SURVEY (1/5) “Distance learning” 🕵️
It has been a year since the COVID crisis hit the world of higher education to have the effect of a bomb. A year that students and professors have, by force of circumstance and the magnitude of the event, reorganized their teaching methods. What did they learn? What did they remember? They took the time to respond to us.
Time for the balance sheet
Although schools have been opening their doors timidly for the past few weeks, students are still farsighted: they will not be able to fully return to their classrooms anytime soon. And since distance learning is destined to take an increasingly important place in our lives, we wanted to dive into the heart of the matter. Learning from the collective ordeal that the world of higher education has been going through over the past year. Try to keep the best of these months of video conferences, screen sharing, muted microphones and wifi failures. Consider this “zoom” school year as an idea laboratory to test, invent, and define what higher education could be. (Just that).
Let's stay humble: we don't want to revolutionize the world of higher education, but simply capitalize on this unique year to start thinking about topics that are bothering us. The task remains ambitious. Countless questions. Can students actually learn behind a computer? Do the new configurations of distance learning facilitate learning? What have we really learned in the last few months?
Focus on learning
On the student side, the tone is gloomy. Unsurprisingly, a majority of them complain that they have assimilated less knowledge than usual in recent months - some even going so far as to deplore having “learned almost nothing” since March 2020. The main reason, according to them: the difficulty of creating adequate conditions for concentration and working remotely.
And we understand them. The entertainments accessible via the computer are innumerable. Social networks, YouTube, Netflix... It's so easy to get lost on the internet and to drop out of class, when you just have to mute your microphone and camera to go unnoticed. But the zoom spiral is even more sneaky: when you take classes from home, the sources of distraction multiply, and everything becomes a reason to unplug. Especially since at a distance, the intransigence of students is redoubled. “If, after a minute of class, my marketing teacher didn't call me up, if she didn't take an example to make me think, I quit.” admits Louis, a first-year master's student in a business school. “Hop, I'm going to mute, and I'm going to make myself an omelet.” Remobilizing students who are about to enjoy an omelette: this has been the new daily challenge for teachers since March 2020.
“If, after a minute of class, my marketing teacher hasn't called me, I switch to mute and I'm going to make myself an omelet. ” 🍳
When distance learning opens doors
Fortunately, there are exceptions. Students whose distance goes hand in hand. Among them, Victor Godinot, a master student at a Parisian engineering school: “Alone in my room, I close Facebook, I am busy, I am efficient; while I have concentration problems when I have my friends around”. Contrary to the dominant discourse, this year he discovered that he was more focused, receptive and effective at home, alone in front of his computer; rather than in class, surrounded by his friends.
Like Victor, several professors we met were far from sharing the pessimism of the students about the year that has just passed. And for good reason: distance teaching has pushed many of them to develop their profession. After the urgency of adaptation during the first lockdown, Fabienne Stefani, a professor of commercial negotiation at a business school, decided to “take the turn” to distance herself from her school. Looking back, she is proud to say that this moment “energized” her, “set her in motion”. And what a movement: after several courses taken over the summer, the teacher improved her computer skills, modified the content and format of her classes, integrated new digital tools into her courses, and changed her assessment methods. Today, she is convinced that “COVID will transform the teaching profession”.
“It's as if the face-to-face course was a 2D course; and the distance learning course was a 3D course. ” 🧬
We are no longer in class: we are now online
More generally, the teaching teams of higher education institutions realize the opportunities that distance learning represents for their students. Excluding the COVID context, the distance model has many virtues. Benefit from quality professors and speakers who would not have been available to physically come to campus. Work between students from different campuses on the same group project. Have greater freedom in the organization of schedules thanks to asynchronous formats. “It's as if the face-to-face course were a 2D course - in physics, in an enclosed space; and the remote one a 3D course: it makes it possible to open the classroom and to give more depth of field in terms of educational innovation.” summarizes Bertrand Augé, professor of management at ESC Pau.
Whether you like it or not, you have to get used to the idea: distance learning has entered the higher education landscape to stay there. This is the motto of the teaching teams in preparing for the start of the 2021 school year. Anthony Payet, director of programs at ESC Pau, testifies: “When we think of future educational models, we are not asking ourselves what part of the remote we integrate into the classroom, but rather the part of digital that we allow ourselves to replace by face-to-face”. All that remains is to identify and use the full potential of distance education to convince students.
