Utah Students Connect is a consortium of seven districts (Granite, Davis, Tooele, Park City, Jordan, Murray and Nebo) that have come together to offer online classes for original credit to students in our districts. We would like to share the steps taken to create the online consortium as well as lessons learned and some of the pitfalls of online learning. While most of the districts had already offered or were developing online courses, SB 65 which became law on July 1, 2011, propelled us to collaborate in an innovative, collaborative way to offer online options for students. We currently offer the core academic classes in addition to art courses with more elective offerings on the docket for summer 2012. We would like to share what we have learned about creating and running an online program with our colleagues around the state, including course development and revision, teacher hiring, professional development and helping schools with the shifting paradigms in education as regards online learning. We intend to have students in the program available via webinar to dialogue with session participants.
