Ways things will change due to COVID-19

[welshbairn]

Boom time for garden shed kits as hoarders order them to store their mountains of bog roll.

[GordonS]

8 hours ago, JTS98 said:

The impact on education is going to be interesting to see. Everyone I know who works anywhere near education has their own view on whether remote learning could or should ever become the norm, what we have at the moment is a forced experiment that will tell us a lot more about that than we could ever have hoped to find out in normal times.

A lot of universities, colleges, private schools, language schools, etc have moved or are moving online for the next while and it will give us a better picture of whether and how that works than we could ever have hoped to see otherwise.

It could lead to the scaling back of on-site education. It could lead to lessening the lack of acceptance in some places of distance learning and this would be a great thing as it would open up greater opportunities for people who would like to improve their education and their lot in life but cannot afford to give up work and physically attend somewhere.

I know distance degrees exist, but in many industries and in some countries they are still very much looked down on. This might change that.

I think it's just as likely it will go the other way. Because it's completely unplanned and unstructured, and parents are dealing with so much else, every parent I know is tearing their hair out. It's not a remotely realistic experiment but it is giving a terrible impression of remote learning. 

[GordonS]

IMO, in the UK, two years from now it will be like it never happened - apart from the additional borrowing and unemployment. 

[Granny Danger]

10 hours ago, pawpar said:

Nothing will change. The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer and stupid people will still be stupid and be in the majority.

I’d give this post 100 greenies if I could.

No disrespect to the OP, but little or nothing will change; a few cosmetic things in the post-virus period but these will be for political expediency only.

If people were fire bombing the Harley Street clinics that are profiteering from this, or staging protests because Prince Charles skipper the queue for testing I’d maybe hold out a sliver of hope but even that isn’t happening.

 

Disclaimer: protests of only two people 2m apart might be ineffectual, though that brings into focus the civil liberties aspect of the legislation that has slipped through.

[throbber]

31 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

I’d give this post 100 greenies if I could.

No disrespect to the OP, but little or nothing will change; a few cosmetic things in the post-virus period but these will be for political expediency only.

If people were fire bombing the Harley Street clinics that are profiteering from this, or staging protests because Prince Charles skipper the queue for testing I’d maybe hold out a sliver of hope but even that isn’t happening.

 

Disclaimer: protests of only two people 2m apart might be ineffectual, though that brings into focus the civil liberties aspect of the legislation that has slipped through.

What a defeatist attitude.

[Jacksgranda]

35 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

I’d give this post 100 greenies if I could.

No disrespect to the OP, but little or nothing will change; a few cosmetic things in the post-virus period but these will be for political expediency only.

If people were fire bombing the Harley Street clinics that are profiteering from this, or staging protests because Prince Charles skipper the queue for testing I’d maybe hold out a sliver of hope but even that isn’t happening.

 

Disclaimer: protests of only two people 2m apart might be ineffectual, though that brings into focus the civil liberties aspect of the legislation that has slipped through.

Aye, I wonder if that will be repealed when all this is over.

[D.A.F.C]

Hopefully an end to jumping through the hoop and presenteeism from companies.

Working long hours when theres nothing to do. Zero hour contracts hopefully done.

Every day I see thousands of office workers travel from fife to Edinburgh clogging up the roads and causing pollution. Is there an actual need for all of them to travel? Maybe local virtual offices are the way to go?

I hope that manual labour and front line staff get rewarded for this but as said as soon as everyone is safe the world will probably go back to being run by sociopathic arseholes.

[Jacksgranda]

12 minutes ago, D.A.F.C said:

Hopefully an end to jumping through the hoop and presenteeism from companies.

Working long hours when theres nothing to do. Zero hour contracts hopefully done.

Every day I see thousands of office workers travel from fife to Edinburgh clogging up the roads and causing pollution. Is there an actual need for all of them to travel? Maybe local virtual offices are the way to go?

I hope that manual labour and front line staff get rewarded for this but as said as soon as everyone is safe the world will probably go back to being run by sociopathic arseholes.

Somebody has to run it...

[Guest JTS98]

1 hour ago, GordonS said:

I think it's just as likely it will go the other way. Because it's completely unplanned and unstructured, and parents are dealing with so much else, every parent I know is tearing their hair out. It's not a remotely realistic experiment but it is giving a terrible impression of remote learning. 

Yeah, it will to parents, but I don't think they're the audience for this.

Parents need to give their kids' teachers a break just now. Very few teachers are trained in distance education and they're being asked to suddenly make a 100% transition to it with at most a few hours' workplace preparation. It's really not a fair situation in which to judge the teachers or the method. The resources aren't there for it just now, teachers of school-aged kids have their hands tied behind their back.

