The Covid Gap

The global phenomenon of the Covid-19 Pandemic which has included the mass movement of education into an online setting will have long term effects on the educational world moving forward and leave this current schooling generation with serious gaps in their education.  I would gladly consider arguments to the contrary.

Even as many in the education world hail this situation as a real opportunity to fundamentally change how we do schooling, I am concerned that as poorly as we have been doing it for the last century or so, this will make it worse.

For the use of this blog, I am going to refer to all forms of online learning as Distance Learning (DL) here.  And the face-to-face instruction of students with students and a teacher in a room together will simply be called the Traditional Classroom or Classroom.

Distance

By definition, distance between a teacher and student is an educational obstacle, not an opportunity.  I am aware of the ballyhooed benefit of a teacher in Iowa being able to engage with students around the world, but the distance between them presents a net set of difficulties greater than the benefits.  In the traditional classroom, we tout low teacher to student ratios as superior to high ones.  The class of ten students out performs the class of thirty five.  And the modern lecture hall in University that seats seven hundred is full of those who complain they have no connection with their teacher.  

Sometimes the difficulties imposed by distance force the teacher to seek solutions that result in better attempts at instruction.  In fact, many such strategies used online would be great, if the student was able to handle it.  Distance is an obstacle to be overcome, one that most traditional classroom teachers can deal with more easily than those using DL.  Much of this obstacle has to do with the remaining issues below.

Autodidacts

Distance learning places a great deal of responsibility on the learner.  I believe this is why we started trying it at the top end.  The idea is that a college student has gained sufficient intellectual virtue and skills so as to be able to handle the responsibility of self-learning or autodidactic education.  Even in the traditional classroom of higher ed, this has been the case, with the professor expecting a great deal of learning to go on via the assigned readings, the writing of papers, research, etc. outside the classroom per se.

To be clear, I love autodidactic approaches to education.  But the skills necessary to learn on your own, if not in place, will crush distance learning attempts.  This goes back to the distance issue: the teacher is not present to solve the many issues that a lack of skill will bring about.  The teacher in essence is demanding something of the student that they have not been prepared to do.

If the call to replace traditional classrooms with distance learning are to be taken seriously, then a return to teaching real learning skills at the youngest grade levels is imperative.  But with our desire to make education efficient seems to argue against such.  Early ed folks will quickly burn out if they are held responsible for using DL modes to bring about strong young readers with full compliments of math skills, thinking skills, and study strategies.  Do we think we can do this online when it has not been happening in the classroom?

Accountability

One of the biggest issues I hear from my colleagues and see in my own DL experience during Covid has been the issue of knowing that I as the teacher have an accurate way to assess what is being learned by my students.  There is a broad range of related concerns here: during synchronous learning events, knowing all students are attending to the lesson and not doing some other activity behind their avatar, building online assessments that are addressing higher level thoughts, and then just the plain concern of honesty.  Within the walls of a classroom, the teacher is able to monitor these things much more easily than online (see the Distance issue above).  

I am not simply “old school” here and unaware of all the gizmos available to try and deal with academic integrity online. I use the Google originality check, Turnitin.com’s powerful help, and other tech to try and help with this, but I would be naive to believe that students won’t always be one step ahead of the tools teachers have for this issue of honesty.  Again, the issue for me is the group calling for us to move from the classroom to DL permanently as though such was superior to the traditional way.  The fact that we can do it does not prove that we should.

If we had students raised in an ideal culture that loved learning, feasted upon truth, goodness, and beauty, and did not treat education as a job, a game, or a system of grade hounding, then I might concede the point.  But we obviously know that students are mostly trying to survive school, that all of them want to be in the top 5% of their graduating class, and that getting an “A” is way more important than learning anything or maintaining any ethical standard.  I just don’t think an online “A” is the same as one earned in the classroom.

Shocking the System

Finally, there is the way in which we have had to jump into DL due to a crisis.  Many believe that this jump has been a God sent blessing, forcing us out of the patterns of the traditional classroom and all the malaise of recent educational difficulties.  This is the school of the future is the battle cry.

I know that in some circumstances of poor performance it is best to practice the notion of ripping the bandage off quickly, of making the pain of change as quick as possible.  But education is too cumulative and complex for that analogy to work.  If we had philosophically believed that distance learning was superior to the traditional classroom, then we should have approached it incrementally, beginning at early learning and moving it upwards slowly.  The fact that we have welcomed DL mostly at the top (college) first brings up the question raised earlier, does the student have the necessary skills to deal with the independent nature of distance learning?

Covid Musings

I have been overlooking this blog due to the upheaval of my routines during this pandemic time.  I hope I will get back into a regular routine of posting, but as the event is not over I cannot be certain.  But Covid-19 has produced some thoughts regarding education as it has swept over us.

