2020 - Online Learning off the Deep End

As this fall has rolled out my entire world has plunged into online learning.

I’m juggling teaching 4 courses with trying to do some online learning myself. In a very meta sense - I’m doing an online learning course about online learning.

My biggest challenge in becoming an online student has been showing up. As every day seems to slip away in crisis after crisis from students stranded in quarantine to the roll out of exam software less than two weeks before actual exams, I find myself watching the days pass as I fail each day to log in and actually do my own work.

This is paralleled in the discussions I’m having with my colleagues about my own learners. My students told me this week that they have no bandwidth to do the a-synchronous aspects of their courses as they desperately try to keep up with a mountain of coursework piling down. Watching videos, reading, taking notes and reviewing what happened in synchronous sessions all seems beyond the scope of their overtaxed schedules.

So this week I’m learning to help my students sort out what needs to be done, as I sit down to try and make some headway in my own course. Perhaps the biggest lesson is to forgive the intentions of perfection I had in the beginning and focus on good enough.