FROM THE EDITOR: Online - Again
Technology in education certainly has a place, but how much? And at what age? And in what way? These are questions we are nowhere close to answering. Virtual learning days are a reminder of this.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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The weather did a number on area schools last night and this morning.
As is often the case with winter storms, knowing precisely when, and how much, frozen precipitation will fall depends on a range of factors that can be difficult to predict accurately.
Both Caroline and Stafford school divisions opted to close for the day. But three divisions — Fredericksburg, King George, and Spotsylvania — went to virtual learning.
Spotsylvania and King George were “asynchronous,” meaning students accessed materials on their own pace. Fredericksburg was “synchronous,” meaning teachers and students interacted in real time.
For teachers who came aboard following COVID, it was an opportunity to experience first-hand what it is to prep students for asynchronous learning, or teaching a class online. For some other teachers who remember COVID-era online education, today’s classes taught online in real-time brought back some bad memories.
For good or ill, what parents and students learned today is that online learning is not just a distant memory. Rather, it will likely have a permanent role in ongoing K-12 education.
The difference is, today we have far more evidence regarding what does and doesn’t work in the K-12 environment.
What Works, and Where
A lot went wrong with online learning during COVID, as will be made clear shortly. Lost in the general conversation, however, is that for some students, online learning actually worked better.
That’s the conclusion of some researchers examining the use of online learning in higher-ed.
Online learning had been in motion prior to the pandemic, and reviews of it were mixed at best. Most felt it didn’t deliver the same caliber of learning as in the classroom.
“Students who enrolled in online programs before Covid tended to be older and studying part time, for instance, and often had jobs and families,” wrote Jon Marcus in a column for The Hechinger Report. It’s natural, Kameshwari Shankar, a City College of New York faculty member, told Marcus, that “a part-time student with other obligations [would] perform less well” than full-time students with fewer outside obligations.
During the pandemic, however, online learning actually led to better results in large, lecture-style introductory courses because “those students … [used] chats and virtual feedback to raise questions they [weren’t] able to ask in giant, impersonal lecture halls,” wrote Marcus.
Online courses during the pandemic also helped students graduate faster. And, post-Covid, university students are showing more interest in taking online courses.
What Doesn’t Work, and Why
In some sense, it shouldn’t surprise that university students found marginally better performance and had more-favorable opinions of online learning. These are students who’ve already enjoyed at least some success in the classroom, presumably know how to take notes, prepare for tests, and raise pertinent questions that will further their understanding.
The K-12 story of online learning, however, was vastly different.
The Annie E Casey Foundation is a nonprofit educational think-tank that does research on K-12 education. It’s generally recognized by both liberal and conservative academics as being objective and delivering conclusions that prioritize a fair reading of data over political agendas.
Summarizing the findings from its annual Kids Count study (2024), the foundation said the following about K-12 learning during COVID.
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a wide-ranging and long-lasting impact on education in the United States. Not only are students still contending with years of learning loss, but they also must rebound from the disruption to their social and emotional development.
Remote learning: The sudden shift to remote learming platforms decreased instructional time and hindered student learning. Many students struggled to stay focused in class, and they were less likely to seek help when needed.
Digital Divide: Disparities in internet access exacerbated existing educational inequities for Black and Brown communities. As a result, children spent less time learning, and were more likely to drop out of school altogether.
Mental Health: Many students experienced significant mental health struggles after the shift to remote learning. Students were increasingly isolated, spending more time on devices and getting very little physical activity — all of which contributed to increased stress, anxiety and depression.
Curriculum Adjustments: Teachers were required to redesign lesson plans and find innovative ways to keep students engaged. In many cases, teachers were forced to eliminate sections of their curriculum due to their limited instructional time.
Extracurricular Activities: While classroom learning shifted to a remote model during the pandemic, extracurricular activities were typically suspended altogether. Without the outlet of extracurricular activities, students had fewer ways to develop their talents, manage stress and connect with their peers.
There’s a lot to digest in those findings, but local school districts who look to online learning to fill the gaps when extended snow days disrupt learning should take note.
Concerns over social emotional learning loss are not a grave worry when online learning is used as it was today. However, because K-12 students — especially the younger ones — are still learning how to learn, and many, if not most, are not self-motivated to do well in the classroom, simply moving online lessons to the computer and holding class is not likely to result in students retaining high levels of information.
Learning is a skill that requires focus and guidance. And that experience is best delivered in-person, or, through online programing that is developed exclusively for the purpose of online learning. In the case of the latter, the vast majority of teachers — myself included — do not have the expertise, time, or computer skills necessary to build effective online training modules.
A day or two over the course of a school year in online learning isn’t going to do significant damage to students. There’s time to make up the work and ask in-person questions about what they understand.
Used over a period of a week or more, however, schools must accept that unlike online programs specifically designed for virtual training, online classes are not likely to be particularly successful.
This is not hyperbole. In most every grade, the curricula and accompanying pacing guides — which dictate how much material must be covered in what amount of time — are so packed that students stand to lose a lot of information over a week of online classes.
It’s the Technology
This is not to build a case that schools shouldn’t use virtual learning on days like today. Rather, it’s to raise awareness of the difficulties of leaning too heavily on technology too early in students’ lives.
The Advance was to host this evening a public forum on Cell Phones and Students at James Monroe High School. The weather has forced us to postpone the event (Watch for the make-up date), but one of the reasons for hosting the meeting was to gain some insights into whether removing cell phones from the school environment has had a net positive impact on the learning environment.
There’s a small but growing body of evidence that suggests removing cell phones does improve performance — marginally. But there’s also growing evidence that technology in general is making our education woes worse, not better.
This is not to suggest we go back to how school was taught “in the day,” and put Dick and Jane primers in every kids’ hands. (The problems with that primer and others like it are well known).
It is to suggest that technology may be a much bigger problem than we are ready to admit.
A day here and a day there of online learning is certainly preferable to not attending school. But telling ourselves that more technology, not less, is the key to improving education overall would be a mistake.
And online learning may be the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
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Thank you for this very informative and well written article.