Authenticity, engagement, and performance in online high school courses: Insights from micro-interactional data

Increased reliance on online course-taking in high school may have a negative impact on educational opportunity gaps by exposing students belonging to marginalized subgroups to a pedagogy of poverty. Employing a mixed method design, I documented the prevalence and form of authentic work in asynchronous, vendor-developed online courses used primarily for credit-recovery in a large, urban school district serving a predominately low-income, minoritized student body. Rather than facilitating higher-order thinking and providing real-world relevance, lessons most often required students to recite information. However, through qualitative analysis, I identified that some types of authentic work were feasible within the asynchronous online course structure through the integration of student-directed research, writing-based tasks, and interactive assignments. The identification of only small magnitude associations with achievement indicates that authentic work should be viewed less in terms of closing the achievement gap and more as necessary to remedy the opportunity gap. Findings identify instructional practices likely to improve the authenticity, rigor, and relevance of students' educational experiences online.