Written by: Ekaterina Matveeva, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
The pandemic has drastically changed the way how learners interact with institutions and how corporate training programs are held. In the past year, I have been teaching students of various levels and hosted a number of round tables with teachers and entrepreneurs to explore the learner’s point of view. Being an active online learner myself, I discovered new approaches to engaging in my studies.
Putting aside the obvious obstacles such as the speed of the internet, unequal access to the internet, and privacy issues, there are more serious, to my mind, hindrances preventing a modern learner of any age from enjoying and fully involving in the study process. One of them is the lack of engaging educational content, accompanied by a myriad of distractions starting from social media and ending up with online games. This brings a lot of learners to “zoom fatigue” - an emotional state when they are required to keep their cameras on during the whole study day, constantly feeling under the pressure of being observed, in the spotlight, without being able to relax between periods of high concentration, or stretch their legs now and then. Consequently, a lot of learners of different age groups started falling behind their studies, experiencing negative emotions towards particular courses, and ignoring their lessons by getting carried away by online distractions. A poor online support system and feedback prevented them from staying on track and instantly sharing how they felt with the instructors.
This is not an easy challenge to tackle. However, there are a few outstanding examples that can serve as a beacon in this transitional period.
As an online learner, I was lucky to take up the online course “Introduction in Computer Science” — “CS50” at Harvard University. Dr. David J. Malan leads this course.
Dr. Malan began teaching CS50 years before the pandemic. However, he already had in mind an idea of online education. He requested the university administration to assist him with filming the course to allow learners watching his course via MOOC platforms to feel as if they were present physically in the auditorium. Eventually, this turned CS50 into one of the most engaging courses with over 2 million registrants. Learners enjoy the course immensely. Does it mean that all the courses should be like this? There is no correct answer to this question.
However, if learners have no opportunity to attend engaging classes, how could they learn more efficiently?
First of all, a learner needs to find a healthy balance between on-screen and off-screen time to avoid “zoom fatigue.” It can involve physical exercises, getting a healthy snack, or doing anything off-screen. Moreover, the eyesight might get affected by long hours in front of the screen. Therefore, a break is recommended every 2 hours, if more frequently is not possible to do.
Secondly, a learner can try to work in a team with other learners to engage in discussions and solve tasks. This might help to learn faster and find multiple solutions.
Thirdly, a learner can use memory techniques and storytelling to memorize information. As a memory athlete, I can testify that these techniques help create associations turning boring information into adventurous stories.
Fourthly, providing learners with space between new concepts, rather than cramming lots of information in all at once, has proven to be effective not only on paper. I elaborate on my experience with knowledge bites below.
And finally, when learners feel excited, supported, and safe, they learn better. A well-facilitated online session can help learners connect with materials and with each other. A poorly run session can leave learners isolated, disconnected, and frustrated with their experiences, which has been observed in the past years worldwide.
Overall, various methods can help learners take up responsibility for their studies. Yet, a lot still depends on an educator, not only session facilitation. What are the main obstacles in online teaching?
As an educator with over ten years of online teaching experience, as a language teacher, public speaking coach, and university professor, I must admit that one of the biggest challenges at group sessions is not to burn out while trying to keep learners engaged, especially when privacy issues or connections don’t allow keeping their cameras on during discussion sessions. This turns a teaching experience into a live session with no immediate response, feedback that could stir the course of the session. Personally, as an educator constantly interacting with learners, I found it extremely stressful at some programs that I was leading. I discovered my own ways of how to measure the temperature in the room with no cameras by either having a few selected learners engaged in our public discussion or a colleague being in an active dialogue with me.
I was not alone in distress when I heard from many of my colleagues teaching at universities how hard it was to run a course online. On top of connection issues and the inability of some teachers to use digital tools, it turned out that there was yet a bigger issue - how to convert offline course content into online course content.
It was highly impractical to take two-hour lectures and schedule webinars with the same content, expecting students to follow a monotonous teacher and engage in activities. I experienced this when I was preparing an executive program on public speaking in English for international speakers at the University of Palermo (UP), Argentina, and we were driven to the same impasse where it was expected from me to turn an in-person program into an online program without any changes. However, I proposed a different way to approach the situation.
As a creator of video courses on soft skills in foreign languages, I learned the strategy of knowledge bites - short informative videos with engaging storytelling and practical tasks to memorize the provided information afterward.
It took me some time to explain my approach, as this was novel to the university administration typically measuring the efficiency of programs and financial rewards of professors in conducted hours. Nevertheless, soon a new format was born of blended learning with a mixture of pre-recorded short videos on theory, engaging tasks, and practical dynamic webinars. The feedback on the program has proven this approach to be the most effective at the current stage. And more cooperating with Amolingua institutions start adopting this approach.
But does it mean that all the lectures must be either recorded in the style of Dr. Malan or new blended learning?
As the founder of Amolingua, where we have been training languages, cultures, and soft skills for over five years, I went through a round of attempts to build apps, platforms, and other tech solutions to provide impeccable learning/teaching experience. And I must say, we ran into various issues, including resistance to change by particular groups of learners who couldn’t imagine studying online. And even though the pandemic has put resisters in the corner, a lot of people are still distressed by technology in online learning.
