There has been much written about the stresses caused for students having to study online this year due to COVID-19. There has been less on the effect on teaching staff. One of my students is researching how to make online learning better and came across some work indicating students were happier with video conferencing than those teaching them. It occurred to me that some of the techniques online teachers are trained in to make them appear more human to the students might also be used to make the students appear more present to their teacher.
One of the basic techniques is to have a profile photo. This appears in a video conference if the camera is off. I use a still image taken by my web camera showing me dressed typically for a video conference with the usual background. When not speaking in a video conference, I suspect than many people don't notice I switch from live video to the still image.
Teachers express frustration about talking to a Zoom screen showing rows of black rectangles. It is tempting to tell students to turn on their cameras, but there are many reasons they may be unwilling or unable to. I use a wireless broadband connection which sometimes can't support video. Sometimes I am in a shared office with people who do not want to be on camera. So I understand why students do not want to turn a camera on.
On a visit to Cambridge University, some years ago, I came across research which suggested people relate to a computer as if it was human, if it has a face. This did not need to be high quality video, a still image, or even a smile face would do :-)
So I suggest that having students include profile photos on their video would help teachers feel they are talking to people. This could be implemented by asking students, or by having the Learning Management System provide the official student photos to the video conference system by default.
The Australian Government announced funding for short online university programs, in response to the COVID-19 Coronavirus, on 12 April 2020. There are 77 programs offer from today on the Courseseeker website (look for course category: "Short course"). These are undergraduate certificates (46) and graduate certificates (31), requiring six months full time study. While welcome, I suggest government make some improvements to the scheme, to allow for part-time study, nested programs, and mutual recognition of the certificates. Also I suggest incorporation of compulsory peer support training in all certificates, to address the elevated mental health risk, particularly for young people isolated at home, studying online, during a pandemic.
Study Areas
The emphasis in the announcement was on areas of study to help with the COVID-19 emergency. This is reflected in the programs offered. With health, including aged care and biomedical science, the largest offering, followed by education:
Study Area
Number of Programs
Health
25
Education
18
Information Technology
10
Engineering & Related Technologies
9
Agriculture, Environment & Related Studies
5
Natural & Physical Sciences
5
Architecture & Building
3
Society & Culture
2
Total
77
Acceptance of Certificates
The Minister for Education, Dan Tehan, caused confusion at the time of the announcement by describing these as "micro-credentials" and "diploma certificates". What are being offered are six month full time programs. A micro-credential is much shorter, requiring only hours, days or weeks of study, not six months. A diploma requires a year of study.
A Graduate certificate is a well known, well understood, and legally recognized term. Such programs have been used in the past as a way for someone from a discipline to gain extra skills and knowledge to work in a specialization. A Graduate Certificate in Australian Migration Law is one path to registration as a migration agent. A certificate in cyber security is useful for an IT professionals to work in security. It can also be an entry point to further studies. As an example, I undertook a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education, to help me learn to teach, and to then go on to a Masters of Educaiton.
Graduate certificates are a low risk, low cost, well understood option for universities to provide. The students are more mature than undergraduates, so are easier to teach. The course materials and classes can be shared with graduate diploma and masters programs.
Legality and Acceptance of Undergraduate Certificates
While graduate certificates are well known, as Andrew Norton points out ‘undergraduate certificates’ are not currently recognized in the Australian education system. If a private for-profit educational institution was to offer such a qualifcaiton, they could expect legal action from regulators. However, public universities are offering these with the blessing of government, with legal status to be conferred retrospectively.
While legal status may not be a major problem, industry acceptance and pedagogy may, with undergraduate certificates. It is likely that the certificates will have been created in the same way as graduate certificates, from components of longer diplomas and bachelor programs. As an example, UWS with its Undergraduate Certificate in Information and Communication Technology offers the possibility of credit towards a degree, and presumably the certificate is built from that degree. However, unlike graduate students, these undergraduate students may be new to university study, as well as to online study. It takes time for a young person (the minimum age is 17 years) to get used to study at university, as well as life in general.
While the undergraduate certificates are being offered as standalone qualifications, I suggest they would be better as the first part of a nested qualification. That is, it would be assumed the student was intending to go on to undertake a diploma, and from there a degree. Ideally this would allow for blended learning. That is the student would undertake some study online and some on campus. My rule of thumb is that a typical student would be on campus for 20% of their study, about one day a week (obviously where COVID-19 restrictions allow).
