However, in order to attract students and accommodate their busy schedules, the program requires that first year students meet for only one class period each weekday, while second year students meet for only two class periods each weekday. Designing a complex curriculum from which students receive three class period's worth of daily content, while only attending one or two daily classes, required inventiveness. Tim Whitley, who conceived the program two years ago, creatively supplied the program's initial creativity when he devised a Web-based delivery system for much of the content. Using Claris HomePage, and with assistance from CyberSchool's Tom Layton, Tim constructed Web pages delivering both content and daily homework assignments. Tim finds that although Web-based lesson plans have many advantages, in some ways they can be time consuming.
Web pages take longer to construct than do standard in-class lesson plans.
However, Tim feels that Web lesson planning is keeping him better organized and helping him build a large personal library of lesson plans. He also finds that the e-mail homework submitted by students, usually legible and concise, is faster to read and process than written assignments. Outside professionals, representing a wide range of approaches and viewpoints, are periodically invited into the Center's classroom in order to give students a balanced, real-world perspective. Representatives from other Oregon schools, striving to develop their own CAM programs, have been visiting the Rachael Carson Center for Natural Resources during the past year to observe and learn.