By Seago, Edward Brian – http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib//151/media-151002/large.jpgThis is photograph Art.IWM ART LD 5638 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25335771
BY AARON BARLOW
We have been using digital technologies as tools in our pedagogical kits, generally speaking, for a couple of decades. The battle for “smart” classrooms is over; we can’t imagine teaching in an environment where we do not have internet access and immediate projection. We use music and video in the classroom as well slides and may even ask students to work in small groups via texting. We communicate with students via websites and educational platforms such as BlackBoard as well as email, and our assignments have digital components.
We don’t think much about this beyond how best to use the evolving tools. We have completed whatever training in digital tools our institutions require for hybrid/online teaching and are often involved with the development of new in-house tools. The move to the digital has been accomplished.
Or has it?
Many of our colleagues are still teaching as though it is 1975.
Like thousands of other professors, as soon as I began to suspect we would be shifting from face-to-face instruction, I quickly put a site for each of my courses online and walked my students through the steps to access. I even told them that, if we did not close but they were not comfortable coming to class, they could continue their work through the site. My assumption was that most other professors were doing the same. Though our institutions weren’t yet responding to what was likely to happen, we teachers were, and we were working with our students to make sure it would go smoothly.
What we forgot, though, was that many of our colleagues, especially (but not only) the older ones (and not all of them: I am 68), have no idea how to bring digital tools into their classrooms—let alone bring their classrooms into the digital. We have not made it foundational to 21st century teaching that the instructor be conversant with the digital technology at her/his disposal and have certainly not required that these be incorporated into every class.
As we have learned over the past month, we should have. There is no excuse for a situation where, even now, we have instructors trying to teach via email or who have been replacing the classroom with Zoom lectures alone. Teachers who see the digital as a poor approximation of the classroom (which it is) but who have no idea how to use it to augment the classroom or enhance an online experience. Teachers who have no conception of the reality that communication online has to take a different tone entirely from the personal interactions they are used to. Teachers who have no understanding of the difference between mentoring in person and providing support online. Teachers who have no… well, the list could go on.
It is long past the time when every professor should know how to teach a class online, appreciating the differences between that experience and the classroom one and tailoring pedagogy in that light. We know this. No college instructor should be unable to approach teaching assignments with the flexibility command of digital tools brings. But we have not made it so.
We, as the broader American faculty, have not insisted on this. We have bowed to the inherent conservatism toward pedagogy that has ruled our profession for decades, if not centuries, when we should have been finding ways of overcoming the reluctance of colleagues to make use of the new tools now available. We have failed both our students and our profession.
At no time has that been as apparent as the present, when half a semester is being wasted for at least half of our students. Their unprepared instructors are flailing and pretending, and the students are learning little. Many of the least ready teachers are hiding their inability to deal with the new situation, not reaching out to colleagues who could help, whether through embarrassment or through ignorance. And it is too late, really, to provide the kind of training that would help, anyway, for many of these professors don’t have enough experience online to even use the internet for their own training. Some don’t even have wifi access in their homes, further complicating their situations.
In many departments, fewer than half of the instructional staff is qualified to teach online. Others may have command of available digital tools but not nearly all.
By this point, every instructor should have been able to step into a digital environment without confusion.
This has not been the case. And we could survive, were the problem limited to the current term. But, as appears more and more likely, most classes in the fall will start out online, migrating to the classroom only as dangers recede. So the problem of digital incompetence among us is only going to grow.
How are teachers with no experience with the tools or with the actuality of preparing and teaching a robust course online (as opposed to the make-do experience of this semester where we all have to assume that very little learning is taking place) going to face the fall semester? Few colleges have the resources for providing training, even online, and fewer still are going to be willing to pay their adjuncts to learn to use online tools. Most schools have a process of certification for teaching online, processes which focus primarily on the technology and not the pedagogy but that, at least, provide some sort of foundation for online instruction. But they don’t have the staff that expanding this over the summer (and fall) months would require.
Colleges are exploring temporary and alternative means of certification, but these are likely to prove to be band-aids that quickly lose their stick. Departments are asking those with online experience to work with those without, but full-time faculty are often already over-burdened.
We, as a national faculty, have failed in preparing ourselves for the demands of contemporary situations and their impact on education. We can’t even play successful catch-up.
When this crisis is behind us, our departments must begin to insist that every member have certain digital competencies, both in the technologies themselves and in the pedagogical necessities within a digital environment, necessities often different for different fields but there in every one.
We weren’t ready for what is happening now. Let’s learn from that. Let’s put aside our complacency and be prepared next time, acting in an orderly fashion rather than in chaos.
For there will be a next time….
