Over the weekend, researchers from the State of the Nation project were alerted to this article by a member of the Canadian eLearning Network.
London – News
Teachers’ union calls on province to end mandatory e-learning in Ontario schools
Published:
The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) is calling on the province to eliminate mandatory e-learning courses in high schools, arguing the policy is inconsistent with efforts to reduce screen time and distractions in classrooms.
The union says any changes to cellphone restrictions in schools should be paired with changes to mandatory online learning requirements.
“We’re calling for the elimination of mandatory e-learning in Ontario high schools,” said OSSTF/FEESO President Martha Hradowy. “Right now, students are required to take one e-learning course. And we are, in fact, seeing the expansion of more options for e-learning and we at our staff think that that is absolutely the wrong direction to go.”
To continue reading, visit https://www.ctvnews.ca/london/article/teachers-union-calls-on-province-to-end-mandatory-e-learning-in-ontario-schools/
While we won’t get into the e-learning mandate itself – as there isn’t much research available to support the stated goals of the mandate or of the potential outcomes of the mandate, it is helpful to look at the veracity of some of the claims being made about e-learning in general. The first one that was repeated several times throughout the article was:
…mandatory e-learning courses in high schools… is inconsistent with efforts to reduce screen time and distractions in classrooms.
The union says any changes to cellphone restrictions in schools should be paired with changes to mandatory online learning requirements….
…mandatory e-learning undermines the province’s push to reduce classroom distractions caused by technology and cellphone use.
“…inconsistent with this idea that students are getting too much screen time and there’s distractions from electronics and saying that they have to take two e-learning classes,”
The educators and union representatives are correct that there is data to support limiting screen time and also limiting the use of mobile devices – particularly for younger children (as well as broad public and parental support). Unfortunately, a lot of that research is based upon perceptions of students, teachers, parents/guardians, and/or the public at large. Additionally, much of that same body of research has found that “interactive and educational screen content may positively influence language development and executive functions when aligned with recommended screen time guidelines.” We suspect that a well designed and facilitated e-learning class would probably count as “interactive and educational screen content.” Often, the restrictions on cell phone or mobile device usage in the school are focused on the potential for that device to be a source of distraction or become a classroom management issue. Similarly, the decrease in the amount of screen time in the child and adolescent psychology literature is focused on non-educational uses of devices. Finally, it should also be noted that the Ontario guidelines focus on mobile devices, not specifically screen time, and the stated reasons focus on those devices being a source of distraction and the potential negative impact on mental health.
Next, there were a couple of statements that focused on class size.
The federation says online courses are funded differently than in-person classes, allowing for larger virtual class sizes.
“In-person classes are funded at 23 students per teacher, but virtual classes are only funded at 30 students per teacher. And that’s baked into the funding formula,”
What both the reporter and the union representative fail to account for with these broad generalizations is the other educators who are involved in the e-learning process. For example, in most cases, Ontario e-learning course content has already been designed by an educator and loaded into a learning management system to allow the online teacher to actually teach it. This means that the online teacher has less preparation work to actually teach their course because they don’t have to prepare how the content will be presented or the activities that the students will undertake. It would be like if a classroom teacher could walk into a classroom and deliver a lesson that someone else had already researched and prepared for them. Further in many cases there is a teacher at the student’s own school that has some level of responsibility for that student while they are engaged in their e-learning course (e.g., someone supervising the computer lab or library where the students login to their e-learning course, someone at the local school that the online teacher can reach out to when the student hasn’t logged on in a couple of days, someone at the local school to proctor assessments that the student might take, etc.). The fact that online teachers don’t have to undertake these course preparation tasks and many of the supervisory duties suggests that they might have additional time to interact with and grade students – time that could be used to interact with and grade more students than what they would be able to do in an in person setting where they are responsible for all of these tasks. In the case of the Ontario funding formula, it is assumed that an e-learning teacher can manage 30% more students because of lessened responsibilities. Finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t point out that there was an earlier special report prepared by State of the Nation researchers that looked at the issue of e-learning and class size.
The next claim [that is] made was a statement from a student.
