Amidst months of lockdown and continuing uncertainty regarding social distancing, it has not been an easy time for the further (FE) and higher education (HE) sectors: classes and lectures have switched to online platforms and students have been forced to study from home.
Parama Chaudhury, professorial teaching fellow in economics at University College London, says one of the great challenges in recent months has been creating a sense of community among students, enabling them to continue to learn alongside and from their peers and teachers.
With students working from home, Chaudhury feels it’s important to replicate the more personal and human elements of education in an online environment. To address this, she launched a series of online sessions to interact informally with students, answer their questions and stimulate discussion. “I felt that live interaction was super-important, however short. It was about me being available in that space and time and the students being able to ask off-the-cuff questions and get a response right away,” she says.
Recordings of these live sessions are also beneficial – especially for students who struggle to access digital resources. Posting lectures online allows students to view them whenever they have access to wifi, or when their siblings are not using the home computer, for example.
For many institutions, too, the adjustment has been challenging. Not all colleges and universities have invested in realising the potential of their digital environments over the past 10 years, and many have struggled to invest enough resources to give staff the capabilities to use these tools effectively. The rapid shift to online learning has been a wake-up call for educational institutions across the country, underlining the need to invest in the technological aspects of learning.
The switch also risks deepening the educational divide between students who have access to high-level technology and those who do not. Research by Jisc, a national not-for-profit providing tech solutions for FE and HE, shows that some learners are at a disadvantage: while fewer than 1% of students in the HE sector said they didn’t own any personal device, such as a computer, tablet or smartphone, in FE that rose to 5%. Given that there are 2.2 million FE students in the UK, that could amount to as many as 110,000 students who stand to miss out on education during lockdown. To remedy this, many FE colleges are loaning students digital devices to allow online learning.
Grimsby Institute, part of the TEC Partnership further education group, is an FE and HE college that blends technology-enabled study with physical lessons. Deborah Millar, director of digital learning technologies at the TEC Partnership, says attendance of online lectures has been better in many areas than physical attendance before the lockdown. But there have been challenges keeping certain students involved in online courses.
“Some of this was because they didn’t have wifi or they were fighting for a device at home because their parents or brothers and sisters were using the one device,” says Millar. The college has handed out hundreds of devices to students and, on the whole, she thinks many of the benefits of online learning have came to the fore during lockdown, such as offering students the opportunity to get in touch with tutors online with questions or concerns. This can be particularly useful for students who may be vulnerable or in a disadvantaged situation.
Another challenge for online learning under current restrictions is giving students free access to relevant content. Many providers, such as Adobe, have opened up their paywalls and allowed students to access their content for free, which has helped with the learning experience throughout the pandemic.
While technology offers many advantages for teachers, it is not a silver bullet to improving educational attainment. Jisc’s head of data and digital capability, Sarah Knight, says online learning requires the same educational principles as traditional teaching.
“It’s not about making learning content available online and replicating the face-to-face experience for students. Effective online learning will happen when students have opportunities for meaningful discussion, reflection and collaboration,” she says.
“It is critical that students are able to interact with their lecturer and their peers synchronously or asynchronously in order to keep that sense of community and engagement. Timely feedback is also key,” says Knight. “There is no going back; we need to embrace the benefits of online learning – and we need to ensure that our teaching in the online environment is of the highest quality and supports all learners.”
The pandemic has underscored the critical need for online learning and highlights the vital role technology has to play in supporting all students, including those with disadvantages, through the lockdown and beyond.