Do We Need Undergraduate Certificates When We Have VET Ones?
While graduate certificates have been accepted as a qualification for particular roles, undergraduate certificates have not. The Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector already has a well established set of qualifications for jobs in the fields the undergraduate certificates are being offered in. These VET qualifications have been recognized in laws, and in industry hiring practices. The VET sector is experienced in turning out students who are ready with practical skills needed for a very specific workplace role. However, universities have focused on much longer programs and more general higher level skills. In some cases universities have formed partnerships with VET institutions (or have VET arms), where the student does enough training in VET sector to get a job, then then transitions to university for a degree. It is not clear there is really a need for vocationally useful undergraduate certificates, or than Australia's universities are equipped to provide them.
There is also a lack of alignment between VET sector and university qualifications. As an example, to be able to teach in the VET sector, I was required to complete a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment. This was despite already having a Graduate Certificate in the field of education. In practice I was able to obtain 80% of the VET certificate based on my university experience and education. Even so this took months of elapsed time and payment of additional fees.
Will Universities Value They Own Certificates?
Within the VET system qualifications are mutually recognized, but this does not apply between VET and university, between or within universities. A student who has completed a unit of study at a public or private VET institution has that automatically accepted at any other for credit. However, the UWS Undergraduate Certificate in IC&T"may be credited towards the degree". In this case the university is not guaranteeing to recognize its own certificate for further study, let alone one from another university. If the undergraduate certificates are to continue beyond the next six months, I suggest the government make funding conditional on universities accepting their own certificates, and those from other universities, for advanced standing.
Need Part Time Certificates
I suggest government allow certificates, undergraduate and graduate, to be part time.
The certificates offered under the government COVID-19 funding are all full time.
This makes sense as a short term emergency measure. The nation
needs health and other workers quickly to deal with the
pandemic. It is also a way to keep young people occupied while forced to
remain at home. It provides them with a qualification to get a job much
quicker than a degree. However, undertaking full time study online is
very difficult, especially for a young inexperienced student. Adding to
that isolation due to COVID-19 greatly increases the difficulty, and the risk of mental health issues.
It has been common practice for Graduate Certificates to be offered part time. This is useful for working professionals, who cannot take six months off work to study. It is particularly useful with online study. Even so, as an online graduate student I found I could not do more than one quarter of a full time course load comfortably. This was under almost ideal conditions, where I was a mature student with very good IT skills, studying with some of the world's top online educators, and already experienced in the field I was studying. The typical young undergraduate is going to have considerable difficulty studying full time.
Address the elevated mental health risk
Even with all the advantages I had as an online student, it was not the fun depicted in university advertisements: it was a frightening, painful, frustrating experience. The Australian Government ,and universities, need to address the elevated mental health risks, particularly for young people isolated at home, studying online full-time, during a pandemic.
Students are encouraged to take part in extra-curricular and co-curricular activities on campus. This can't be assumed for online students, especially not with COVID-19 measures in place. I suggest universities need to teach students how to form and maintain peer support groups online, and make this an assessed compulsory part of studies. Leaving this as something optional and voluntary, is an unacceptable risk to the health, and the lives, of students. In addition, not teaching students how to support each other will result in a higher dropout rate, and so a waste of public money.
Athabasca University sent out a request to alumni for short articles on how study had changed their lives. So I quickly wrote "Responding to the Coronavirus Emergency with e-Learning", which has now been published. As part of my studies in distance education I looked at how e-learning could be used by Australian universities for international students. This included proposing online learning as an emergency measure in the event an international crisis prevented students getting to campus. Having considered the policy, tools and techniques for this, has proven useful in dealing with COVID-19.
Advocating elearning be ready in case of a crisis has been frustrating. Some academics were horrified by the idea of distance education, and did not believe my warnings in 2016 and 2017 that an international crisis could stop students getting to campus. Just three years later, with COVID 19, some of the same people said this was a Black Swan Event, which could not have been anticipated, or prepared for. But at least, when faced with an existential threat to their teaching, and their lives, they were prepared to at last take action.
It is time to plan a return to campus. Previously I suggested this could be gradual using blended learning. However, social distancing* will still be required. This will require changes to campuses and classrooms, similar to those now employed in stores. This requires a smaller number of people indoors, and kept further apart than is usual in classrooms and offices. One way to do that is to continue to schedule online classes, so the physical space can be rationed. Some minor changes to physical layouts may also be possible, and perhaps this could be a topic for the EduBuild Australia and Asia conference series.
