Welcome back to a ‘traditional’ blog. I hope you enjoyed the academic keynote segments I provided in my “Quarantinotes Series” – some of the best ‘bits’ from my keynote and plenary sessions over time. While I like blogging very much (and have heard from a few of you that video is not always easy to consume…especially when in a meeting!), I did find value in vlogging. I will likely produce more video content in the future, so stay tuned.
But one thing the series did do was that it pigeon-holed me into only using existing bits of content. So much has happened over the weeks that I wanted to discuss! So here is one of those things both near and dear to my heart: eLearning.
Just this morning I saw yet another report (NY Times) suggesting that distance learning is not working. (Sigh) The reporting throughout the shelter-in-place has seen darker and darker shadows fall on the subject of eLearning, whether K-12 or in Higher Education. Teachers hate it, professors hate it, students hate it, and parents hate it, or so the reports tell us.
At the same time, with a collective but far smaller voice, eLearning advocates and practitioners (whom I have joked for years are best referred to as “e-vangelists”) have tried to call out the misinformation, bad assumptions, lack of examination from legitimate research on the subject, and more. Twitter conversations continually state, “Well what did you think would happen? You can’t act like Zoom is your classroom and expect a good result!” or “Why did we start having a conversation about forcing students to show themselves on camera again? Wasn’t that discussion put to bed in 2009?”
While I think the assertions of many experienced, online instructors on Twitter are spot on, I do know that the issue is more complex than that. So let me try to highlight some of the most important variables here, to try and help a conversation that is becoming less conversant more more yelling-at-the-sky in nature.
Important Variables
First, it is crucial to understand that online learning in a K-12 context (especially K-8) is a very different proposition than eLearning for college / university students. The obvious difference is that K-12 education is not optional, meaning that practitioners have to teach everyone, regardless of their ability to leverage online hardware or software. Imagine being a 2nd grader without a computer in your house. What would you do in order to meet your educational requirements during a shelter-in-place? Well…probably nothing.
At the same time, remember that K-12 instructors have strategic intervention strategies, partnerships, and the ensuing paperwork associated with helping individual students who are struggling (for any number of reasons). Taking individualized instruction into a video chat context is incredibly complex and difficult, typically seeing teachers throw up their hands as the technology is just not intended for such a use case. While this can be done far more easily when using proper eLearning tools (such as an LMS), it still requires a great amount of consideration, strategic thinking, and execution.
Second, as I (and dozens of others) have now stated in a number of different outlets, many of these stories and reports are NOT talking about online learning / eLearning. We are seeing remote instruction much of the time. And there is a massive difference.
Remote Instruction vs Online Learning
Look, we all get it. Sometime in February or March a Dean or Chair or Principal came to instructors and explained the situation. Everyone was told to figure out how to teach at a distance, which may have (literally) been the only direction given. And so, most people did whatever they could think of to do.
But keep in mind a few important factors here. Forgive the crass metaphor, but online learning has been seen by some as a “red-headed-stepchild” to “real” learning that takes place face-to-face for years. (My best friend is red-headed and he hates that phrase…) You’ve heard it. There are lengthy, eloquent declarations by educators (K-20) stating that they would never, ever do students the injustice of teaching online. There are college Presidents who have stated in no uncertain terms that their students would never be forced to learn anywhere but in the directly supervised context of a classroom professor. Students deserve that kind of personalized attention and service! (Just please don’t ask about how this personalized service is delivered…that could prove awkward.) These eLearning antagonists will talk about the inequities of the modality ranging from cost to support to motivation to a practitioner’s inability to see any “a-ha” moments from the learners.
Please know that I do not agree with any of that. For two decades I, and thousands of eLearning practitioners, researchers, and theorists, have been proving the efficacy of eLearning. While it is absolutely true that online learning can be bad, it is equally as true that face-to-face learning can be just as bad. In fact, if you really want to get down to how much “learning” takes place in any face-to-face classroom, be careful. There are mountains of studies and research showing that most students learn little (or nothing) in any classroom. They don’t learn subject matter, they don’t learn how to critically think, they don’t learn how to problem solve…they don’t learn much of anything except how to play the game of education. (See Dr. Bryan Caplan’s Book: The Case Against Education for dozens of such studies.)
But this blog is not intended to rehash what has become (to me) a very tired argument. No, I only point out the context of online learning because all of those pundits are now regretting their comments. When you tell people for decades that something is bad, only to then “resort” to that thing, of course the reaction is going to be negative. You’ve got consumers of the “bad” product who have bought into the notion that it’s second-best (or worse) finding it difficult to overcome that predisposition. You also have practitioners who do not want to appear foolish, so they are in a catch-22. If they put the time, effort, and energy into doing eLearning right (and there is a right way…), they may find that online learning is actually just as good as face-to-face. In fact, like some researched studies, they may discover that it is better! But of course that would mean they were wrong for all those years, showcasing bias and ignorant argumentation. So what to do?
