I have been trying to find the time to sit and write this page over the past weeks. The first step as they say is the hardest. And when it comes to typing my thoughts down, it seems I am struggling with more then time….
Yet, I find myself in a new reality these days.
Each morning I wake up to news about COVID-19, each day announcements on further restrictions to movement, and further calls to tighten safety measures especially to limit students in a classroom for fear of spreading the virus. We are really in challenging times as we have had to grapple with operating in/on an online space almost overnight and in a way in which we have had no choice but to do so. This has added significant pressure and stress to both faculty and students. Faculty seemed unprepared and fearful when asked to switch to teaching in an online space. Quite a few resisted in the first few weeks when the University made the decision to minimize possible community spread of the virus from within the classrooms. The reasons for resistance ranged from strong disagreement of the quality of online teaching (as opposed to face-to-face interaction especially for post-graduate education) to concerns over confidentiality over content/information that was being shared in the classroom. The fear can be linked to a lack of familiarity with online tools for teaching as well as a situation/realization that the course had not been specifically designed for online teaching or interaction. There were real concerns about how to ensure engagement in an online space. Understandably, faculty were concerned about how they can maintain/sustain the quality of their class when they had to shift to an online format instantaneously. In the face of clear instruction from the University that faculty had to shift their classes to online teaching, there was little choice and faculty requested substantial support to shift. This meant actual physical help with webcasting and set-up/working with ZOOM. Faculty who struggled the most were those who did not have exposure or familiarity with a range of online tools e.g. Twitter, FaceBook etc.
Interestingly, age has not been a factor in the distinction between those who were open and comfortable with online tools and those who were not. It was about familiarity with online tools, familiarity with different pedagogical approaches, and time. By this I mean that the time pressure e.g. “you’ll have to switch to e-learning” was perhaps the hardest to adapt to… And this was not restricted to faculty/teachers. This was the same set of issues that students grappled with. Students were equally unhappy and uncomfortable with the e-learning but accepted it as an emergency response to COVID-19. They may have been much more familiar with online tools and in many instances agreed to assist the professors with the switch but the younger cohort – those familiar with a highly interactive process in the learning space were the most unhappy at having to switch e-learning.
So what do we need to do to create a “comfortable” space for teachers and students in online education or with regards to online tools?
- Knowledge and familiarity – exposure to online tools, what they can do and what their shortcomings are
- Time – to shift and make the adjustments; the more both sides are under pressure to use these tools and to show that they can use it, the harder and more painful the experience
- Design & Experimentation – it takes a lot of design and experimentation to get online use and online teaching to work
So how? COVID-19 has forced us all to confront our fears. It’s emphasized the great divide around digital literacy and how the unregulated online tools do not quite help address the illiterate. Simply telling people that they need to be digitally literate doesn’t make it happen.