Transparent Partitions in Classrooms
Some Saudi-Arabian universities use partition-rooms to separate female
students from male teachers. The teacher is behind a glass wall,
and has a separate doorway to the outside of the building, so they are
never in physical contact with students. However, that would require extensive building work, for limited return.
A simpler measure would be the type of transparent plastic screens now installed at supermarket checkouts. These have been used not only in front of human cashiers, but between self-serve checkouts. The same could be done in lecture theaters, with a screen in front of the lectern.
In laboratories, a screen could be placed between each student. Removable screens have already used in the Australian National University's computer labs for examinations. The difference would be that the new screens would be transparent. It may be possible to design a screen which is partly transparent so it can server both purposes: part of the partition would be transparent, so the student could see the person next to them, and the instructor. But part would be opaque, louvers, lattice, or translucent, so the student could not see what was on others desktops and computers.
Online Educaiton Works
However, before investing in new measures to bring all students to campus, it needs to be kept in mind that distance education online is generally as effective as face to face
instruction. There is a body of literature on this "No Significant Difference" phenomenon. So it should not be assumed that students education is being harmed.
School systems and universities already had online distance students, so
had content, tools and techniques. The problem was to familiarize the
teachers and students with these, and provide access. That is relatively
simple, compared to rebuilding classrooms.
My online students do as well online as as in their face to face
courses. However, these are students who chose to study this way, using
techniques developed to keep the students studying, with courses
designed for this, and an instructor trained to teach this way.
The world is, in effect, conducting a large scale experiment, to see if
students forced online, with teachers having only a small amount of
training in this mode can produce comparable results. So far it is going
well where I teach, but that is a very well resourced university, with a
cadre of experienced online educators, and some of whom spent years
preparing for this emergency.
Simplify Assessment
Perhaps the most useful thing which could be done right now is simplify
the assessment system to try to counter the obsession which students,
parents, and universities have with grades. Outside the education
system, in the workplace, how well you did at school, or university,
doesn't matter, as long as you passed. The vocational education system
has long used an approach were students are assessed as "competent", or
"not yet competent".
* ps: While "social distancing" is the term in common use, I suggest "physical distancing" would be better, as we want people to be socially close, while physically isolated, for their own mental health, as well as to be as economically productive as possible.
Yesterday I ran a video workshop for the ANU TechLauncher computer project students. Last year these were run in a purpose built building of flat floor classrooms. But due to COVID-19 all workshops are now online. One of the privileges of being a lecturer at a leading university is that you get to decide for yourself how you teach, as well as what you teach. Many advanced video technologies were suggested, but I decided to just use a Zoom video-conference, as it has been mostly working over the last few weeks, and it mostly worked this time.
I had prepared for the workshop, with two computers, and two Internet connections in my home office. There were also two colleagues authorized as alternate hosts to take over if something went wrong. Everything was working fine, up until the time for the workshop, when the cabled network connection stopped working. So I had to use WiFi, and at that point my wireless modem's connection to the mobile network also slowed down. But it was still fast enough for audio, and screen sharing, which is all I needed, and the video was also okay.
One of the problems with a live online session is not knowing how well it is working. What I realize now I should have done (and tell others to do), is to log the second computer in as a participant, so I could see how it looked.
However, my colleagues told me it was working fine. Most of the time screen-sharing was used. This reduces the video of the presenter to a postage stamp size, just to reassure the viewer. One problem at my end was that I then could not see participants or the text chat window (relying on colleagues to point out text questions).
I used the option of recording the video to the cloud (actually on the university AARnet system). The video was recorded at 1920 × 1200 pixels WUXGA resolution. I downloaded the hour of video (554 Mbytes, or about 10 Mbytes a minute), and then uploaded it to the university's Echo 360 video system. The video was then converted to the more widely used 1080p (1920 × 1080 pixels HDTV format), which took several hours. Echo 360's own editing tools were then used to trim the video. The editing was quick, but it then took several more hours for the video to be re-rendered. The video I then linked from the university's Moodle Learning Management System, and it loaded very quickly.
It would give a better result if I could skip the conversion step to change from WUXGA to HDTV. As well as making for a clearing recording, that should speed up the process. Perhaps I can set my monitor to HDTV resolution.
