On behalf of the joint authors Paul Bacsich presented the team’s report What schools can learn from virtual schools (and online universities) and sought feedback from the research community.
He also invited further experts to contribute papers to the Education Sciences journal Special Issue on Virtual Schools for K-12 Education: Lessons Learned and Implications for Digital K-12 and Other Sectors of Education, reflecting on their experiences with virtual schools.
The team are particularly interested in hearing from virtual schools which have been established for some years who would like to submit a research paper on their experiences.,
Paul is leading the author team creating a new paper reviewing progress on virtual schools in the European Union and Charlotte is leading the team creating a new paper reviewing progress on virtual schools in the United Kingdom and associated islands. Although there have been several private reports for certain organisations and ministries there have been no public overview papers on either of these regions for over ten years.
The presentation (in PDF format) can be found here.
For further information on each author click on their name:
Interim conclusions:
- Virtual (digital) schools are relevant to all advanced countries especially OECD and EU
- There is a compelling story of the relevance of virtual schools for Special Needs
- Schools can run the same global VLEs as universities – and some do
- An institution does now not need research capability in online learning in order to run a
VLE - Pedagogies for schools and universities overlap especially at upper secondary level (Sixth Form in UK)
- There is a business case for OER where there is a National Curriculum (as in England) or de facto
commonality (as in some science subjects)
Opening up learning 
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