After two years of this pandemic, I have finally succumbed to having Covid-19. To do so at a point where the UK Government decided to lose all restrictions probably points to the fact that the restrictions were keeping some people safe. Ho hum. I managed to successfully navigate an entire semester of face to face teaching last semester without getting sick, despite students regularly being absent with the virus. Now that I have some time in isolation, I wanted to reflect on the post that I wrote in June 2020, about my thoughts on what the perfect learning experience may look like after the lockdown.
I stand by most of what I wrote in the original post in terms of what I had hopes for. My hope was that we would move away from the traditional structures of delivery and move to a flexible and negotiated model. I still wish that were the case. As it happens, the traditional model of face to face lectures and seminars has proven to be so desirable in my institution that we snapped straight back into it. I think it was desirable for all parties; staff, students and administrators alike, as it represented the ideal scenario that most people identified as ‘getting back to normal.’ Not all people. Some staff, students and administrators suffered anxieties about returning face to face and we made some concessions to try and address that (with varying degrees of success.)
I recognised in the original post that much of what I hoped for ‘seemed a while off for most UK Higher Education institutions’, and I think that is still the case. I can certainly see online meetings remaining as part of the ‘new normal’, where external examiner visits, validations and some conferences now provide institutional cost savings of not having to bring people together into the same physical space. In terms of digital learning environments? It is too early to say, but I am certainly not as evangelical about it as I was in 2020.
I mentioned in the original post that I was ‘trying to develop more asynchronous content and then using face to face time to personalise the experience in ways that seminars and lectures have not previously enabled.’ I adopted this approach in two specific units that I led and in a third unit that I contributed to. In all three units, I uploaded a substantial volume of weekly asynchronous content (approx. 2 hours of work) and then used the face to face time in lectures and seminars to develop exercises with students in the room. From my perspective as an educator, I began feeling really optimistic about this approach but in the end, by most parameters the experience was disappointing.
First, the structure of delivery. The decision to have lectures and seminars as delivery modes were assumed by the university. You could choose the length and delivery pattern but not the order in which they arrived on the timetable or the spaces in which they took place. So, the age-old problem of early start equals bad attendance was same as pre-pandemic.
Second, academic standards. In all three units the grades awarded were lower than in previous iterations of the units. I could spend a whole blog exploring the different potential reasons for this and examining the variables, but it would be onerous. Suffice to say that it is probably related to the third element, engagement.
Online environments provide detailed web analytics to indicate the level of online engagement. Obviously, in the lockdown and during remote learning, the online engagement was inflated. On returning to a face to face model, the online engagement was woeful. Crucially, it was where most of the learning outcomes and key information was presented, because the face to face was vulnerable to cancellations and sickness etc. Indeed, face to face engagement was also woeful because of the ongoing pandemic. Bizarrely, student evaluation surveys suggested they were satisfied with the new blended approach despite the fact that the evidence indicated that they hadn’t substantially engaged with it.
Long story short. It is difficult to draw conclusions from one semester, especially the first face to face experience for everyone after 18 months of remote education. First impressions suggest that the pandemic has not ignited a pedagogic revolution. Yet the same conversation about value (which was mentioned in the original post) still goes on. It begs the question: if the Government is unhappy about the quality and the students are unhappy about the cost, while teachers are unhappy about the way courses are delivered, is anyone happy? And what will it take to change it? More than a global pandemic it seems.
