Abstract:
Closed campuses, working remotely, and physical distancing have changed the way we work, teach, learn, shop, attend conferences, and interact with family and friends. But the Covid-19 pandemic has not changed what we know about creating high-end online education. Two decades of research has shown that online education often fails to fulfill its promise, and the emergency shift to remote instruction has, for many, justified their distrust and dislike of online learning. Low interactivity remains a widely recognized short-coming of current online offerings. Low interactivity results, in part, from many faculty not feeling comfortable being themselves online. The long-advocated for era of authentic assessments is needed now more than ever. Finally, greater support is needed for both underrepresented students and for faculty to move beyond basic online instruction to create a strong continuum of care between the teaching and learning environment and the student support infrastructure. For those who have been long-term champions of online education, it has never been more important to confront the three biggest challenges that continue to haunt online education – interactivity, authenticity, and support. Only by confronting these challenges squarely can instructors, educational developers, and their institutions take huge steps towards better online instruction in the midst of a pandemic and make widespread, high-quality online education permanently part of the “new normal.”
"In the context of an article on MOOCs I co-author, one of the reviewers raised the question of how networks and communities, in particular networks for learning and communities of practice, are different from each other. Without tracing the complex history of learning in social networks, one can safely say that all of it is rooted in the pioneering work on social learning done by such people as Alfred Bandura and, later on, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. Was Bandura interest in all kinds of learning, primarily formal, school-based learning, Lave and Wenger thank their fame to their development of the concept of a community of practice. The participants of such communities learn by peripheral participationthey claim, that is through their presence in the many professional discussions that take place in the context of the community. Thus learning is social, as with Bandura, but also almost accidental."