PADEN CITY -- Starting in mid-January, Wetzel County Schools will move to using WV Virtual School as its distance learning platform, transitioning away from the Schoology platform it had used for the fall semester.
The change was made in order to reduce the burden on teachers, county assistant superintendent Darren Cook said. They had needed to perform in-person instruction, as well as remote learning, alongside Schoology, which was designed, instructed, and managed in-house by those teachers. WV Virtual School is administered by the state department of education and provides uniform, online instruction across all counties.
Schoology will remain in use for remote learning if an entire school, or the county as a whole, is forced to suspend in-person classes, as they have for the last several weeks.
"It's just a horrendous amount on the teachers, and they just can’t keep up with it," Cook said Tuesday. "They're not only doing traditional and remote learning, they're also doing distance learning -- three different things they're trying to accomplish for all the students. In order for us to meet the needs, we've been having to ask for help."
Cook said other counties in the state use different programs for distance learning. However, Wetzel County had introduced Schoology, which its faculty had been trained in, not initially realizing the workload they would be shouldering.
"(Some systems have) all the stuff already ready, the paperwork, classes, all ready; ours isn't like that," Cook said. "Ours, the teachers have to make the plans, the classes, do the videos, do the tests, put them online, make whatever accommodations for students. All that is done by the teachers, but with some other programs out there, it does it for them.
"We didn't get into those," he added. "Our teachers, Schoology is what they were trained in, and they all kind of thought they could do this, but as it became more to bear, it got overwhelming to the teachers, and it got to the point where it's a bit of a disaster. We're just trying to get through the first semester, to mid-January, and turn it over to WV Virtual."
Cook said the downfall of moving to WV Virtual School was the loss of personalized instruction, and the lack of communication between teachers and their students. Cook said there could be a discrepancy in what students would learn online versus in their own classes, but he didn't imagine the gulf between county and state lessons was very wide.
Wetzel County's in-person classes had generally been held on an A-B schedule throughout much of the semester, with two days of in-person instruction for half of each school, with one day set aside for cleaning. Only Hundred High School, with its relatively small student body, was able to maintain four-day-a-week instruction. Across the county, Cook said around 430 students out of 2,353 were undergoing full-time distance learning.
"We'd catered to the distance learning, trying to make it work," he said, "but, I think, at the expense of our traditional learners. This semester, we're going to focus on getting kids back into the classroom, back with their regular teachers, and back on schedule, even if they're not in the classroom, they can be all together in a remote setting.
Cook, as with many other administrators in local school districts, said that in-person education is the most effective form of learning, and urged those who felt it was safe to do so to return to schools. Families may sign up for WV Virtual School beginning on Tuesday until Jan. 15. The form will be available on wetzelcountyschools.com during that time period.