Down the Rabbit Hole

In just 3 months, the world turned upside down. A teacher went to school each day, and taught a classroom filled with students. Suddenly schools are closed and teachers are given 2 weeks to take their courses online. No problem, after all we live in a digital world.

But it is a problem. A big problem, and the problem isn’t the technology or the teachers. The problem is skills. I have spent at least 20 years of my life creating learning solutions for adults. This includes documentation, curriculum and materials for instructor-led training (or what the layperson would consider traditional classroom training), curriculum and materials for webinars, and curriculum and materials for online training platforms (elearning). I would find it disturbing if an academic teacher could make this leap in 2 weeks. It would certainly minimize the value of my skills.

In an article by Michelle D. Miller in, The Chronicle of Higher Education, she describes her 5 Takeaways From My Covid-19 Remote Teaching, “It’s … an excellent time for academic leaders to beef up their engagement with all the great research and thinking that’s been going on in the field of higher-education pedagogy… getting up to speed on the learning sciences, inclusive pedagogy, and other important frameworks such as universal design for learning.”

Basically, the academic world is being forced into the world I know of as blended learning. This means using several tools, such as the classroom, documentation, video, and online learning to deliver knowledge. Moving into the world of online learning is more than video-taping yourself or holding a web conference, you need to know the technologies: how they work, what techniques work the best, how to create interactivity and engagement, and how to create community, just to name a few skills.

Parents also face a learning curve. For younger students, they need to create the structure that schools have provided. Then there are the issues with meals and other assistance lower-income students receive by attending school, social engagement, all which are beyond my expertise.

According to USA Today, “Several online petitions have popped up on Change.org asking for partial or full tuition refunds at universities.”

“The fact that school has transitioned to remote teaching means that we students are not gaining the same level of teaching from the university in addition to the fact that the school does not need as much money to run now that everything is remote,” said one petition pushing for a partial refund at New York University.”

Today reports:

“And nearly everything requires a printer, which we don’t have,” Nicholson lamented in her tweet. “We quit.”

“According to the census, we have 18 million households in the U.S. that do not have broadband subscriptions at home,” says Angela Siefer, executive director at National Digital Inclusion Alliance.

“Tawana Brown of South Bend, Indiana, begins each day by driving her family to a parking lot where school buses that are equipped with Wi-Fi are parked.”“

In places like Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Knox County, Tennessee, where many students do not have computers or access to the internet, the curriculum consists of review or “enrichment” material; the work is not mandatory and students are not being graded.”

People are angry, and need a target for their anger, but it isn’t reasonable to attack the schools. No one foresaw this. Everyone is adjusting the best they can. Kindness would serve a lot better.

I also must take issue at the allegation that universities do not need as much money to run now. Certainly, the buildings are closed, but all schools must increase technological services: Zoom or other web conferencing accounts cost money.  Expanded bandwidth costs money. Server storage costs money. Training employees in new technology and techniques costs money. Providing computer equipment to those without costs money. It takes me 16 to 20 hours to build and produce a 5 to 10 minute elearning course. Imagine the time that is required to move a semester of learning online.

Interestingly, despite all the complaints, The World Economic Forum states that “Research suggests that online learning has been shown to increase retention of information, and take less time, meaning the changes coronavirus have caused might be here to stay.”

How do we deal with the shortcomings of online learning? The underdeveloped world has been addressing these issues for years. In 2017, I spoke at the ICTD Conference in Hyderabad, India on the challenges of delivering training in a disconnected world. Although the U.S. is very connected, 75% of the world is not. Yet organizations, like Catholic Relief Services, with whom I consulted as an instructional designer for 6 years, addresses these issues every day.  

World Bank Blogs describes some of the methodologies other countries have employed to address this situation, including crowdsourced content, curation and classification, scalable technologies to reach everyone, and flexible digital pedagogies.

Take heart, solutions exist. In the coming days professionals like me and other instructional designers and technical writers can help you close the digital gap. In coming blogs I will address the new set of terminology you might be experiencing as you enter the world of blended and online learning.