Covid and Good Enough Teaching

I was talking with a colleague on Friday and conversation returned to online education.  The premise was if online teaching was good enough and more cost effective than online delivery, would schools move to online delivery for students in courses where it was reasonably effective.

The hypothesis was that is is possible for a highly skilled teacher (top 10% of teachers skilled in delivering the course) to deliver highly effective content for a Methods course to a large number of students (>1000).  If this was possible, it would have the potential to reduce costs significantly, as the IT infrastructure has already been significantly implemented (and tested during Covid) and face-to-face teachers would not be required.  If each class is about 20 students, that's 50 teachers at $24000 per year, $1.2 million dollars.  If a fifth of that was allocated to online tutors and markers, that's still a saving of about 1 million dollars.  Where schools are struggling to run small courses and SCSA prevents mixed year classes - this could be a godsend.  Schools wouldn't even run classrooms, just timetable time for students to be at home working.  After the content was created it could be re-run year after year.  This is already happening in University mathematics courses.

My colleague took this further and said that the online course would deliver better instructional content than current classrooms in face-to-face mode.  Information could be standardised more easily to the intent of syllabus writers, typically teachers delivering courses face-to-face are not in the highly skilled category, teachers have competing demands in different courses and may have issues impacting on performance from outside the classroom.

Theoretically we could run schools in an online/offline more, where students come to school for socialisation, tutoring and assessment and stay at home for the rest of the time learning online.  Content would be superior and the teaching environment could be better utilised in a cheaper "good enough" solution - the ultimate aim of any bean counter.  Schools could support a greater number of students and become much more efficient delivering content.

Could a compromise be that all ATAR courses be delivered online/offline and students only attend schools 2.5 days per week?

The obvious counter to all of this is that not all high school students are motivated enough to work online for a long period, schools do more than deliver content, context and socio-economic factors impact implementation and research is required to analyse how students impacted by covid perform at University and other higher learning online. 

Education has not evolved for 100 years and is predominantly still delivered in the same mode despite significant changes in technology.  Education appears to be on the precipice of a technology disruption.  Will we too be the victims of automation, or will we navigate it somehow to continue to be an integral part of society?

What did we learn from the last period of online learning and the 2020 cohort?

Last year we had a short period of online learning.    We learned a lot about online learning and its impact in a relatively short period of time.

1. Student Motivation

Not all students will be motivated enough to complete work assigned online.  It is imperative that someone keeps an eye on students and informs parents when students do not complete the work set.  Leaving them in hope that they will complete the work set (or face the consequences later) is not a sufficient response.  The impact goes well beyond the few weeks away from school.

2. Use a variety of online teaching methods

Students consume information in a variety of ways, but have been predominantly taught to consume visually and aurally.  Screencasts work for some students, particularly those with high work ethic and reasonable levels of concentration.  Students that struggle with self motivation and rely on the threat of teacher consequence, require social encouragement or require positive reinforcement to stay on task will struggle with a passive learning environment.  For these students it important to engage some level of social media (even if it is just a Connect discussion group or a Webex session) to provide the additional stimulus and interaction required to work.  Teaching "on the fly" is less likely to work and preparation in lieu of face-to-face teaching time is required.

3. Anxiety is a real issue

Students encounter increased anxiety regarding the Covid outbreak and the uncertainty attached to an new learning environment can encounter a block that will prevent working.  We don't know if the outbreak is a five day or five month event.  Given that high performing students are prone to high levels of anxiety (especially at the pointy end of 11 and 12), this can be debilitating without a teacher guiding them and alleviating the anxiety by moderating workload and providing encouragement.

4. Content is hit and miss

Online learning is a developing medium.  Technology has improved, delivery is easier and has wider saturation than ever before.  This coupled with the need to make, tailor or find good content without the same level of student feedback found in a classroom is difficult.  A teacher's ability to create content varies greatly from teacher to teacher and class to class.

5. Student Confidence

Not all students have the confidence to raise their hand online and say they need help.  If they stay quiet, no-one will know until the assessment point that they did not understand what was required.  The same checks and balances used within a classroom (checking answers, verifying concepts with each student, attendance checks) are all required in a modified way in an online classroom.

6. SCSA and the Department

We don't know how SCSA or the Schools Directorate within the Department will react.  SCSA may relax requirements as they did last year or stand firm and require online learning to fill the gap.  The Department was not comfortable leaving teachers to teach from home last time (justifiably as they required re-skilling) and has initially not required teachers to return to school but will recommence teaching online in some form if students are away for an extended period.  

7. Universities and higher learning

Universities require bums on seats to ensure funding and are likely to use any way possible to ensure that they reach student quotas.  By providing additional alternate entry means, students are able to bypass the rigor of ATAR external exams and lose motivation to complete courses.  This coupled to the loss of pre-requisites allows students to pick and choose whether they need to finish courses if their WACE is already secure.