TECH4ALL#2 under lockdown: digital e-cologies

On 23rd of March 2020 the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, at the daily update declared to the nation that from March 26 a set of ‘distancing’ measures would be put in place to slow the spread of COVID-19. It was the beginning of the lockdown which would continue for the next two months. These changes did not stop the TECH4ALL#2 team.

From “blending” to fully online: the rise of the social and of the ‘pedagogy in lockdown’

One of the key changes happening across the nation was the increased in use of social media platforms, which now more than ever kept families and friends together while physically away from each other. The inappropriate terminology used by the Government at the beginning of the lockdown gave way to a more apt way to show how new digital means could help. So rather than abiding to ‘social distancing’, physical distancing became the norm for the vast majority while ‘social closeness’ took a different turn.

Of course the digital nature of the social sphere was a reality well before the COVID-19 pandemic. What developed during the lockdown was something different, which will be a topic of research and debate for years to come. The ‘new’ social-under-lockdown saw the rise of the use of Zoom, for example, but also the phenomenon of being ‘zoomed-out‘, a new urban term defining the fatigue of being constantly ‘on screen’ and ‘socially available’. It also saw the rise of groups of varied nature bringing people together for online social activities, such as tea-parties, yoga classes and more.

Besides the usual social spheres of action, the lockdown also saw the use of social online spaces for the creation of local and national support initiatives. Pubs, small local stores, and even restaurants, which had to physically close their premises, opened them up online. A mix of economic and community support created an alternative online space where a new digital ecological niche could set roots and expand.

The changes did not stop there. As a result of the lockdown the nature of work changed as well. The latest statistics available from the Office of National Statistics (ONS, 2020) shows that in ‘In the reference period 23 March to 5 April 2020, 27% of the workforce had been furloughed across 6,150 businesses’. While these stats might not be representative of situation at the time of writing this blog, the economy ran into a wall and has remained almost at a standstill.

Yet, some workers just moved their ‘office’ home. Smart-working, home-working, remote working, and various other terms have been used to represent the new reality of work for those which had been defined as ‘knowledge workers’. Because this blog is about reflecting on a project whose goal is to explore and understand digital literacy in higher education, the term work encompasses all activities which are supportive of teaching and learning. Let’s call it ‘pedagogy in/under lockdown’, although better terms might be developed in future. This term, would of course, include all those workers operating at every stage of formal education, but also informal and non-formal education. A new digital pedagogical ecological niche came into life and, for better or for worse, it is here to stay for few months more, possible all the way into the next school and academic year.

“Pedagogy in lockdown”: challenges and affordances

In unison, schools and universities closed their doors and moved to online teaching. Schools were closed on March 20 although a skeleton services continued to be provided to the children of emergency and frontline workers throughout the lockdown period. We cannot with certainty say what the impact of this change has been on the education sector, but we know that many universities, such as the University of Cambridge (The Guardian, 19 May 2020)  have already decided to continue online teaching in the next academic year, or are planning a blended approach flexible enough to cope with any resurgence of the virus spread and future lockdown measures.

While moving lectures and assessment online has been generally ‘easy’, at least in technical terms, there have been variations in the extent to which different universities might have been prepared. The issue, however, is not that of doing the same but online. The issue is not even if we have a pedagogical approach for teaching online. We have plenty of research on online teaching, MOOCS and distant learning. The issue is whether there is a need for a development of a new pedagogical attitude enabling students and lectures to work across new e-cological spaces of learning. Related to this, there is a need to ascertain whether students and teachers have the digital literacy, that is the skills, competences and overall capabilities to take advantage of the new learning spaces.

The TECH4ALL#2 team took advantage of the new ‘home working’ reality. Through the use of Collaborate Ultra we have continued to meet, discuss and share ideas, analysed the interviews, discussed recommendations and planned for the future. In line with the blurring of pedagogical boundaries which is a key feature of an e-cological approach to learning, we also discovered that we were all using a number of collaboration tools for other formal and informal meetings. These included Zoom, WebEx,  MS-Teams, Whats App, Facebook, and yes, the old phone as well. While each of these offered similar functionalities, they each worked slightly differently. Having the ability to master one of these platforms (or many at the same time) and then being able to easily adapt this knowledge to quickly transition to being able to use any of the others is a simple example of the digital autonomy the TECH4ALL#2 project has identified as being to the right of digital competence and being a key to becoming digitally fluent on a digital skills continuum. So we have reflected on what the new future would mean in terms of the digital literacy required.

So while technology enabled universities to move teaching online, the nature of that teaching is different. From traditional lectures, now  as webinars, to using various platforms for interactive work, the way we plan and deliver a session, and the way we engage with a distant and virtual audience have changed. For once the ‘public’ lecture has invaded the private space of students’ and lecturers’ home. The distinction between formal and informal has been blurred.

Most importantly for what matters to the TECH4ALL#2 project, online teaching has also lifted the veil on our own personal and professional digital literacy capabilities. Going online has forced us all, students and lecturers alike, to confront our selves and our own digital skills. By making our own personally held professional self-efficacy open to scrutiny, online teaching has invaded the private sphere of what we, as learners, held to be true.

In the process of discovery of the self as digitally literate, some might have been pleasantly surprised, while others less so. Many would fall in between.

It is the role of universities, as both context for research and learning, to assess where on a digital literary continuum students and lecturers are so that ‘pedagogy in lockdown’ is not just a phase to bear and move on, but a true opportunity for a deep change in how we use technologies to teach and related to each other.

This is what TECH4ALL#2 is looking into. In further blogs we will develop these ideas further.