A Manifesto for Online Learning

Published: 2023-05-30 7:22 PM | Updated: 2023-08-09 10:08 PM

Category: Teaching | Tags: online, learning, teaching, digital, guidelines, principles

Online spaces are, by default, open spaces

The World Wide Web was created with open spaces in mind. It allowed anyone, anywhere to publish and see information on the computer in front of them. Closed spaces followed, but the idea of requiring a password to interact with information was a change to the system (Luotonen, 1993), not the default. Closed spaces are not bad in and of themselves, but they ignore a major affordance of the web: connectivity. In a closed space, information can be brought in, but it difficult to get shared knoweldge back out.

Open online learning offers a formal way to invite perspectives and voices into otherwise privileged spaces. When learning is visible, teachers and students are participants in communities of practice, which raises rigor (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989) and contributes to the construction of knolwedge rather than consumption of information. Students are refocused toward building the community by sharing their own learning rather than fixating on simply demonstraiting captured facts.

An argument could be made about how students are assessed in the online space and that the LMS provides a "secure" way to make those measurements. Open learning rejects the notion that all knowledge can be measured as discrete "right" and "wrong" or that it is even the underlying goal of assessment to make that judegement (Schira Hagerman & Kellman, 2020). Online courses have an opportunity to allow student production of knowledge to serve as a demonstration of understanding where students synthesize ideas from across the Internet as they consume and create information.

Spaces need to be cultivated, not replicated

We care for our physical spaces because they're intimate and hold tangible value. The online space is no different - it requires care and attention in order to serve in an effective and, at the very least, functional capacity.

Many online courses are born and live inside the Learning Management System (LMS). The tidiness of the LMS gives a false sense of "doneness." When the course is published, it is easy to fall victim to copying the same thing over and over because the content is "complete". The LMS needs as much care as the physical meeting space.

An indicator of the impersonality of the LMS can be easily seen in discussion boards. It is not uncommon to see the directions, "post and reply to two peers" as an expectation for discourse. This often results in poor participation and formulaic responses at best and marginalization at worst (Lieberman, 2019). Without taking time to build a culture of learning and clear guidelines for communication with peers, these tools become wasted space and provide little affordance to the course.

Care for the online space needs be driven by a pedagogy of online instruction (Morris & Stommel, 2018). Our developed and practiced pedagogies will dictate the type of care we provide. If our pedagogical focus is on cheap replication of a product for consumption, the course will feel cheap and impersonal, even with a dynamic, engaging instructor. If we're focused on the experience of online learning for our students, we will have hard-to-replicate spaces, but ones which cultivate a culture of learning through building together.

We are not "just" online teachers

The early focus on online instruction centering on facilitation has damaged the dialogue about online learning in general (Bayne et al., 2020). There is a perception that teachers of online courses are not skilled or qualified enough to teach in a classroom and emphasizes "learning at the expense of teaching" (Bayne et al., 2020). Instead, the "best" online instructors should be as, if not more, sought after as the "best" classroom teachers.

The best teachers are those who A) know the content in situ, and B) know how to help students interpret information in ways to grow their own understanding (Bayne et al., 2020). This can happen in person as well as in the online space. The need for strong teachers exists in both contexts and the most adaptable professionals will develop pedagogies for both.

Online learning can make it more difficult to get to know students at first, especially in asynchronous courses where much of the interaction is written rather than face-to-face via video. Technology plays a critical role in getting to know students at an introductory level (a "get to know you" survey, for example) as well as how you build relationships through coorespondence. It is also important to remember that instructors are also humans and we have interests, quirks, and personality. We need to be careful to show these qualities to our students as much as we ask them to share with us their own preferences.

Best practice may change year to year, month to month, or even day to day. Practice needs to be driven by the experience of the learner online and the the instructor's ability to make instructional decisions strategically and with purpose.

Expression and iteration are required

The way in which knoweldge is built has changed. New knowledge is created through interactions - we help each other make sense of the world by sharing our experiences and building meaning from our varied backgrounds. Online, new knowledge can be shared in a wide variety of means of expression and creation is just the first step.

