What this story covers:
Online education has existed for years, but this semester it became the norm for colleges and high schools across the country. COVID-19 came out of nowhere, forcing teachers and students to try emergency distance learning. How did it work? What lessons were learned?
Why it matters:
Some form of distance learning will likely be around until a COVID-19 vaccine is found. Everyone will have more time to prepare for the fall, and classes with an online component likely won’t look like they did in the spring.
By Simone Boyd, Nia Fitzhugh & John Hack
It’s early March on Towson University’s campus. Ariel Better, a spring semester transfer, is still learning her way around campus. She has settled into her routine in a new city — a 15-minute commute to campus, walking to her exercise science classes, meeting new friends.
Just before spring break, her routine changed dramatically. It started with reports that Towson University students had attended an event where people tested positive for COVID-19. After days of rumors, the university canceled the final few days of classes before the break, and then later moved all classes online for the rest of the term.
“[Initially] I was really happy that schools were closing because I thought that it would be nice to not have to go to classes,” said Better, a junior.
But once classes resumed after spring break, Better wanted things to return to how they had been.
“It turns out that it’s actually just harder to do online classes,” she said. “I miss being on campus and having to go to classes because now I’m bored and I have a lot of work to do since everything is online and it’s really hard [having to manage home life and] taking five online classes.”
When the University System of Maryland moved all undergraduate classes to an online only format for the remainder of the semester, professors and students only had days to prepare. It meant re-thinking teaching strategies, assignments, work spaces and schedules.
For students, the changes were abrupt — and often difficult to manage.
“My least favorite thing is that teachers had to change everything and now they’re giving us a ton of work that we probably wouldn’t have been doing if we were in face to face classes,” Better said. “Some of my teachers are ahead of it but then there’s also some who just aren’t really organized and will post stuff late and then have it due within the next three days or so. It is a struggle keeping up with all the requirements because each class wants a lot done so it’s a bit hectic and overwhelming. [So] I try to do certain classes on certain days instead of trying to do everything on the same day.”
The COVID-19 outbreak caused a number of logistical headaches for students and teachers in higher education and K-12 settings. According to a survey of 172 university presidents conducted by Inside Higher Ed, 98 percent of all institutions moved to online learning, and 93 percent of all institutions implemented remote-work policies for staff and faculty.
What happened in late March was a grand experiment in emergency online education. How quickly could educators migrate their courses? How fast could students catch on? It was often a struggle, especially for teachers and students who are not used to online learning technology.
Emergency online education
Very few faculty members prefer to teach online. According to a 2017 study from Educause, many educators do not believe that students learn effectively online. The majority prefer teaching courses with little to no online components. The study showed, however, that most faculty members agreed they would have a better experience if they understood how to effectively integrate technology into their courses.
Flower Darby, the assistant dean of online and innovative pedagogies at Northern Arizona University, said lack of comfort is one of several reasons why professors may dislike teaching online.
“For me, it’s all about faculty not being prepared and equipped to teach in an online environment,” Darby said. “Nobody has that breadth of experience when it comes to teaching and learning online. I do think we’re going to get there over time, but right now at this point in time, people don’t know how to teach online.”
Hear Darby discuss the challenges of teaching onlineEducators in some classes also struggled to maintain connection with students and to keep instruction to a regular schedule.
“[Schooling] is not going to be able to be the same, but the expectation is for continuity [of education], student welfare and being able to help students learning pathway not be abruptly halted,” said Deborah Adair, executive director of Quality Matters, an organization focused on improving the quality of online education. “So, the No. 1 goal, besides making sure that all people in this situation were well and healthy, is to have continuity of instruction, and that’s been the focus.”
Adair said that it is important to recognize that what happened in spring 2020 was not typical distance learning.
“It’s very clear it’s emergency online education,” Adair said. “In fact, practitioners have adopted the term remote instruction to differentiate it from online education because all of the preparation that goes into running an effective online program cannot be done in the kind of short term pivot that’s happened and that educators have had to respond to. There’s a lot of planning and foresight that goes into making online education work. It’s not just about the creation of the course or the faculty training or preparation, although those are both critical, there’s a whole lot of other things that go into being able to support students in this environment. And so, this is in no way equivalent.”
Adair said that during this time, students need to recognize that this form of online learning is not representative of online education. Primarily what educators are doing at this time is replicating what they would be doing in the classroom and transferring it online, which does not constitute online education.
Adair said students have to proactive in this environment.
