Remote Learning Can Work, We’re Just Doing it Wrong
We need to change the pedagogy, not the platform.
A consensus seems to be emerging around distance learning: it’s not working. Students are disengaged and distracted when trying to learn from a computer. Test scores are dropping. Students are falling behind and won’t be prepared for end of year exams. Mental health is deteriorating. This big experiment in virtual learning has failed.
The critics aren’t wrong. Many students and families are frustrated by the new normal. As a teacher, I was frustrated too — my teaching wasn’t as sharp, my students less engaged. Test scores, undoubtedly, will back up these criticisms.
And yet, I don’t think the remote nature of this experiment is to blame. That is to say, returning to campus won’t fix everything. The standard pedagogy of today — teacher introduces new topic, student does work based on that topic, I-do-we-do-you-do — clearly isn’t working through Zoom, because without the physical presence of a teacher, I-do-we-do-you-do falls apart.
But this isn’t the same as saying that remote learning cannot work; rather, the remote learning platform is showing the weaknesses in the pedagogy schools have developed over the past several decades. Rather than throw in the towel on distance learning, teachers and schools could just change the way they teach.
After all, it is possible for a kid to spend all day learning on a computer. I know because I’ve done it.
In the summer of 2002, when I was twelve, my family found ourselves staying with my grandparents in the small East Texas town of Malakoff. I had no friends there (other than my siblings), and it was far too hot and humid to play outside, so I spent my days on an old laptop. It was a clunky, two-inch-thick plastic box, running Windows 98 and loaded with a software that allowed the user to create their own computer games.
At the time, I was an avid gamer. My favorites were games like The Legend of Zelda, where you could explore new lands and live out an exciting adventure, and I set out to create games in that model. But my initial excitement changed to frustration, as I hit road blocks.
The software used a sort of drag-and-drop programming, and the code was not editable. Several key gameplay aspects appeared inalterable, in particular the battle mechanics. The software used a turn-based combat system, while I wanted something that would play out in real time. In a sense, I had to turn a card game into table tennis.
Eventually, a breakthrough emerged. Events in the game could activate switches (as an on-off binary) and variables (which held a numerical value, and could be manipulated in many ways), and later events could be conditional on the status of those switches or variables. These two discoveries, though simple in themselves, became the basis for complex rube-goldberg-esque strings of pre-written code, which could push the software past what I thought was possible. Eventually, I created a real-time, playable fight with a monster. It was a simple goal, one many people would find uninteresting, and yet it filled twelve-year-old me with pride.
At no point, in all these hours of work (and yes, it was work), did I require adult supervision. When I became tired, I took a break. Once rested, I got back to work.
My time as a game designer, and in fact my interest in video games altogether, did not last. I moved on to other things, and eventually became an educator and a writer. But that summer was not a waste of time, nor was it just a hobby. That project had a direct impact on my core academic skills, many of which I still use today.
First, English Language Arts. At the start of that summer, I could not type. My formal typing lessons in elementary school had left me with one piece of rote information — where to put my fingers — but unable to perform the meaningful task of typing. That summer, things changed. My games were narrative adventures, epic tales of wizards and dragons, and this required hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lines of dialogue. As I wrote, I began to think closely about character arcs, internal conflicts, and plot development — things my teachers had previously failed to make me care about. By the end of the summer, I was a competent typist and a developing storyteller.
Next, math. Working with variables introduced me to algebra, managing the game’s grid-based map gave me the basics of geometry, and the interconnected switches and variables introduced me to the basic principles behind computer coding. In the classroom, I hated math, yet I was spending my summer practicing math several levels beyond what my formal education had introduced.
Electives. Game design made me think about the role of music and sound in developing tone and atmosphere. I learned basic graphic design. No one told me to work on these things, but they were necessary steps in accomplishing my goal.
What I’m describing is not unique; it’s how we naturally want to live.
Whether that energy is focused towards video games or something else, we all want to recreate the things we’re fascinated by. Watch a young child play, and you’ll see reenactments of their parents’ rhythms and routines. As kids get older, their projects change. Under the right conditions, adults do this too — just ask anyone who learned to bake sourdough bread during the first COVID shutdowns. In the process, we’re not only learning the primary task, but building a host of other knowledge and skills.
This can be explained through self-determination theory (SDT), which “begins with the assumption that people are active organisms, with evolved tendencies toward growing, mastering ambient challenges, and integrating new experiences into a coherent sense of self.” SDT is concerned with intrinsic motivation, and states this is at its highest when we can meet our needs for “autonomy, competence, and relatedness.” In other words, we must be free to choose how we spend our time, with opportunities to master challenges and support from the people around us.
In this environment, learning flourishes. As you integrate new experiences and challenges mastered into your sense of self, you absorb a wide range of academic knowledge, because academic knowledge is all around us. Our world is modeled by mathematics and narrated by mythology. You retain self-directed knowledge longer, because it’s been encoded into more meaningful long-term memories. Engaging in real-world, intrinsically-motivated projects will result in learning, because what else could it do?
