How Technology helps in The Covid-19 pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic raging around the globe has caused large-scale institutional and behavioural âshock effectsâ in various areas of human activity including education. The impact on learners is unprecedented: on 9 April 2020, there are over 1,500,000,000 students worldwide from primary to tertiary level who cannot attend school (UNESCO 2020). Due to massive and unexpected closures, affected countries and communities have been forced to seek quick fixes in different digital learning platforms (JandriÄ 2020a). These rapid moves from classroom to online teaching have set aside the more profound questions related to national educational policies and theoretical grounds and premises. Current conditions of formal educational systems can be described using Philip Strongâs (1990) model of epidemic psychology consisting of three consecutive and overlapping epidemics: those of fear, explanation, and action. Strong uses âepidemicâ as a metaphor representing collective psychological reactions to an epidemiological crisis. The first aspect involves an epidemic of fear and opens up a question: How can the educational systems and individual learners cope with the exceptional situation?
The second aspect is an epidemic of explanation and moralisation: âPeople may be unable to decide whether a new disease or a new outbreak is trivial or whether it is really something enormously important. They swing backwards and forwards from one state of mind to anotherâ (Strong 1990: 254). At the same time, different actors in administrative positions provide their accounts of how to make sense of the situation and ensure the continuation of teaching and learning. Politicians are, of course, at the front line of educational policy-making, simultaneously setting restrictions and measures based on health expertsâ assessments and constructing their official and authoritative narratives. Social media allow experts and novices to share their rational and irrational views with little in the way of moderation. Lockdowns affect students in multiple ways, reinforcing inequalities and putting them under social and psychological stress. Parents and custodians are affected too, and many of them come to realize, perhaps for the first time, the social purpose of the educational system and its power to structure everyday life.
The third aspect is an epidemic of action. It demonstrates how educational institutions and teachers across the worldâs educational systems transfer their work from classrooms and lecture halls to digital platforms almost overnight. This quick transition has also revealed gaps and shortcomings in how online learning has or has not been adopted in educational institutions. Efforts at covering these gaps have created an influx of various kinds of support such as drop-in sessions, free webinars and blog posts, emergency policy documents (e.g. Doucet et al. 2020), and even lessons learned from earlier university lockdowns (Czerniewicz 2020). Perhaps more importantly, the situation has become a new market opportunity for commercial digital learning platforms providers.
Some forms of emergency online learning are being criticized for failing to adhere to sound pedagogical principles, best practices, and earlier research (Hodges et al. 2020). On social media, prominent experts have questioned reasons driving some individuals, organizations, and companies so eagerly towards providing guidance, pondering whether their motivation has been driven by market reasons (Siemens 2020). Others have noted the potential negative outcomes if educational technology quick fixes are implemented without balancing their consequences (Selwyn 2020; St. Amour 2020). Quickly jumping on board with learning platforms and online learning has also raised concerns about privacy and surveillance and the impact on studentsâ lives and human dignity.
In the moment of crisis, educational organizations should think carefully about their choices regarding online learning and education technology. These choices can potentially echo in the future as new relations of power and control, new forms of student inequity and inequality, and other unpredictable effects (Selwyn 2020). In order to mitigate possible negative impacts, educational organizations should leverage past knowledge of online learning as something that can be more varied than just a way to deliver information. Otherwise they are in danger of falling into the trap of classic Bourdeausian âmisrecognitionâ (see Bourdieu 1984), that is, into interpreting digital learning as self-evident and all-encompassing solution to the more profound problems of current mass education and institutionalized teaching and learning.
Online learning can take many different forms, including those pedagogically more innovative and engaging than commonly used processes of knowledge delivery and assessment. It can be informed and shaped by different education-philosophical and pedagogical underpinnings (Teräs and KartoÄlu 2017). Thus, online learning should not be seen as âone thingâ or a pedagogy in its own right.
