Does Covid-19 create a need for new models of online learning?

My last post https://davefoord.wordpress.com/2020/07/06/emergency-learning-is-not-the-same-as-quality-online-learning/ was my first Covid-19 related post. This is my second post in this series:

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There were recent discussions on various mailing lists that I am on, about the need for different models of online learning during this phase as we cope with the educational demands of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some went as far as suggesting that we need to throw away any existing models and start again with completely new ones. When I talk about models, I am talking about the mechanism or structure that are followed when designing, developing, delivering and then reviewing a ‘program’ of learning. Different organisations will use different combinations of models and ideas – some will be highly formalised, others will be more ‘organic’ and more loosely adhered to. The topic of choosing/designing the actual models is too complex for me to cover in detail in this post – what I am doing here is discussing the decision making considerations.

So the question is – do we need new models to meet the current demands?

To answer this question correctly, we have to identify if the current models are working or not. If they are not working – then yes we may as well ditch them and start again. But, if the current models were working before Covid-19 then I think we would be better off using (possibly with some slight tweaking) these exiting models for three very simple reasons.

• Just because Covid-19 has forced people to change their delivery methods, does not mean that the principles of good quality blended learning has changed, and therefore the models to create this also haven’t changed.
• Whilst people are adapting to the new way of working – it seems more prudent to me, to embed the existing model of practice rather than create potential confusion by introducing new ones.
• We have no idea how long this pandemic will run for, if there will be second waves, and what the ‘new normal’ will look like. But, it is highly unlikely that we will return to where we were before. So the smart money at the moment is not to focus on just the here and now and providing some emergency learning for the current students – but to look to the future, and take this enforced inconvenience as an opportunity to develop our blended learning provision.

The reason why I believe in the above points are:

• Education (certainly in the UK) is based around the interactions between student and tutor, and student and student. This doesn’t matter if the learning takes place in a physical classroom, or an online environment – this should be the cornerstone of the learning experience and this hasn’t changed as a result of Covid-19. If there are no interactions with other people, then there is no point in a student paying significant amounts of money to study, they may as well buy a book, or simply spend their time surfing the web.
• There is a myth that people learn differently when they learn online. This is nonsense – the process of learning is (apologies for the gross over-simplification) the formation of electrical connections in the brain connecting prior experience and understanding to new stimulus. This biological process is the same regardless of the vehicle of delivery.
• High quality blended learning is about identifying the optimum mix of face to face and online learning, and developing both so they benefit from and enhance the other. The optimum mix is not a magic percentage but will be influenced by the subject, the students, the teacher, the resources available and logistical factors. The desire to find the optimum mix has not changed as a result of the pandemic – what has changed is the logistical factors that affect this optimum value. I blogged about this back in 2014! – https://davefoord.wordpress.com/2014/10/09/getfeltagright/

So – my opinion is that we shouldn’t be treating this current situation as ‘out with the old and in with the new’ but instead work with the bits that we have working well and develop them.

And as my closing comment, which has quite serious ramifications – to do anything else would send a message to teachers that us learning technology evangelists have been wrong all along – which isn’t going to provide confidence to the teachers who are probably apprehensive and nervous at the moment and need to trust the learning technologists more than ever.

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Image Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/business-man-coffee-work-computer-4250499/

The 4 stage model for use of a VLE

A major part of my work at the moment, is working with and around VLEs, either by creating content and activities, or providing training to teachers or learning technologists in the effective use of the VLE. As part of my work in this area, I have identified that there are different steps to go through for the effective use of a VLE, which I have simplified into the following diagram, and which (I think) has huge significance strategically for organisations that are trying to get teachers in particular to make better (or at least more) use of the VLE.
The 4 steps are:

1: Managing

Many of the clients that I work for, hire me to design and create the various activities that form the backbone of a course on a VLE. The teachers then become skilled at managing these activities – e.g. pointing the students to quizzes at the appropriate times, moderating and encouraging forum based activities, providing constructive feedback for formative assessment activities etc. These teachers in the main are not involved in the design process, and certainly not the building/creating process.

2: Designing

Once a teacher has worked with and managed activities that has been created by someone else, they start to understand how such activities work, what the important ingredients are, and why and when the activities are used. They can then start to design new activities – this may be sketching out the ideas or concepts on paper, it may be creating source information in Word, PowerPoint or Excel – the information then goes to a learning technologist who turns their ideas and content into the actual activity.

3: Building

The third step is the actual building or creating of the activities, i.e. using the VLE tools to actually create the books, quizzes, assignments, forums etc. from this content.

4: Repurposing

Once someone has become proficient at building activities, they can then start to repurpose existing content, and hand in hand with this, build content in a way that makes it easy to repurpose in the future (either by them or someone else).

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Some organisations have a centralised learning technology team, which is great, as they can help teachers gradually work their way up through the steps. When a teacher is new to this area of work, the learning technology team can do the building for them, allowing the teacher to concentrate on managing and designing. Then as the teacher becomes more proficient, they may start to do some or all of the building, and later repurposing.

However, there are many organisations out there that don’t have such a support mechanism, or the team is too small to be able to effectively meet all the building and repurposing needs of the organisation, and this then forces steps 3 and 4 onto the teaching staff, often without them having worked through steps 1 and 2.

