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.

高中阶段对在线课程的依赖程度增加，可能会使边缘化群体的学生遭受贫困教育的影响，从而对教育机会差距产生负面影响。。我采用混合方法设计，记录了由供应商开发的异步，在线开发课程的真实工作的普遍性和形式，这些课程主要用于在一个主要为低收入，少数族裔学生群体提供服务的大型城市学区中的信用回收。课程通常不是在促进高级思维和提供真实世界的相关性，而是最经常要求学生背诵信息。但是，通过定性分析，我发现通过整合以学生为导向的研究，基于写作的任务和交互式作业，在异步在线课程结构中某些类型的真实工作是可行的。仅识别与成就之间的小规模联系，就应当减少对成就差距的重视，而应视需要纠正正当工作，以弥补机会差距。调查结果确定了可能会提高学生在线教育经历的真实性，严谨性和相关性的教学实践。