How Do We Make Remote Learning Better? Listen to the Students

Between April 21 and May 14, 2020, we surveyed 3,113 undergraduate college students from 31 universities across the U.S. about their remote learning experiences.* The survey was anonymous, took 10 minutes to complete, and consisted primarily of closed-ended questions. Students had the option of writing in answers about their experiences with remote learning at the end. Their answers should guide how we, as educators, make remote learning better for this upcoming school year — for our students, and for ourselves. This 5-part series is a collaboration with Amy Jordan, Alyvia Walters, and Luna Laliberte.

Lesson #2. Less is More: Helping Students Manage Information Overload.

Many assume that this generation, raised with the internet and digital devices, are comfortable with any form of technology. It isn’t true. Like many of their instructors, most students had no experience with online courses prior to March, 2020. They had a steep learning curve with the learning platforms and systems they were expected to abruptly master to complete their coursework.

To make remote learning better going forward, we need to make the platforms and programs we use as transparent as possible. When new technologies are introduced into a system, they are initially opaque, in that the technology itself is unclear and therefore, the focus of attention. Only in time do we start to see the technology for what we can do through it, and that is when it becomes transparent.

How do we help make learning platforms transparent? Students have a clear message: less is more. Less platforms. Less changes to course requirements. Less variation in communication. Less may means your course is less perfect, but simplicity helps students manage overload in a digital learning environment.

Here’s what students had to say:

Limit how many digital learning platforms you use. In the spring, faculty cobbled together programs and platforms to make their classes work as well as possible. For many students, that meant using different apps and platforms for each class. They struggled. For students with spotty internet and slow devices, it is especially hard to operate many platforms when just one would do.

All students have trouble with splitting focus and disorganization across platforms. This is especially true if, for example, due dates are posted in Canvas but assignments have to be uploaded via another app or platform. Having some courses using Canvas and others using Blackboard is also problematic. As one student noted, “Remote learning means there are five different platforms from which my professors are each posting material. I’ve overlooked multiple assignments, simply because I had no idea they existed in some remote corner of the Internet somewhere. Things just slip through the cracks easier.”

Use your main digital platform to its fullest. Platforms like Canvas or Blackboard have many functionalities, and many have been added since the spring. That should enable most faculty to make their courses a one-stop shop. One consistent request from students was for a course “to-do” list or calendar function that lays out all their due dates in one, easily accessible spot. The syllabus still matters, but make sure to list important dates on the main page of your course as well. And, do not change due dates once they are set unless it is absolutely unavoidable. This may seem obvious, but students noted this as a major stumbling block to their online success.

Streamline how you communicate with your students. Let your students know what to expect from you upfront. Do you want to email your students with reminders and updates? Fantastic. Tell them that. Do you want to use the “announcements” function on Canvas? Great! Let them know. Setting clear guidelines for where to find important information was crucial to students feeling a sense of control in a remote environment. When communication is “too inconsistent to keep up with routine,” students get lost, and “it’s impossible to stay organized.” Mixed methods of communication may seem like a reasonable way to reach students, but they were clear: please have a singular, reliable go-to form of communication.

Did you catch Lesson #1 on Students Being Under-Connected? Next up is Lesson #3: Helping Students Create Community

*More information on methodology: The survey was developed by Vikki Katz and Amy Jordan, approved by the Rutgers University Institutional Review Board and ran for three weeks on the Qualtrics platform, between April 21 and May 14, 2020. A total of 3,113 undergraduates from 31 U.S. universities that had shifted to remote instruction participated. Ninety-four percent were between ages 18 and 24. Sixty-five percent identified as female and 35% male, somewhat more skewed than the general 4-year college population (56% female and 44% male, according to the National Center for Education Statistics). A total of 10% of participants identified as African-American, 18% as Asian, 13% as Hispanic, and 62% as White; an additional 17% selected multiple races or ethnicities. The project was supported by the School of Communication and Information, and by the University Research Council, at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.