Communication

Text-only communication can often lack tone, which can lead to uncomfortable or damaging interactions. As instructors setting the tone for a course, we need to clearly define and demonstrate appropriate and edifying communication practices. This work begins in the intial contact with students and continues until the final congratulatory message is sent.

Creation

Authorship is changing (Bayne et al., 2020) and the way in which we can interact with anything published on the web fundamentally shifts the narrative about finding meaning. Interaction around ideas becomes much more dynamic as we mix and remix, adding layers to ideas collaboratively using the medium of the web. Feedback becomes a driver of learning both for the creator receiving and the observer giving. Ideas are discussed and learning is shown through iteration. When expression and iteration are core components of online learning, participants will move from compelled participation to a culture of learning in which growth is inevitable (Shepard, 2000).

Long live guiding questions

A pedagogy built on sequencing students from point A to B comes from a pre-Internet world where resources were limited. Today, the volume of information on any given topic is overwhelming and it isn't feasible to sequence an exact path students need to follow. Online learning allows us to ask - and try to answer - questions that are worth asking. We are enabled to go move beyond simple regurgitation of information in favor of synthesis and elaboration. This is embodied in how we structure course materials (sequential module requirements vs explorations) for students to use and in how we choose to assess their products.

When the answers to most questions are a search away, we have to fundamentally change what we're asking and what students are expecting to be asked. The age of online learning gives our students opportunities to become experts in their own way, building meaning with what they can find and interacting with those ideas in a community of practice. The teacher's subject matter and instructional expertise provides a base of interaction but quickly steps aside as students take charge of their learning.

This focus on student synthesis moves away from assessment of learning to assessment for learning. Assessing student growth takes the shape of feedback and is tailored for each individual. Their products can serve as a log documenting their progress from one idea to another which supports metacognition and reflection.

Critique everything, especially yourself

For teachers, questioning methods and assignments is a good way to reflect on pedagogy. Diving into the why of what we chose to do will help us reflect on what we think about teaching and learning. Do we really believe students should be creators of information? If that's true, are those elements present and intentionally structed into the course?

Reflecting on in-person teaching can do the same thing, but our basies and perceptions of how students received a lesson or assignment can make our reflections biased. The value of online learning references being stored perpetually is that we have a lens into what we were thinking at the moment of creation. We're faced with our own decisions in real time each time we look at our courses.

Morris and Stommel (2018) argue that online learning is already in a state of failure because of the ways in which many online courses focus on replication (cost saving measures), uninformed design (disconnects between teachers and instructional designers), and a lack of pedagogy. Lacking deep reflection on methods, especially in the digital context, will result in poor online learning experiences for multitudes.

Online teaching requires that we question everything, especially ourselves.

Resources

Bayne, S., Evans, P., Ewins, R., Knox, J., Lamb, J., Macleod, H., O'Shea, C., Ross, J., Sheail, P., & Sinclair, C. (2020). The manifesto for teaching online. MIT Press.

Bransford, J. L., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school (Expanded Edition). National Academy Press.

Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32-42.

Morris, S. M., & Stommel, J. (2018). An urgency of teachers: The work of critical digital pedagogy. Pressbooks.

Gershon, L. (2020, April 13). Three centuries of distance learning. JSTOR Daily. Retrieved from https://daily.jstor.org/three-centuries-of-distance-learning/.

Lieberman, M. (2019, March 26). Discussion boards: Valuable? Overused? Discuss. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/03/27/new-approaches-discussion-boards-aim-dynamic-online-learning.

Luotonen, A. (1993, September 10). Announcing access authorization documentation. Retrieved from http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q3/0882.html.

Putnam, R. T., & Borko, H. (2000). What do new views of knowledge and thinking have to say about research on teacher learning? Educational Researcher, 29(1), 4-15.

Shepard, L. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4-14.

Schira Hagerman, M. & Kellman, H. (2020). Learning to teach online: An open educational resource for pre-service teachers. Retrieved from https://onlineteaching.ca/module-4-2/#Five-Methods.