In my summer of video game design, I had met my needs for autonomy (no one told me to spend my time this way), competence (the challenges were clear, difficult yet achievable) and relatedness (my siblings were creating games right alongside me).
Other environments, though, can kill motivation. When you’re doing a task because someone (a teacher, a boss) said so, autonomy is decreased. When tasks are too easy, the feeling of gaining competence is gone (conversely, when they’re too hard, competence is out of reach). When we’re alone, we have no support.
This is the problem with distance learning, as we’ve practiced it for the past nine months: we are not sufficiently meeting our students’ needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The problem isn’t the computer, it’s the teaching.
The narrative that distance learning has failed isn’t exactly wrong, but it certainly isn’t complete either. Even this I-do-you-do-we-do over a computer thing we’ve tried to do has worked for many students, notably those who on-campus learning often didn’t work for.
In March 2021, NPR ran a story about some of these kids.
Bobby is a sixth grader at North Brookfield Elementary School in western Massachusetts. He’s crazy about the Loch Ness monster. He’s into math and Minecraft. And he likes online learning.
. . .
Bobby has ADHD and sometimes gets seizures. (NPR isn’t using last names to protect students’ privacy.) This means that the 11-year-old often needs to take breaks from class, whether it is because of a seizure or just because he wants to walk around the room to get some of his energy out. Even though he already had some accommodations when school was in-person, online learning makes it easier for him to accommodate his own needs.
Schools and teachers have tried to make accommodations and modifications for students like Bobby, but within the structures and expectations of the typical school day, there’s a ceiling to what can be changed. Once allowed to accommodate themselves, these students find school to be a different, and much simpler, task. They’re finally being trusted to meet their own needs (or at least, it’s no longer within teachers’ abilities to stop them).
In May of 2020, the New York Times ran their own story on students who were doing well with distance learning.
Some students have found it easier to participate in remote classes without the social pressures of a physical classroom. Introverts who are the last to volunteer an answer in class, even when they know it, are now making themselves heard.
“Kids who would not have put a hand up at the end of a lesson are now emailing me,” said Mike Drosos, a seventh-grade math teacher at Voice Charter. He said that it seemed to help those students “when the teacher isn’t making direct eye contact six inches from their desk.”
For many students, the gift of distance learning was that the pressure was gone. They no longer had to give all their attention to school. They could complete their lesson, check that off their list, and continue with their day. The fluff was gone, and without it they could finish their work quickly and get on with the things that actually mattered to them.
Of course, this is hardly a success story for school. It exposes the sad reality that, for many students, classroom learning is not the thing that matters to them. The standard 50-minute class period is stuffed to excess, book-ended with warm-ups and exit tickets, filled with turn-and-talks and quick writes, and watched over by the peering eyes of an adult task-manager. Given the opportunity, they would gladly jettison the unnecessary structures that prop up the program of learning.
That’s not a failure of distance learning, but it certainly isn’t a victory for schools.
We can fix this. We can rewrite our understanding of school, and the principles of Self-Determination Theory provide a good starting place.
First, to build autonomy, allow students to create their own work. Teachers can play advisory roles in this, advising students and offering support in whatever they need. Second, to support competence-building, replace all letter grades with pass/fail designations. This may seem counter-intuitive, but grading has consistently been shown to stifle motivation. Without the pressure of evaluation, students will feel the freedom needed to take risks and tackle meaningful challenges. Third, to foster relatedness, create virtual spaces for students to talk with one another about their projects. This could include Zoom sessions, but could also use forums or Discord channels. Whenever possible, use the systems that students are already familiar with.
With the COVID-19 vaccine now in distribution, distance learning will become a thing of the past. But if we accept that our dominant pedagogies have been bad for kids during distance learning, why do we think they were good before? Distance learning stripped from schools the artifice and image, the games and activities, but in most schools, it did not change the fundamental nature of our pedagogies.
Our need for autonomy, competence, and connection existed before COVID and will persist long after the pandemic has ended. This isn’t simply what we need to score well on tests and develop impressive college applications, it’s what we need to thrive, to be whole and healthy human beings. Regardless of where school takes place, it’s good to give students real autonomy.
These changes aren’t new. There are entire schools and individual teachers taking the bold steps to eliminate grading or refocus their curriculum on authentic project-based learning. There are alternative approaches to education, such as the unschooling movement, that have long recognized the importance of self-determination. If teachers want to fix their pedagogy, they first need to learn from those who have been doing this work. The models are out there.
To think that a generation which has grown up with the internet should be disengaged from online learning is, perhaps, the greatest indictment one could make of current education thought. For years, educators have wrung their hands at how video games and smart phones have eroded kids’ attention spans. Yet, we’ve now put school onto their phones, and engagement has dropped even further. The problem was the teaching all along.