Also I have been using an online tool to create video slideshows with synthetic voice. It might be interesting to mix some of that content into the live videos. The idea would be to take the live recording and insert the slideshows at points where students had difficulty with a concept.
A fun idea would be to turn the live audio into text using a speech-to-text system, then paste that text into the slideshow tools automatic content search, and insert the resulting stock footage into the live video recording. This would emulate an approach I use when chairing a live, or online session. When the speaker has no slides, and the audience seems to be getting bored, I search the web for relevant content and put it up on the screen behind the speaker (usually without consulting them first). It would be possible to have a system which did this live during a video conference.
In 2018 I talked on flexible classrooms and energy use at EduTech Asia in Singapore. It is not certain when the next face to face event will be held due to COVID-19. But a series of free video conference based sessions are being held. At the moment there is one on immersive technology (also known as eXtended Reality), combining augmented, virtual reality. Eric Hawkinson got my attention. After talking about avatars, Eric's live video image was suddenly replaced by an animated cartoon character, who's month moved to match what he was saying.
Something I did not expect is that EduTech sent me a signed certificate of attendance. I guess I can use this towards the 30 hours Certified Professional Development I have to do to keep my Australian Computer Society status.
ps: I prepared a talk for EduTech 2020, but don't know when, where, or how, I will get to present it:
In 2016, as part of research on higher education, Tom Worthington
identified the risk to Australian universities from a sudden disruption
of the flow of international students to Australia. To mitigate this
risk, he developed an approach combining blending e-learning with
flexible classrooms. This was trialed during 2019 in the new Marie
Reay Teaching Centre at the Australian National University, and is now
being implemented in response to the COVID-19 Coronavirus. All students
access the same e-learning materials, including e-books, videos,
quizzes, and discussion forums. There are then on-campus workshops in
classrooms which can be quickly reconfigured for different teaching
formats. Students who are unable to get tho the workshops in person,
have the option of participating online. This approach allows one course
design and one building design to be used for classes mixing on-campus
and remote students.
pps: This also allows for a gradual return to the classroom after a COVID-19 outbreak. It is not feasible to set a deadline when all classes return to "normal" campus-based teaching. Rather than having all students stop online learning at once and return to campus on the same day. On-campus components can be gradually added. However, the online components can be retained, in case of future emergencies, and to cater for individual student needs.
China has announced that universities and colleges will offer online courses in English to international students due to COVID-19. This is a significant pivot for the little known Education Action Plan for the Belt and Road Initiative. This Plan is about boosting China's trade, but also has similarities to the Colombo Plan. During the Cold War, Australia provided free education to students from the region, as a form of soft diplomacy. Australia's Government, and universities, have so far made only tentative moves with international education. That may now have to change, as I suggested in 2017.
It would be tempting for Australian universities to assume that online courses from China in English would be of low quality, and so not direct competition for on-campus Australian courses. However, Chinese institutions have been adapting the online techniques used by some of the world's leading universities. Also research over decades shows that graduates of online courses are at least as employable as those from on-campus.
Australian universities might decide to concentrate on quality advanced degrees, conceded the introductory and first degree market to online overseas institutions. However, graduates make very good online students, and someone who has done an introductory online course will think an online first and second degree perfectly normal.
The Australian automotive industry assumed that Japan, and later Korea, were not a threat due to poor quality products. However, the quality improved, and we do not now have an Australian automotive industry. Australian universities need to not make the same mistake.
For several years I have been attending international technical education conferences run by, or with large attendance of Chinese academics. They reported steady progress with scaling up offerings of education in China to international students from developing nations.
As well as students studying in China, the Plan also envisaged campuses in the student's country, built and staffed with Chinese help. While China has some large online universities with decades of experience, online learning was not mentioned in the Plan.
"Education is Australia’s third-largest export and the government's "National Strategy for International Education 2025"
points out that Moodle is an Australian product serving a global market
and identifies on-line learning as an area for growth (Australian
Government, 2016). However, Australia's universities are predominantly
set up for students traveling to Australia to study on campus, and the
government strategy provides little practical guidance for changing
this. International tensions could disrupt the flow of students to
Australia very quickly. Competition from universities in other countries
and DE is likely to increase. We can produce quality on-line and
blended programs to remain competitive, based on demonstrated success
and research results." (Worthington, 2017).
One of the frustrations of being an on-line student is working out when events and deadlines are scheduled. With more students online away from campus due to COVID-19, there will be more confusion. Courses which have most students spread out across the world may adopt Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), for simplicity. However, if most students are in the same timezone as the campus, it is simpler to use that time zone, and to explicitly include the city in announcements: 6pm AEST (Canberra Time).
