As 2019 ended, who would have imagined that so many millions of people around the world would have first-hand experience with distance learning just months into 2020; certainly not I.
My opinion of distance education has evolved over the years. The first time I learned that distance learning existed was the first semester of my sophomore year of college at Oral Roberts University where they offered (if I recall correctly) two correspondence Masters degrees in theology that were in systematic theology. I actually had a campus job that semester where I had to call prospective students and basically sell them the program. I am not sure anyone ever signed up because of my sales pitch (I surely was not their best salesperson-Ha), but they had very few students in their program where they mailed student writing to the university and graded work back to the student. Even if students stayed on pace with the correspondence track, it took double the time of a student taking courses on campus. At this point in time, my opinion of distance learning was not very high though I did recognize its benefits to those far from the University.
Jump ahead almost 15 years where I had acquaintances that homeschooled their children using an online curriculum. This curriculum was both parent guided and student guided with no online teacher to hold students accountable for the quality of the work they produced nor to keep the learning on a rigorous pace.
Lastly, as schools shut down abruptly in March 2020, the level of preparedness for teachers and the district was fairly great considering the pandemic situation. My district quickly distributed Chromebooks to students the Monday after spring break and began online classes the next day. My whole fifth grade team worked very hard planning and implementing lessons that were largely asynchronous. When oue district, teachers, and families had time to acclimate and evaluate the online learning programs, many recognized the need to increase rigor, expectations, and require equal instructional minutes for both online and in-person students for the fall of 2020.
I hesitate to make a blanket judgement of any educational modality or tool because of all the many factors at play in people’s lives affecting their learning, so I would not like to see any laws limiting access to distance learning as options for students at any level. I do not believe that means I necessarily have a positive view of online/distance learning, but I believe it does offer learning opportunities for people who would otherwise be without.
