WEWERE LITERALLY FOOTSTEPS AHEAD OF THE CHILDREN WHEN WE REOPENED AFTER THE HOLIDAYS
a holiday for us at all. It was a massive learning curve in a very short period of time – we were literally footsteps ahead of the children when we reopened after the holidays.” The pandemic and ensuing lockdowns sparked a real-world experiment in online education for students of all ages. Teachers got a crash course on how to teach virtually, using apps and video through 18 months of trial and error, turning to tools like popular game- based learning platform Kahoot. The company, headquartered in Norway, saw a five-fold leap in use from February to May 2020, according to CEO Eilert Hanoa. While the eLearning experiment continues, early results aren’t necessarily positive. Research on Covid’s educational impact in the Netherlands, by the National Academy of Sciences in the US, suggests students made little progress at home (pnas.org/ content/118/17/e2022376118). The Netherlands was presented as a “best-case scenario”, having a short lockdown, equitable school funding and world-leading broadband access. The PNAS study claims to be one of the first attempts to quantify learning loss from Covid-19, and underlines how technology without well-considered practices could not take the place of in-class education. Another study, of South African students by the International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches , shows that the isolation of lockdowns and remote learning has been detrimental to university students’ mental health. Plus, the negative effects will continue to be exacerbated in countries that have been slow to vaccinate, where lockdowns continue. Students are, in effect, educationally five to nine months behind where they would have been had the pandemic not happened, according to a report from McKinsey
& Company on the lockdown impact on US students (mckinsey.com/ industries/public-and-social-sector/ our-insights/covid-19-and-learning- loss-disparities-grow-and-students- need-help). It noted that “the learning loss was especially acute in schools that predominantly serve students of colour”. They could be six to 12 months behind, compared with four to eight months for white students. While all students are suffering, those who came into the pandemic with the fewest academic opportunities are on track to exit with the greatest learning loss. THE ELEARNING EXPERIMENT Teachers have been forced to make a massive leap forward in digital education, experimenting with virtual tools they didn’t always know how to best use. Learning and teaching online is very different from in-person education, says Diana Laurillard, professor of learning with digital technologies at the University College London Knowledge Lab. “The basics of teaching are similar, but the ways in which you do it through digital means are very different,” says Laurillard. At Brookham School, one challenge was catering to families with parents working from home who had multiple younger children. Alongside not having enough devices and broadband accessibility, Baber and her colleagues quickly realised mums and dads couldn’t follow a schedule of live lessons, due to their own work demands. Instead, Brookham pre- recorded video lessons to be watched whenever suited students and families. Tasks were set that worked across multiple age groups, letting older children help younger siblings, as well as assigned work that pulled students away from screens, such as handwriting letters or making models. As lockdown continued, Baber says it became clear that a variety of needs
had to be met. Older students were given more live teaching via video calls, with a wider range of apps and platforms to cover different subjects. For literacy and maths, the experiment largely worked, says Baber, with academic performance tracking as expected. “There are certain things that have been hit enormously,” she adds, especially handwriting. “It sounds silly, but that’s gone right out the window. We came back to classroom teaching and were like, ‘Oh my goodness, what’s happened here?’” Another area where students have suffered from the shift to online learning is social interactions and emotional development. “That is far more concerning for me moving forward,” comments Baber, adding that, although the school hopes to continue with technology in classrooms, her teachers will be focusing their training on social and language development.
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