I undertook an MEd in Distance Educaiton on-line in Canada. Some tutors would assume everyone knew what time zone was being used and leave it out. Some would say MT, but what is "MT"? It turns out this is Mountain Time. But then there is the problem of daylight saving time where the campus is and where the student is. There is also the problem of the time set in the learning management system, and the adjustments it offers. I missed a deadline when I thought I had set Moodle to work in AEST, not MT, but it was actually using UTC.
I tried explaining this problem to another North American organization, but they could not understand what the problem was. Here is the answer I got: "Hi Tom, excellent point. We are in the process of scheduling additional talks outside ET. Please stay tuned.". But I didn't want the time of the events changed, just how it was described.
ps: There can also be confusion with things as apparently simple as page size. If an assignment length is specified using page size, the the size of the page should also be specified. My tutors were a mix of Canadians and Americans, the Canadians assumed everyone used international paper sizes, and some of the Americans assumed American, but neither told the students. To add to the confusion, I found Canada has its own weird hybrid paper size "Canadian P4", which I used to submit my first assignment, but apparently no one in Canada uses.
One issue which has been raised by both university administrators and students is how to conduct graduation ceremonies while maintaining social distancing for COVID-19. This may seem trivial, but it is important emotionally, and practically for students. In 2017 I conducted my own remote graduation ceremony. I was awarded an
MEd in Distanced Education by Athabasca University. Appropriately, I
studied entirely online from Australia. On graduation Athabasca mailed
me a masters hood in an envelope. I added the hood over a standard black
academic gown from my last graduation, and wore them in the academic
procession at the institution where I teach in Canberra. Then I paid to
have my photo taken along with the local graduates.
1. Award Degrees As soon as Students Qualify
I suggest adopting the practice of online universities, where degrees are awarded as soon as the student meets all requirements. The student has the option of attending a ceremony later. Awarding of degrees should not be delayed for ceremonies, and there should not be just a one off special case for COVID-19.
2. Send Students a Certificate and Ask for a Photo
Send
the graduates their certificate, and something to wear or show. Encourage students to conduct their own local
ceremony, where their parent, or loved one, presents them with their
certificate. Where social distancing rules allow, they could have a
local ceremony with students of other institutions, conducted by a local
dignitary. Have the student send a photo to the university to be used in their
ceremony.
3. Stream an Academy Awards Style Ceremony Online
I suggest the university conduct an academy awards style ceremony streamed online. This would have speeches live, recorded videos from major award winners, and the rest of the graduates appearing in a montage of
the images they provided.
4. Digital Certificates
This would also be a good time for universities to introduce digital certificates. Prospective employers will be reluctant to accept paper certificates from candidates, for health and logistical reasons. Applicants who can provide digitally authenticated evidence of their qualification, rather than just an easily faked paper or scanned copy, will have an advantage in the job market. As well as providing digital certificates, universities should also put in place procedures for accepting them.
5. Standing Invitation to Later Ceremony
Universities could invite students who can't get to that year's graduation ceremony to attend one next year, or any time in the future, even decades later. In my case I could not afford to fly 13,000 km to attend, but if I happen to be on that side of the planet some time in the future it would be nice to have some pomp and circumstance.
The Australian Minister for Education, Dan Tehan, and the Minister for Employment, Michaelia Cash, announced a Higher Education Relief Package, in response to the COVID-19 Coronavirus, 12 April 2020. Overall the intention of the package is good, but some of the details will need considerable work. Andrew Norton has produced a very useful commentary on this, but here are some additional comments of my own.
The package envisages Australians studying online to improve their job skills, while waiting for pandemic control measures to be reduced allowing a general return to work. Areas of study mentioned are nursing,
teaching, health, IT and "science". Short, online courses, from universities and private providers will be subsidized, from May for six months (initially). Strangely missing from the list of areas of study is any specific mention of engineering, or manufacturing, given the need for Australia to rapidly produce strategic products to meet the current emergency.
The announcement refers to the short courses being from "world-class universities", but presumably that is a rhetorical flourish and the intention is not to limit the program to the top half dozen Australian research universities which rank highly internationally. That would be unfortunate as it is the lower ranking regional teaching universities which have more expertise and experience with online learning in Australia. I studied how to do online learning (via online learning), at the University of Southern Queensland, which while providing good courses and is highly regarded in that field, is not a "world class" university.
