What could successful online learning look like? Multimodal curriculum and no time restraints | Access - Technical.ly

Laura Otten, a longtime La Salle University professor and and the director of a fully online master's program, argues for a shift in thinking about virtual education as we approach the start of a remote school year.

Do it all online.
Photo: Cytonn Photography from Pexels

In mid-March, the novel coronavirus forced colleges and universities to pivot from in-person course delivery and traditional on-campus experiences and thrust them into a modality of remote instruction.

Many amongst the educators — and those being educated — complained and grumbled. “Students aren’t engaged,” or “I can’t tell if they are cheating” were among the most-common refrains from faculty. “Our education management platform and I don’t get along” was another. As we quickly found out, students were dissatisfied with the caliber and content of the remote teaching, too. To a great extent, much of these complaints from both sides could have been avoided had the change need not have been required, in essence, overnight.

I am a longtime educator at La Salle University, where our leadership extended spring break by one week to afford professors an opportunity to prep themselves and their courses for a transition to remote instruction. Not every college or university made this effort...

A professor might be OK with remote teaching, where the only difference is performing in front of a camera to a class of students each watching from their respective personal space. The students can all see the professor and the professor can see all the students, and everyone can interact with everyone. This is the version of online teaching that says, “Just add a camera and, poof, you have online teaching.” It is without a doubt the weaker form of online teaching...

Online teaching and learning may not be for everyone, and this is true of both teacher and student. And it may not work well for every subject. But there is a large swath of students for whom it may be the difference between an exciting and engaging educational experience and one that is simply tolerated in order to get a piece of paper — the difference between getting excited about a subject and having the support and room to learn for learning’s sake, as opposed to learning just to get a grade.
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Source: Technical.ly