I’m standing in my post-Covid-19 quaratene shelter-in-place guestroom / home office and beating a metal cake pan with a wooden spoon, hoping someone will hear my lament: The rush the return to classes, fueled by the rush to free-up parents to work, the rush to get new undergrads in dorms, etc., is obscuring sound discourse / publc discussion about the merits of online learning, itself — and this is resulting in premature and uninformed prejudices against the online teaching modalities, which probably aren’t deserved.
No less than the Journal of Higher Ed ran another article this week, about the issue. Here’s my favorite paragraph:
“Experienced online teachers and faculty developers have rightly responded to those complaints by pointing out that we should hardly expect satisfaction with online teaching this spring semester, given that our transition to it was so rushed. Faculty members who had never before touched their college’s learning-management system suddenly had to master it in a week or two. Lack of familiarity with all of the digital tools available meant that too many instructors tried to replicate their face-to-face courses online, without considering the distinct challenges and opportunities raised by teaching in a different medium.”
To read more, please click here: https://community.chronicle.com/news/2353-on-not-drawing-conclusions-about-online-teaching-now-or-next-fall?cid=VTEVPMSED1
It’s an article worth reading, because the author casually lays out the issues, framed within a personal narrative of his own college professor matters, and those of his daughter, who doesn’t like the idea of starting her undergrad studies online.
I especially like the part where he actually taps the expertise of a seasoned Instructional Designer, to share the ADVANTAGES of online learning lest they be swept away in the current emotion-laden discussions. What he’s referring to includes the benefits to learning disabled, physically disabled, or other frequently marginalized groups of students, who have been shown to do better in some cases when their lessons are offered online:
I learned from her how online instruction can provide a gateway to higher education for those who would otherwise be denied access to it. I learned how online teachers with the right tech tools can work wonders in their medium, just as some teachers can work wonders in the physical classroom. Darby’s work convinced me that, for some students, online and hybrid courses can provide a learning experience every bit as robust as a face-to-face course.
Either way, the article asks folks to be more considerate and circumspect and to not conflate apples and oranges in the discussions — and how can anyone argue with that?
Dottore Mark 