Introduction: Alison Hancox, Principal of Palliser Beyond Borders, was kind enough to offer her insights into this topic. The following information is based off of our conversation.
What is Palliser Beyond Borders?
Palliser Beyond Borders is a fully operational school online, and we offer all of the online courses that students would need to graduate with a highschool diploma we also offer off-campus programming that includes courses in work experience, registered apprenticeship, screen certificates, career internships, volunteerism, and mentorship courses. Students may register at PBB as well as register at any other Alberta high school, or you can choose to register with us entirely and complete all of your courses online. We accept registrations from students coming from other locations in Alberta and elsewhere in Canada and we do register students as international students who join us online. Palliser Beyond Borders serves student who are apart of the Palliser Regional School System and we have students who are uniquely situated in either four of our outreach campuses in Vulcan, Picture Butte, Coaldale, and Calgary, or are concurrent students at one of the other Palliser high schools.
What makes Palliser Beyond Borders unique?
Continuous Learning
Palliser Beyond Borders allows continuous intake, opportunity of mastery in learning, flexible start and completion dates. With PBB learning is completed not when course dates end, but when learning is completed.
Response to Intervention Approach
Palliser Beyond Borders utilizes the Response to Intervention Approach (RTI), a three tiered pyramid to identify strategies, supports and interventions that address students' academic and social-emotional needs. The pyramid shows a continuum of supports that range from the following: Universal supports for all students (Tier 1 or primary prevention tier), Targeted supports and interventions for students who need additional support (also called Tier 2 or secondary prevention tier), and Individualized supports and interventions for students who need specialized support (also called Tier 3 or tertiary prevention tier).
Systematic Practice
Palliser Beyond Borders utilizes a systematic approach by tracking data on Student Tracking, Enrollment, Progress Sheets (STEPS), individual school sheets, and Intelliboard. This combination has helped Palliser Beyond Borders helps create effective learners and gives success to students with a 97 % completion rate and has resulted in PBB winning International Awards.
Palliser Beyond Borders allows continuous intake, opportunity of mastery in learning, flexible start and completion dates. With PBB learning is completed not when course dates end, but when learning is completed.
Response to Intervention Approach
Palliser Beyond Borders utilizes the Response to Intervention Approach (RTI), a three tiered pyramid to identify strategies, supports and interventions that address students' academic and social-emotional needs. The pyramid shows a continuum of supports that range from the following: Universal supports for all students (Tier 1 or primary prevention tier), Targeted supports and interventions for students who need additional support (also called Tier 2 or secondary prevention tier), and Individualized supports and interventions for students who need specialized support (also called Tier 3 or tertiary prevention tier).
Systematic Practice
Palliser Beyond Borders utilizes a systematic approach by tracking data on Student Tracking, Enrollment, Progress Sheets (STEPS), individual school sheets, and Intelliboard. This combination has helped Palliser Beyond Borders helps create effective learners and gives success to students with a 97 % completion rate and has resulted in PBB winning International Awards.
What would you like students and parents to know about Palliser Beyond Borders?We are a publicly funded online school, funded by Alberta Education. We follow the Alberta Program of Studies. All of our courses are designed to ensure that the learning outcomes for the provincial curriculum are addressed. The students are taught by Palliser certificated teachers who are trained to work with students online. We like to partner with parents or our sister schools within the division to help monitor student progress and to help ensure that we have successful completion.
In our accountability pillar and in our school review our surveys tells us that parents and students feel they are part of a safe and caring school environment and school system. We are an award winning program, our teachers and staff have been recognized for improving student levels of achievement and completion rates over the last few years. In 2014, completion rates were at 63% and over the next three years through improved strategies for retaining students, working with them online, teaching students to be effective online learners we have increased our course completion rates to over 96 % finishing and hovering in the 90’s over the last three years. Graduates of PBB graduate with a high school diploma in the province of Alberta. Course content at PBB are no harder or easier than any other course offered in the province. Learning at PBB happens in a number of ways. The first is that we offer 24/7 access to courses hosted in a learning management system online. The first course that we offer that is mandatory is a prerequisite for joining us online is what we call our getting online course or GO course. This course teaches our students how to be effective online learners, teaches students about the expectations for submitting assignments online to teachers in other courses. The second way that course delivery is offered at PBB is by accompanying those online courses with live instruction through BlackBoard. These courses are timetabled for students to log in during the day and we also offer a study hall support from 4:30-6:30 across all study areas. Teachers in each course will advise the students of the expectations for live instruction. Recordings of the live instructions can be embedded into work plans that are included in the courses on the learning management system and the students can click on the recordings to listen to their teacher. Teacher support is available at all four campuses. We offer courses that allow students to complete an entire diploma online. As in any school in the province, 100 credits are required for graduation and we at PBB offer those courses both in core subject areas and in the option areas. In addition we offer off-campus support for students who are registered in off-campus courses such as work experience, registered apprenticeships, career internships, and green certificates. We offer students the ability to earn credits during the summer time by attending an off-campus program. There is more that we can tell you about Grade 9 registrations, adult learning plans, upgrading, and we offer continuous learning throughout 12 months of the year, accelerated learning opportunities, courses challenges, what a concurrent registration with another high school looks like. We would also welcome conversations about international registration. *Resources consulted: I would like to thank Alison Hancox for speaking with me about the program highlights of Palliser Beyond Borders. https://www.palliserbeyondborders.com/ |
What would you like teachers to know about Palliser Beyond Borders? More Information |