1. This whole desire to return to “normal” or learning to deal with the “new normal” is interesting.  I don’t think there is such a thing as “normal” in life.  We do experience routines, to be sure, but those change regularly.  What I think is being bandied about here is freedom and the loss of such.  Before Covid struck, I had freedoms that have since it’s commencement become restrained.  What I (and others) are desiring is a recovery of lost freedoms.  Not sure when or if that will happen, but I think that is what is being discussed when we talk about “normal” right now.
2. I have discussed virtual reality before (some here and a lot more here), but having remote learning thrust upon me and my colleagues has done much to confirm or change my theoretical musings of the past.  Remote learning is not the same nor can it be made to seem the same as in-class instruction.  Trying to fit that square peg into the round hole is very frustrating.  The main problem I encounter with screens seems to have two parts:  screens do not by their nature encourage sustained rational thought, and the culture of screens in our day actively affects the user’s appetites such that it places my class content in competition with the other things a student accesses with a screen, such as YouTube, Netflix, gaming, etc.  So these two things together challenge me to no end:  I can’t justify changing the content of my course to become like a movie, or a game, or a stupid cat video.  
3. When I am in class, I can relate directly to a student.  When we are separated by the screen, we are not able to relate nearly as well.  My relationship with a student is what I use to develop their attention to our content, to adjust to them as I see, hear, observe their body language, etc.  There is no way around the fact that distance learning puts more weight on the shoulders of the learner, who has to be able to do more “on their own.”  Teachers have to deal with what I mentioned above, that they cannot treat the student as though they were still in the classroom, but even if that is dealt with, I see no way in which to avoid placing more responsibility on the student than would be necessary in the classroom.
4. And by golly, screen fatigue is REAL.  Don’t get me wrong, a full day of classroom teaching is exhausting, but not in the same way and at least for me, not to the same degree as remote learning.  I feel bad at the end of the day, but the students must feel worse.  It is no wonder that most of them don’t engage the whole day, I am not sure they are physically or spiritually capable of such.  The classroom experience, again, allows for wisdom and virtue, whereby I as teacher relieve the classroom tension with a joke, or have everyone stretch for a moment, or the bell rings and releases them for a few minutes.  The marathon that is a day of remote learning is dehydrating to the human soul.

There is more, but that is enough for now.  I got get up, go take a walk, talk to a real person.

Teaching on the Internet, Pt. 1: Basic Distinctions to Work With

 

The Covid-19 pandemic should be a new learning opportunity for the serious teacher.  None of us were truly ready for this situation, unless perhaps we were already teaching online.  But even then, we were suddenly thrust into the online situation rather than having time to prepare.  What can we learn from it?  The following series of four blogs (maybe it will grow) are my meditations on what I have seen and learned as this surprise has unfolded.  Because I teach at a small and rather well-resourced private school, we were able to close up normal class on a Thursday and begin teaching online the next week.  Most larger schools took much longer.  I am now six weeks into this new experience.  I will start with some simple but important distinctions. 

Emergency vs. Purposeful 

I am a somewhat of a planning nut.  I spend most of my summers working over my teaching assignments in the big picture, and then plan out my lessons throughout the year about a week to two weeks in advance.  When the boss says we are going online with our school in four days’ time, I may panic a little.  But most of my experience with online learning this year is working off the principle that this is a surprise, a left turn, not what was planned.  I am thankful that we had 2/3 or so of our year behind us by the time this occurred.  The necessary work of bringing students into my world, guiding their learning arts, etc., was well underway by the time we all jumped onto our screens.  My planned and purposeful choices about my teaching had to shift when Corona came knocking. Thus, the first distinction to be made is that this is emergency work, not the carefully planned and chosen type of learning that some might pursue online.  We are trying to make the best of a weird situation. 

Video Classroom vs. Online Learning 

Another distinction, coming from the first, is that what I am doing right now is not true Online Learning.  There is a growing section of education that is purposefully choosing the online environment.  In their minds, the online experience is either superior to, or at least has fewer down sides, than the traditional brick and mortar classroom.  I am not going to build a case for such in this blog, but rather use that fact to note that my own experience is not of that ilk.  Because we cannot afford the risk of contagion, we have moved our classroom onto Google Meet.  If we could, we would go right back into the physical classroom (and plan to do so as soon as we can).  I am seeing confusion on this distinction, so I want to make the distinction clear.  I have been trying to keep my students learning as much as possible in the way they would be with me in the classroom.  I have not desired to flip to another format of education, though the venue has forced some compromise. 

Some teachers are trying to replicate online what usually happens in their classroom.  I just don’t see that as possible.  Attention to the task at hand is so key, and so hard online, as the students can easily be doing other things without my knowledge, that I just can’t continue to think that most of the learning happens within the video classroom.  Most of my students are learning through what I assign them to do outside our synchronous video meeting.  This experience has made me contemplate how I will return to the physical classroom and if I will change any of my behaviors there based on what I am learning in this context.  This leads almost directly to my final distinction. 

