When I think about distance education, I must reflect on my role as an early childhood educator, a higher education student, and as a person who provides support and training for teachers in the classroom. Each of these provides a distinct perspective and has unique needs. As an early childhood educator, I don’t focus on distance education but rather showcasing how online resources can be incorporated int teaching that fosters inquiry and creativity. I taught during the Covid-19 pandemic, including fully online classes completely asynchronously as well as hybrid classes for the 2020-2021 school year. Homeroom teachers did have daily synchronous Zoom calls to start the day, to check in, and continue the classroom relationships, but I was not part of that process. The relationship building part of quality distance education discussed in Minds Online was missing for me.
As a student, I have taken distance education courses as a early as the early 2000s for my undergraduate, which is accomplished as an email correspondence course, around 2014 at the University of Washington where I used Canvas for the first time (and saw both instructivist teaching over video as well as more novel teaching), to completing a Ph.D. a distributed student. Continuing the theme of connection, each iteration has increased connectivity between students through more multimedia means. This was partially due to increased interact connectivity from 2003 to 2014, but the real transformation was between the master’s and Ph.D. programs, when more constructivist education moved online, as well as more opportunities for students to connect with each other. Across these 4 degrees, the only one where I felt like a true member of a distributed cohort has been the work done at UNT to build community for students across the country.
The difficult part, though, is as a professional development provider for people in my building. Our rapport is built from daily, in-person interactions. The main drive for online education is to meet the teachers at both point of need and at point of convenience. Online teaching allows that to be flexibly accomplished, but the tradeoff is personalization at that point. This goes against my more constructivist pedagogical stances and moves into instructivist (or even just straight tutorials with no true instructor). I prefer to collaborate with the teachers in group sessions where we explore and share together, or one on one or in grade level teams where we can work in partnership to address their needs. The trade off is the time it takes to do that. I am sure there are ways to foster collaborative, co-construction of knowledge learning online, but I am not sure how to do it in balance with working in-person with my learners (adults and children).