Part I: The struggle to redefine learning during COVID-19
The first installment of Second Waves: Schooling in the Age of COVID-19 and AI
On the morning of March 10, 2020, students and staff members at Harvard University received an email from president Lawrence Bacow. It informed them that they would not be returning to campus for the remainder of the semester due to COVID-19 concerns. Classes would resume virtually for graduate and undergraduate students following the spring recess. He acknowledged students’ frustrations about the sudden isolation from their friends and classmates. To faculty, he wrote, “I recognize that we are asking you midway through the semester to completely rethink how you teach,” adding, “we do this because we know that you want to avoid putting your students at risk.” Bacow praised the community for their patience and resilience and signed off with the casual tone of a thank you note: “With appreciation, Larry.”
His assertion that educators would have to “rethink” their professional practice was — to say the least — an understatement.
One by one, colleges and universities across the country shuttered their campuses, intent on curtailing the global pandemic. On the same day, Massachusetts Institute of Technology made a similar announcement to Harvard, and Boston College followed suit a day later.
Faced with the immense threat of COVID-19, K-12 schools also pivoted swiftly and school buildings began to close. Tens of thousands of educators flocked to free webinars to learn how to run a Zoom or Google Meet video conferencing session in an attempt to continue classroom instruction. Even tech-averse teachers submerged themselves in learning technologies in an attempt to maintain some semblance of continuity. The virus gave educators no choice but to reconsider what teaching and learning looked like for their students, and even the loudest opponents of technology adoption were forced to reconsider their views. Structural change felt imminent — but was it, truly?
Suddenly, schools found themselves in the midst of a unique opportunity: the ubiquitous adoption of technology in education around the world. It provided a chance to rethink education and how technology integration can transform the learning experience — for the better. COVID-19 necessitated a shift in teaching and learning as school moved online through remote learning. Ready or not, even Luddite teachers grudgingly found ways to instruct and manage their courses online.
Yet, seven months later, pundits have lamented the limitations and perceived ineffectiveness of remote learning. The Wall Street Journal published an article entitled “The Results Are In for Remote Learning: It Didn’t Work,” and pointed to unequal access to technology for students and the considerable stress on parents as reasons for its “failure.” For their part, many schools adopted an “emergency teaching” mentality, which precluded them from fully adjusting to a “new normal” of remote learning in which a deep rethinking of instructional strategy and student assessment is required.
Unequal access to technology is an ongoing concern, but where technology has, in fact, landed in the hands of students and teachers, there has also been a lack of vision and creativity. Teachers have struggled to adapt to a learning environment that is less under their control and where students must work more autonomously. To some experts, what should have been a moment for technology to shine in education has become a considerable disappointment.
Ironically, the initial desire for classroom continuity spurred considerable instructional change. Teachers and schools recognized early on that their students couldn’t (and shouldn’t) be expected to sit continuously hour after hour each day in front of a computer screen for live instruction, so an interesting transition occurred. Teachers found themselves willing to make instructional videos, record audio, and otherwise create multimedia, instructional content for students to consume asynchronously. Large masses signed up for “how-to” webinars on creating multimedia, and a newfound openness toward instructional transformation seemed to be taking root.
Weeks later, many teachers also began to acknowledge that their traditional model of student assessment was now impractical. Simply put, students can cheat on factual tests and quizzes in remote learning environments. (Schools cannot control a student’s home internet or personal cell phone, and so students can Google test questions, text classmates for answers, or ask someone in their household for “help.”) Many teachers hoped that the impact of COVID-19 would lessen quickly enough so that they would be able to administer tests and quizzes to students in physical classrooms.
Yet, COVID-19 cases across the country are increasing exponentially, and more and more schools are continuing, or reverting to, remote learning. (Just this week, the New York City public school system, the nation’s largest district with over a million students, closed abruptly over fears of rising COVID-19 cases in the city.) As a feared “second wave” of COVID-19 descends upon the nation, many teachers are now accepting that their long-time reliance on summative assessments must come to an end and that they must rethink and reimagine how they are going to measure student learning.
We know how many teachers reacted in this time of great change; their first impulse was survival; “Just trying to get through it” became a COVID-19 mantra. As teachers try to make sense of a new reality, they cling to a vestige of continuity. Not surprisingly, teachers gravitated toward video conferencing platforms to reconstruct their classrooms — that space where they feel comfortable teaching students. Teachers scrambled to recreate a familiar teaching environment.
But COVID-19 has done more than force our hand when it comes to the use of technology in the learning process. It has created a pandemic mindset. Many industries made swift changes that had been long-thought infeasible. For instance, telemedicine, once plagued by outdated licensing laws, quickly proved itself as a viable option for many health care appointments. Corporate America, which once scoffed at employees who asked to work from home, quickly transitioned to remote operations.
Consider also the Black Lives Matter movement. George Floyd was not the first black man to be victimized by police brutality, nor was he even the only one that month. But it was his death specifically that sparked an uproar. A “business-as-usual” approach to policing and race relations was deemed no longer acceptable. People demanded fundamental changes to systems considered oppressive and outdated. As a result, President-elect Joe Biden has pledged that the battle against systemic racism will be one of his top executive priorities.
The COVID-19 age has shown that meaningful change is possible and that inertia is no longer sustainable. This era, above all, has demonstrated the need for creative problem-solvers — scientists developing vaccines at a record pace, businesses figuring out how to service clients remotely, and designers reimagining physical spaces to accommodate social distancing. We expected scientists and businesses to think on their feet and come up with creative solutions when faced with new challenges. Should we not be preparing our students to do the same?
The volatility the world faces now — in the form of fluctuating job markets, transformed workspaces, and unforeseen new responsibilities — begs the question: Are we preparing students for an unstable world of unforeseen challenges?
Whether pundits’ criticisms of remote learning are fair or unfair, American educators are under an intense amount of pressure to reinvent themselves and create effective learning environments with technology. But schools have struggled to redefine teaching and learning during this tumultuous COVID-19 period. And teachers are exhausted. The implications are enormous for the education of our students.
The key to instructional innovation lies in the mindset of our educators and the culture of our educational institutions. The roots of the lack of vision and creativity needed to adjust fully to the instructional realities of COVID-19 are long and entangled, but a pivotal lesson can be found several years back amidst the first wave of widespread technology adoption in schools.
NEXT: The First Wave: Widespread Technology in American Schools
