Make Online Learning More Human!
How can we make online learning more social and human for learners as well as teachers?
Let’s face it, we never expected to have our children’s teachers beamed into our living rooms on a weekly basis. They’ve probably learned more about our children from sibling squabbles and holiday fridge magnets than we will ever know. Despite this, the irony is online learning has resulted in some learners and teachers feeling less connected. There is no bumping into each other in the corridor, no anecdotes by the lockers or pranks between lessons. Oh, and we all miss the cake. So how can we make online learning that little bit more human? Our challenge focused on the different interactions demanded and afforded by digital media. We didn’t conclude with a single idea, but rather the components of what we think the solution would need to have. The following is what we talked about.
The opportunity
In the discussions, we discussed the fact that current online learning is both missing important aspects of in person learning, and that online learning is perhaps being used for too much. The opportunity is to focus online learning on what online is best at which, in our view, was asynchronous, autonomous learning, fostering creativity, reflection, providing more ways to give feedback and ways of structuring the time online.
Structuring the time spent online is particularly important now, in lockdown since teachers and learners are sometimes just moving in person lessons online which might not be making best use of the online time. This suggests a need for the solution to chunk up time for the teacher and the learner.
Online learning provides huge scope for autonomy and creativity. Learners can research, create, share and explore. The solution should make use of this so that using it feels inspiring and fun, not tedious.
The opportunity for parents to be involved in the curriculum - by looking over the shoulder - is an opportunity but also a potential problem. If the parent is challenging everything, the teacher becomes overwhelmed by just answering the parent whereas their time should perhaps be spent helping the learner. The challenge here is to involve the parent and provide opportunities for feedback… exactly how though is unclear.
Components needed for the solution
Rebecca Osborne day 2 drawing snippet
Ability to record tutorials and share easily (e.g.as simple as TikTok).
Providing a balance of synchronous and asynchronous use of the platform. For example, don’t make something a video call if you can do it over chat or shared docs. Consider replacing revision time with peer-to-peer quizzes. Don’t necessarily go with what’s been done before.
Consider how best to mix online and face-to-face time. Lockdown is overemphasising the need for digital (so solve for what will become normal not what is normal now).
Provide tools to scaffold the online interaction time. For example, provide social catch-up times in lessons which automatically move to “lecture” or tutorial time. This gives structure to what are otherwise seemingly endless video calls.
Create a community around the solution, as many platforms already do. This means the platform provides the tools but the community of teachers, learners, parents and other stakeholders who can determine how it’s best used.
Merge the tools we’re currently patching together. A lot of online learning is a janky combination of video calls, shared presentations, some collaborative documents and a chat box tools which don’t really work together, they require the humans involved to learn the tools instead of the content. There’s an opportunity to make the technology disappear.
Constraints
MIRO collaborative white board full of ideas from the focus group
As with everything in education, very few solutions work for everybody in all circumstances. When you choose your users, you choose your constraints.
Access to device and internet
Capacity to maintain motivation
Parent availability, where required
Pressures of testing
Access to training - for parent, teacher and learner
(In hindsight, most of these constraints are true of all digital products).
Who will build it?
The platform we’re imagining didn’t have a clear home so we considered the role of all those involved in education.
What should the role of legislation be? Perhaps to push providers of platforms and education to move to better, healthier digital experiences.
Could this start as an open source project or based on open protocols?
Could a new provider start with the most impactful part of the problem? (In the same way Slack started with messaging and then added integrations to many work tools).
Have your say
Are you already working on something similar? Do you want to get involved with this?
Reckon we’ve got it all wrong but know the solution we’re looking for? We’d love to hear from you - drop us a comment below.