I don’t have a magical answer to this problem, as money is tight, and organisations cannot just create large support teams out of nowhere, but if we think about this 4 step model, and identify the necessity for teaching staff to work their way up it, it is possible to rethink a little about how we do things. I have worked with some organisations recently where I have been asked to come in and run training, where I have had a few hours to try and get teachers jumping straight into step 3, and without any central support for the staff once I leave at the end of the day. This is always going to be tough for those staff. What would be really good is, if there is a mechanism where staff can manage some existing content first, then design some basic activities which someone else creates for them, and then they receive the training in how to build/create content etc.

Within FE and HE at the moment, there are huge pushes to get people using learning technology more (and in many cases the VLE)  – and what is very noticeable is the very different approaches that organisations offer in the way of support, and more significantly the different levels of understanding from the decision makers in these organisations.

‘Flipping eL’ – ‘The Flipped Classroom’ – part 2 – One size doesn’t fit all!

In my previous post I introduced my opinion on the notion of the ‘Flipped Classroom’. In general I think this is a model that may have potential for certain learners on certain courses in certain situations, the problem is there are many situations were this won’t work, and my fear is that organisations will try to implement a 1 size fits all approach which invariably becomes a 1 size fits none.

One size doesn’t fit all

For the flipped classroom to work, the notion has to be fully embedded, understood, and embraced by the tutors and learners to be successful. When I was at school, doing my GCSE subjects, we had a homework timetable where on each evening we would have 3 different subjects worth of homework – each 30mins long, and as students we did this without exception – so in this situation the flipped classroom could work – however I was lucky enough to have passed my 12+ and ended up at a very good Grammar School. I don’t think this model would work with schools that have less motivated students, or ones where students have less supportive family home lives. If you have a mixed group of students, where some do the necessary preparatory work, and others don’t the risk is that parts of the face to face sessions, would be spent trying to ‘catch up’ those that didn’t do their prep work – which would annoy those that did and seriously weaken the model. There will also be a fear from the school managers of the impact on league table positions, which I would see resulting in extra work for the teachers as they try to accomodate the needs of the less motivated students, to ensure they don’t do worse than the previous model.

If we look at HE, hopefully learners are more self motivated, better at managing their time and want to learn – so again there is potential that this could work – but I think we would need to advertise clearly before students enrol on a course, that this is the intended model, so that they can make a conscious decision as to whether they would prefer this model or not, and if not they then choose an alternate provider. If students have signed up for a course at an institution, and then suddenly we introduce this model without discussion with them, then I would expect an element of dissatisfaction from them, and if they are paying up to £9K per year for the privilege then in my opinion, dissatisfaction just isn’t an option.

The most interesting area for this model is FE – which is where I started my lecturing career. The norm within traditional FE is that students don’t get ‘homework’ the same as they did at school, so there isn’t the culture within FE for students to do out of class hours (unless it is an assessed piece of work). Many doing FE courses also have part-time work, and those on courses like BTECs will have huge amounts of coursework to negotiate leaving them no extra time for this model. The only way that this time could be created, would be to reduce the teaching timetable – but the risk of that is the learners just spend the time doing more part-time work, or other distracting activity, so I foresee the need to have ‘monitored’ class time where the learners sit in a classroom doing their prep – but this then self defeats the point of the process.

Where this model may work very well within FE is if learners actively choose to study their courses via a mixture of face to face and online delivery methods – This model had been difficult in the past to achieve as the funding model required a recording of the guided learning hours, so it was very difficult to quantify and record the proportion of time spent on the online elements – and because the college didn’t want its funding reduced had to deliver the same full number of contact hours. Changes to the funding mechanism in recent years means that FE qualifications will have a notional numbers of hours from which the funding model is based, however these hours do not have to be accounted for down to the last minute as was previous. This opens a lot of potential new avenues for FE colleges and Work Based Learning providers in particular, but from my experience as a freelance consultant, most organisations are not moving forward quickly in this area – one exception is Loughborough College, and in particular the sport courses – with whom I have been working on these things for a few years now. They have been delivering online learning at FE level very successfully for about 5 years, mainly to elite athletes for whom the demands of training and competition prevent them accessing a traditional face to face based course.

In a subject like sport there is always going to be a need for some face to face element, in order to access specialist equipment, in order to teach elements such as coaching, massage etc. and for a tutor to accurately assess the practices of the learners. So if a learner is choosing a course such as sport but they want to learn primarily through online learning – then this is where the flipped classroom can work. If the online content element of the course is thorough and well designed, then it is possible for the majority of the teaching and learning to take place via this medium – then learners come together at key times (e.g. for an intensive days or days) in which to cover the practical elements – but hopefully with some pre-knowledge so their time in the lab or gym is maximised.

The problem that most organisations face, and FE colleges in particular – is the diversity of the types of the courses offered (and the types of learners that study them) – means that each course would need its own unique model of doing this (if they went down this route) – but that is harder to roll out, and harder to manage. I have worked with a couple of colleges recently who are seriously looking at the model of the flipped classroom, and I am concerned that they are trying to enforce a model of ‘1 size fits all’ onto all of their courses – which I think will result in problems.

My next posts in this series will be trying to analyse some of the benefits and problems that this model would bring, and look at how an organisation could go about implementing this model if they do go with it.