Digital learning after the lockdown

Many parents have experienced it for themselves: Homeschooling is no walk in the park! The media has reported on the difficulties and frustration for children, parents and teachers. After this crisis, will we return to everyday school life as we knew it before spring 2020?

Most people would probably answer: Of course! It is important that pupils and teachers are in the same room. A virtual meeting is of course better than none at all, but it is by no means the same. What's more, schools play a crucial role in a functioning economy by providing childcare while parents work - even if this statement is perhaps not entirely politically correct. But what happens now?

Scientists and policy makers will analyse the successes and failures of distance learning during the pandemic. They may recommend having the necessary software ready to switch to distance learning in the event of a crisis. But if schools and universities simply rely on reactivating existing programmes when the next crisis hits in a few years' time, they will find that they are outdated by then: Licences have not been renewed, content has not been updated. We may well then find ourselves in a similar situation to that of the last few months, when there was not enough personal protective equipment in many countries.

A different approach would make more sense: if schools systematically combine digital and analogue learning opportunities, only the proportions of conventional and distance learning need to be adjusted in the event of a crisis, rather than making radical changes. Many people seem to think that learning from home is completely new. But haven't students always done homework in the evenings and at weekends? And don't teachers already integrate the internet into their lessons? Pupils share tasks in Whatsapp groups, teachers upload exercises to Dropbox and so on.

Homework contributes to social inequality

The post-Covid-19 school will have to remain partly digital, as children have always learnt at home and this will not change. However, research has shown that homework, whether digital or analogue, contributes to social inequality. During the coronavirus crisis, this problem is exacerbated by unequal access to digital technologies and differences in the time parents can devote to their children's schoolwork.

However, avoiding digital tools is not a solution. Rather, these tools should be used to reduce inequality. For example, parents who are not at home could help their children with their homework online. Non-profit organisations could support pupils who do not receive help at home. Artificial intelligence could be used to inform schools when children have learning difficulties, and so on.

After the crisis, the eternal search for the ideal learning and teaching platform will continue. But there is no such thing as the one technology that fulfils all expectations. Instead, schools use different programmes for different activities: for example, Moodle for organising activities, Google Drive for sharing documents, email, Zoom or Slack for communication and interactive applications for maths exercises and scientific simulations.

A poor learning platform can ruin a project - but a good one is no guarantee of success. For online learning to succeed, you should pay less attention to the choice of software and more to the quality of the learning activities that students complete with it.

We should get used to the idea of systematically combining digital and analogue activities.

It is often pointed out that teachers are not sufficiently trained in the use of digital technologies. But what skills are we actually talking about here? Most teachers are perfectly capable of booking flights online or filing their tax returns. The technology of educational software is no more complicated than the programmes we already use in our everyday lives. Apart from the inevitable technical glitches, the real problem with using digital learning platforms is not how to use the software, but the question: What can I do online with my students?

If we get used to the idea of systematically combining digital and analogue activities, then in a post-Covid-19 world we can use the same video telephony software for a lecture, a physics experiment, a practical demonstration in biology lessons and for student presentations. So it's less about the programmes and more about their pedagogical and didactic use. After the current crisis, we should focus on collecting and sharing examples of successful online activities. This approach will help us to create a stable system that combines digital and analogue learning opportunities, the proportion of which can be adjusted accordingly if necessary.

This text first appeared in English on BOLD - Blog on Learning and Development.