Most of us never saw the COVID-19 pandemic coming. This experience, which was typically read about in history books or quickly contained far away from our shores, cracked our collective ego of perceived invulnerability. Things have been brought to a sudden, grinding standstill, making us deeply miss the trivialities of everyday life we had taken for granted.
Meanwhile, life had to go on. For the sake of continuity, we also had to quickly learn to adopt and accommodate to a new working lifestyle, instigating many to telework, invariably turning cloud-based services like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Zoom into buzzwords overnight.
This also involved educators who, regardless of age, technical background and gender, scrambled to action, taking their lessons online practically overnight. Yet this purposeful activity for the sake of our student population also led to a steep learning curve for educators.
Teachers are working much harder than ever. They have to find creative ways to teach students whom, instead of being in front of them in class, are scattered across Malta and Gozo.
Students are also confused. They are following all sorts of lessons through possibly shared gadget screens of all sizes. They may also be sharing space at their homes with other family members who themselves are juggling between study and work. Students have to learn to follow school rules even when they are not at school.
While we may think we are practising remote learning, in reality what we are doing is just emergency distance learning.
For anyone to be endorsed as an online teaching specialist s/he must go through an intensive eight-month course that concludes with a 60-hour practicum of student teaching with an experienced online instructor. This is the view of Jeff Renard, director of the Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative (VTVLC), an educational organisation that works with schools to facilitate online courses across all the US state of Vermont.
I and several other academics from the University of Malta completed a year-long intensive Master’s Online Teaching Certificate run by the University of Illinois. Yet I still consider myself a novice to online or remote learning instruction. And an attitude must first be assimilated before it is practised and efficiently articulated in ways that go beyond its original design. In fact, Renard says it can take up to three years for a certified online practitioner to comfortably articulate any new methodology, curriculum or initiative.
We are still learning, and I am really concerned when I meet people who consider themselves e-learning experts because they transfer or simply drag material from a paper to the screen. Despite all good intentions they will surely fail, and fail us even more if they view negatively the future deployment of technology for teaching and learning.
We must move away from the factory model of schooling
A paradigm shift is neither easy nor straightforward and there will always be those who deplore a new technology because it somehow undermines the way things were. Johannes Trithemus, a 15th century abbot, was concerned at the use of printing on paper rather than writing on parchment. He preferred preservation over communication. But when change becomes a necessity one has to think out of the box.
Within the discipline of digitally mediated learning that I work in there is ample literature that points towards a much-needed digitally instigated transformation in education. Various countries have consolidated free-standing, inclusive and embracing ICT policies in education because they believe technology can bring out as much change within schools as it has outside them.
Definitely these are really particular times. Even before educational institutions started taking formal action to guide and induce instruction through digital means, many teachers had taken personal initiatives to keep the ball rolling. I cannot say that we learned it all, but we are learning.
Students have been away from school since mid-March. While we all hope things will be back to normal, one can only imagine what it would mean to be normal again. Good or bad experience will always educate but time is needed to learn from insights gained.
No, e-learning cannot substitute or replace face-to-face learning and the school life as we are accustomed to. It is different. Remote learning is defined by parameters that are distinct from those entailed in face-to-face contexts. But digital tools can help to mediate and elicit new attitudes and aptitudes that can still augment learning.
As a teacher who has taught in class for 17 years before venturing into other forms of pedagogies, I can understand why those who have never really experimented beyond their tried and trusted secure zones think differently. Still, in order to mirror socioeconomic requirements, we must move away from the factory model of schooling. This is an opportunity to think and act otherwise in education to make up for this long hiccup in our modus operandi.
I believe e-learning is still in its infancy. Gasser and Palfrey (2008) state that “no generation has yet lived from cradle to grave in the digital era”. The journey of discovery is long. Yet it is of concern to see that people who embrace personal digital assistants and applications for their private life still struggle to come to terms with its constructive employment in formal educational systems. I cannot say now how schooling will look like this October. But we have to stop investing in education, training and attitudes that in 10 years’ time will be obsolete.
I am proud to say that many teachers whom I now rub shoulders with virtually are learning to adapt in style. I appreciate the collective effort of the various entities and hard-working individuals who are working to make that much quantum leap towards 21st century education. I honestly hope that after this ordeal, education will not be the same and that we go back to what it was when I was a student sitting behind a desk in class 40 years ago.
Yes, most, if not all of us are doing emergency distance learning, but the insights gained from this experience should surely change the way we look at what remote learning through digital technologies entails. Ultimately it would be a shame if these alternative windows of opportunity are treated as the Cinderella of our education when they can be employed to open new horizons, especially when augmented with face-to-face instruction.
Patrick Camilleri, Senior Lecturer, e-learning and Digitally Enhanced Pedagogies, UOM