Online Courses | Academia | Avon Old Farms

• You'll enhance your current course of study so you can enroll in more advanced/varied courses next year.
• You'll familiarize yourself with online learning: you're going to be using this environment throughout your college years!
• You'll reinforce concepts you learned from previous course work and preview concepts you're scheduled to take in the fall.

DID YOU KNOW?
One-third of all course takers are incoming Avon Old Farms students! 

AOF Online Courses serve the interest of 21st-century secondary education and college preparation. As more colleges and universities offer blended and online components in their curriculums, students who have previous experience with online academics have an advantage heading into these opportunities. At Avon, approximately 100 students take advantage of our course offerings each summer, with more than 750 registrations since we began.

The 2018 Online Education Trends Report as well as the Babson Survey Report on Online and Distance Education show upward trends in online course engagement in secondary and post-secondary education continue:

• Five states require high school students to take an online course to graduate.
• Over 30% of higher education students took at least one online course in 2016 as part of his/her college curriculum.
• In the 2017-2018 school year, 34% of polled schools saw an increase in high school and first-semester college students engaging in online curriculum.
• Online education has increased for the 14th straight year with 6% of all students now taking at least one online course (a total of 6,359,121 students), with an increase of 5.6% (337,016 students) in the last year alone.
• 60%-70% of undergraduates will take an online course as part of a four-year degree
• Plans and resources for online program development at four-year institutions continue to increase each year.

AOF Online Courses are taught by our own skilled faculty and are designed with our specific curriculum and students in mind. We are dedicated to providing small class sizes, extra help enrichment sessions, and timely feedback and support. Additionally, we are pleased to offer for-credit courses and preview courses in math, physics, and computer science this summer. We will also continue to offer our four-week SAT Preparation Course as well as our two-week Critical-Reading and Note-Taking Skills for the New Student course.

Course Content

• Eight-week courses begin on the Monday of the first full week of June. Check course descriptions for the start dates of four- and two-week courses.
• All content will be delivered to the students through videos produced by the teacher. Students are expected to watch these videos and take notes on the content as if they were sitting in a regular class.
• All course information and resources will be provided by the teacher through the course’s Google Classroom.
• In order to get through all of the material, students will be required to put in approximately 3 hours per day for credit courses and approximately 2 hours per day for preview courses.

These courses are asynchronous, which means that the work can be completed each day when it suits the student. For the 3 hours recommended for a credit course, a student could do 1 hour in the morning and 2 at night to accommodate a job or a local sports camp. However, the student must be able to complete those 3 hours each day and should not expect to be able to leave it all for the weekends, take days off, or go on vacation somewhere for a week without access to the internet and without time each day for the work.

Assessments

• Eight-week courses will have a midterm exam at the end of the fourth week and a final exam at the end of the eighth.
• Four-week credit/preview courses will have a final exam at the end of the fourth week.

Grading

• Weekly assignments: 60% for eight-week courses, 80% for four-week courses.
• Midterm and final exam: 20% each.

Students will be required to submit an academic honesty statement with each weekly assignment, the midterm exam, and the final exam.

Support

Teachers frequently check the progress of their students to ensure that they are on track for success in the course.
Just like our regular classes, students can expect to get additional support from their teachers. This can be done through e-mail, Zoom, phone, etc. Teachers will outline their guidelines on how to get extra help with the material at the beginning of the course.

“Taking classes during summer break prevented me from becoming idle and allowed me to approach my studies consistently and diligently. The credit classes enabled me to advance more quickly and made my academic schedule more flexible. Participating in the Online Program prepared and enabled me to take advanced classes in areas of my interest, such as Differential Equations and AP Biology."

“The online course was a great way to learn about Computer Science while still being able to enjoy my summer to the fullest! You are able to go through the lessons at your own pace, the teacher is available several times a week for help, and you are still able to do what you wish with your summer. The flexibility let me do things such as go to camps or hang out with friends. The online classes also helped prepare me for the workload here at Avon Old Farms, and I would recommend them to anyone who is thinking about trying it!"

“[Online] courses at Avon are amazing as it allows for maximum flexibility in the classroom. Whether it be for preview or for credit, the [online] courses helped me move forward in otherwise impossible ways in the classroom and get into more advanced classes like AP Physics or AP Calc."