The video above is from a 2014 panel group discussion I participated in on the subject of evaluating online instruction. I went back to look at the video after all of this time because college administrators recently featured in the news have mentioned the difficultly schools are having in shifting to a distance learning modality. We are three weeks into this semester and the one thing that I have realized about how High Education has responded to the COVID-19 impact on face to face instruction, is that we should have been better prepared.
Based on a 2011 survey of 2,500 colleges and universities conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group, 65% responded that online education was a critical component of their long term strategic plan. It is now 2020, so the question that all of us should be asking is “what have they been doing in all of this time?’. Why is it only now that we are moving toward accepting online learning as necessary evolution in teaching pedagogy.
We all know within academia that there has been no “en masse” push to train educators in the methods and practices on how to teach online. Sure, there have been some programs, but by and large , those programs have been small in scale and usually restricted to select faculty. And because the process of instructing students remotely requires multiple shifting technical elements such as reliable high speed internet access, modern computers capable of processing and transmitting clear video, an a understanding of how these components and numerous others can be integrated into our individual teaching methods, this training was sorely needed.