In the past years, I realized that one should not focus on technology as the core of their value proposition, as tech solutions change so fast that it is really easy to be left out in the tech race. Also, one of the old issues is when companies throw tech at big problems without really solving them. Instead, you need to focus on identifying what you’re trying to accomplish and then look for a tech solution to support your goals. Even though virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) is more frequently mentioned in the space of learning, this cutting-edge technology requires time and educators' adaptation. And one of the opportunities for ed: tech companies is to focus on learning design. As Bob Cooney - the world’s expert on virtual experiences, says: “It’s not about the technology, it’s about the experience.”
While I had to work with educators and university administrators on how to turn offline content into online content, I discovered that it is not simply re-writing the script or re-organizing sessions. This transfer involves significantly more, especially concerning human behavior online, a learner’s trajectory, personalization of learning, brain function, and UX design. A learning designer is a person who adopts an offline course to an online course, finds new ways to engage learners, and provides interactive sessions for educators.
Being a practicing learning designer, I can say that it is a creative and yet technological job. And this might be your opportunity if you are in the sphere of technology and education.
But this not the most lucrative opportunity in this field. Apart from highly required training on digital tools for educators, another need must be addressed. It concerns community or ecosystem building.
An offline institution easily builds a community of students attending the same premises, bonding over similar sport or art interests, spending time in nearby entertainment facilities. The future is in ecosystems. And creating learning ecosystems online still proves to be challenging.
A few years ago, the Singularity University leaders were pointing out that there are four stages in development: a product - a service - a platform - an ecosystem (a community); it seems that we are currently at the stage of platforms. Educational institutions are looking for tech solutions without addressing a bigger issue - the creation of an online ecosystem. And there is an opportunity for startup founders to find new ways of creating communities or helping institutions create communities by connecting their learners to their “why,” common values, and shared vision.
I am now tackling this challenge while working on our Erasmus+ funded project Lingo+, building multilingual, multicultural teacher training. Simply engaging in training for teachers won’t be enough. We’re set to build a learning community. I hope to share some of the insights of our journey with useful tips in one of future articles. Now back to the ecosystems.
If the future is in ecosystems, VR, AR, blended learning, and learning design. What kind of jobs might emerge in this sector? How will the field of education evolve in the following years?
This has already been explored by the “Global Education Futures” project (GEF), where I have been contributing since 2015 on the topics of future trends and threats in various educational fields. What is quite peculiar is that educators taking part in this project agree that the figure of a teacher will evolve into more of a mentor or coach who accompanies a student on the path of learning rather than serving as the source of knowledge.
Apart from a mentoring position, there will be game masters who will work on the gamification of courses with new tech solutions; educational trajectory development specialists helping to personalize courses; project-based learning organizers that will look into real projects required by real sectors each state.
More educational platform coordinators will appear similar to present learning center coordinators with the surge of online platforms. Some of the roles are emerging already. You can find out more about these jobs in the “Atlas of Emerging Jobs” as one of the outputs of the GEF work.
Conclusion
The period 2020-2021 has accelerated the digital transformation of all sectors, but by all means, the educational sphere has been one of the most affected. When the first wave of emotional dismay is over, real ideas and solutions start getting shaped. And agents on both sides of the table need to work together to find the best ways to create a new learning/teaching experience for the years to come. For instance, we can start with a human-centered design provided by IDEO to discover the needs of learner-workers for corporate education. The future is exciting and empowering, as it promises limitless possibilities for lifelong learning for everyone, regardless of race, culture, gender, sexuality, income, age, or physical ability. And I personally hope that we will watch the rise of edutainment where education and entertainment mix and art and education meet at the edge of technological advances.
Ekaterina Matveeva, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Ekaterina Matveeva is a linguist working in 9 languages, award-winning entrepreneur, learning designer, founder of Amolingua, and leader of the ErasmusPlus funded project Lingo+. She is a TEDx speaker, best-selling author, and researcher developing her theory “Language Alter Ego.”
She has been training people worldwide for over 14 years and is now set to develop bespoke training for educators to teach in a multilingual, multicultural environment. This year she is running the MM Universe conference. Ekaterina is on a mission to create a better connected multicultural, multilingual world.
She believes in communication across cultures. She has been working with world thought leaders from TED to Singularity University, serving as a public speaking coach at Talkboutique, and an invited professor for executive programs at the Universidad de Palermo.
Education and entrepreneurship form a huge part of her life. She is an advisory board member of 3 Day Startup, helping university students acquire entrepreneurial skills. Her motto is: Dream, Decide, Do.
References:
Atlas of Emerging Jobs (3rd edition, 2020)
Cepeda, Pashler, Vul, Wixted, & Rohrer, 2006, Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354.
Immordino-Yang, Darling-Hammond, & Krone, 2018, The Brain Basis for Integrated Social, Emotional, and Academic Development. National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development.
