Nettilukio - case study

General information

Name of school	Internet Upper Secondary School at Otava Folk High School
Address	Otavan Opisto, 50670 OTAVA, Finland
Website	www.nettilukio.fi
Contact name and role	Administrator and student counsellor: Taru Kekkonen, +358 44 794 3517, taru.kekkonen(at)otavanopisto.fi
VISCED partner/author	TIEKE (Finnish Information Society Development Centre) / Merja Sjöblom, +358 50 567 6893, merja.sjoblom(at)tieke.fi
Type of school	Public
References	Annual report 2011: http://www.ofw.fi/mmm/vuosikertomus/nettikoulutuksen_toimintakertomus_2011.pdf http://www.studentum.fi/Nettilukio_142004.htm Futura 1/08 (http://www.futurasociety.fi/futura.htm), article by Hannu Linturi Linturi Hannu 2002. Oppimisen verkkosaalistusta. Teoksessa Verkot ja virtuaalistaminen oppimisen tukena. Juhani Nieminen (toim.). Hämeen ammattikorkeakoulu. Saarijärvi. 125–173. Linturi Hannu 2003. Oppimisen kulttuurievoluutio verkossa. Teoksessa Tulevaisuudentutkimus. Toim. Kamppinen, Kuusi & Söderlund. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Helsinki. 665–788. Rubin, A. & Linturi, H. (2004) Muutoksen tuulissa. Pienten lukioiden tulevaisuudenkuvat. TUTU-julkaisuja 3/2004. Tulevaisuuden tutkimuskeskus. Turun kauppakorkeakoulu. Turku. Linturi, Hannu & Rubin, Anita (2006) Kouluttomaan oppimiseen? Opetuksen ja kasvatuksen ristiriitaiset tulevaisuudenkuvat haasteena koulutuksen kehittämiselle. Futura 1/2006. 42-52. Linturi, Hannu (2008) Sivistys on rajanylityksiä ja järjestyksenpitoa. Viisitoista vuotta tulevaisuutta takana. Futura 1/2008. 42-71 Linturi, Hannu & Rubin, Anita. 2011. Toinen koulu, toinen maailma. Oppimisen tulevaisuus 2030. Turun yliopiston Tulevaisuuden tutkimuskeskus. Tutu-julkaisu 1/2011. Linturi, Hannu, Rubin, Anita, Airaksinen, Tiina (2012) Lukion tulevaisuus 2030 - Toinen koulu, toinen maailma. Otavan Opiston Osuuskunta. 978-952-6605-00-5 (pdf), ISSN-L 2242-1297, ISSN 2242-1297. Hannu Linturi och Jari Sarja 2001. Otava Folkhögskolas val: Internet i demokratins tjänst. In bok Ove Korsgaard og Niels Buur Hansen: Demokrati og folkeoplysning i Norden. Köpenhavn. http://www.oph.fi/julkaisut/2011/lukion_tulevaisuus_2030

Headline description of the school

Internet Upper Secondary School for adults at Otava Folk High School originates from a project called Internetix. This ESR funded project started in 1996 aiming to find solutions to take school to students instead of forcing them to travel long distances or having to move in order to get to school. In the project eLearning material was produced and special demand seemed to be in upper secondary school courses. The first distance learners of Nettilukio started in 1997 - at that point there were 13 students, today more than 500.

Nettilukio is both national and international upper secondary school for adults operating in Finnish, but students living all around the country and world. Typical virtual school student comes from one of the following groups:

• parents of small children
• professional and semi-professional athletes
• people who travel a lot (because of occupation or for other reasons)
• people living abroad
• shift workers
• people who cannot attend school for reasons of health
• people with previous negative experiences like bullying or frustration
• people living in sparsely populated areas

Flexibility seems to be the greatest advantage of distance schools. In distance school one can rhythm their schedule and studies to their other life easily. There are no terms or periods, instead each student can study according to their own schedules. There are no obligatory contact days which lead to the fact that most of students never actually visit the Otava campus.

Background

1) When was the school established? How has it evolved till now?

Otava Folk High School was established in 1892. In 1994 the school received an upper secondary school for adults status. At first the school was only a physical school, concentrating on mathematically talented students, offering coaching to math and physics.

In 1996 a project called Internetix started. Within this project the totally virtual upper secondary school for adults, Nettilukio, was founded. The first students in Nettilukio started in January 1997.

At first the emphasis was in producing eLearning material that students could use while taking the upper secondary school courses. Over the years the emphasis moved towards learning platforms and Nettilukio developed its own learning platform, muikku. The new learning platform was developed to support studies and evaluation.

Later new learning options were developed. Nowadays students at Nettilukio can choose from three different ways to accomplish courses - or they can freely combine these options between different subjects and during their studies. These three ways are non-stop-courses, collaborative courses and phenomenon based learning.

2) What was/were the reason/s for establishing a virtual/distance/online school? What specific need(s) was it aimed to address?

ESR-funded Internetix project was a starting point for Nettilukio. However, at first the project emphasis was to produce eLearning material in general for any students and any studies. Focus was to find general solutions to take school to students instead of forcing them to travel long distances or having to move in order to get to school. From a general solution the aim was moved on to vocational education and only after that upper secondary school became the main target.

At the same time the Finnish National Board of Education started to emphasize virtual schooling in adult education and especially in upper secondary schools for adults. This offered support for Internetix project as well and encouraged the idea of founding a virtual upper secondary school for adults.

From the beginning one aim was also to be able to work over borders of different school levels. Transparency and trust were the guiding ideas from the beginning.

Trust and transparency have also been performed when deciding not to create official and exact follow-up systems. Nettilukio trusts its students and one of the basic assumptions is that students understand that they are studying for themselves and for life - not for the school and examinations.