…considering taking online courses next year because of the flexibility they offer.
There is a long and detailed history in the K-12 distance and online learning literature that suggests flexibility is one of the main benefits and main reasons why students enroll in e-learning courses.
The final claim about e-learning in the article also comes from a student.
…prefers in-class learning because it is more interactive.
Unfortunately, this is another myth about e-learning. Let’s use an example of a classroom discussion. In an in person setting, the teacher asks a question to get the discussion started. In most instances, in a class of 23 students (to use the figure from above), you might find that half of the students respond to the teacher’s prompt. But let’s be generous and say that two thirds of the students engage in the discussion. Has it really been a discussion? The teacher asked a question and 15 students provided their version of an answer. But a discussion is designed for participants to interact with each other, to build upon each other’s ideas and challenge each other’s assumptions and beliefs. In a 60 minute class, for all 23 students to simply respond to the teacher’s initial prompt, it would mean that each student only had about two minutes and 40 seconds of speaking time. Now, if we assume that maybe there was some back and forth between a couple of pairs of students – and each of those back and forths ate up three minutes each. Now students only have two minutes and 20 seconds of speaking time. Unless the teacher told them about the topic the day before, the students are also mainly providing their initial ideas or thoughts on the prompt, as there isn’t time for them to look at resources to form a more supported response. And all of this is assuming that the teacher spends the full 60-minute period on nothing but this discussion.
Now compare that to how a discussion is often structured in an e-learning class. In most cases, the instructions that come with the prompt tell the student that they have to post a response to the prompt, and then interact with one or two other students (i.e., comment on one or two other students’ responses to the prompt). If we assume that the instructions simply said that each student had to comment on one other student’s response to the prompt, right off the bat, there is a greater level of interaction because every student in the class – all 30 of them (using the figure from above) – will have to post one response to the prompt and one comment on another students response to the prompt. Additionally, because these asynchronous discussion forums are not done in real time, it allows the student to actually take some time to compose their response – making use of the resources available to them, even being able to edit their ideas (as opposed to having to respond on the fly in the moment like they would in a classroom). If the online teacher adds the instruction that every student must also interact with anyone who comments on their response to the prompt (which is a common addition in asynchronous discussion instructions), now you have that back and forth from every student in the class at least once.
To provide another comparison, if you think about the teacher in an in person setting who is providing a lecture on a specific topic. Beyond the ability to look at the faces in the room to see if they are looking at him or her (which they use as a measure to determine whether a student is paying attention – even if in reality the student could be day dreaming and just watching the teacher walk about the room), the only way they have to interact with the students and determine if they were listening is to ask specific students questions. We suppose the teacher could also walk over to stand near a student’s desk whom they perceived not to be paying attention as a subtle way to get them focused again.
Now compare that to an online teacher in a synchronous class in Zoom or some other live tool. If the online teacher has set the expectation that the students must have their cameras on, they have the same ability to look around the virtual classroom to see where students’ eyes are or ask questions of specific students to determine if they are paying attention. But they also have things like a polling feature that is built into the class. Most virtual classrooms have features where students can click on a button to publicly or privately tell the teacher to speed up or slow down. Virtual classrooms also have the ability for students to add a text-based chat message, which would allow the teacher to get feedback from multiple students at the same time. If the virtual classroom is configured correctly, students would also be able to ask questions – both publicly and privately – to their online teacher throughout the class. Imagine being a student and having the ability to ask for a clarification or for something to be explained again, without the social pressure of outing yourself as potentially not being smart enough to understand it the first time around.
Note these comparisons are not to suggest that e-learning classes are more interactive than in person classroom. It is to suggest that each medium has certain affordances and limitations. For example, the first example above suggests that an online asynchronous discussion allows students more think time and to be more purposeful in composing their responses, whereas the in person class discussion provides the teacher with a better sense of what the students know or think in the moment. Depending on what the discussion was designed to accomplish, one of these things may be more important to the teacher’s lesson that day. As we have said many times in this space, in person and online are simply the mediums in which the instruction is provided. The quality of that instruction is solely impacted by how it is designed, delivered, and supported.