In the pandemic many higher ed faculty, forced onto Zoom and other videoconferencing platforms, have continued teaching online just as they always did face to face, delivering lectures over streaming video as they did in person. Many are unaware that teaching online can actually open new possibilities to innovate their teaching practice.
In fact, many college instructors have been downright grumpy about having been thrown into a new teaching format.
Believe it or not, this may be the easy part. The answer is to put the power and profit in the hands of the teachers themselves, and in turn, back into their communities. By building teacher cooperatives this can become reality.
For online learning to be successful and happy, participants need to be supported through a structured developmental process. The five-stage-model provides a framework or scaffold for a structured and paced programme of e-tivities.
The five-stage-model offers essential support and development to participants at each stage as they build up expertise in learning online.
The perfect class discussion can feel like something of an alchemy. From the instructor’s preparation to the students’ personalities, many ingredients can enable or challenge the social construction of knowledge in a class community. As Jay Howard suggests, quality discussions require a great deal of planning and an understanding of social, emotional, and intellectual dynamics (Howard 2019). As we begin one of the most unusual semesters in the history of higher education, with institutions implementing a combination of remote, hybrid, and in-person instruction, it’s urgent to consider how we can facilitate meaningful discussions in virtual environments. In particular, if instructors used video conference software during the emergency remote teaching of the spring and summer, they may have experienced a ghost town of student reticence and awkward silences, and the occasional shuffle of video boxes like virtual tumbleweeds..
As teachers, no matter what grade level we teach, we want our students to feel comfortable to participate and even initiate virtual class discussion. The author of this article mentions the importance of letting students know the expectations of the virtual class discussion, how to make space for all student voices, and how to call on students to add to the discussion without making them feel intimidated.
In March 2020, UK higher education embarked on a sudden shift to digital learning. In the vast majority of cases, it wasn’t a designed and fully realised transformation of teaching and learning.
It was an emergency response to an unprecedented situation that relied on upskilling staff rapidly enough to enable them to deliver the remainder of their courses, and assess them, in as effective and equitable way as possible.
The extent of this digital shift, and the tools, techniques and platforms used, varied not only between universities but also within them, depending on the demands of different departments and the confidence and capabilities of the staff.
The transition to online, asynchronous learning poses just as many challenges for students entering the online classroom as it does for academics mastering the platform. Cynthia Wheatley Glenn out…
As remote teaching and learning become more common–if not the standard in many places over the next six months–I thought it might be useful to offer some remote teaching tips to engage students in distance learning.
As with all content, how useful and relevant any of these are depends on your context–experience, grade level, need, priorities and strengths as a teacher, etc. Some are possibly too general to help (e.g., ‘Simplify’), but hopefully out of the 25 remote teaching tips below, one or two might stick and make your planning a little easier–and more engaging for students.
One of the key questions that faces you as you make your transition to online education is that of resources. In order to make the best of your online teaching/learning experience, you will need to have access to the right materials that can help facilitate this transition. EdTech and mLearning's distance learning section has some good suggestions to start with.
This blog was kindly contributed by Dr David LeFevre, Director of the EdTech Lab at Imperial College and the founder of higher education platform company Insendi, part of Study Group.
Last month a subtle warning shot was shot across the bows of universities still struggling to manage the disruption caused by Covid-19. When the Minister responsible for higher education announced that UK students would be charged full tuition fees for online study, she added a caveat – the assumption of quality. If students ‘feel that the quality isn’t there’ she said, ‘there are processes that they can follow’ to seek redress’.
Amid talk of pandemics and economics, it may seem like a comparatively minor discussion to have: the difference between remote learning and online learning.
But, with COVID-19 forcing schools around the nation to move their classrooms online and more and more scrutiny leveled at the sustainability of doing so, it’s a conversation that education experts increasingly insist should happen. Making the distinction, some say, could shape the future of online learning for years to come.
This guest blog has been kindly contributed by Professor Neil Morris, Chair in Educational Technology, School of Education, University of Leeds. He can be found at @NeilMorrisLeeds
The Unbundled University research project, funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC grant number ES/P002102/1) and the National Research Foundation in South Africa (NRF grant number 105395), explored a range of issues in relation to the expansion of online education in universities in the UK and South Africa, including partnerships with private companies and the disaggregation of learning and teaching materials for delivery online (‘unbundling’).
Data were collected from interviews with senior leaders, academics, students and private companies in both countries. The data are being written up for publication in academic journals, but given the rapid shift to focus on online education as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is evident that some of the headlines from the research need to be put in the public domain rapidly.
Elizabeth E Charles's insight:
A timely report with the mass move to online teaching/learning.
When I was asked to create an online course 20 years ago, I simply transcribed my face-to-face lectures into 10–15 page Word documents that I posted in our LMS. Don’t ask me how my students managed to get through them.
