Orbis Leaning Online (OLO) is a virtual educational course and program delivery platform, established to provide middle and high school age learners an outstanding online curriculum to complete an academic plan of study necessary for the completion of a high school diploma where courses are built, taught, and managed by highly qualified faculty. 

The Plan

Orbis Learning Online partners with existing schools, identified as branded schools (BS), that wish to enter the online school market, yet do not have the appropriate platform or understanding to do so. For branded schools, a subsite will be developed within the OLO platform that will be branded with the school’s name (i.e., ABC School Online), in which their faculty will teach the online courses. The branded school will provide course credit and appropriate credentials for students who complete the course requirements. Although for branded schools OLO staff will provide platform support for the school, the faculty compensation and supervision will be the responsibility of the school. 

Additionally, Orbis Learning Online will contract with highly qualified independent faculty to build, teach, and manage online courses. These faculty will be compensated and supervised by OLO staff. Any course credit granted will be issued by the student’s home school, therefore, a faculty CV will be made available for review as assurance that the independent faculty’s credentials meet appropriate standards. 

The Process 

The Orbis Learning Online will be populated with middle and high-school-level curriculum and content provided by a variety of sources. It is appropriate to think of this online program as an aggregating platform where courses are created and instructed by qualified faculty who are a part of a branded school program or who are working as an independent contractor. Likewise, a repository of open-source academic resources will be made available within the platform. 

The Orbis Learning Online platform will have three primary markets for middle and high school courses. One of these markets is for students in schools that are unable to provide the widest array of course offerings, or that lack qualified faculty to expand their course offerings. Another market will be for independent learners, who are in home schools, or for other reasons are not enrolled in a school. The third market will be to provide a course delivery platform to support academic content for learners in Orbis Learner Communities around the world. 

Why Orbis Learning Online 

During the pandemic of 2020, schools around the world have on short notice pieced together various platforms and digital tools to serve the needs of their students. Although few have mastered a process that they would argue is ideal, many educators and parents have become significantly more aware of the power of digital learning platforms and their value to blended learning. 

The Orbis Learning Online platform is a unique addition to the array of LMS and online school platforms available to schools for use in the delivery of online or blended learning for students. There are currently several excellent LMS platforms available that are designed primarily to manage student learning within a given school. 

There are online school platforms that deliver courses to schools and learners, complete with a static ‘out of the box’ curriculum and with an online teacher, who typically works in a mostly asynchronous mode with 100+ students per class. There are also online platforms that can provide a school an online learning management platform complete with a static ‘out of the box’ curriculum for the school’s faculty to teach. 

There are several large online collaboration platforms such as Google Classroom and Microsoft 365 Education, in addition to many more specialized collaboration tools, each of which can play a role in the mosaic of options to serve schools. Likewise, there is a myriad of LMS plug-and-play programs for assessing, topical content, open-source information, and more. 

The Orbis Learning Online model resembles much of what already exists in the learning management space yet is quite different in its philosophical approach. Orbis Learning Online, as a division of Orbis Learning, is a platform based on a principle of collaboration in which schools and educators develop academic curriculum within a ‘global’ LMS platform, to be made available to learners in schools or Learner Communities throughout the world. Orbis Learning Online is not an academic content developer, but rather an aggregator and manager of online course content from a variety of sources, and as a part of Orbis Learning, a global network and marketplace in which a school’s courses can be shared or sold. 

This model is designed to allow schools to sell or share high-quality course content and instruction to generate additional revenue, and/or for missionary outreach to schools in developing or underserved parts of the world. This is accomplished with the school’s courses being accessed on Orbis Learning Online, or a custom "school-branded" subsite utilizing the school’s unique URL. Likewise, the courses will be available to the school’s students as is needed and will provide a very dynamic global online classroom when the course includes both the school’s students with learners from other areas of the world. 

Orbis Learning Online, a collaborative digital learning environment designed to connect schools and learners around the world through the sharing of high-quality academic courses and programs. 

How it Works