In addition, government funding for universities will be "at
current levels, even if there is a fall in domestic student numbers". There is no offer of government funding to make up a shortfall in international student fees.
How the new funding for short courses will be administered is not detailed in the announcement. It should be remembered that previously about $2.2B was paid to private trainer providers for courses of dubious quality, or in some cases, not delivered at all. While "innovative micro-credentials delivered flexibly online" is a worthy goal, there are no agreed definition as to what a micro-credential is. Micro-credentials are not currently part of the Australian Qualifications Framework, and some have formal coursework, while some do not. Short courses can range from one hour's study, to about the length of a typical university unit (about 100 hours).
I have worked in this area of education for ten years, designing and delivering short online courses. I have been involved in several micro-credential projects and on professional standards bodies overseeing these, presented papers at international conferences, given evidence to a Senate inquiry, and blogged on the topic, but I am still not sure what a micro-credential is. Or it may be that micro-credentials mean many different things to university, and vocational providers.
I suggest universities should take a cautious approach to micro-credentials, due to the high reputational risk from over-promising. As an example, it is common for universities to offer short courses which do not count for credit towards a degree, are not aligned with the AQF, and are not specific to a job. However, a "micro-credential" is clearly intended to be a type of credential: that is a qualification. In the context of the government announcement, by issuing this qualification, the university has certified the holder has the skills needed to undertake a specific workplace task. Universities cannot use disclaimer to say the credential is not a credential, and those so qualified are not qualified. One way I suggest universities can navigate this legal and ethical minefield, is to integrate short courses in existing AQF qualifications. As an example, in 2016 I set out to design a teaching course for IT professionals. Teaching is a recognized skill in the computing discipline internationally. Australian universities are accredited to provide degrees under well established national procedures. So what I proposed was to create a teaching course within that framework. This way the familiar quality controls of the university system and professions could be applied.
To make a university course into a set of "micro-credentials" I proposed dividing it into three or four parts, with each part aligned with a set of externally defined skills. A student would receive a micro-credential for completing each part. Those who completed all the micro-credentials would receive one course credit towards a degree. None of this will be new to the vocational education sector, which has been routinely producing nationally standardized job relevant short courses for decades. However, this is a new skill for many university educators (some of us are dual qualified in by VET and university sectors).
ProfessorJulian Sefton-Green asks "Will mass schooling-at-home lead to the death of schools?" in EduResearch Matters (13 April 2020). I suggest not. School and university students are studying at home in numbers not see before. This is challenging for teachers and lecturers, the students, and their families. It will also introduce many to the benefits of this form of education. However, distance education is not new or unknown, at least not to some of us. School and university campuses will still be needed, at least for about 20% of the average student's education.
Most teachers and lecturers have received little format training in distance education, but may have some experience of it as a student. There is the problem of becoming familiar with the technology used, but this is minor compared to the need to make a personal connection with students over a relatively impersonal medium.
However, distance education is not new and unknown to the education discipline. There are decades of experience on the use of online learning at school and university for millions of students. There are research journals and conferences devoted to the subject, as well as courses and whole degree programs. For ten years I have been part of this subset of the education discipline, studying, teaching online, presenting papers at national and international conferences, writing books on the topic and refining the techniques though teaching students around the world. sharing the frustration with my colleagues that the rest of the world just doesn't "get it". That has now changed, but there is a risk of over-promising what distance education can deliver.
As teachers learn to teach online, materials are developed and students settle into it, governments may be tempted to see an opportunity to reduce costs. If students just need a computer to study, why have we been spending money all these years on expensive schools? The answer is that there is more to learning than what you can do through a computer, and teachers are still needed.
Professor Sefton-Green worries that we may see a move to
concentration of education, with the computer as a conduit for a national curriculum. At least in Australia, moves for national standards have been resisted due to the decentralized nature of our governments. I suggest that of more conern is a move to cost cutting.
As parents are no doubt discovering, delivering education is hard work, the more so the younger the child. Also social skills require a social environment, with students learning to work togehter. This does not only apply to the youngest students. When studying education, as a graduate student, I was required to work in teams. I did not like it, but I had to do it. Now I help university students learn this way. It is possible to have students in disciplines, such as computing (which I teach), learn to work together online, but this is a very difficult skill to learn.
