The world’s collective imagination is now profoundly concentrated on the most essential of activities, education at the forefront. The COVID-19 induced school closures in Alaska, and around the world, have created a seismic shift within an already dynamic sector: E-Learning.
Context is helpful, the first visual web browser debuted in 1993, web based email came into existence in 1996, and the first use of the term E-learning was recorded in 1998. By 1999, a glimpse of the E-Learning future was available to classroom teachers using the newly invented virtual learning management system (LMS) called Blackboard, still an industry leader. But it has been in the last ten years that a host of technological tools, strategies and approaches have touched almost every classroom and training environment in the developed world.
Rural Alaskan students have benefited for years in the ability to access classes being taught by another teacher in a nearby hub community with greater instructional capacity (distance learning), from online coursework they are able to complete at their own pace (asynchronous) – and from a combination of online and face to face instructional environments (blended).
Rural Alaskan students have benefited for years in the ability to access classes being taught by another teacher in a nearby hub community
REAP energy educators have been delivering synchronous webinar energy literacy lectures to students throughout the state for several years. And REAP’s educators are, like teachers around the state, pivoting and cutting new pathways in an effort to educate and excite Alaska’s students. REAP Energy Educators recently leapt into the breach with the recent Alaska Virtual Science Fair.
But for all the E-Learning software and hardware innovations of the last decade, the dominant intention has been to supplement and compliment – not supplant face to face classroom teaching. In the short term, COVID-19 has upended this intention. Before COVID-19, E-Learning landscapes were shaped by school boards, administrators, teachers, students and parents making informed and collaborative choices based on need, available technologies and cost. These same stakeholders are in a triage state of education today and operating without a clear sense of what the future holds (including whether or not school buildings will open in the Fall.)
There is a great deal of experimentation and lowered expectations in the current delivery of educational content. Equally, great allowances will be allowed in terms of the performance of teachers and students. There is a slew of unanswered questions and the dust is far from settling in what is proving to be a grand experiment in E-Learning. Among these questions:
- How is it that Anchorage’s King Tech Electricity Construction classes that require hands on activities in a lab setting are still being taught?
- How will International Baccalaureate students at West High School engage in AP Literature discussions or conduct chemistry experiments from home?
- How will students with no quiet workspace, computers or high speed internet learn at the same pace as more privileged peers? (GCI is providing free internet for students and many districts are issuing computers, but fundamental questions remain.)
- What will it look like for trainees from rural Alaska who were bound for Alaska Vocational and Technical College (AVTEC) in Seward so that they might earn certificates in Bulk Fuel, Power Plant and Maritime Operations?
We are still deeply rooted in the unknown stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Certainly, mistakes are being made and not all students are being equally served. But what seems clear is that there is a great deal of innovation taking place in Alaska that will serve the state well as we discover what the new normal looks like in a post Covid-19 world.
The path toward solving these challenges will continue to run directly through the state’s most valuable resource – dedicated teachers, trainers and their students. If the medical experts are correct and we are in the midst of a war, Sun Tzu offers this advice in The Art of War: “Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”
Definitions:
E-learning or distance education – umbrella terms for any learning that takes place across distance and not in a traditional classroom.
Virtual classroom – an online learning environment that allows for live interaction between the tutor and the learners as they are participating in learning activities. The most common tools in a virtual classroom are: videoconferencing and an online whiteboard for real-time collaboration.
online learning – a type of distance learning that takes place over the internet.
remote education – synchronous or asynchronous instruction where instruction and/or information source are separated from the student by time and distance – therefore not in the same classroom.
blended classroom – Instructors utilize online content and tools as integral aspects of instruction
student engagement platforms – software or web apps that help educational institutions increase student participation on campus and in the classroom through real time communication and access to information. Examples (Nearpod, Turning Technologies)
learning management systems (LMS) – A learning management system (LMS) is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, and delivery of educational courses, training programs, or learning and development programs. (Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle)
REAP’s education initiatives.
Learn more about our programs to increase energy education in the state.
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