Transfer, or Transform? What the early weeks of remote instruction can teach us about undergraduate online learning
#5: Conclusion: Don’t Be Afraid To Try Something New
The transition to remote learning in the Spring of 2020 was a monumental effort for faculty and students to keep school going during a global pandemic. The earliest weeks of the pandemic were a shock to the system and all its participants. Students and faculty alike have become more comfortable and confident with online instruction over time. Nonetheless, students’ initial reactions during those early weeks — including their immediate suggestions for how to improve remote learning — offer the special clarity that only exists before the strange becomes familiar. Those insights offer important lessons for how to improve online learning experiences for students and faculty for as long as we must, or choose to, continue to learn in these ways.
Students experienced some familiar in-person behaviors as strange in online environments, and some online learning behaviors felt more comfortable and familiar. Many reported that traditional testing practices transferred poorly online. One student suggested a better way: “The solution is to grade students with completely open tests — no strict time limit, notes allowed. This way, you can’t cheat, and everyone has fair circumstances.” Online learning requires new ways of evaluating students that emphasize fairness and are suitable to remote realities, both of which require faculty to consider both the novelty of the learning environment and the social contract they have built with students.
Students also experienced novelty overload at the start of remote learning as they adapted to both novel learning practices and a novel learning environment. With that early stage behind us, instructors can use online learning environments in more transformative ways by dynamically integrating students’ feedback. For example, some students found video conference lectures to be even more useful than in-person ones, writing that “I find my programming units tutorials being better online, as tutors share their screen to do coding demo (where on campus we would have to squint in on project screens). “ Finding what works can be iterative enables faculty to tinker with what is or is not working so they may find and continuously improve the overall learning experience over time.
Finally, students felt that some faculty made changes in the remote transition that violated the syllabus as a social contract. With more than a year of experience, instructors can now create realistic guidelines for online learning environments so that learners can have stability and agency within the classroom, be it digital, hybrid, or in-person. One student disclosed that, “I had classes where assignments were due the day online learning began or the few days after and it was hard to keep track of everything. If we are going to continue online learning for the fall term, I hope that professors give a week or two before assignments start to be due in order to give students a chance to get prepared and adjust to new classes in a new learning environment.”
In March 2020, learning was transferred online out of urgent necessity. But since then, instructors and students alike have learned many lessons. In order to provide students with a meaningful online education through the pandemic and beyond, faculty and students both need to reexamine their conservative tendencies to maintain what they know. By transforming learning practices rather than transferring them, faculty and students can take full advantage of the benefits of online learning. When we transform old practices to new ones that suit this novel teaching medium, develop social contracts that facilitate equitable learning, and embrace the ways online learning can refresh outdated techniques, online learning becomes more than just a last resort — it becomes a new channel of effective, equitable, and engaging education.
Thank you for reading! If you missed it, check out the first article in this series.
This 5-part series on transferring and transforming learning online is the product of an independent study project by Luna Laliberte. She analyzed open-ended answers from 3,000 students surveyed between April 21 and May 14, 2020, from 31 universities across the U.S., about their remote learning experiences. The survey was conducted by Vikki Katz and Amy Jordan, professors in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University.
