Everyone Was Learning Online This Spring: Mission Accomplished?

The objective of the Straube Foundation is to show how anyone anywhere can obtain quality education at little or no cost.  In the past few months, the coronavirus caused virtually all teaching to go online for the Spring 2020 and Summer 2020 semesters, and many schools’ plans for Fall 2020 are still in flux.  Some have questioned whether the foundation’s mission has been accomplished and we can close up shop.

Not quite …

In this blog post, I will outline some of the issues that have been highlighted in the past few months which act as real barriers to allowing anyone anywhere to obtain quality education online.  I intend to explore some of these issues in more detail in future blog posts, with a focus on what can be done to reduce or remove the barriers.

Not everyone has access to the internet.  There’s not much more to say on this, except to emphasize that free access to the internet (at schools or libraries or other public places) has been shut down for months due to the pandemic.  Some creative folks have taken to using the wifi in parking lots for their internet connection, but how effective is it to load the family into the minivan for a 5-hour school session?  If you even have enough laptops or tablets for everyone to use ...

Not everyone has a device (computer, tablet) appropriate for online learning.  Sure, a vast majority of people (and kids) have cellphones these days, many even have smartphones.  These are not ideal devices, however, for the extensive reading / writing / exercises / taking tests that are the essential tasks of online learning.  Many lower income families in the US do not have any computer at all.  Or they have only one computer that needs to be shared, in coronavirus times, between the adults (if they are able to work from home) and each of the kids (for schoolwork).  But let’s say you are fortunate enough to have internet and enough devices …

Many homes do not have a quiet space for study.  Watching HGTV may have you thinking that every family has a large living room/dining room space and a family room and one bedroom per person.  So not true.  With the adults possibly working from home right now (or looking for a job), and the kids going to school from home, the demand for a quiet work space greatly exceeds the supply.  And this gets even more challenging when the work that needs to be done online includes conversation (think Zoom meetings and class discussions).  Now, imagine the ideal situation with a nice quiet study space, a good laptop and a strong internet connection …

Many parents are unable to adequately supervise or facilitate their child’s learning.  For many parents of K-12 age children during the time of coronavirus, they have become the ultimate multi-taskers, balancing their own work-from-home demands with entertaining, feeding, and facilitating the online learning of their children.  Studies have shown that parents neither have the time, patience, nor often the skills to successfully accomplish these many tasks, and many students have fallen months behind when classes went online.  And then you need to consider whether the kids themselves are motivated to learn online …

Many students are not motivated to learn online.  While some K-12 students are thriving with online learning, away from the bullying and other negative aspects of modern classrooms, many simply are disengaged without the face-to-face teacher support and peer pressure.  A friend’s son teaches at a magnet junior high school that decided not to give grades this spring, because so many students were not participating in the online school work (for various reasons). 

University of Utah students surveyed about their experiences with online learning this spring cited two major challenges:  lack of personal motivation (70% of students surveyed) and lack of space to work (22%).  Some college students are so disappointed in their online learning experiences that they’re threatening to boycott universities that plan to offer the fall semester in online format only.  Which begs the question of what’s missing with online classes …

Online classes, if poorly designed, do not replicate the social and emotional benefits of F2F learning.  As I’ve discussed in an earlier blog post, the experiential and interactive aspects of classroom teaching are often key components of the learning experience.  Designing online classes in a way that provide for interactivity and hands-on practice is possible, but it’s not easy and it’s not intuitive.  Meaning that the instructors share some responsibility here …

Many instructors are not motivated to teach online, or simply don’t know how.  A friend of mine is Dean of Science at a smaller college.  One of his most difficult challenges with moving all classes online this spring was the fact that some of the older professors could not even use a computer, which prevented them from pivoting quickly to an online format.   That is an extreme example, but many faculty are comfortable teaching the way they have done for years, and don’t want to invest the time needed to change their class to an effective online offering.

Designing an effective online course often is not as easy as simply turning an existing F2F course into a videotaped lecture.  While there are many resources available to faculty to help them design online courses and use online platforms, it takes time to make this happen.  And not all students have the same learning needs …

The challenges are increased for students with special needs.  When English is not the students’ first language.  When students with learning disabilities or behavioral challenges have been mainstreamed with the general student population.

There are plenty of experts who are suggesting that the shift to online learning during the coronavirus is an arbiter of the promising future of expanded online education.  I would agree that the current situation has validated the vast potential for “everyone everywhere … obtain[ing] quality education at little or no cost.”  The challenges I’ve outline are not insurmountable.  We just need to get to work on overcoming them.