Experiences with Informational Communication Technologies and How Experiences with Distance Learning Have Made System Issues Evident

 Since the global pandemic, the need to adapt with technology happened seemingly overnight as brick-and-mortar buildings shut down and restrictions of quarantine required swift adjustments to instructional delivery. In my own classroom, I have used learning management systems to deliver instruction to absent students, but only in a shallow presence by posting in class worksheets online. Then when the pandemic happened, it became imperative to ensure that students could still be successful when out for weeks at a time. The learning management system used the most has been google classroom. I posted videos, interactive assignments, worksheets, and discussion boards online. Zoom meetings were utilized to supplement where face-to-face learning takes place with instructional videos providing direct instruction. 

The advantages to distance learning are that there is more access to learning materials and students have the opportunity to stay caught up on work when gone. However, even though this opportunity is used, it is rarely taken advantage of. For example, I had a substitute recently and left an assignment for students in which they had to determine the kinetic energy of different objects and graph the table data. I had posted a video explaining the worksheet, completing examples for them, and reviewing the material. Students were told there would be a video and an announcement was posted on google classroom. Unfortunately, about three-quarters of students did not watch the video and several got it incorrect even though in the video I literally gave them the answer to the first few. This is like the saying: “You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.” This system only benefits students with existing intrinsic motivations and identify those future successes are dependent on their academic achievement.

There are several disadvantages to distance learning that educators were not prepared for and were expected to overcome in a brief period. My personal experience was that I could not effectively differentiate for all students to the extent done in the classroom, including those with exceptionalities. I could not evaluate students as they were working, and it seemed that the assignments received from online learning are more summative than formative. Valuable feedback that would occur in class through discussion and questioning was missing. 

Furthermore, issues with getting students to simply complete the work that had existed before the pandemic increased exponentially. Students stopped turning in work and a failing grade was not enough to motivate participation in school. With the removal of absence policies to accommodate for quarantine practices, students who already had attendance issues were missing more and more class. When students do not engage in their own education, they do not learn anything and fall behind. 

Based on my personal experience, independent learning abilities come from how education is valued at home. Students who had parents that valued the importance of education and had socio-emotional support systems at home demonstrated more independent learning abilities than those that had other barriers in place like lower socioeconomic status. Factors outside of students’ control including lack in childcare for younger siblings, parents having to work longer shifts, or parents who did not prioritize educational time to complete assignments lead to a significant decline in academic performance that will be a topic of educational research for the next several years. 

Distance learning for children is only effective if they have the emotional and social support at home they would otherwise receive at school. Our public education system has developed into a structure to fill the gap caused by systemic issues in the American workforce. With parents working for wages that barely allow them to support their household, there is a vacuum filled by parents/guardians investing their time in long work hours to make sure their children have food, heat, and shelter. The public education system has become the mechanisms for meeting children’s socio-emotional needs by offering counseling services, food supplement programs, clothing, childcare, and, finally, a foundational education to help make children into decision-making citizens that will have to eventually make the same sacrifices their parents make if there are not changes.

Distance learning does not facilitate nondirective teaching but is purely academic in nature. In the classroom, the teacher’s goal is to not only teach content, but to help students understand their own needs and values so that they can direct their own educational decisions (Joyce et al., 2003). Distance learning relies on these needs being met at home by students’ support systems since teachers cannot be as involved to facilitate their learning. Now that we are back in school, we are beginning to see the repercussions of almost two years of regressions of socio-emotional health. Behavioral issues, decline in classroom participation, and deterioration of social behaviors expected in an academic setting are symptoms of this problem.

I end with this. Parents and guardians love their children and do everything in their power to make sure their children are taken care of. The issue is not if children are loved at home. Parents and guardians are working tirelessly to make sure children’s basic needs are met. The issue stems from unresolved systemic issues that have been put in place to ensure that it is nearly impossible to cross the poverty line. The global pandemic has made it impossible to simply ignore these issues any longer and discussing these problems is only the beginning of education reforms. 

References

Joyce, B., Weil, M., & Calhoun, E. (2003). Models of teaching.