Post-COVID-19 we will still need school and university campuses. But there could be the opportunity to use them, and teachers better. University lecturers perhaps need to learn the benefits of teamwork themselves, while parents and governments could learn to value their school teachers more (and pay them more).
Most older school students and university students do not need to spend much time in a classroom listening to a teacher talk. Instead they need to be working together, with a team of teachers in support. Most of their learning can take place off campus, online. But there are valuable skills best learned interacting face to face in a team. My rules of thumb is that the average students will need to spend about 20% of their time (one day a week) on campus, or in some other location, together with other students, and perhaps a teacher.
Piazza provides forums for students. When helping with teaching this has been typically used for teachers to send out announcements, and for students to ask questions, typically about administration of a course, rather than the content. Like Slack, Piazza can be confusing, with messages popping up in different forums. A particular annoyance are the semi-anonymous posts. This is used so that students do not feel so reluctant to ask a question. However, I am training professionals, who need to learn to seek information from colleagues.
Discord is an audio chat system intended for video gamers. The idea, as far as I understand it, is that you play a game together, while talking via Discord. About the only useful feature I can see, from an educational point of view, is that Discord allows for telephone quality speech, which uses much less bandwidth than the video conferencing systems.
Currently I am mentoring a team in the Australian Computer Society's Flatten the Curve hackathon, to develop prototypes in 48 hours to counter theCOVID-19 Coronavirus. Participants have until 6pm, to demonstrate a working product, or at least an idea of what it could do. This is the first purely online hackerthon I have been involved with. Previous ones have been at one venue, or at a number of networked venues. It is challenging to work with organizers, fellow mentors, and a team, who I have only ever see on screen. The primary tool being used is Slack, an instant messaging platform. This is the largest scale use of Slack I have been involved with.
Previously I have helped teach teams of ANU TechLauncher students who use Slack to coordinate their project. But there each team operates independently. Here Slack is being used by all teams and organizers. There are almost a hundred channels, and I am following a dozen of them. I have to be careful who the audience is in each channel, as there are ones just for mentors, and others the participants read. One surprise was that Slack, usually text based, also does video conferences. The audio quality is not as good as I have found with Zoom, and it seems to use twice as much bandwidth, but it is conveniently integrated with the forums. I got so comfortable with the integration that I was sitting in Slack wondering where everyone was, and then realized this particular meeting was happening in Zoom. I then had to scramble to find the details.
One of the tools it has been suggested I use for streaming education in response to the of theCOVID-19 Coronavirus, is Open Broadcast Software (OBS). Before I could install the software I had to upgrade the operating system on my laptop, which proved a challenge. But with that done, OBS was easy to install. What was harder to do was work out exactly how to use it. OBS handles video for recording, or as a front end for streaming, but doesn't actually do the streaming. Instead OBS has to send the video to a streaming service such as Twitch. OBS ran a test of my setup to see what I could stream and came up with a recommendation of 767 x 431 pixels, at 30 frames per second. The video would be sent from my computer, and recorded at a higher Standard HD resolution (1280×720 pixels), but then down sampled for streaming. I suspect that OBS is intended a more complex problem than I have, and I would be better off with a video conference system, such as Zoom.
The Australian Computer Society is running a Flatten the Curve hackathon, to develop prototypes in 48 hours to counter theCOVID-19 Coronavirus. Registration closes 3:30 pm 9 April, and the event starts at 9pm. The challenge I have submitted is Blended Learning for a gradual return to campus, and so if there is a further outbreak of disease online learning can be quickly implemented. This will require tools, teacher training, and changes to government policy.
Most educational institutions had to scramble to convert courses for online delivery due to the COVID-19 Coronavirus. Those educational institutions which were already providing large scale e-learning, and those who took my advice in 2017 to be ready with online learning in case of a crisis, have had less difficulty. A more orderly move back to the classroom can be planned, when the virus is under control in the next few months. This could use blended learning, with on-campus components gradually added to the blend. However, the online components should be retained for all programs, in case of future emergencies, and to cater for individual student needs.
It is not feasible to set a deadline when all classes return to "normal" campus-based teaching. Rather than having all students stop online learning at once and return to campus on the same day, stagger it over weeks, or months. Students would be on campus initially for only a few classes. Some students will be unable to return for medical and other reasons. With a gradual return there would be fewer students on campus, allowing for easier social distancing. Further COVID-19 outbreaks are possible, until a vaccine is widely administered. If there is a further outbreak, the decision to move back to online learning would be much easier. There would be no difficult decision to declare a campus "closed". Instead the on-campus options would be swapped out and the online equivalents used, for as long as is required. This could be done just for a particular group of students who may have had contact with a person found to be infected, rather than closing the whole campus.
