What Covid Did to Education: Technology Came to the Rescue!

Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences.  Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, morals, beliefs, habits and personal development. Distance Education (DE) is any method of instruction that is delivered outside of a classroom.  Examples include correspondence, video, and computer-mediated Internet courses.  Hybrid Instruction is the combination of in-class and DE instruction.


Since the onset of the Covid pandemic, educators and parents have tackled issues regarding safe delivery of educational programs to students in K-12 schools, colleges and universities. There weren’t many options once the virus went viral.


Computers have been used in in higher education institutions since the dawn of the computer age. K-12 schools were targeted by computer manufacturers in the early 1980s. In1982, after the governor of California signed a bill that granted a tax credit to companies, Apple donated Apple IIe computers to around 9,000 schools in the state. See the MOTAL artifact article on the Apple II computer on the MOTAL website: https://motal.dm.networkforgood.com/emails/artifact-of-the-month-partner-museum-edition


A Purdue Online article about the history of classroom technology states:
By 2009, 97% of classrooms had one or more computers, and 93% of classroom computers had Internet access. For every 5 students, there was one computer. Instructors stated that 40% of students used computers often in their educational methods, in addition to interactive whiteboards and digital cameras. College students nowadays are rarely without some form of computer technology: 83% own a laptop, and over 50% have a Smartphone.


Thus, when the pandemic struck, it made sense to focus on delivery of instruction using electronic media (computers, smartphones, pads, laptops) and the program applications that had been developed by programmers and modified by educators over the years since the earliest days of personal computing.

Prior to the pandemic most children attended a school and sat in a classroom where a teacher conducted lessons, assignments, activities, and so on. Computers have been important tools in most K-12 schools in support of curriculum. Both teachers and students developed basic computer competencies, but instruction remained physical and face-to-face.


America’s educators heroically stepped up to take on the challenge of swiftly adopting distance education frameworks, adapting their curriculum to the new structures required by online education, and assisting children, parents, and other caregivers with expectations and responsibilities.


Researchers will be exploring the impacts of the shift from traditional classroom to computer-mediated instruction for years to come. In the meantime, there is both good and bad news pertaining to this type of distance education in elementary, middle and high school.


The first negative aspect of the shift is that not all families or school districts are equal when it comes to technological readiness. For the most part, the disparities are the traditional ones along economic, cultural and social lines. There is research that suggests there is a correlation between parental education levels and ease in adapting to distance education for their children.

Less well researched is the fact that some children embraced DE and thrived; and others, for a variety of reasons, struggled and fell behind. Those reasons include learning differences (for example ADHD), lack of parental support, lack of access to technology, unstable family life, physical limitations, etc. For the struggling students, distance education was a nightmare, and will continue to be unless strategies are developed to provide them with individual interventions. This will be especially important if post-pandemic education relies, at least in some curriculum, on distance education modalities.

Use of DE modalities during the pandemic revealed that in some disciplines student success actually improved over traditional classroom instruction. For example, researchers Markus Wolfgang Hermann Spitzer and Sebastian Musslick received funding from the John Templeton Foundation to “investigate whether the performance of K-12 students in mathematics—quantified in terms of error rate and difficulty of assigned problem sets in an online learning environment—changed during the shutdown of schools in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.” The final report was published August 3, 2021. The study examined data from 2,500 K-12 students and over 124,000 computed problem sets. Researchers used these data to compare each student’s performance before the shutdown against their performance during the shutdown. The results of the study suggest that performance in mathematics improved during the pandemic, and, more importantly, “improvements were greatest for students who performed below average [prior to the pandemic].”


It is important to note that the technology is a tool, just like chalk and slate were tools in the past. It is a powerful tool and like all powerful tools it must be wielded with care.


In his book, Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education, Justin Reich of MIT states,


"If you look at how progress in education tech has been made, it’s not through vast disruptive changes—it’s not through brilliant new tech that transforms in a shock…The best work we do in edtech has a kind of tinker’s mindset to it,” … meaning that teachers and developers make small changes to systems like learning-management systems and videoconferencing tools over time that gradually improve online learning.


More research will be necessary to confirm the efficacy of specific programs and applications, but it is safe to say (I believe), that both traditional and distance education will be used in the future, each doing what it does best – as determined by teachers, parents, programmers, and others.


Reminder:  Listen to our MOTAL YouTube podcasts Teaching in Times of Covid  episodes one through nine in which educators reveal how they have coped with Covid. 


Sources
Education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education


Learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning


Purdue online 
https://online.purdue.edu/blog/education/evolution-technology-classroom


Spitzer, M. and Musslick, S. “Academic performance of K-12 students in an online-learning environment for mathematics increased during the shutdown of schools in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.” Purdue Online. 03 Aug 2021. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/search?q=Academic+Performance+of+K-12+students+in+an+online-learning&filterJournals=PLoSONE
 
Staff. “The History of Online Schooling.” Onlineschools.org.
https://www.onlineschools.org/visual-academy/the-history-of-online-schooling


Young, J. R. “Massive Study of Online Teaching Ends with Surprising – and ‘Deflating’ – Result.” EdSurge. 17 Jun 2020.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-06-17-massive-study-of-online-teaching-ends-with-surprising-and-deflating-result.


Submitted by
Cheryl Stewart, MOTAL Board Member and Treasurer