Time for a new orthodoxy in e-learning?

I was going to write something on this anyway, based on my experience of teaching in the first semester of the academic year 2020/21. However, at the same time that I started writing, I came across this piece in The Guardian, by Profs Anbarci and Hernando-Veciana of Durham University (“The pandemic is a chance to rethink education, not settle for online lectures”, Fri 18 Dec 2020), which has done quite a lot of the work for me. They make several cogent points about the future of instruction in higher education and they are right to suggest that the sector needs to take the best of online learning and use this as a catalyst to re-think university education. The response to the effects of COVID has pushed the sector forward ten years – or more – in its thinking, into an area where virtue can be made from necessity. In short, I recommend this piece.

However, there is one point that, based on my experience, is underplayed in this article. That is the effect of the advice given to teaching staff – many coming to online learning for the first time – over the summer. I found no lack of support at my university, but this was premised on what was described to us as an e-learning orthodoxy that should involve a minimum of live (“synchronous”) teaching, and more time for students to engage flexibly with their studies. This was specifically emphasised in a proprietary online training tool, as well as several discussions prior to the beginning of re-designing existing courses. For most courses, the logical response would have been to hold live seminar or tutorial sessions, with recorded lectures, possibly with some live aspect available during the timetabled slot.

In theory, I can see the sense of this. For some time students have spoken in favour of the provision of lecture recordings so that they can re-listen to them at their leisure. To my understanding this provision has not had any serious effect on attendance. There is also a lot that can be done in terms of encouraging comprehension and basing work around recorded lecture resources. (This led me last year to write this on the possibilities for designing welfare monitoring alongside the design of academic work. https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2020/10/26/the-engagement-monitoring-of-university-students-in-the-context-of-blended-learning/) I also appreciate that a common aim may be to encourage students to spend time on ideas encountered in lecture material to make for informed and productive live seminar time.

This low-contact, high-flexibility system may have worked in the pre-COVID era where students specifically chose online or distance learning courses, but in my view it does not work as a straight replacement for large-scale conventional university teaching. Among other things, it removes those opportunities for informal learning that Anbarci and Hernando-Veciana outline in their article. I have dealt with several students this semester who are struggling with this new flexibility, not least in terms of a perceived increase of workload. Our present inability to replicate informal, face-to-face contact has been a major contributor to these problems. Few students are receiving overt advice on how to study; most are not able to pick this up simply from being around other students and staff and finding out what they should do, how they should do it, and – no less important – what they can get away with. This has been hard enough for returning students, but a chronic problem for first years, who have no experience of higher study to draw on.

The colleagues with whom I share the teaching of a first-year course quickly realised that students were craving live contact, and that is what we gave them for the full, timetabled two hours a week. We also hit upon the idea of team teaching, allowing us to cover IT glitches through mutual support, and use the technology to better effect; for instance, through picking up student comments for the session leader, and managing break-out rooms. It was evident that we were learning no less than the students, but in redesigning the course in line with what it was clear the students needed, they in turn came to the sessions with patience and credulity.

Another unforeseen problem that was solved with the same methods is what students are expected to do in timetabled slots. This sounds like a strange problem to have. However, the idea of timetabling is very much an artefact of face-to-face teaching, as it aims to have people do a particular thing at a particular time. Logistics are built into timetables and there is a strong normative aspect to them. The flexible learning propounded as part of an e-learning model has an uneasy fit with timetabled classes. If we are presenting recorded lectures at a designated time, we are essentially saying that students should watch those lectures at that time; rather than, for instance, at any time before the live small-group slot where the ideas can be discussed.

A related e-learning practice advocated was to provide smaller chunks of recorded material, perhaps 20 minutes in length, with associated comprehension tests and activities. The result appears to have been that for any lecture timetabled for an hour, several hours of work are necessary. At this point many might say: no bad thing if students are reflecting on the core ideas delivered by lectures. However, it begs a series of questions. On my part, one question is whether this additional work around lectures is of a piece with timetabled activity, or whether it is part of the independent study that students are meant to carry out alongside their instruction, commonly in a ratio of two or three hours of independent study to every hour of instruction. Or is it a completely new type of activity? No-one I have asked seems to have the answer. The perception among many students is that they are taking more time than they should be to complete a finite activity, and this has contributed to feelings of anxiety about performance. It is no wonder that students have been asking whether this is how their studies should look; and I refer the reader above to the same point regarding opportunities for informal learning.

Finally, it became evident to us early on that live teaching needed back-up plans at every turn. I encouraged my colleagues on the course to build in a Plan B and preferably C for every session. This level of planning served us well, not only tactically at the times when we experienced the inevitable IT failures (or IT user failures), but also strategically in the overall concept of delivery for the course. In principle at least, students knew that there was something in reserve that would deliver much of the same outcomes as the live sessions. In this way we were able to deliver not only the course itself, but also the reassurance of personal contact and known quantities in terms of academic work. The flexibility of e-learning was subservient to our overall aims for the course rather than being an end in itself.

In short, those of us who teach in universities need to continue to learn quickly. The lessons I have learned from the first semester are clear: maximise rather than minimise personal contact in teaching; introduce possibilities for informal learning; be clear about expectations; think about different modes of delivery in terms of staff deployment, where possible; and remember that your aims for the class outweigh the theories of optimum online delivery.

Many thanks go out to my co-Course Unit Directors and students of last semester, all of whom were “building the boat while already at sea”, but who managed this with some aplomb.