Tulsa Public Schools Students Working To Improve Distance Learning

Tulsa Public Schools said students are helping to make learning from home a lot easier.

They said after distance learning in the spring created confusion, students came up with ideas to make the process better for everyone.

Some high school students are part of City Lab, which is a partnership with Tulsa Community College.  The project they chose to work on this year, was to make "distance learning" easier to maneuver.

Students in the Tulsa Public Schools "City Lab" partnership with TCC said they started tackling problems with distance learning right away because they wanted to make virtual school easier for students and teachers alike.

"Some of the frustrations were trying to find classroom applications and schedules and Zoom times,” Paige Purdom said. “Figuring out where to contact teachers, find assignments, turn them in, etc., no consistencies between classes.”

They said teachers would get confused, which then confused students.

The City Lab students decided to build a website to put all the links for online platforms in one place along with the TPS chat and video calls.

"Our group pointed out one of the main problems we had was didn't necessarily know where to go, during that spring where it was all online, we didn't know where to go, we were confused,” Giana Alexsis said. “Tt was really hard to get our work done, because we didn't know where to go.”

They said the website they're using now is called Clever. It's a one-stop shop with all the information students and teachers need.

"Clever is now deployed throughout TPS schools,” Purdom said.  “This has impacted the distance learning experience for students by making simplified access for applications and an easier login process.”

TPS leaders plan to meet with students every couple of weeks to continue making the distance learning process better.