Even as more people are logging onto popular video chat platforms to connect with colleagues, family and friends during the COVID-19 pandemic, Stanford researchers have a warning for you: Those video calls are likely tiring you out.
Professor Jeremy Bailenson examined the psychological consequences of spending hours per day on Zoom and other popular video chat platforms. (Image credit: Getty Images)
Prompted by the recent boom in videoconferencing, communication Professor Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL), examined the psychological consequences of spending hours per day on these platforms. Just as “Googling” is something akin to any web search, the term “Zooming” has become ubiquitous and a generic verb to replace videoconferencing. Virtual meetings have skyrocketed, with hundreds of millions happening daily, as social distancing protocols have kept people apart physically.
"Facilitating discussion in any course can be challenging, and if you are facilitating an online class, the difficulty level goes up exponentially. Why is this? First, in a face-to-face class, you can manage and control the flow of the discussion in real-time. If you see the conversation going south, you can pivot to another topic to recalibrate things quickly. However, in an online course, more than likely, you and your learners will not be accessing the course at the same time, especially when it comes to discussion."
After such an unusual year, EDUCAUSE has taken an unprecedented approach to naming next year’s highest-priority tech issues.
In a typical year, the EDUCAUSE Top 10 IT Issues list would be exactly that: a list of the 10 most pressing issues expected to affect higher education over the course of the coming year.
But 2020 has not been a typical year — and 2021 seems likely to follow suit. So, when it came time to compile next year’s list, the EDUCAUSE IT Issues Panel had a much more complex undertaking than in years past. After all, how do you forecast a year’s worth of priorities when no one can reliably predict what tomorrow holds?
“Throughout the pandemic, we’ve all learned a different way to plan,” said Susan Grajek, vice president of partnerships, communities and research at EDUCAUSE, during the organization’s annual conference in October. “We’ve learned the futility of making long-term plans to mitigate a disease that’s still poorly understood. We’ve also learned about how useful scenarios can be when we’re faced with uncertainty. Scenarios can help us plan for alternative futures.”
Higher education, Grajek explained, is facing multiple possible futures and scenarios, each with its own complex challenges and priorities. Recognizing this, EDUCAUSE’s expert panel realized that one list of top IT issues would not suffice.
When hundreds of spring and summer undergraduate courses were abruptly moved from onsite to online delivery in the wake of COVID-19, several faculty and students nationwide reacted with panic and uncertainty. Currently, instructors are busy preparing for the 2020-2021 academic year where several students will continue taking courses online. At my institution, fall academic courses will be primarily virtual (along with several others across the nation), with some in-person and hybrid instruction for performance-based, clinical, and laboratory courses, and some students living on campus.
In preparing for the fall term, most colleges and universities are responding to the renewed public consciousness about equality, inclusiveness and fairness for all students.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic we started a section here in EdTech and mLearning devoted for distance education. Our goal is to provide teachers with readily accessible resources to help them make the best of educational technology in their remote teaching. We have already covered several EdTech tools, apps, and tutorials and today we are adding another interesting resource.
Distance learning started as an emergency in the spring, but teachers are finding ways to make it better, even for students working on smartphones.
As the new school year looms in the U.S., many teachers are unsure of the exact amount of time they will need to dedicate to remote teaching. With departments of education and districts looking to maintain both teacher and student attendance while minimizing the risk of coronavirus outbreaks in their schools, we know that remote learning isn’t going away at this time.
COVID-19 has upended normal social connections that develop between students and professors. We are missing the connections that develop through casual interactions in office hours, pre-class discussions, post-class questions, and any other in-person interaction. These social connections are important for student retention, academic development, diversity, and inclusion. As universities and faculty grapple with the shift to an online education system, and as uncertainties and budget concerns about the fall semester take hold, strategies to maintain student-faculty connections should be a top priority.
As we thoughtfully shift our courses online, we must also strategically consider how to best replicate or innovate to develop social connections. While maintaining a connection with students should be a university wide initiative, in the short run, faculty can assist by developing their own student connection initiatives. The purposeful use of social media presents a great opportunity for educators to connect with their students and recreate some of the social connections that are lost due to online education, while also providing new ways of developing connections.
With some schools already announcing they will not reopen normally in the fall, and many others considering their options, educators are hoping to take advantage of the summer to improve on this spring’s sink-or-swim plunge into distance learning. Much of this reflection is likely to take place within the often siloed communities of practice in K-12 and higher education.
Dr. Mark Bullen demystifies instructional design by providing a simple and easy to understand explanation of the concept. His key point is that instructional design is all about crafting learning objectives at a level appropriate for the knowledge and skills that are being developed, then
The shock has passed, the sadness comes and goes, and the stretchy waistband pants are becoming a mainstay. Your college or university is staying online for the rest of this academic year, as well as summer, and you wonder about fall 2020.
While the trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic persists, it may be time to settle into an educational environment that will be more online than previously imagined.
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