With Westview’s competitive academic environment, many students feel the need to take online courses to fulfill graduation requirements for different reasons. Although it is typically used to retake a previously failed class, students also take these classes to leave room for Advanced Placement (AP) classes, to take an off-roll or to finish their required courses early, to name a few. There are several platforms for these online courses, but one of the most common ones for PUSD students is Edgenuity. Edgenuity is an online learning resource used by the district that allows students to take or retake certain high school courses, which opens a class slot for students to fill with another class or an off-roll. 

While the resource gives students more flexibility with their class schedules, not all prefer it to in-person learning. Lana Pham-Nguyen (11), who took World History through Edgenuity in the summer of 2022, said that she found it to be not as engaging as she would have liked.

“Everything that was in the course was not very interactive,” she said. “You would maybe listen to two minutes [of videos] and answer questions and move on, but there were no projects.”

After taking U.S. History online this semester, Taylor Thomas (11) said she had a similar experience. 

“[The content is] very repetitive and [that makes it] hard to stay focused when people are talking at you the whole time and you’re not engaged with it,” she said. 

Although Edgenuity offered more free time for her during the school year, Thomas said that she finds in-person education to be more helpful. 

“I think the thing that’s good about in-person is that you can actively ask questions to learn more about [the subject] where you have classmates to bounce ideas off of,” she said. “Whereas online, most people are just going to look up the answers, which makes it hard to actually remember what you’re learning.”

Vanessa Ho, Westview’s Edgenuity coordinator, said that although the platform can give students flexibility in their schedule, the excess of freedom also leaves room for procrastination.

“It can be an out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind of thing where students have a full load of classes and are not making progress,” she said. “The counselors who sign up the student for the class get a weekly report on where students are in terms of their progress. But other than me [checking on their progress,] there’s not really any other entity doing that.”

Donna Mahmoudi (12), who took U.S. History through Edgenuity this summer, said she also struggled with getting through tedious videos. However, despite these challenges, she said she found some upsides to the program. 

“[I liked] having the flexibility to work on [my] assignments throughout the day instead of going to [a specific class time],” she said. “That way you’re able to take other classes or take an off roll [during the school year].” 

In addition, Mahmoudi found the versatile nature of the program to be particularly preferable. 

“I liked having it [on the computer] because I could adjust the volume and I could do it in my bed or while I’m eating lunch. It was just more flexible,” she said. 

Although Pham-Nguyen, Thomas, and Mahmoudi do not plan on taking more courses through Edgenuity because their schedules accommodate in-person, Mahmoudi said she believes she would choose online classes again if she had the opportunity to go back and decide again. 

[I would choose online again] because for this class it was way more convenient, and in the summer I had time to work on the assignments, so it worked perfectly,” Mahmoudi said.

On Ho’s end, she said that although this accelerated learning can be nice to get the credits done, getting good grades in these classes does not always reflect the same knowledge that someone taking the same course at Westview will leave the class with.

“I had a student who she took [a math class] in the summer [on Edgenuity], and I remember her coming in in the fall, and she was so excited because she did well in it,” she said. “[But it doesn’t] necessarily give [students] that foundation, [rather] almost a false sense of how successful they could be in the next class.” 

In the end, although online learning with platforms such as Edgenuity can be helpful for freeing up students’ schedules, Thomas said taking a class online is a personal decision that depends on one’s class schedule and learning style. 

“Edgenuity might work better for [other students more] than it did for me,” Thomas said. “But, it depends on how you work and how [quickly] you want to work.”