It’s one thing to incorporate a web academy into your school district — it’s another to do the actual planning it takes to make that vision a reality.

There’s no “one size fits all” for distance learning. A school district can’t download a software, hand out a few laptops, and be done with the planning process. Like any educational endeavor, designing a distance learning academy that places effective education at the center will take the laying out of clear goals and a thorough plan to ensure those educational goals are being met.

Before any talk of curricula or IT budgets can begin, a crucial first step is to identify what your district hopes to achieve through an online learning system. Your goals may range from dissuading students from leaving the district, to increasing your graduation rate, to serving students physically unable to attend school, to enticing students to the district by offering unique and valuable electives. The end result depends on what you hope to achieve even more so than how you hope to achieve it.

Once one or a few central goals are established, the planning and enrollment phases can begin.

Logistical Questions

After addressing the “why” of your web academy, you can begin to address the “how.” Now is the time to develop a range of details tailored specifically to your school, as well as to the specific needs of your prospective students. It’s imperative that all of these details be taken care of and cemented in writing before the enrollment stage. Parents and students unfamiliar with distance learning and your academy’s mission will come with questions, concerns, and most likely, misconceptions.

Logistics entail everything from the school’s programming — like curricula and the path to graduation — to location, staff training, attendance policies, and IT concerns. Now’s the time to discern whether students will be learning at home or in labs; how much face-to-face instruction they will receive; whether they will receive their own hardware; and even how fast their internet connections should be.

No question is too small to be worth considering and answering in these early stages.

Communicating a Vision: Branding and Marketing

Unfortunately, web-based learning garnered a less-than-stellar reputation early on due to the crop of for-profit systems that competed with school districts for students during the first internet boom. These ill-conceived academies often left students inadequately prepared, and many students were forced to return to a brick-and-mortar school system to complete their education no closer to graduating than they had been before.

To ensure enrollment and enthusiasm in your school, a fundamental component of establishing a web academy is to communicate that this is no longer the case. Quite the contrary, in fact: now, distance learning companies work as partners, not competitors, with school districts. Together, they refine the goals for each district, and execute logistical plans to make sure those goals are met.

Your district’s web-based academy should be marketed to communicate just that. The system should be adjacent, but clearly separate from the school. One idea is to have a separate yet similar mascot from the brick-and-mortar school that establishes a clear identity while maintaining a clear relationship between the two institutions.

Ensure that all of your marketing materials have a uniform, professional appearance, and have a recognizable “brand” associated with them. All of the documents present at events like open houses and orientations should be branded with the distance learning academy’s “look,” from its mascot to its color scheme.

Recruitment

Odds are that your school district has never embarked on a distance learning program, so parents and students will be unfamiliar with the concept, and unclear with the benefits remote education might offer them. After ironing out the logistics and programming, it’s time to get the word out.

Most likely, the digital academy will be targeting a specific segment of the student population. For example, is your online school designed for students unable to attend classes due to a physical disability, or for students who have dropped out and are looking for reentry to the district? Depending on the answer, you’ll be able to select a defined group to receive your introductory letter.

Your letter should be sent out to familiarize parents and students with the academy’s intent and leave room for questions that will be answered at the academy’s open house. After addressing some basics about the academy and its relationship to the brick-and-mortar school, the letter should indicate a date and time for an open house, which is where the real recruitment process can begin.

Ideally, there should be two open houses: one at the beginning of summer, and one right before school starts. At these open houses, be sure to include a few crucial ingredients:

Greeters to describe the program and answer essential questions
Food and light refreshments
A sign-in sheet to obtain visitor information for follow-ups
Informative literature, like flyers, FAQs, a description of the academy structure, course schedules and programming, and an enrollment packet

Only after being given a thorough portrait of what to expect from the distance academy can parents and students make an informed decision about whether to move their educational experience online.

The Enrollment Process

The enrollment process is a matter of converting the prospective students at open houses to enrolled students who have filled out their paperwork and are ready to start learning. Enrollment should take place within pre-planned chronological parameters: a clearly demarcated macro timeline is important to maintain along every step of the process, but it’s especially crucial once students become involved.

Through information gathered from open houses and the school district, you can reach out to prospective students. Do so through district and counselor visits, a well-designed website, and phone calls. Once students have started showing interest, they can follow up by requesting an informational packet, or by taking a tour of the facilities or computer lab.

Interested students must gather and fill out the necessary documents before proceeding with the nitty-gritty of the enrollment process.

Enrollment itself is a two-way street. While students gather documents and obtain signatures, the school must also integrate that student into the system. In the enrollment phase, take care of things like scheduling and reserving the student’s orientation, classes, email addresses, teachers, and laptop. Orientation should address all aspects, including, but not limited to, report cards and grade access, attendance requirements, policies and course descriptions, a course pathway towards graduation, how to schedule tutoring sessions, and how students can get involved with the associated brick-and-mortar school.

Students have to do their part as well by proceeding through orientation, familiarizing themselves with the school handbook, adjusting their schedules as needed, and obtaining necessary signatures. A well-organized spreadsheet or database denoting each individual student’s information and progress towards their eventual enrollment will be a very helpful resource in this effort.

Once the student has completed his or her initial login, he or she is officially a student of the online academy. Your digital academy has gone through the necessary planning, recruitment, and enrollment phases, and is finally ready to launch.

Of course, your work here is not done. The next part is where you’ll live up to the promises you made during the open houses: educating and retaining students in your district.