Much has been written about the lessons from the Covid-19 induced pivot to remote learning in higher education but a recent feature in the New York Times entitled, “My college students are not OK,” caught my attention. The author – a university educator – shared his experience of poor attendance, lower-quality work, disengaged students and worse outcomes, noting that many colleagues had seen the same trends. He pleaded for more in-person classes and engagement, demonising online learning. “You can’t learn to use a microscope online,” he wrote. Although, the author noted that even now, with many students back in live classrooms, they’re still not performing to pre-pandemic levels.
Numerous studies and anecdotes point to deteriorating student performance during the pandemic and cite remote instruction as the reason. There seems to be a cause-and-effect bandwagon that a strict diet of online learning is bad for students at any level and a return to in-person instruction is the answer.
Continue reading in Times Higher Education...