Where it's slightly more meaningful at the moment is in further and higher education. A lot of the work is lecture-type situations and now even small group tutorials can be done relatively easily online. They're dealing with students who are at an age where they have the maturity to actually work in an online environment using turn taking and showing patience and attention span. Also, these students do the majority of their work away from rooms anyway.

If it can be observed through learning outcomes that there's no meaningful harm done to students in these environments, then the real work will begin on fine-tuning approaches and materials to make this more of a regular thing and remove the idea that it is somehow less worthy than being physically present.

There's a lot of money to be made in this so if it can be demonstrated to be sound, it will be done. I'm not necessarily jumping either way in terms of whether it will be successful or not, I can see arguments either way. But we're about to find out a lot more than we ever could have before about it.

For school kids it's definitely not as far down the track. I'd ask parents of schoolkids to be kind to the teachers just now, they've been properly chucked in at the deep end.

Edited March 26, 2020 by JTS98

[D.A.F.C]

Somebody has to run it...

Need to reevaluate why capitalism rewards these type of people?
Being nasty and shitting all over others is seen as strength in business.
It's not.

[Thereisalight..]

I just hope people enjoy and don’t take for granted the simple things anymore. Things like seeing loved ones or friends, going to football or gigs. Going for a walk however often you want. Stopping to appreciate nature. Being kind to one another and not being so so judgemental or materialistic. That’s what I hope anyway 

[vikingTON]

48 minutes ago, JTS98 said:

Where it's slightly more meaningful at the moment is in further and higher education. A lot of the work is lecture-type situations and now even small group tutorials can be done relatively easily online. They're dealing with students who are at an age where they have the maturity to actually work in an online environment using turn taking and showing patience and attention span. Also, these students do the majority of their work away from rooms anyway.

If it can be observed through learning outcomes that there's no meaningful harm done to students in these environments, then the real work will begin on fine-tuning approaches and materials to make this more of a regular thing and remove the idea that it is somehow less worthy than being physically present.

That's all wishful thinking right now. For a start, there are a lot of students in further education and higher education now who have additional learning needs: if you're dyslexic for example, then taking notes from online lectures, accessing slides or carrying out assessments are no good. The remote learning capacity to support those students - sometimes accounting for half of a bog-standard college class - is next to non-existent right now. Students still benefit significantly from face to face contact, not just for motivation but also for explanation and practice instead of having to figure out abstract examples. And finally, while the younger students are certainly equipped to do their work online, mature students - a significant part of the higher education intake now - still often struggle.  Not that this matters too much because the online learning platforms used by colleges and universities are a running joke. There's no chance of learning outcomes being maintained to the same standard given those conditions.

There's certainly a good case for more work to be moved out of a physical classroom and onto an electronic (and so feasibly remote) format though. The continued reliance on pen and paper exams from schools all the way up to universities is ridiculous and if it had been addressed before then scheduled exams could have gone ahead this spring. Such relics of the 20th century might finally go but there's not going to be any drastic change.

[Guest JTS98]

6 minutes ago, virginton said:

That's all wishful thinking right now.

I know.

There's no question there's a long way to go before it becomes fully viable, and, as I mentioned, with schoolkids it's miles off. But with the financial incentives of doing so being huge, you can bet your arse solutions will be found if this is seen in any way as a success.

Nobody is saying it'll happen tomorrow, or that it'll happen at all. You might want to re-read what I posted.

However, this presents an opportunity for advocates of greater distance learning that they could never have dreamed of. How it will go is really hard to predict. SEN students that you refer to are not a major consideration in this at the moment.

Edited March 26, 2020 by JTS98

[vikingTON]

The handling of this pandemic has made an ironclad case for greater state intervention and control over private enterprises. If your business had to be bailed out by the government - like some bearded tit's airline - then the government should be taking a huge stake in return and should use it to permanently abolish the shareholder wealth maximisation principle. They should be run in a manner that keeps them financially secure instead of handing out money to shareholders and then running to the government about a week after they start losing custom.

If your business is important to the basic functioning of the economy then the government should also have an oversight role to ensure that is equipped to cope: similar to the 'stress tests' imposed on banks after 2008. Supermarkets should no longer be allowed to operate on a 'just in time' stock principle that breaks down as soon as everyone buys toilet paper: and the costs should be absorbed by their shareholders in the form of reduced dividends rather than consumers.

[vikingTON]

8 minutes ago, JTS98 said:

I know.

