While most students would rather leave remote learning to the era of COVID lockdowns, a group of year 11 pupils from across the ACT and NSW have signed up for an innovative virtual learning program.
For the first time, students from six Catholic schools are able to enrol in specialist subjects delivered online by teachers based in various locations.
The 45 participants met at a camp hosted at Merici College in Braddon to get to know each other and learn how to be a successful virtual student.
Catholic Education Canberra Goulburn Director Ross Fox said there was great potential for virtual learning to be part of the senior secondary educational experience alongside face-to-face teaching.
"We want them to have a similar experience in terms of learning but you can't just repeat the classroom online and so that's what this is about," Mr Fox said.
"It's getting the right expectations and clarity about how we best use the virtual mediums to deliver a great learning experience so we can offer those additional subjects."
Mr Fox said it was quite common for students in the past to access correspondence courses through external providers, but now the Catholic Education system was making a commitment to share teachers and resources between schools to broaden the subject offering.
Five year 11 subjects will be on offer virtually this year: biology, business studies, economics, maths specialist and Italian continuing.
Two schools, St Anne's Central School in Temora and McAuley Catholic Central School in Tumut, are extending their cohorts to year 11 this year and year 12 next year.
The virtual learning program opens up more subject offerings for the students and means that students don't need to change schools for their senior years.
St Anne's Central School principal Grant Haigh said his students would normally have to go to boarding school and leave behind their families, employment and sporting clubs.
"It's really just been so great for the town. Everyone stops me in the street saying it's amazing," he said.
The small school of 247 students can now offer subjects that it doesn't usually have the staffing to support. Mr Haigh said there had been an increase in the number of year 7 enrolments now that the school was expanding to year 12.
The virtual learning will be a vastly different experience than lockdown learning.
Rather than making an overnight switch, the people involved have been meeting weekly for 12 months to get the scheme off the ground. Teachers had a term of training and had their programs and assessments prepared by the end of last year.
"It's a bit of adjustment [for the teachers] but they knew from their experience with the online learning with good training, good programs, good coaches that virtual learning can be achieved," Mr Haigh said.
The other schools involved are Saint Francis Xavier College in Florey, Saint John Paul II College in Nicholls, Lumen Christi Catholic College at Pambula Beach, and Carroll College at Broulee.
The students will be doing largely self-directed learning through Microsoft Teams and One Note and will have fortnightly online meetings as a class.
McAuley College student Olivia Dean will be balancing vitual classes, in-person classes and weekly Tafe classes for a certificate III in educational support.
"I'll come out of school with accreditation instead of taking time afterwards," she said.
"It will get me into university so I don't need an ATAR."
St Anne's student Joshua Daly said the cohort was nervous but excited to start their virtual learning experience.
"There's a bunch of information and it's our first time because there's no year levels above us so it might be a bit nerve wracking," he said.
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