As every higher education institution and K-12 school in the country has had to shift to some form of remote teaching, misconceptions abound comparing what we are currently doing to effective online teaching.
Online teaching and remote teaching are not one and the same.
Many faculty who transitioned quickly to remote teaching as a result of COVID-19 did so with little regard to instructional design; content was quickly put together for delivery over a synchronous video-conferencing platform. Learning Management Systems were thrust into the fore, but faculty had to be quickly trained on all the tools: gradebooks, discussion boards, assessments. It was the Wild West education episode.
But now, across the country, we hear cries from some faculty that they are ready to teach fully online because they have been teaching in a remote environment for several weeks. We cannot let COVID-19, and the rush to remote instruction, kill the quality of online teaching that so many of us have been focused on — and helped to enhance — for years.
Community colleges are poised to help win that battle. Our faculty are engaged in the scholarship of teaching, not just the scholarship of research. And our students, many of whom are working or taking care of children or elders, need the flexibility during this pandemic that fully online courses bring. They expect quality courses.
Not only will the institutions be harmed but, more importantly, our students will suffer. If institutional leaders rush to compare remote instruction with online teaching, the naysayers of online education may point fingers and say, “I told you.” They may suggest that online courses are thrown together, and consequently, students cannot digest content and success is impacted. They may say that the in-depth training that our institutions provide for teaching online is exaggerated. “After all,” they may say, “you let me teach in an online environment after two days of training. Why do I need weeks of preparation?”
An article in Educause Review last month highlighted the concern:
Online learning carries a stigma of being lower quality than face-to-face learning, despite research showing otherwise. These hurried moves online by so many institutions at once could seal the perception of online learning as a weak option, when in truth nobody making the transition to online teaching under these circumstances will truly be designing to take full advantage of the affordances and possibilities of the online format.
We have to fight against these temptations. Now is the time for the online community to tout its successes and to talk about the positive impact quality design has on student achievement. To do anything less allows the educational naysayers to claim victory.
References
https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning 2020 Charles B. Hodges, Stephanie Moore, Barbara B. Lockee, Torrey Trust, and M. Aaron Bond. The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License.
Dr. Michael Mills 