REVIEW OF Ontario Virtual School BY student, Aisha Saleh

(4.5) Student Experience

I enjoyed being a student at OVS. I was taking an upgraded version of a course. Although I struggled to follow the material at my regular school, repeating it with OVS gave me a second chance to learn at my own pace. There was also plenty of extra work available, either embedded in the lessons or assigned as homework. My teacher was always quick to respond and returned my assessments within two days. If I could change one thing about the online school, I wish there were more ways for students to interact. Many times, I felt alone while relearning the material, I can’t imagine how tough it must be for students learning it for the first time.

(5) School Leadership

I only had one interaction with guidance, which was when I asked them to change my course from the regular version to the upgrade version. Throughout the entire conversation, the teacher stayed respectful and kind, even when my file picture didn’t load the first time I requested the upgrade. I do wish guidance would check in with students throughout the course, just in case someone needs extra support, but is too scared to ask.

(3.5) Teaching

Although I took the upgrade version, I completed some labs. There were times when I felt my teacher expected too much work for just a lab. For example, some labs included what I thought were a lot of extra and unnecessary questions. I also didn’t feel a connection with my teacher since I completed the course online. I wish my teacher had made more of an effort to reach out personally to me and other students, just to make sure no one was feeling overwhelmed. That way, students might feel more comfortable continuing and maybe start to build a connection with their teacher instead of just rushing through the course.

(3.5) Academics

During the lessons and sometimes on tests, I was occasionally confused by the wording of a question. Whenever that happened, I would email my teacher during the school week, and she usually responded fairly quickly. There were also several times on my tests where my teacher made a mistake, or the wording in the questions was confusing. For example, she might write one thing in the question but something different in the equation attached to it. I often got frustrated because this happened multiple times on assignments. As for the difficulty of the work, overall, I found it challenging, but since I had already completed the course and was just doing the upgraded version, I didn’t think it was too hard.

(5) School Life

I attended OVS as an online student. The website is self-explanatory, and there are multiple tutorial videos embedded on the site for you to watch. All the lessons were organized in a way that clearly showed what you had completed and what you hadn’t. For example, lessons you finished were highlighted in green, while the ones you hadn’t done were white. The lessons were also laid out in order. The page itself had a sidebar where you could view your grades, lessons, or even access the test center (where you go to write tests). This made it easy and quick to navigate to where you needed to go, and if you weren’t writing a test, you could just stay on the main page.

(5) Admissions

The admission process was very easy. All I had to do was send proof to the university that I was upgrading my mark with OVS, along with my receipt attached in an email. Then, when I got my midterm and final grades, I would request the midterm or final mark on the grade book page of my course on the OVS website and fill out some questions about my school. After that, OVS would send it to my school guidance counsellor to update my transcripts.