Australian institutions should include online learning, as part of permanent contingency planning, as was done by some institutions in our region years before the current emergency.
Blended learning will also better suit student needs and the reality of how they now study. The idea that most university students were "full time" and "on-campus" was a fiction. Even before COVID-16, most students did not attend most lectures, in the typical Australian university program. Many students have families, or jobs, or both, competing for their time, making them effectively part-time students, studying mostly online. The opportunity can be taken to redesign programs, to provide blended learning.
The distinction between on-campus and online students can be removed, along with full and part-time, domestic and international. The typical student will likely study 20% on campus and 80% online. But students should be allowed to choose the blend which suits them. Courses and programs can be flipped, with a design for online delivery, plus some campus-based elements added were appropriate. If Australian universities do not offer these options, domestic and international students seeking them will be required to enroll at overseas institutions.
Professor Marginson of Oxford University, has suggested treating online learning as a different product with a "separate pricing
structure” (Coronavirus: global student flows to suffer ‘massive hit’ for years, Ellie Bothwell, Times Higher Education, 26 March 2020). However, offering cut-price online degrees could risk the reputations of institutions, and countries, for quality education. Blended learning, could incorporate some online learning, but be seen to be a quality product worthy of the full fee.
Australian higher education policy should be changed to accept blended learning as the default, for both domestic and international students. Australia should focus on quality education for all students, wherever they are. This will reduce the burden from unworkable regulations, which have been waved during the current emergency. It will also provide a competitive advantage for Australia in a more competitive international education market.
Just gave my first presentation via Zoom video conference this afternoon. This was on "Better e-Learning Tools for Combating COVID-19" to early career academics at the Australian National University (ANU). These webinars are being held every two weeks, to help deal with isolation.
Zoom worked much like the other video conference tools I have used to present. The audio worked well, as did the video, but screen sharing had some glitches (very much like other conference tools).
While Zoom offers to share a window on my screen, I could not get this to work with the Linux operating system and Firefox web browser. As soon as I started sharing a window, it went black on my screen and for everyone else. Sharing my whole screen worked, but then I could not see the chat window or video from other people. This was a little like presenting to a dark room full of people (which I have done in Indonesia, during a blackout). The window sharing may be better supported on other operating systems and browsers.
To those working hard to move courses online, due to the COVID-19 Coronavirus, remember there is no need to replace every lecture with a video, every tutorial with a webinar, or every paper examination with an online test. I recommend the Zen martial arts maxims: Economy of effort, Realism, and Switching smoothly between techniques.
Meditation, by Jens Tärning
from the Noun Project,
CC-BY 3.0, 2014
Martial arts emphasize maximum results from minimum effort. Similarly, learning is a
means to an end and so should be done efficiently: using just enough resources to get
the job done. However, most theories of education ignore the cost of an activity. There
tends to be an inappropriate emphasis on trying in education, rather than
succeeding.
2. Realism
Education needs to provide the student with useful skills. Students will need to
start with simplified exercises, but need to be exposed to increasingly realistic
problems. My students either have jobs or are training for a specific role as a
professional, their studies are therefore focused on obtaining skills for that job. By
providing student exercises which are based on their own workplace, or a reasonable
simulation of the workplace, the students are motivated and learn useful skills.
3. Switching smoothly between
techniques
Educational literature is full of explanations of why one principle, theory or
technique is superior to another. But one approach will rarely do for all situations.
Educators need to move smoothly from one technique to another. Students will need times
when they learn alone and then others in a group. They can learn the basics using a
simple drill and practice computer program (based on behaviorism theory) and then
explore advanced topics with other students.
I spent much of the week in Zoom based video conferences, only one of which did not work. This is remarkable, given how heavily Zoom is being used due to theCOVID-19 Coronavirus. In contrast, I had considerable difficulty with Blackboard Collaborate. Collaborate seems to be less able to cope with my 1 mbps broadband connection than when I used it at 28.8 kbps dial-up speed in 2011.
However, these video conference tools have not changed much, from the user's point of video, for decades. The quality of the video has improved, but that is about all, and that is about the least important aspect of a video conference. These events should really be called audio conferences with a shared screen and optional video.