Alladidactic vs. Autodidactic 

As soon as you place a screen between myself as teacher and my students, I sense that the burden of learning begins to shift to the student.  To bring out this distinction, I coined a new term, “alladidactic” as opposed to the already existing term, “autodidactic.”  The auto (Greek for “self”) didact (Greek for “teaching”) is the student who has the tools necessary to teach himself (I think best summarized as possessing the 7 Liberal Arts).  The alla (Greek for “other”) didact still needs a teacher in order to learn.  A very young learner must have someone guiding him to the arts necessary for learning.  He can’t walk on his own, he needs the teacher to hold his hand.  But the older student has gained enough skill in learning that she can begin to learn for herself.  She is still helped, no doubt, by the guidance and accountability of having a teacher, but given the right assignments and deadlines, she returns with learning she has gained on her own and simply reveals such to the teacher to receive her just praise and necessary criticism. 

I teach high school students, who should be close to autodidactic skill acquisition, though some have not been guided to such and others have chosen not to try and acquire those skills.  I can’t imagine what the mandated online classroom experience has been like for a 2nd grade class, or the like, but in my case, it has promoted the alladidactic to become an autodidact, and for that I am thankful. 

With these distinctions made, I will proceed to several more points in future blogs, including a comparison of what can and cannot be done online vs in the classroom, how methods are affected by the medium, and in particular, changes we must make in assessment if we move our instruction online.  My goal is to have all this up in fairly quick work, but we will see if that transpires.  Pray for me as I pray for you. 

The Audacity of Udacity

What about all this excitement for online learning?  Is it the means for recovering the right path to a higher education? Some think so: Bill Bennett on Udacity.  I am not convinced.

 In my previous blog I lamented the turn in modern education toward slavery away from freedom.  As this turn completes and education becomes fully about certification and motivation, the new and rapidly expanding online alternatives will fill both these criteria much better than the expensive “traditional” factory college classrooms.  So I applaud the saving of some money.

But is it a better education?  What are the criteria for better?  You can take classes when you want, dressed in your pj’s or less, and spend less money.  You set the pace, the content, and get to interact only with a screen.  To many in our day that is much better.  You don’t have to leave home, so the rent is lower, the food is better (in many cases), and you sleep in your old bed, not a noisome dorm.

And the courses tend to be better fitted to the modern student: visually oriented, fast paced, generally assessed in a manner that gives you multiple shots at passing, and with no books, just online stuff.  The ability to gather information from the leading sources and specialists is superior to any on campus experience.  And did I mention it was cheaper?

So it is the idea that will revitalize education, right?  Not so fast. Education as defined by whom?  In my previous post, there is clearly two definitions.  One wants to see a person get into the job of his dreams, the other wants to see a person become more human.  The first goal is much lower than the second.  If the first is sufficient, then perhaps online certification may be a viable means. It should be noted that the most popular distance learning options are seeking ways to ensure that the online experience did in fact “take” by demanding some sort of final “face to face” assessment by another human before conferring their degree.

The issue of human interaction is at the heart of my concerns.  I have some experience with distance learning and distance teaching.  This experience and reading about other people’s experiences has led me to these questions regarding this latest attempt at educational paradise:

1. A computer cannot, philosophically and practically speaking, replace a human.  It can be programmed to be intuitive but is limited to the imagination of the programmer, typically even falling short of that limited sphere.  So how can a computer judge a human’s abilities and give a true assessment of skill or wisdom?
2. It is exponentially harder to transfer skill through recorded material than in a “live” setting.  So how will even the best video or magic whiteboard settings communicate anything other than one recorded way of learning?  I can see multiple versions of a lesson, but that assumes that a student having watched format A will know he does not understand and move to format B and C until he does understand.  The most basic problem any teacher of young people confronts is the over inflated notions they have of their own mastery of a subject.  Take one course in X subject and they talk like an expert, until they are Socratically questioned by someone who truly is an expert.
3. The key component of most online learning is the internal motivations and character of the student.  That is true in the classroom as well, but the human teacher can catch the glint in the eye, the mannerisms, etc. that reveal either a truly engaged mind or one who is bluffing.  No online experience that I am aware of can discern the soul of its student.  So even setting aside the freedom/slavery discussion of my previous post, just the utility of the mode is questioned.  A lot of certified online graduates will show up to work and demonstrate that they are not ready when real people ask them to do real things.   That already happens with many traditional graduates, which is why most folks want to see a change in how we do college.  But I am not sure that the computer will do any better.
4. The very things that have been jettisoned in the classroom and that have thus resulted in poorer education are not necessarily being recovered by the traditional teachers who are now going online with their stuff.  Yes, you can package the information in neater videos and charts, interactive games, and in many cases get by with more salacious content, but in the end mimetic and Socratic modes of teaching are just as absent from the online stuff as from the live courses.  So after the fallacy of “new is better” has worn off, and we have taken time (probably about 20 years) to evaluate the differences between the new new and the old new, there won’t be measureable differences, other than those of utility mentioned earlier: price, convenience, etc. So how is online education substantively different than classroom, other than price, convenience, etc.?

I say all this while currently being employed in helping to create an online environment.  In fact, I am trying to find ways to spur students to think more clearly than they will have to in their traditional college classrooms.  But the format is limited.  It is not a panacea.  It is only as good as those limitations.  In the end, education is a heart transplant.  The teacher’s life is recreated in the student’s.  I am not convinced that the online world can do that anymore truth, goodness, or beauty than the traditional classroom.  It is an alternative, not a whole new world.