“Just click the thingie that way and that will solve your problem.”
I looked at her with that look that’s seems normally reserved for women – starting at about age 12 – the look that says “Really? I mean. Really?”
She knew the look.
“It’s not that hard. Just click right THERE.”
Hard to tell if the way she punched ‘there’ was a sign of frustration or simple emphasis. I’ve learned the look, but the capitalized word? I’m still working on that one.
I clicked the thingie.
“Hey, there it is!”
I was rewarded with a smile. It seemed honest enough. No ‘I TOLD you it was no big deal’ hidden at the corners of the mouth.
I think.
Welcome to the world of online learning, where Microsoft Teams, or Zoom - or something else I’ve never heard of and will try very hard to avoid learning in these final few years of my teaching career - is part of the everyday conversation.
Welcome to learning in the era of Covid-19.
It’s a strange world for those of us who grew up sitting shoulder to shoulder in lecture halls and classrooms. Where plopping down in a seat in a teacher or instructor or professor’s office was part of the process.
Now it’s email and video conferencing. It’s necessary, it’s unavoidable, and it’s jarring. And it’s almost certainly going to be with us – in some form – forever. Especially in the college and university setting.
There’s just too much money out there for it to be otherwise.
Courses can be taught online – either by someone lecturing into a laptop, or by posting a bunch of material online, then marking assignments as they are email to you. Sorry, when they are dropped in your dropbox.
“How does dropbox work?” I asked pleadingly.
"Just click that thingie that way and it will solve your problem,” came the response.
Right. We’ve been here before.
Recently.
Online learning is an easy way to include students from across the planet in a college or university class. Those are students you cannot reach in a classroom, a ‘we’re all in this together in this room’ kind of setting.
And given the gradually declining pool of students available locally – because we’re just not having kids the way we used to – colleges and universities are scrambling to find enough students to keep the doors open.
COVID-19 shoved a new door open. Desperation is the mother of invention in this case. Everyone scrambled to keep things going when the doors closed in March, and now the genie is not going back in the box.
It makes perfect economic sense.
A student from India wants to take courses and you can offer them online? That’s a business opportunity too valuable to ignore.
Welcome to education, post-Covid.
But when I faced a group of students last January, students who didn’t know each other and were afraid to talk in class, I knew I had to do something differently.
I split them up into three groups, handed them some tough call journalism situations, and told them they had five minutes as a group to decide: run it or not.
“And remember, your competitors sitting a few feet away may decide to run that gross photo if you don’t. They’ll get the clicks and make the money you lose,” I warned.
Suddenly the room was awash in increasingly loud voices arguing for and against. My problem was solved. Let the learning begin.
This fall I couldn’t do that. Online with a bunch of strangers is not a great spot for that kind of icebreaker.
The post-Covid education world will include online, but some of the magic of teaching is face to face.
Now then.
“Which button do I click to make that work?” I asked one more time.
“Just click the thingie that way and that will solve your problem.”
There was that look again.
Rick MacLean is an instructor in the journalism program at Holland College in Charlottetown.