The Real Variables
If we want to have a meaningful conversation about eLearning and what should be done in order to serve students while at a distance, then let’s do that. But can we please do it without the bad assumptions? Can we try not to ignore the copious, quality studies that show the power and efficacy of (real) eLearning? Because while there are variables to consider, quality isn’t really one of them. If students experienced a poor quality online course this past Spring, then the developer of the course did a bad job. Period. And it did not have to be that way.
So what are the variables that matter here?
Well, as I alluded to above, access matters a lot. Some students thrive in eLearning contexts because they desire it. Whether for pragmatic reasons like work or family obligations, or because they simply enjoy the asynchronous nature of getting into the content, hearing how every student contextualizes the theory, debating with a professor who is playing devil’s advocate, or co-creating learning / meaning with others, there are students who delight in the medium. But those students have tools and access available from day one.
I read a number of stories this past Spring of students whose only computer is an iPad. While I love my iPad, most of us can likely agree that it was not designed to be a power tool for online learning. Yes, I can read stuff in most any LMS via an iPad, but what about content creation? For those students who relied on computer labs to type up 30-page research papers or to edit videos or to do major library searches, switching to an iPad was probably a real struggle. (Especially if they have never used a bluetooth keyboard, which one student I spoke with did not even realize was an option.)
And as awkward as it might be to take a course on (only) a tablet, that is a story of students who own a device. What about those without? Did you see any of the Twitter pictures of people whose phones were damaged on day 1 of the shelter-in-place order? Or people who lost a computer or maybe never had one to begin with? As a person who is (obviously) reading this blog via a screen, it may be easy to forget how many people in our culture do not have ready access to technology. Throughout the quarantine, I watched Jimmy Carr’s “Little Tiny Quiz of the Lockdown.” Every day he posted 10 trivia questions to help distract people. One question has stuck with me. What percentage of humans traveled by plane in 2019? The answer shocked me. Only 2% traveled by plane last year! But it aligns to this question, no? How many learners have no consistent access to the web? There are millions of families whose only connection to the web is a smart phone and millions more who don’t even have that. That is a variable which impacts online learning greatly.
Then, there is the important variables of motivation and/or self-direction. I have blogged before that telling online students they need to have more grit or self-motivation than face-to-face students is an attempt to overcome bad design, but I am willing to admit that some students need a teacher or professor in their face all the time because they lack the maturity to act in their own best interest. It’s at the heart of why a healthy proportion of students even go to college at all: to grow up under the watchful eye of adults who are not their parents. It is not hard to imagine a student who struggled to turn in assignments under normal conditions seeing the online learning context as a massive vacation.
I heard NPR report that 4 out of 10 K-12 students who have computers and/or access had never checked into their online classes once schools closed. Forty percent?! Ok, so we also have the variables of parental accountability, the need for teachers to reach out via other channels to ensure compliance, and other things. So I guess we’ll stick that in the motivation and self-direction category too.
And finally, I will fully concede that there are tens of thousands of teachers and professors out there who will struggle to adapt their lessons, instruction, and assessments to another modality. There is a distinct difference between a master teacher and a conveyor of information. This pandemic may have shone a light on a lot of information pushers who are not really very good at teaching. I know we don’t like to talk about that very much, but it’s one of the ignored secrets of education. Despite so much looking the other way, we all know it’s true. There are simply some practitioners who don’t belong in any classroom, online or face-to-face. So, asking a person who struggles to create meaningful, strategic, active-learning for face-to-face learners will absolutely see a person who cannot fathom how to teach online. To the professor who has almost no (meaningful) prep prior to a class, electing to walk in, stand in front of the students, and talk for an hour because s/he has done so for decades, online learning will be seen as a black hole. Any modality where the instructor must also be a learning designer, considering how to scaffold, how to chunk, how to prepare, how to tie outcomes to both instruction and assessment, and a myriad of other variables is going to see people who believe education as synonymous with information sharing struggle.
So, as we go into Fall and as we consider how to develop and deliver learning, let’s start talking about the actual variables without demonizing a modality due mostly to cognitive bias. Let’s talk about what can work, what might work, and what will work. It might just open some new opportunities to schools. (I hope it’s not lost on people that some schools are re-opening because they don’t know how to deliver quality online learning…that incongruity might soon be seen as educational malpractice.)
Luckily there are people out there who know how to do this. From learning designers to curriculum managers to educational strategies, we can have both the right conversations about access and motivation while also developing rich, meaningful classes that can bridge the gap if necessary. If you don’t have those people at your institution, then find some. We at IICE have a bevy of faculty and fellows who have been doing this for decades, but there are thousands of experts around the country who can help. Let’s make sure we learn some lessons from Spring and create a Fall that gets everyone back to authentic learning.
Good luck and good learning.