning is the future. If your kids are collegebound, a significant portion of their learning will take place online. Colleges save a lot of money by offering virtual classes. Kids who head to campus already comfortable with digital tools like Canvas (a learning management system), Zoom, and online textbooks will be ready for success.
    2. Virtual learning introduces students to digital tools and skills. How we learn and the resources we use to learn are changing rapidly. Learning how to learn online is a new skill set—most of us parents never had to learn this way. But our children do. Enrolling in a few online courses a year during middle school and high school is a gentle way to help them acquire these 21st century skills.
    3. Online learning saves time and gas. Add up the time spent driving your kids to co-op classes or extra curriculars—couldn’t you use that time for something more important? Think of the fuel you’re consuming! Online learning is more efficient—that’s why it’s the future.
    4. Online learning diversifies your child’s learning. Peers from around the world are more likely to make-up an online class than a local co-op. Even when your online community shares a similar worldview or is made up of only homeschoolers, your kids are being prepared to step into the wider world. They will become more skilled at expressing their viewpoints graciously and listening carefully, even when they may not agree with the speaker.
    5. More niche classes can be found online. While your local homeschool co-op may not have enough students for AP Calculus or advanced languages, you can find these classes online. This allows your children to follow their passions, even when you don’t have the expertise to teach to them.
    6. Your child’s future job will likely be virtual. Ongoing training for that job will likely be virtual. Acquiring digital skills now will help your child make an informed choice about his or her 21st century career.
    7. Online learning helps your child become more responsible and self-motivated. That’s just a positive benefit to the reality that online learning requires more of students—a virtual teacher can’t hold a student accountable to the same degree that an in-person teacher does. Most online classes meet once or twice a week—not daily. But as stated in no. 1—virtual learning is the future, so helping your children learn to take charge of their learning is a critical skill they need before they leave home.

    What Online Learning Can’t Beat

    1. Face to face learning helps students develop better relationships with adults and peers. Online learning just can’t duplicate this. Even though I run an online academy, I still know that most of a student’s learning should be one-on-one with Mom or Dad, or face-to-face at a local homeschool co-op. Important developmental milestones require in person relationships, and kids need to know the difference. Virtual relationships are not the same thing, and we don’t want to give our kids a false impression. The only way to know the difference is to experience authentic, in person relationships and compare those to our virtual ones. If your circumstances dictate that your child be fully remote, choose classes that do not require students to be online most of the day. It’s much better if they can sign on, get their assignments, and work on those offline.
    2. Learning in person provides more accountability and support. Kids need a certain level of maturity before they take an online class—you don’t want to enroll them prematurely. It is much easier to forget about the online class, then it is your face-to-face co-op classes or daily homeschooling at the kitchen table.
    3. Online classes are typically more expensive.  You can barter among your local homeschool friends, or charge much less for a local class. The teacher is likely to be more available for questions and support outside of class. Because it is easy to forget about that online class, it is easier to not get your money’s worth from it.

    Coming up: How to Make the Most of an Online Class

  • Affiliation Motivation

    Around this time each year, the students in my Psychology Class study the concept of motivation – why we do what we do.  We explore the motivations behind hunger, thirst, achievement and one of my personal favorites, the need to affiliate.  The word ‘affiliation’ is not one that we use often, so let me explain its meaning.  To affiliate means that we “flock together”.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that we form a close, lasting relationship, but it does mean that we have a need to be with others.  Affiliation is a type of social motivation.  The need to belong and the need for emotional intimacy are the other components of this type of motivation. 

    As children and as adults we all require a certain amount of quality contact with others to feel good.  In fact, if we deprive others of this social contact using punishments like solitary confinement it can cause some serious problems such as heart disease, depression, and premature death.  When we are rejected socially our brains actually respond in the same way as when we are experiencing physical pain.

    We form bonds quickly, even when we don’t need to.  I am a person who frequently talks to others while waiting in line (my kids were always embarrassed when I did that).   I am not sure why I do this, but I suppose it has to do with a shared experience of not having anything else to do while waiting, or just being miserable that I am wasting my time in this line – misery loves company!  Others I know form bonds with people during an elevator ride in the hospital or while riding up to a job interview. Or, on the long ride down, when you’re not sure if you “landed the job”.  We seem to be drawn to these conversations.   You don’t have to look very far to see that we are programmed to affiliate with others.

    One of the most famous psychological studies on the concept of affiliation was done by Stanley Schacter in 1959.  Working as a social psychology professor at Yale University, Schacter was interested in studying our motivation to be with other people in the same space.  He divided the students who volunteered for his experiment into two groups.  The first group was instructed by a severe, mean-tempered research assistance by the name of Dr. Zilstein who told them that they were going to be severely shocked during the experiment, and these shocks were going to be painful.  The other group met a “mild mannered” professor who told them that they would receive shocks that would feel no worse than a “tickling” on their hands.  The groups were then told that they had to wait for the experiment to begin.  They could choose to wait alone in a separate room or they could choose to wait together with others.  Where do you think the students in Dr. Zilstein’s group chose to wait?  You guess it, with others!  The moral of the story (experiment) in times of stress we prefer to be with others. 

    Although affiliation is important, we humans seem to need more than to just “hang out” with each other.  Most of us are also looking to belong, feel as if we are a part of a group.  This belonging seems to involve two important factors:  frequently positive interactions with others (doing things together that are fun!!), and a stable, enduring relationship (meeting in an elevator one time just isn’t the same as an enduring friendship).  Maintaining close personal relationships where we feel like we belong is probably the single most important factor in human happiness and life satisfaction.  We need to be needed and feel that we belong. 

    If the need to belong is not fulfilled and we feel rejected by others we can experience severe emotional turmoil.  Believe it or not, this distress can even be felt when we are rejected by a computer. When people are rejected by unknown internet partners while playing computer games, they actually change their behavior and even risk losing the game to ensure they are not rejected again.  Amazingly these same behaviors occur if people in research studies are told that they are playing against a computer and not other humans!!  We change our behavior to make sure the computer doesn’t reject us. What a powerful need we have for affiliation!

    I began this blog post talking about the students in my online psychology class.  As we study this concept of affiliation motivation, I always challenge them to think of their affiliations.  Are they engaging with others?  Do they feel needed and connected to people in their own lives? After all teens and young adults are one of the most vulnerable populations when it comes to feeling rejected and lonely.   Often in our class we begin discussing these connections, and my students begin to bond with one another.  If you think about it, our class actually fulfills the two components of belonging – weekly interactions (classes) that are fun (at least I think they are), and stable relationships (we meet for 8 months of class, and many students continue to stay in contact after the class has finished).   This leads me to believe that even internet class connections are ways to help our students form positive, and in some cases, long term bonds with others.  These classes help students fulfill important affiliation and belonging needs. 


    Bonnie Gonzalez has 36 years of experience as a counselor and is passionate about helping families apply the latest research in their home schools. She teaches Introduction to Psychology for Aim Academy as well as the Secrets of Success mini-course series. Her upcoming Secrets of Success summer course helps students learn how to persevere in the face of failure. You can learn more about the seven week course here.

  • An Interview with Bonnie Gonzalez

    An Interview with Bonnie Gonzalez

    Bonnie joins our staff this year for the 2017-2017 school year. She will be teaching Introduction to Psychology and AP Psychology.