Completion of Development of the Virtual High-School in Mathematics and Physics

The Virtual High School for Advanced Level Mathematics and Physics was established two years ago, as a solution for highly motivated students whose schools do not offer five units of mathematics or physics for matriculation. The foundation provided a grant of 7 million shekels towards the first two years of development (out of four), while noting that if successful, and if the Ministry of Education would fund the operation and expansion of the project, the foundation would consider granting additional funds for the completion of development.

The Virtual High School opened its doors in 2012, and in its first year taught 106 tenth grade students from 28 different schools around the country, particularly schools in the periphery, from the national religious sector, and from the Arab sector. In 2013, there are 290 students enrolled in grades 10 and 11 from 56 different schools, with more than half of the students coming from national religious state schools.

Learning at the Virtual High School is fully online, including classes, labs and practice assignments. There are 15-25 students in each class, who meet with excellent and specially trained teachers, for synchronous lessons. Students also receive distance-mentoring in small groups of 2-3 from an outstanding university student, as part of the Nachshon project. Student achievement so far is good; there is a very low dropout rate and high levels of satisfaction.

The project is being developed and pilot-tested by the Center for Educational Technology (CET), one of Israel’s best and veteran education nonprofit organizations. In discussion with the foundation, CET has shared the following lessons it has learned from the project during the past two years:

1. There are large gaps between students from different schools, due to differences in taught materials, teaching methods, and different expectations of the feeder schools;
2. The 11th grade class is witnessing increasing difficulties among many students, particularly in national religious state schools, given the additional pressures that students are facing;
3. Operating a remote project for a large number of schools is complex – and is expected to become even more so as the scope of the project increases;
4. Project costs are higher than expected, a consequence of the considerable effort devoted to supporting the learning of every student.

The project is currently preparing to scale-up its operations while addressing these lessons.  The goals which have been set for the next two years are: to complete two full cycles of learning; to expand participation to 1,000 students; to complete the development of the project content, in line with the lessons learned; to make the materials developed in the project available to the public free of charge; and to gain initial experience in hybrid models, combining virtual and frontal learning, for additional populations.

The development component is comprised of adapting 10th grade content to support different entry levels of students; creating digital laboratory kits and accompanying visual content, to enable the mandatory tests in schools where there are no physical laboratories; making all content accessible and searchable to the Israeli public free of charge; and creating a management system that will allow monitoring and will assist effective communication with students, registration and placement of students and mentors, schedule-building and user management.

In addition, CET has also asked the foundation to support the development of two new operating components designed to address the big differences in entry level of the students, including a diagnostic preparatory course for new students to make teachers aware of where their difficulties lie; and synchronous marathons of filmed lessons by excellent teachers in preparation for the matriculation exams.

The Virtual High School is a flagship program for the foundation, which provides immediate solutions as well as developing long-term infrastructure. The Ministry of Education chose CET, investing 32 million shekels in the project, adding to CET’s own investment of 8 million shekels. In the future, it is hoped that the development phase will be completed, and the project will be able to scale up even further, reaching an ultimate 5% increase in the number of mathematics and physics students in Israel, that is, about 1,000 students every year.

* The text  above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation’s Board of Directors / Grant 104