Transfer, or Transform? What the early weeks of remote instruction can teach us about undergraduate online learning
#3: Novelty Overload
During the Spring 2020 transition to remote learning, learners struggled with adapting to novel learning environments and developing novel learning practices suited to learning online.
A learning environment (e.g., a physical classroom) is distinctive from a learning practice (e.g., raising a hand to ask a question). Changing either a learning environment or a learning practice is a challenge; changing both at the same time is inadvisable. In Spring 2020, students had to familiarize themselves with new learning platforms (i.e., online platforms) and new learning practices (e.g., online testing systems) before they could even begin learning new content.
In an attempt to reduce uncertainty, both instructors and students alike held on to conservative education practices, ones that did not suit online learning. The end result was that both parties battled with friction from using old methods in new ways; 3,000 undergraduates surveyed at universities across the U.S. relayed their experiences struggling with new platforms and practices.
Students needed to learn how to use novel platforms. Prior to the transition to remote learning, 41% of surveyed students had never taken a class online, and another 16% had only taken one online class. Students with any prior online class experience had the advantage of being more familiar with online learning platforms than those who had not. For most students, the rapid transition to online learning took these platforms from the periphery to the center of coursework and classroom interaction.
Students had to familiarize themselves with what their learning management systems (LMS) could do, and quickly, so that their limited knowledge did not affect their course performance. One student wrote, “Due dates for assignments appear [on the LMS] as [they] become closer, so most of the time [when] I learn of the assignment and due date [it’s] already close to the due date.” Students were used to getting in-class reminders for assignments. Instead, they now had to scroll through multiple due dates to find the one most relevant to their objective, and remind themselves every week to check and keep track of deadlines.
These tasks aren’t inherently difficult, but each new platform added to the information overload students experienced adjusting to online learning. 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.”
For others, those challenges were compounded by technology failure; for example, one student noted that their LMS was “continuously cutting out, so students are always being disconnected from their professors or having to constantly refresh in the middle of lecture, and therefore miss material!” The overwhelming newness of classwork added to the anxiety students already felt from the uncertainty of the global pandemic: “There is a lot going on (family obligations, financial concerns, mental wellbeing concerns, physical wellbeing concerns) that prevents me from doing my schoolwork and learning… I feel like I’m doing assignments to get it done and maintain my grade without taking anything meaningful out of my classes.”
Students needed to learn novel practices for their new platforms. Instructors tried to transfer in-person practices online, but were forced to implement familiar techniques in new ways given the constraints of enacting them online. Students often needed to adopt novel practices in response.
For example, students reported that instructors had reduced the time allowed for exams, and/or did not allow students to return to a previous question to change their answers, in an effort to reduce cheating. Because students were accustomed to double-checking answers during in-person exams, these new restrictions forcibly removed a core aspect of their test-taking strategy. Many were distressed that their grades now depended on them performing well without customary routines; one student, discussing such testing changes, concluded:“[Faculty] are expecting even more from us rather than trying to understand that this is a huge change for students.”
Students weren’t the only ones struggling to develop novel practices; most faculty were learning on the fly during the transition as well. Students provided extreme examples of instructors who circumvented use of an LMS entirely: “…one of my older professors who does not know how to use Sakai, Canvas, Zoom, etc. [and] is emailing us our scheduled quizzes every two weeks, and that’s it.”
Other students reported taking extreme measures themselves to keep up with coursework that had not transferred easily into an online format: “I have one class where we do a lot of graphical analysis. Our professor keeps insisting that we don’t need a printer to do the homework or the quizzes, but I end up having to try and trace lines from my laptop screen onto a sheet of paper and measuring angle with a protractor [on] my screen. I’m scared I will damage my screen, but more likely not get accurate values [and end up with] a poor grade.” While both of these are extreme cases, they highlight how much stress could have been avoided by transforming in-person practices to fit the new online platforms.
Catch the next part of this series, Syllabi as Social Contracts
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.