There's no question there's a long way to go before it becomes fully viable, and, as I mentioned, with schoolkids it's miles off. But with the financial incentives of doing so being huge, you can bet your arse solutions will be found if this is seen in any way as a success.

Nobody is saying it'll happen tomorrow, or that it'll happen at all. You might want to re-read what I posted.

However, this presents an opportunity for advocates of greater distance learning that they could never have dreamed of. How it will go is really hard to predict. SEN students that you refer to are not a major consideration in this at the moment.

I think you'll find that they are when it comes to measuring whether there has been 'no meaningful harm' to learning outcomes from the current experiment and if education institutions can't cater for them in their sparkly, fine-tuned VLEs of the future then they'll have a string of lawsuits on their hands. 

They certainly aren't paying for an increasing number of support staff right now for a laugh either.

Edited March 26, 2020 by vikingTON

[Guest JTS98]

6 minutes ago, virginton said:

I think you'll find that they are when it comes to measuring whether there has been 'no meaningful harm' on learning outcomes from the current experiment and if education institutions can't cater for them in their sparkly fine tuned VLEs of the future then they'll have a string of lawsuits on their hands. 

They aren't paying for an increasing number of support staff for a laugh either.

Again, I think you're flying far too fast into the future to try and argue with a point I'm not making.

This is not going to happen tomorrow, and support for SEN students is evolving and improving all the time. Current SEN support is not what SEN support is going to be in five years, so it will not be a consideration.

I currently work for one further education outfit and write materials (face-to-face and online based, so I don't care either way) for a group of others. The institutions see one direction of travel on this. Lecturers etc tend to (but not exclusively) disagree. But the fine-tuning of support for SEN or for certain types of assessment is all for the future. It's not relevant to what's happening now.

As I said, I'm not convinced it'll happen. For the same reason I'm not convinced pilotless planes will happen. But, this certainly moves the argument forward in a way nobody thought would happen. Which is the point I've made all along.

Edited March 26, 2020 by JTS98

[vikingTON]

4 minutes ago, JTS98 said:

As I said, I'm not convinced it'll happen. For the same reason I'm not convinced pilotless planes will happen. But, this certainly moves the argument forward in a way nobody thought would happen. Which is the point I've made all along.

Only - as you said - if there's evidence that learning outcomes have not been negatively affected. But I've already set out why that's not going to be the result given the current state of the sector (at least in the UK): a negative result doesn't move the argument forward at all.

Can't imagine that full-time lecturers are loving the current, piss-poor technology and teaching experience either which will make the unions more likely to dig in on this issue in the future.

[craigkillie]

1 hour ago, JTS98 said:

Where it's slightly more meaningful at the moment is in further and higher education. A lot of the work is lecture-type situations and now even small group tutorials can be done relatively easily online. They're dealing with students who are at an age where they have the maturity to actually work in an online environment using turn taking and showing patience and attention span. Also, these students do the majority of their work away from rooms anyway.

If it can be observed through learning outcomes that there's no meaningful harm done to students in these environments, then the real work will begin on fine-tuning approaches and materials to make this more of a regular thing and remove the idea that it is somehow less worthy than being physically present.

There's a lot of money to be made in this so if it can be demonstrated to be sound, it will be done. I'm not necessarily jumping either way in terms of whether it will be successful or not, I can see arguments either way. But we're about to find out a lot more than we ever could have before about it.

For school kids it's definitely not as far down the track. I'd ask parents of schoolkids to be kind to the teachers just now, they've been properly chucked in at the deep end.

Most universities were already approaching the end of term anyway, so at the moment we're not really seeing a proper meaningful lecture course being provided via distance learning. It has maybe been a handful of tutorials and revision lectures at most.

[Guest JTS98]

1 minute ago, virginton said:

Only - as you said - if there's evidence that learning outcomes have not been negatively affected. But I've already set out why that's not going to be the result given the current state of the sector (at least in the UK): a negative result doesn't move the argument forward at all.

Of course it does. A negative outcome moves the argument much further forward.

Can't imagine that full-time lecturers are loving the current, piss-poor technology and teaching experience either which will make the unions more likely to dig in on this issue in the future.

Ultimately doesn't matter. They hold sway just now, but they'll be replaced by a new generation and the technology will continue to improve. It's miles better than it was a decade ago, for example. Industries change, and when they do the old guard tend to make a fuss.

 

[Guest JTS98]

3 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

Most universities were already approaching the end of term anyway, so at the moment we're not really seeing a proper meaningful lecture course being provided via distance learning. It has maybe been a handful of tutorials and revision lectures at most.

Most universities in the UK.

Plenty of academic years are carrying on elsewhere.