Our education system is improvising
As COVID-19 drives learning online, support matters, says Laurent Benoit
Canada slows down to a crawl to mitigate COVID-19. Citizens’ activities, business services, indeed much of our daily lives trickle to a halt due to social distancing. Meanwhile, post-secondary education institutions are accelerating, urgently migrating online to save the school year.
But distance education is nothing like classroom instruction. Building a single course online requires a multidisciplinary team’s expertise and techno-pedagogical planning, not to mention testing and time. Emergency campus closures grant none of these essentials.
This education crisis is a ripple effect of the virus. Can institutions achieve an accelerated transition and save the year without diminishing education quality? Can they ensure students’ degrees are not of a lesser degree?
Crises are inherently paradoxical. Crises present complex challenges under extreme time constraints, yet sound decisions require careful analysis. They reduce resources, yet positive outcomes require adequate means. A successful crisis management principle is to improvise with perspective.
Teachers and professors are altering plans, conceiving new teaching strategies and tools, designing new activities and assignments, even learning new communication apps and platforms. We are going online with our lectures, presentations, instructions, templates and reminders. That is improvisation.
Tens of thousands of students will need to find, read, interpret and digest our information. Under end-ofyear pressure, with already one less week of instruction, students will need to catch up and demonstrate a level of discipline and proactive participation too many may not possess. That, too, is improvisation.
Dear politicians working on compensation plans for businesses and citizens: Consider compensating institutions so they may order the resources students need, now. And since high school students are also moving online, remember these are kids, kids who need professional help, not only low-paid tutors.
Dear colleges and universities: Extending this term or adding activities in the Fall to give students additional time to learn and protect the quality of education should not be brushed aside. Converting traditional exams into “house” exams raises many concerns, including plagiarism. Final exam conditions can be adapted to offer social distancing measures.
Dear parents: Your child, even if a young adult, needs help — a quiet learning environment, a regular routine, a friendly ear and words of encouragement. Please keep a close eye; look for signs of isolation or distress, especially towards the term’s end. Friends and families, it is up to us to overcome social distancing, a real threat especially to those most vulnerable — all too often our youth. It’s time for lots of little hearts and likes on all the marathon study session pictures. An occasional call, to tell them how proud you are, works too. That, well, that’s love.
Dear students: You have been tasked with acting like professionals years before beginning your career. Meticulously maintain your schedule and regularly check for emails and new online materials, posts and announcements. Create study groups via the platforms that, fortunately, you master so well. Luckily, collaboration comes naturally to your generation.
You are now responsible, more than you’ve ever been, for your learning. The temptation to increase social media use will be strong. Resist it at all costs, for you need that extra time to organize yourselves and fully absorb concepts. Looking at this positively, COVID-19 offers you a fantastic growth opportunity. That is life and that’s why I became a teacher.
Delaying the spread of the virus is a collective responsibility requiring individual actions by us all. Learners are deprived of their best learning tool, the classroom, and of a primary social setting, campuses. For students to academically grow away from the classroom, we all need to lend them a learning hand.
Everyone’s improvising. True leaders show perspective. We all could use a little love. Call someone you haven’t spoken to in a while. Today.
Laurent Benoit is a professor of public relations at La Cité and regularly lectures on crisis communications at the University of Ottawa and Université du Quebec en Outaouais. During 9/11, he was director of communications at the Ottawa International Airport and a member of the crisis team. Previously he was director of media relations for the Ottawa Senators. The views expressed are his own and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the institutions he is affiliated with.