UW-Superior instructor using AOL grant to teach online course in local high schools

Geography is enjoying a revival in America's schools, and a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Superior is playing a role in its comeback while also helping students at several schools in Northwestern Wisconsin.

Dr. Randy Gabrys-Alexson is using an AOL Foundation grant to teach an online university geography course to high school students in Washburn, Bayfield, Maple, Port Wing, Solon Springs and Minong. The students get an opportunity to take a challenging course and earn university or high school class credits without spending hours traveling back and forth to campus.

Gabrys-Alexson, who has taught at UW-Superior for 14 years, holds one of the few doctorate degrees in geography education. She's a champion of geography's importance not only for high school students, but also for UW-Superior students majoring in such diverse fields as teacher education, science, business, and transportation and logistics management.

Geography is much more than what is thought of as rote memorization of place names -- it's learning about the people, their culture, politics, economics, and how they interact with the natural environment,” she said.

A campus pioneer in online teaching, Gabrys-Alexson had earlier adopted a Cultural Geography course to be taught over the Internet. Last year she learned that American Online's AOL Foundation was offering grants to educators to develop courses using Internet technology. She applied and was among only 35 of 480 applicants selected for funding.

Using the $10,500 AOL grant, she has developed a one-year pilot program that uses the Internet to deliver the independent study geography course to students at rural high schools.

"This project enables these students to experience a university course at their own high school," she said. "The lessons in the online course are as similar to the on-campus course as you can get, and it includes exercises that require them to interact with people in their community."

Each participating high school selects students to take part in the course, which begins in October and runs through mid-April. Money from the grant is used to hire a mentor at each school to assist the students and administer tests, and to provide a course scholarship for a student at each school. In addition, UW-Superior's bookstore is loaning books to the students, and the university's Continuing Education/Extension program is waiving its technology fee.

Gabrys-Alexson said she chose Cultural Geography for the project because local high school students frequently enroll in that course to get a taste of college life. Many have later told her that their exposure to the course helped ensure their eventual success in college.

For the participating high schools, the online course enables them to offer something extra for their students.

"We try to provide our students with as many opportunities as we can," said Len Burfield, guidance counselor at St. Croix High School in Solon Springs. "This looked like a very good opportunity to offer something we don't teach. It's a nice opportunity for a young person to get started on a college course and, personally, I like the responsibility that it places on the student."

"We're a very small school, which often limits the number of classes we can offer," said Tonya Roth, guidance counselor at South Shore High School. "This online course is an excellent opportunity for our students to take classes we can't give them."

Once the pilot project concludes next spring, Gabrys-Alexson will seek funding to continue it. She'd like to expand the program by offering the course to additional high schools in northwestern Wisconsin.