Luisa Pan¹, Annie Wang², Emily Zhang², Brooke Ellison³

¹Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02138, ²Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, ³Center for Compassionate Care, Medical Humanities, and Bioethics, Health Science Center, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794

*Editors: Hugo Onghai, Ethan Pereira, Jessica Guo

 

Due to current pandemic circumstances, education at all levels has begun to shift towards remote learning. While the foreseeable future points to widespread hybridized and virtual schooling models, long-term speculation is extremely uncertain. It is clear that alternatives to complete in-person schooling must be pursued. An increase in technology-related strategies will play an integral role in education for months, if not years. However, recent criticism of 2020’s spring semester suggests quite a disordered digital classroom environment for students, and hence several measures must be implemented to retain maximal academic drive and performance.^[1]

 

The disparities present between full in-person education and a hybridized or online model are evident through degradation in academic structure for students. Without constant academic enforcement from a teacher that one would typically receive in class, students’ intrinsic motivation might understandably decrease. One survey indicated that students were most concerned about their final grades; concern over learning itself lost precedence.^[1] When such a situation arises, the purpose of school becomes distorted: while grades are an important tool to measure academic performance, true learning should be prioritized. It is critical to maintain constant feedback from the student body in order to recognize when students are more focused on their transcripts rather than their erudition.

 

Apart from academics, widespread concern has been raised over the amount of time students will be able to interact with teachers, socialize, and emotionally connect with peers. Active discussion, instructor feedback, and consistent and streamlined course design are the most important factors in student well-being.^[2] A traditional classroom’s discussion, questioning, and small talk, which satisfy these factors, are almost entirely removed from an online setting. To indemnify this loss, teachers can capitalize on the advantages of digitalization. In a hybrid setting, a flipped classroom model might be proposed—students would study the bulk of the course content at home, with lesson material provided by teachers, and return to school for discourse over crucial concepts. Digitalization also provides teachers with more flexibility for private conversations with students, which should be utilized as a useful asset to ensure maximum comprehension and form positive teacher-student relationships.

 

The tasks of budgeting for technological improvements, structuring schedules, and informing and educating teachers fall on administration. Meanwhile, as the first link between students and staff, teachers should act as guides to introduce students to this new medium of learning. Therefore, the responsibility of ensuring optimized remote learning falls upon the administration and teachers at the school system in tandem, who are both responsible for ensuring the wellbeing and maximum success of students anyway.

 

As for future implications, one interview with a Levittown, New York high school teacher yielded this insight: although the global demand for remote learning has spiked during the pandemic, digital education does not pertain only to combating COVID-19 safety measures. Online school is not new — it has been steadily competing with full-time education since the 1990s. ^[3] In a positive sense, schools that were previously behind technologically, are now forced to transition, which supports the idea that education should not be necessarily constrained to predated methods. The forced process of transitioning to a more technology-based schooling model has helped lay bare the massive digital disparity between socioeconomic tiers of society: those who had poorer access to now-necessities such as internet connection and 1:1 devices for students and staff are now obliged to catch up to reach the same compulsory level for education without the same resources. And although digital education is not a fully formed and researched field, the coming times will serve as a measure of its viability in this novel situation and the future in general.

 

References

[1] Lederman, D. (2020, May 20). Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2020/05/20/student-

view-springs-shift-remote-learning

[2] Karen Swan. (2002) Building Learning Communities in Online Courses: the importance of interaction, Education, Communication &

Information, 2:1, 23-49, DOI: 10.1080/1463631022000005016

[3] Raven M. Wallace. (2003) Online Learning in Higher Education: a review of research on interactions among teachers and students, Education,

Communication & Information, 3:2, 241-280, DOI: 10.1080/14636310303143