Helping Low-Performing or At-Risk Students with Their NCVPS Course

If parents or Distance Learning Advisors find that students are falling behind in a North Carolina Virtual Public School course, they should know that they do have options available to help. Here are some suggestions that will help the students pass the course.

1.) Students can contact their instructors during office hours.

2.) Students can set up a time for one-on-one tutoring with their instructor through Wimba, Pronto, or the phone.

3.) The DLA of the school can create peer tutoring sessions with other successful NCVPS students.

4.) The DLA can have EC students meet with the school's EC specialist to help them.

5.) NCVPS has an extensive list of assistive technologies such as text to speech, visual, mobility and Math tools at http://goo.gl/eryLQ.

6.) Students can attend review sessions at the school.

7.) Students can also attend tutoring sessions at the school if they are available.

8.) If the student is not logging into the course on a regular basis, the DLA might consider creating a time that the student works on their course at the school.

9.) If the student has an EOC in the course, the DLA could place the student in an EOC Reviews at the school.

10.) I send out progress reports to the DLA’s every two weeks.  I include the NCVPS teacher contact information (email and phone) in the Excel spreadsheets so that the DLA’s can contact the teacher.

11.) The parents can log into Blackboard with the students at home and supervise their work. 

12.) The parents can also communicate with the NCVPS teacher.

North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS) Help Center

The North Carolina Virtual Public School has a help center to support students taking NCVPS courses with technical issues. The main issue that comes to mind is students who have forgotten their Blackboard password. The Distance Learning Advisors of the schools and the District Distance Learning Coordinator can look up the students password only if they have not changed it from the original password given to them by NCVPS. If the student has changed their password, the change is not reflected in the student information. They would need to contact the NCVPS Help Center. The hours of operation for the Help Center are 8am-4pm, Mondays - Fridays except for state holidays. There are two ways to contact the Help Desk. The first method, and their preferred method is to submit an online ticket. Their address is http://www.help.ncvps.org/. Students will need a valid email address as the solution will be emailed to them. The second method is to call them at 919-480-8770 and leave a voice message. They will get back to the student via email in 1 business day. Return phone calls won’t happen unless there is a time sensitive need to acquire further information to solve the student's problem.

The NCVPS Help Center services all people involved with The North Carolina Virtual Public School. Their services are not just limited to the students. The Distance Learning Advisors of the schools, The NCVPS Instructors, the Peer Tutors and the District Distance Learning Coordinators (LEA’s) can contact the Help Desk for technical issues.

NCVPS Blackboard Upgrade Compatibility Issues

North Carolina Virtual Public School has updated the Blackboard system they use to 9.1. However, they have learned of a few incompatibility issues. These issues occur when students use Internet Explorer versions 7, 8 and 9. Students will experience issues with content not being viewable, not being able to participate in assessments, or uploading assignment files into the system. Internet Explorer can be modified to be more compatible by using IE in the compatibility mode. However, the best suited browser for Blackboard 9.1 is Mozilla Firefox 3.6 or higher. Make sure your versions of Flash and Java are up to date. Also make sure your browser history and internet cache is cleared prior to the logging into Blackboard. Depending on your version of Internet Explorer, follow the list of instructions I have out lined below.

Setting IE to work in the compatibility mode.

• Open Internet Explore and log into Blackboard.
• Click the tools menu option at the top of the page.
• Select the "compatibility view" option from the "tools" drop-down menu.
• Allow the page to reload.

Clearing the internet browser history and cache.

• Go to the "tools" drop-down menu.
• Select "delete browsing history."
• Click “delete all”.
• Check “also delete files and settings stored by add-ons” and click yes.

NCVPS OCS Blended Learning Courses

Here is a wonderful opportunity for your OCS students. NCVPS offers 5 courses: OCS English 1, OCS English 2, OCS Algebra 1, OCS Biology and OCS Applied Science. The NCVPS teacher works very closely with your face 2 face OCS teacher in these courses. The EC teacher drives the instruction, owns the grade and enters it into NC Wise. The NCVPS teacher supplies the course content which follows the essential standards. The course content was created by classroom teachers from across the state, course content experts, and OCS & EC teachers. The courses focus on engagement and interaction for the visual, auditory etc type of student. The NCVPS teacher differentiates and individualizes the curriculum based on the needs of the students. Each course is created just for the EC teacher and their students in that specific school. Before a school registers students, the school and the OCS teacher should be willing to teach the courses in the Blended Learning environment.

Counties from all over the state are involved in these courses. If you decide to enroll students in these courses, you would need to complete a short online survey in which they ask you the course you want, estimated number of students and the face 2 face teacher that will be involved.
All OCS f2f teachers will need to go through an approximate two hour online training prior to the Fall semester start on August 25, 2011. Teachers will be able to decide when they want to complete the training but all f2f teachers will need to complete this training prior to the start of Fall semester. The training will be available by May 15.
The NCVPS OCS Blending Learning courses require a true co-teaching experience where the f2f teacher is driving the instructional decisions while working daily with the NCVPS content teacher. The NCVPS teacher will help the classroom teacher individualize and differentiate the instruction for each student but the NCVPS teacher does not deliver the instruction real time to the students. The f2f teacher does this but they will have planned using the online content, the teachers own resources, and the NCVPS teacher to determine the best way to teach the content to the students.
This partner teaching is the most critical piece for schools to understand. The NCVPS teacher will not be providing daily direct instruction; this responsibility rests with the classroom OCS teacher. The online content provides archived teaching sessions that can be used, but the daily instructional decisions are driven by the classroom teacher who plans daily, through an asynchronous document, with her partner NCVPS teacher
Distance Learning Advisors may enroll students into the OCS Blended Learning courses starting on April 5th. The DLA's will see the five courses listed in the registrations system, beginning with the OCS prefix. DLA’s will then register students into the course. At this time, the school DLA will not see a specific section for his or her school. DLA's will only see OCSBlendedAlgebraI, OCSBlendedEnglishI, etc. Eventually, in the registration system, NCVPS will break out the school by course so that it will be the course will be identified with your school name in the title such as this: OCSBlendedDistrictSchoolOCSCourseName. DLA's will only see these sections once registration closes and closer to the start of the Fall semester. DLA's will be asked to provide the name of the OCS classroom teacher for each course before August 2011. DLA's will be contacted by email in order to provide this information. The five course sections (OCS English I, OCS English II, OCS Algebra I, OCS Biology, and OCS Applied Science) will remain open until all the available seats are taken.
If you have any questions about the NCVPS OCS Blended Learning program, please contact Michelle Lourcey (michelle.lourcey@ncpublicschools.gov) Curriculum and Instruction Division Director.