COVID and PSE: Do as I say, not as I do

Watching bricks-and-mortar post-secondary institutions cope the suspension of the winter 2020 semester has been very humbling. Many of my colleagues worked very hard (often with little institutional support) to ensure their students could finish out the semester during lockdown.

Going forward, many institutions are (sensibly) planning for an online autumn 2020 semester. This means that online education (previously the purview of a small number of PSEs) will now become the norm. For some long-time distance educators, its validating to see traditional institutions recognize that they can provide a solid online education.

I was struck, though, by some comments attributed to the president of Athabasca University at the end of May in the Globe and Mail:

The virtual programs put together on an emergency basis by schools in the spring is not really online learning, said Neil Fassina, president of Athabasca University, the first postsecondary institution in Canada to focus solely on distance education. High-quality online education includes opportunities for student-to-student and student-to-professor interaction, along with significant tools for social engagement. It typically takes months to build a proper online course, he added.

It is a bit arrogant to judge other institutions as not providing “high-quality online learning” when Athabasca University (which provides almost exclusively online education) doesn’t really provide “opportunities for student-to-student and student-to-professor interaction, along with significant tools for social engagement.” In truth, most of AU’s undergrad programming (I’d guess >90%) is basically delivered on a “correspondence with computers” model, with very limited contact between teachers and students and no peer-to-peer contact whatsoever.

There’s nothing wrong with this approach. Many students learn quite well in this model and makes a university education accessible to many students who couldn’t otherwise go. It’s just kind of weird for the president to assert (by implication), that his university isn’t really offering high-quality online education.

Indeed, if you watch the video (start at about 8.50), he asserts that AU can “create environments where there is huge interaction between professor and learner if it is designed specifically for the online space. We can create great interaction among and between learners” (from about 10.00).

This statement is narrowly true: AU could do that. But, we mostly don’t. What is happening here is a blurring between prescription and description. Outsiders can't see this difference and this sets learners up for a pretty big surprise when they arrive and basically get a website and an etext.

Later on (about 12.30), Fassina extolls the importance of supporting the academy in making the transition to online delivery. That’s a nice talking point. But it belies what is actually happening inside AU. The issue of moving to digital exams has basically been dumped in the laps of professors without adequate (or any support).

Quick background: Many AU courses have invigilated final exams. Exams can be written at an AU exam centre or some other exam centre. Some courses’ exams can also be delivered through online invigilation services, such as ProctorU. Other courses retain paper-based exams that must be written in-person. COVID has foreclosed in-person exams and the institution has moved to online only exams.

For many disciplines, online exams don’t work. I’ve heard from other profs that language, math, and science courses could not be quickly transitioned (or transitioned at all) onto online platforms because these platforms don't support the punctuation, graphics, calculations, or symbols required for assessing student comprehension.

This has been a long-term issue and is why these exams were still paper-based exams. Instead of addressing this (and other pressing operational issues, the institution has spent three years navel-gazing, writing strategic plans, and patting itself on the back.)

Along comes COVID and profs with paper-only exams were basically told “figure it out”. The Faculty of Science appears to be have been particularly hard hit, because of the number of affected courses and the size of the enrollments in the courses. Professors were left to fashion substitute exams (often unique to each student) and schedule and administer them with no additional support. This VASTLY increases the work associated with examinations. Consequently, other tasks (marking, research, sleep) have been pushed aside.

(There are COVID-related workload issues in other areas of the university, but exams is the easiest story to tell.)

The point of this story is that, for all of Fassina’s nice words, AU is basically doing the same things as every other PSE in COVID and dumping the hard work associated with managing COVID onto the staff and it’s not going well. Given that, it is pretty galling for AU’s executive to position themselves as leaders in online education and purport to dispense advice.

-- Bob Barnetson