Negativity.
A new survey suggests online learning has a negative impact.
The subtitle above is from a CBC story about a recently released survey commissioned by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA). 2,208 faculty members and librarians, and 502 students took the poll, but with over 500,000 students in Ontario’s universities, that’s not the most representative sample of student opinion. Still, there’s much to be learned from the information gathered. OCUFA’s press release highlighted that “62 per cent of students and 76 per cent of faculty and academic librarians believe that the adjustments universities made to move teaching online have had a negative impact on education quality.” The headline for the press release was blunt: “Pandemic has caused decline in educational quality.” Has it really?
Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash
One of the more interesting findings of the survey, and one that has been in seen in other surveys by institutions across the country, is that the online learning experience is leaving both instructors and students feeling disconnected. This aligns with the anecdotal evidence I’ve collected from colleagues and students in my own classes. Both have indicated that they don’t feel that they’re connecting with others as much; they feel isolated and miss the smaller yet valuable moments of chatting informally before class or socializing afterwards. These activities aren’t directly related to learning, but they have a big impact on how people feel about the overall experience.
Most of the survey’s results didn’t make it into the news reports or OCUFA’s press release. 29 per cent of faculty and librarians believe that the most important issue facing universities is “lack of funding/research/budget cuts/high tuition”; only 9 per cent thought it was “COVID-19/pandemic/impact on students” and only 6 per cent responded with “standards/quality of education/research.” This would indicate that faculty members feel that educational quality has declined, but that it’s a minor issue compared to funding cuts. That’s a bit of a mixed message.
In another section of the survey, students were asked “what are two or three changes that your university could make that you think would be effective in helping university students adjust to a post-pandemic world.” Reducing costs and tuitions fees came in first at 15%, followed by “reduce campus access/close it/more courses online” at 14 per cent. Yes, you read that correctly: students recommend more online courses, not fewer.
OCUFA interprets the overall results of the survey to mean that “without immediate action from universities and the Ontario government to address these concerns, it is likely that quality will degrade even further.” But there’s no evidence that education quality has degraded, only evidence of dissatisfaction - valid dissatisfaction - with the current modes of delivery necessitated by the pandemic.
I draw two conclusions from the survey. I start from the point of view that without online teaching and learning, there would be no higher education in Ontario during the COVID-19 pandemic at all. The glass is half full. Dissatisfaction has left a bitter taste, but if we didn’t have that drink, we’d be dying of thirst. So maybe we should drink up.
My second conclusion is that we can improve the taste of that drink. The survey should not be taken to mean that online education is a failure, as some will inevitably conclude. If OCUFA wishes to use the survey to snipe at the government and university administrations, fine. But I think a more productive approach, one that would be of greater benefit to students and instructors, would be to think about what can be done to improve on the general unease that comes with online education.
One example was raised by my own students, and I think it has a lot of merit. Online courses tend to have a lot of smaller learning tasks; in the Before Times, this was considered one of the best ways to keep students involved and on track in online courses. But in the Before Times most students weren’t taking all of their courses online, and living through a year that has been trying if not downright painful. In such circumstances all these multiple and varied tasks seem to be overwhelming students, which contributes to the general sense of stress and alienation. We could rethink this approach and scale back on the number of learning tasks in our online courses.
That press release headline - “Pandemic has caused decline in educational quality” - was unhelpful and misleading. Satisfaction seems to be down and stress seems to be up, but we have the ability to adjust and improve.
For Fall Term 2020 this blog will be exploring issues informing education during a pandemic. It is appearing as part of a graduate seminar on online teaching and learning. You can read more about the seminar or see the other posts.
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