“I would encourage students to advocate for themselves and to seek clarity where it’s needed because it’s very hard for faculty to quickly take the student perspective in this environment,” Adair said.
Hear Adair discuss what students can expect from emergency online educationThe quick move to online classes meant students had to deal with a lot of logistical changes: learning new video conferencing programs, understanding changes to course syllabi and, of course, and dealing with lots and lots of e-mails.
Students had to stay organized. And that was difficult for many.
“I don’t really like the lack of organization,” Mazyck said. “The profs and students were trying our best but in the midst of all this chaos it’s hard to really focus on what exactly is due because the days are getting blended together it doesn’t feel like there’s any real daily structure like there was before all of this started.”
A question of resources
For college students, having to move back home and manage new learning environments caused headaches. For many, access to computers and reliable Wi-Fi was also a problem, leading some students to fall behind.
“Technology does play a role in our education and it’s really exposing the disadvantages in access,” said Kayin Mazyck, a senior at Notre Dame of Maryland University. “That is the key word here — access to resources. Libraries are closed, schools are closed and those are the two main places that students who do not have technology at home or reliable technology at home can access those things.”
In K-12 education, the move to online education highlighted the digital divide and inequities in resources. Mary Grant, a teacher in Baltimore, said getting students the technology they need is a challenge.
“Some districts are giving out technology, and some aren’t,” she said. “We have computers in our school building. However, we are not legally allowed to give them out until every high schooler has a computer in their hand. And that hasn’t happened yet. So once every high schooler has a computer in their hand, then we can start releasing all of our technology, but not until that point.”
The move online has also been difficult for students with special needs. Stephanie Hammel, an elementary school resource director in Maryland who works for the Archdiocese of Washington, said students aren’t getting the same level of classroom support.
“They’re finding it really hard to essentially teach themselves because the classes are shorter, and they’re not getting the extra [resource] period,” she said.
Dealing with online cheating
A concern for some professors in the move online is how to ensure academic integrity.
“Now that tests are online you can definitely check your notes and Google answers,” said Better, the Towson student. “I mean, professors know that students are doing that. I’ve had a professor say, ‘I know that you guys are going to use your work and stuff so I’ve set a time limit on assignments so you still have to be aware that you’re being timed, you can’t look up every single answer,’ but yeah I feel like students are more academically dishonest now, but who isn’t in an online class?”
Mazyck, the Notre Dame student, said students are more likely to cheat in an online setting.
“Students were being academically dishonest before all of this and they will continue to be because they are going to do what they have to do to get out [graduate],” Mazyck said.
Listen to Mazyck discuss online cheatingElizabeth Clifford, a professor in the department of sociology, anthropology and criminal justice at Towson, said she’s had to overhaul some assignments and tests.
“The first was just paring down and cutting some things out,” Clifford said. “I like to think everything I teach is super important but it made me sit back and decide which things really were necessary and which things could be skipped. It’s not just people having to get adjusted to the online platforms, but I also have students working crazy hours now because of the fields they’re in. So my assumption was that it shouldn’t be as heavy of a workload, and you know usually I’m very adamant about the work load being heavy but this isn’t the time for that.”
Clifford said for her course midterm she had to move to an open-note test.
“My feeling was if I said you can’t look at your notes it would only be the honest people that would follow that and other students would look at them, so it’d be unfair to the people who followed the rules so I just said its open book,” she said.
Gail Bailey, a clinical assistant professor at Towson whose research focuses on instructional technology and education policy, said she hasn’t spent much time worrying about cheating online.
“I make it [tests and exams] open book, I don’t want to put anyone in a place where they are tempted,” she said. “If I were to do one and exam online, it would be an essay type.”
Add Darby: “I think that faculty are worried overall about students and their ability to be successful, but also they’re worried about, academic dishonesty. They’re worried about students kind of disappearing or not engaging and not understanding what might be happening in that person’s life that might prevent him or her from, engaging in classes.”
Listen to Darby discuss academic dishonesty and how faculty can engage studentsWhat will the fall 2020 semester look like? Colleges across the country are still figuring that out. Many courses will likely have some online component. Warren, the Towson student, said he’s come to appreciate the fact that classes can continue even during a pandemic.
“This experience has shown me that technology is absolutely necessary in today’s education,” he said. “Even before everything got locked down technology was a big part of how we learned and how professors taught, so with something like this going on us continuing our education would not be possible without technology.”