Thesis Blog Post Week #2
Topic Exploration
When the pandemic hit, every education system across the globe was forced to quickly cobble together a remote learning approach to teach their entire school-aged population. It was messy and, in many cases, fell short of normative education goals. But educators and administrators did the best that they could on extremely short notice under the most incredible pressure.
In my children’s school and in friends’ schools, the initial structure of this switch to remote learning relied heavily on asynchronous work in the form of pre-recorded lessons, printable worksheets and educational videos. There was little reliance on live, synchronous lessons. The only synchronous portion of the school schedule was a twice-weekly “Morning Meeting”. A component of the decision to take this approach was based on concerns regarding penalizing children who did not have steady access to a device, an internet connection nor an adult able to facilitate learning.
While many schools seemed to just proceed with their initial remote plan and focus their energy on the following year’s structure, our school took a late Spring Break to regroup, revise the remote structure and ensure that every child in need had the technology required. When school went back into session, the structure was better developed to incorporate more of the in-person experience. Live, synchronous small group instruction and 1:1 check-ins between teacher and student were scheduled throughout the week.
What I’ve gleaned from friends with school-aged kids across the country, is that in anticipation of the need for both a remote plan and hybrid plan for the current school year, most schools have invested in crafting a plan for success. However, this highly individualized patchwork of support systems that facilitate learning components and program management, including web services, apps, software and processes, has created a complex and cumbersome system.
Parents and caregivers, students, teachers and school administrators are the user groups I’ve identified as chiefly affected and driving the remote learning experience. Based on preliminary, informal research it is clear that these groups overlap with each other in terms of desires, needs and pain points.
Problem Statements
These are all a bit rough around the edges. I need to start gathering information regarding remote learning options. To do so, I’m going to tap into my community of parents. One goal is to see how various approaches to remote learning have worked in private, public, parochial and charter schools in various locations across the country. I’d like to examine how various approaches have changed and developed from spring to the new school year and how they vary from school to school, district to district, even classroom to classroom.
Problem Statement #1: How can I make navigating remote learning easier for parents, children, teachers, school admin?
Problem Statement #2: How can I define a remote learning system that’s best suited for individualized learning?
Problem Statement #3: How can I discover best practices for remote learning?
Problem Statement #4: How can the lessons learned during the pandemic regarding remote learning be extrapolated to create new opportunities in the education or ed-tech sector?
Next Steps
Interviews!!!
