TDL Brief: Is Online Learning Here to Stay?
Back in April 2020, thousands of schools across the world closed down in hopes of preventing the further spread of COVID-19. Students suddenly found themselves without in-person learning. Their teachers, meanwhile, were rushing to adapt to the novel challenges of teaching virtually – in most instances, over Zoom.
While online learning was previously stigmatized for being less valuable than in-person education, for many people, online learning is now the only option. Education is one of the industries that has had to change most drastically in order to adjust to the ‘new normal’.
When doors re-opened, some schools gave students the option of returning to the classroom or continuing to learn online, which raised a new set of questions: are children learning as much from home? Will students suffer from Zoom exhaustion if they continue online learning? Should we be paying the same tuition if learning is happening online?
For post-secondary education, a different set of problems emerged, as most colleges and universities still have very limited in-person learning. Many students have moved back home and because of time-difference find themselves staying up all night to attend their virtual classrooms. Online learning has also led to various security concerns. Some professors want to record their lectures for those students who can’t make synchronous sessions, but that might come at the cost of privacy. Globally, there has also been an increase in cyberattacks against universities. These various issues have meant that online learning has been inconsistent and difficult to adapt to because of humans’ aversion to ambiguity and change. For example, the ambiguity effect suggests that we tend to avoid options that are ambiguous, which could cause many students to check out of online learning.
And it looks like we aren’t out of the woods yet. With many countries experiencing a second wave of COVID-19, there are concerns that schools will shut down again, at the very least for an extended Christmas holiday. More time away from physical classrooms will continue to diminish the social interaction that greatly contributes to learning and continue to challenge teachers to find ways to maintain their students’ engagement without a feedback loop. Educational institutions may have to continue relying on third-party providers that are already conducive to online learning, a limited field that may cause a bad-choice environment. Using external resources can also bring into question the safety and privacy of students, which may be at a greater risk online than offline. With these hardships in mind, it is important to understand how online learning is affecting education.
References
- Carey B. (2020, June 13). What We’re Learning About Online Learning. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/13/health/school-learning-online-education.html
- Hugill, J. (2020, October 7). Precommitment and procrastination: Behavioral tools for students. The Decision Lab. https://thedecisionlab.com/insights/education/precommitment-and-procrastination-behavioral-tools-for-students/
- Kelleher, J. S. (2020, October 4). Parents: Online learning program has racist, sexist content. ABC News. https://www.abc27.com/news/us-world/business/parents-online-learning-program-has-racist-sexist-content/
- Rae, J., Collett, N., & Montenegro, M. (2020, November 15). How Might Behavioral Science Transform Education? The Decision Lab. https://thedecisionlab.com/insights/education/how-might-behavioral-science-transform-education/
- Fosslien, L., & Duffy, M. W. (2020, April 29). How to Combat Zoom Fatigue. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/04/how-to-combat-zoom-fatigue
- Pettigrew, K. E. (1999). Waiting for chiropody: Contextual results from an ethnographic study of the information behaviour among attendees at community clinics. Information Processing & Management, 35(6), 801-817. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0306-4573(99)00027-8
- Tyng, C. M., Amin, H. U., Saad, M. N., & Malik, A. S. (2017). The influences of emotion on learning and memory. Frontiers in Psychology, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01454
- Lohrmann, D. (2020, September 19). Online Learning Still Struggles – Especially With Security. Government Technology. https://www.govtech.com/blogs/lohrmann-on-cybersecurity/online-learning-still-struggles-especially-with-security.html
- Teach Online. (2020, April 30). What Is Next for Online Learning During and After COVID-19? https://teachonline.ca/tools-trends/what-next-online-learning-during-and-after-covid-19
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.
Dr. Sekoul Krastev
Sekoul is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. A decision scientist with a PhD in Decision Neuroscience from McGill University, Sekoul's work has been featured in peer-reviewed journals and has been presented at conferences around the world. Sekoul previously advised management on innovation and engagement strategy at The Boston Consulting Group as well as on online media strategy at Google. He has a deep interest in the applications of behavioral science to new technology and has published on these topics in places such as the Huffington Post and Strategy & Business.
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