Your Virtual Classroom is not a Classroom
Teaching in-person versus teaching online isn’t just a matter of a different delivery system. Teaching online not only changes the outcomes but also the very product of education as we know it: the classroom.
Until a couple of months ago, the delivery system of education has been largely unchanged for centuries: In-person classrooms or workshops with smaller or larger cohorts of students. With COVID-19 this delivery system has been disrupted and many of us moved online to continue our practice.
Education goes beyond content delivery
With curiosity, I’ve observed the online learning strategies of public school boards, private training companies and universities, and I’ve noticed a trend to treat education as mere content delivery. The notion that educators can move their classroom online, is rooted in the assumption that educating involves merely delivering content to students. Under this assumption, the same content I teach in a classroom can also be delivered online. Therefore, the virtual classroom guarantees that learners reach the same outcomes as in the physical classroom, regardless of the presence of a teacher or peers.
Education, however, is not just a cognitive experience. It is also a humanizing and socializing experience. Humans learn through narrative, context, empathy, debate, and shared experiences. These components of education are diminished, if not eliminated, when teaching as we know it happens through screens and in isolation.
The Medium is the Message
Even if education was a mere cognitive experience that solely relied on content delivery, creating a virtual version of content still changes the product. To use a simple analogy, when a book is turned into an audiobook, are we simply changing the delivery system? It’s the same content, but is it still the same product? Content and medium have a symbiotic relationship. We shouldn’t examine one without the consideration of the other.
“The alphabet was one thing when applied to clay or stone, and quite another when set down on light papyrus.” Marshall McLuhan, 1964
I currently observe a focus on technology to solve the virtualizing of education, without examining its impact on learning. But as Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message. The medium we choose to deliver education matters and affects the learners’ experiences.
Online education can do a lot more than be a lesser version of in-person education
Online education, the way we are experiencing it now, is the result of an emergency situation. Nobody has really had the time to plan for this. And so what we experience today isn’t online learning at its best. It’s online learning as a band-aid solution.
It appears that with the Internet as a delivery system, we forgot about all the nuances of education, and surrendered to a philosophy that reminds more of B.F. Skinner’s Teaching Machines then the well-established pedagogies that are the product of decades of research and experience.
Virtualizing a teacher-centric model doesn’t equate in a good learning experience. Instead of trying to replicate our in-person classroom online, instead of rationalizing hasty educational reforms, and instead of looking at EdTech to solve our delivery problems, I propose we look at it as a unique opportunity to rethink education. Much like the book was once a new technology that caused a seismic shift in education, the Internet has its own unique properties and advantages we can lean into without abolishing a high-quality education.
If you’re curious to learn how the outcomes of online education should shift, and how we can embed the socializing, humanizing part of education, please subscribe to the Faculty 21 Newsletter so you don’t miss my next post on how to design online learning for the 21st century.
