Earlier this week the annual report of the Digital Learning Collaborative entitled Snapshot 2022: An Inflection Point for Digital Learning was released. This report is the latest in a series of annual reports that the Evergreen Education Group – initially the Keeping Pace reports from 2004 to 2016 and more recently the Snapshot reports from 2019 to the present (the latter published by the Digital Learning Collaborative – a member driven organization sponsored by Evergreen).
As a part of the most recent report, there was a chart that I felt was particularly instructive.
Figure 1. Differences between remote and online learning (Digital Learning Collaborative, 2022, p. 5)
This chart is particularly instructive because it is consistent with the contrasting descriptions of emergency remote learning and online learning providing in our special report – Understanding Pandemic Pedagogy: Differences between Emergency Remote, Remote, and Online Teaching. In that report we wrote that emergency remote learning was:
a temporary shift of instructional delivery to an alternate delivery mode due to crisis circumstances. It involves the use of instruction or education that would otherwise be delivered fully remote teaching solutions for primarily face-to-face and that will return to that format once the crisis or emergency has abated. The primary objective in these circumstances is not to recreate a robust educational ecosystem but rather to provide temporary access to instruction and instructional supports in a manner that is quick to set up and is reliably available during an emergency or crisis. (Barbour et al. 2020, p. 6)
Whereas in presentations we have described online learning as requiring:
purposeful instructional planning, using a systematic model of administrative procedures, and course development. It also requires the careful consideration of various pedagogical strategies. These pedagogical considerations are used to determine which are best suited to the specific affordances and challenges of delivery mediums and the purposeful selection of tools based on the strengths and limitations of each one. Finally, careful planning requires that teachers be appropriately trained to be able to support the tools that are being used, and for teachers to be able to effectively use those tools to help facilitate student learning. (Nagle et al., 2021, p. 3)
As you can see, both of these descriptions are a bit lengthy – so having a nice chart is instructive.
References
Digital Learning Collaborative. (2022). Snapshot 2022: An inflection point for digital learning. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a98496696d4556b01f86662/t/61fbf37739a0f21c1334f108/1643901817943/DLC-Snapshot2022.pdf
Nagle, J., Barbour, M. K., & LaBonte, R. (2021, June). Remote teaching – Emergency or not: Examining pandemic pedagogy in Canada [Panel]. Digital Learning Annual Conference, Austin, TX. https://www.slideshare.net/mkb/dlac-2021-remote-teaching-emergency-or-not-examining-pandemic-pedagogy-in-canada