eLearning in Challenging Times: Homeschooling UK

Homeschooled your children during the COVID-19 lockdown? We would love to hear from you.

Homeschooling UK Survey is now open (anonymous 10-15mins)

In March when the UK government closed schools and imposed lockdown restrictions, to stem the spread of COVID-19, we all were hurled into a situation that we have never been in before. While adjusting to the life with new measures like social distancing; no pasta, rice, flour or toilet rolls on supermarket shelves; and setting up our “home offices” (wherever there was a space on a table top)  – some of us who have young families, had to learn to “homeschool” our children while also doing our fulltime jobs.

Image by: EliasSch Pixabay

As a mother to primary school twins, I can tell you how amazing, frustrating, infuriating and many other adjectives can be added to describe this experience. We started taking in a day at a time first. But soon we reduce that to an hour at a time as we realised even a day is too long time when doing juggling homeschooling with a full-time job.

In April when I was put on furlough I was worried how I would fill my days. But later when I started getting into proper homeschooling, I realised even the furlough time was not enough! My furlough time came at a crucial time as the twins were getting ready for their eleven plus (secondary school entrance tests). 

One of the best things we did before the lockdown was collecting a box of hand-me-down books from a friend's place. These books were used workbooks. But I could copy questions (either by hand - yes, I copied them in my new found 'free' time - or using the until then under used home printer). These workbooks together with BBC Bitesize, IXL subscription and the work sent home by school kept us going until the summer school break. 

The researcher inside me wanted to gather the experience of eLearning in challenging times and I was not alone there. I soon found collaborators in Japan, New Zealand, Egypt and Sri Lanka who wanted to do similar work and possibly draw comparisons. We wanted to do both homeschooing experience as well as the experience of higher education students – however, with the pressing needs of "Transform" project at work (where we transformed all our Autumn 2020 offering) I was only able to progress on the homeschooling study. 

So far, we have launched two surveys: 

• homeschooling experience in Sri Lanka survey and 
• homeschooling experience in the UK survey. 

The survey is designed as an anonymous survey and to take no more than 10-15 mins of time. We hope to gather homeschooling experiences from parents and caregivers of young people.

If you have homeschooled a young person during the school closure period due to COVID-19 pandemic and you are a resident of UK (or Sri Lanka) please can you participate in our survey please?

Online Learning in Challenging Times

Just before I was put on furlough, I had the opportunity to write a short article for the magazine Construction Manager, which they have published under the title Don’t exclude disadvantaged users in rush to online learning. A longer version of the same was published on the UCEM blog under the title Online learning in challenging times: Guest blog by our Learning Technology Researcher, Dr Tharindu Liyanagunawardena.

My final version before the edits is published here.

Social distancing implemented by countries across the world to combat the spread of coronavirus has caused unprecedented changes in our daily lives. The situation posed a great challenge to educational institutions across the world, causing them to cancel lectures and graduation ceremonies, and, where applicable, ask students to vacate their halls and accommodation.

In adapting to the situation, most institutions have adopted online learning. For many traditional institutions this is the first time that they are trying to use technology on such a large scale. In their hurry to adopt technology to overcome the immediate threat of not being able to continue, there is always the danger of institutions rushing into using technologies without proper appraisal (accessibility, security and privacy concerns, for example) or adequate user training.

There is also the possibility of excluding groups of users who are not able to engage with the technologies for various reasons. Some may not possess the required level of digital literacy while there could also be issues of accessibility both for people with disabilities and people who do not have the luxury of broadband connectivity. Therefore, it is important that decision makers address these issues. For example, if a student with a hearing disability had a note-taker in class how could we support them now with online lectures? Or now that most overseas students are in their home countries, can we conduct online classes and expect them to be present despite the time differences? What if the technology we adopt is barred in some countries where our students reside?

Living or visiting a developing country, you may have experienced the difficulties in accessing the internet away from city centres. The unreliable connectivity often cannot support high-definition videos while in some rural places you would be lucky to get electricity!

I hope these points are considered by leaders at institutions currently going digital.

In my role as a Learning Technology Researcher and Chair of the Online Learning Research Centre at University College of Estate Management (UCEM), I scan the horizon, assess educational technology and consider how we can use it to enhance our students’ experience. We are always thinking about the practical aspects and accessibility of the technology we appraise.

As the leading provider of supported online education for the Built Environment, UCEM is better placed than most to face this difficult situation. Sharing our experiences of online learning will hopefully help other organisations learn from us. 

Research in Distance Education (and eLearning) Conference RIDE2020

Every year I look forward to the RIDE Conference hosted by University of London. Because this is a conference about Research in Distance Education, it is so relevant to UCEM as we are in essence a supported distance education provider.

This year RIDE2020 was on 13th March and at a time when everyone is starting to worry about the spread of Corona virus. When I left Reading I knew there will be few people because on the train to London I got a seat! Circle line from Paddington too was very quiet. On the train I was thinking how to greet people now that most people are not comfortable with shaking hands.

Tweet from Friday 13 March 2020

Conference attendance was I would say less than 50% given the number of empty chairs in the hall, which was a shame really given how good it is. We were encouraged to practice "social distancing" by making use of all the available space. Quite a few sessions were cancelled but some sessions were conducted via Zoom conferencing and it all worked well in the end.

It was lovely to meet so many known faces and also to grow my network by getting to know like minded others. It was great to listen to Prof. Allison Littlejohn and getting to know some interesting and highly relevant work conducted by the London Knowledge Lab (such as iRead and Connecting Displaced People). Afternoon keynote was by Prof. Martin Weller, which was presented remotely. He talked about Open ed as the anti-disruption.

My presentation about how transcripts were used by students at UCEM was the last presentation on the day in one of the parallel sessions. My slides Automatic Transcripts: Student and Tutor views from Built Environment Education are shared in SlideShare. Despite my session being the last, there was good engagement and questions from the audience, I think especially because accessibility is an area that is very relevant in the UK with the new accessibility regulations - The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This conference amidst the Covid-19 spread showed that perhaps we need to re-think about attending conferences in person when there is long distance travel involved - especially air travel. Perhaps, we can reduce air travel and be more green and sustainable by presenting our work online. Martin presented his keynote remotely and it was done skillfully. The keynote was engaging and it showed even the keynotes at conferences can adapt to Covid-19 and can also adapt to fight against climate change. Two other sessions I attended too was presented via Zoom and they worked almost perfectly. Once in a while there was few words that we missed due to poor connectivity but it didn't harm the experience.

My next conference is OER20 which is also going to be held online due to Covid-19. So this year many conferences will be run more environment friendly way. Perhaps this crisis is a wake-up call for us to think about being more sustainable and green in attending conferences?