Ontario’s e-learning plan misses the mark

A woefully ill-considered shift to digital coursework that will compel students to acquire four online credits in order to graduate with a high school degree, one-a-year, by 2020-21.

Of course, few details were provided when the scheme was unveiled back in March. Or rationale for so dramatic an academic overhaul, for which students were never consulted. At least not beyond the boilerplate pretext that Ontario needs to embrace 21st century technology. When really it’s the money, stupid. As in slashing costs across the board, from education to health care spending, by a Doug Ford government obsessed with the bottom line.

Educators have objected. School boards have objected. And we now know for certain — though it was already well-expressed — that students hate the idea, as revealed earlier this week by the Star’s Kristin Rushowy, who obtained results of a survey undertaken by the Ontario Student Trustees’ Association. The pulse-taking found some 95 per cent of 6,087 respondents “disapprove of the new e-learning mandate.”

Surely the objective should be to keep students in the classroom, minimize distractions and promote coursework engagement with teachers, as well as each other.

No other jurisdiction in the world has so enthusiastically embraced e-learning. In America, only five states have integrated e-learning into the curriculum, and each requires only one credit obtained in that manner. Of course, if the true intention is to cut jobs — and estimates are that up to 10,000 teachers will ultimately lose theirs under the proposed regimen — then the Ford Tories are right on track. Further, as philosophical adherents of the private sector over the public sector in all realms of existence, this plan opens the door to contracting out of teaching positions because none of it (as of yet) is covered under union contract bargaining.

“There has yet to be any examples of any government in North America where this is largely taking place where this hasn’t been a cost-cutting measure,” says Beyhan Farhadi, an English teacher at Earl Haig Secondary School, who has just completed her dissertation on e-learning and will next week have her PhD in hand.

“This is definitely a way to reduce the number of teachers because you also had, with this announcement, the increase in average class size.” From an average of 22 (Grade 9-12) to 28. “That’s not an accident, right?”

A cyber-class would be even larger.

In some not-too-distant future, teachers could easily become redundant, with for-profit software companies cranking out the curriculum. Already, says Farhadi, she knows of one U.S. tech company that is trying to encroach Canadian space.

Farhadi has, in fact, taught e-learning for a decade, as part of the job, part of a “soft launch” rollout in six schools by the Toronto District School Board. She noticed that the majority of “e-learners” were concentrated in arts schools and were, in the main, already high achievers. But because Farhadi could find so little information on the subject, she made an intense study of it, hence the PhD, including 60 hours of observing e-learning classes.

“Students typically referred to it as a space where they could do their work, check off the boxes, rinse and repeat. They view it as largely an extended homework session. Which they actually quite like, because for them it’s efficient and they can spend more time on their extra-curriculars or other courses that they prioritize in a face-to-face environment. So, for students who are already high-achieving, it’s a way for freeing up their time.”

Yet what of all the many more students who need the structure of a traditional classroom or might simply exploit — as teenagers tend to do — the liberty of an unregulated atmosphere.

“The best e-learning environments provide students an opportunity to go and see a teacher live,” says Farhadi, emphasizing that this is the model currently being used in the TDSB. “Students, if they’re not forced to be in the same space and not forced to attend, will not do so. If you’re lucky, a third of your class will show up to those sessions. Often, you have only one or two.

“That’s because e-learning, what makes it so desirable is that you can access it any time. And teachers are not able to ever be really available at the same time as everyone else. So, often students are getting that information afterward, as a recording. They’re not able to ask questions and get their answers immediately. Often students don’t even know the questions that they have until they’re in a face-to-face situation, especially students that already struggle in the classroom. They require the teacher in front of them to prove questions, ask whether they have concerns about the material. So that’s definitely absent.”

The disconnect is particularly harmful to students who most benefit from eyes-on contact, particularly those from minority or economically disadvantaged communities, and kids whose parents are unable or unwilling to engage in their children’s education for a vast variety of reasons, including not understanding the coursework or not speaking English (or French). Also, while nearly everybody has a cellphone, many students from poorer households don’t have computers at home, or Wi-Fi. They’d have to access the curriculum at a library or some other venue.

While Farhadi didn’t structure her research questions around race or class, she did pose questions about identity in general. “I had a core group of students who really spoke about the importance of being Black in their schooling community and the importance of having folks in their schools who could basically affirm their experiences.”

On the other hand, some were agreeable to the e-learning environment precisely because they had experienced harm in school, so the online experience felt safer. “They didn’t want to be in school. Or, this was a space for them to just get the credit and get their top six (credits) for university.”

Yet, surely those more nuanced complications would be better addressed by strengthening interrelations rather than accentuating alienation.

One of the major challenges of e-learning is that few have addressed how many online hours would be required to earn a credit. Students are expected to receive 110 in-class hours per credit, with chronic absence addressed by guidance counsellors. To her knowledge, says Farhadi, only the Peel board has provided some direction for its e-learning component.

“They’ve said it should take 50 hours spent on course contents. I haven’t seen many students spend that much time. At the higher end, I’ve seen students spend about 20 hours. For some, it’s as little as five hours.”

What about instruction for teachers? Farhadi says those already e-teaching receive only one or two day tutorials on using the platform — basic stuff such as creating discussion posts and how to mark online work.

Only the most self-confident of students will participate in the to-and-fro of learning by actually asking questions in real time, even if the software allows for interactivity.

“I have yet to see a student choose to speak or go on video when they’re being recorded,” says Farhadi. “I have never seen students do that across any classroom I’ve watched. So yes, they can technically do it. But students don’t because they feel vulnerable being recorded, so they type it in.”

Farhadi appreciates the dimension of e-learning but not an exclusive approach. “There’s no benefit. My argument is that to create a separation between face-to-face and e-learning is a false one. Lots of teachers are using technology. We should be encouraging contextually specific learning environments that can blend the two modalities and not be talking about removing students entirely from the face-to-face classroom. All the research shows that the more you have students in their face-to-face learning communities, the better they will do online.”

Not everybody works well alone.

Report card comment for the Ford government: Poor grasp of the subject matter. Must do better.