2019: Is mainstream the goal for students?

by Erik Hansen

The idea of ‘mainstream’ is a very interesting concept to wrap one’s mind around. The term finds itself associated with a variety of concepts: Mainstream media, mainstream society, mainstream culture, mainstream music, and mainstream education just to name a few.  To help set the stage:

Merriam-Webster: A prevailing current of direction of activity or influence.

Dictionary.com: The principal or dominant course, tendency, or trend.

Businessdictionary.com: Products and services which are readily available to and appealing to the general public, as opposed to being of interest only to a very specific subset of the public. 

We have been hearing about the rise of online everything (nearly) for the past 20+ years now. In 2019, most adults purchase items online via various online retailers, search for “how to” videos and choose to download countless apps to their smartphones. To that point, some businesses in the automobile industry (Tesla and Carvana) are offering direct to consumer car purchasing online without ever seeing the car in person and delivered to your driveway.

In 2019, most people would likely agree that online culture is “mainstream culture.”  

Even in post high school education, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee provided data showing that over half of their on campus students were taking at least one online course as part of their on campus experience as far back as 2015. In 2017, Fox Valley Technical College (FVTC) in Appleton, WI, reported that one in every five courses are offered only online as well.

We as a society and in our schools have been concerned about preparing our students for success and their futures for many years. Research has been shown by the Christensen Institute that students are ‘hiring’ schools for two specific tasks to accomplish in their lives: Help me feel successful and help me have fun with friends. When we look at the amount of the ‘business of life’ is conducted online in 2019, it is remarkable. Google, Youtube, and Amazon dominate as search originating locations for nearly all of our questions. In fact, as of 2017, 55% of US Product searches now start on Amazon.com (vs 26% Google and 19% everything else).

We have a major influencer that has always been at the table, but today it is very much front and center driving many of our decisions: Flexibility. 

It is becoming clearer that high school students value their time and flexibility. Since the fall of 2014, here is what our exit surveys are revealing about why students are choosing an online course (Note: students can choose more than one response):

We clearly have a trend showing that high school students value flexibility and are solving for flexibility when choosing to take an online course. The top two responses have remained consistent since 2014: ‘Flexibility to decide when I work on the course’ & ‘Opens up my schedule at my traditional high school.’ We can also see that in 2018-2019, the number of students ‘seeking self-directed learning opportunities’ doubled from years ago. 

Is mainstream the goal for our students in 2019? That is a great question. In my experience, when asking what mainstream means to an individual, people often find mainstream difficult to describe and define. In my opinion, we have an opportunity at this moment to support our high school students by continuing to draw attention to the success and readiness factors that online learning inherently provides. The evidence clearly shows that high school students are seeking and solving for flexibility for their learning. Adults are utilizing online learning for formal and informal self-directed learning opportunities seemingly more than ever before as well.  All of our high school students and families are counting on us to champion formal online learning opportunities in our schools to reach success; not as an “add on”, but as “part of what we do” in 2019 and beyond. 

About the Author

Erik Hanson is the Director of the Appleton eSchool in the Appleton Area School District (AASD) in Appleton, WI, and serves as President Elect of the Wisconsin eSchool Network. hansonerik@aasd.k12.wi.us