… crazy?
Not infrequently, these past several weeks, have I found myself expounding on the stresses and frustrations of my current experience. It often sounds a lot like this:
too busy
so much to do
not enough time
programs are underfunded
unfair societal expectations
(insert musing on the possibility of those being tied to archaic constructs relating to the teaching profession)
work/life imbalance
not enough support
or resources
or energy
or time
or copies of me…
all of which bring me back to the thing I’ve come across so many times in the years I’ve been working in an online setting: why is there not a universal resource available to pull from? Why must teachers re-create the wheel each time they are given a new-to-them course? Why is it that the workload assigned to teachers appears to be so out-of-balance compared to many other careers? Why is it that online teachers are viewed as having a “cushy” job (comparative to those in traditional settings), and finally, how on earth can a better understanding of the work load associated with online teaching (and therefore assignment of FTE, student numbers, course loads, etc) be achieved?
Framed within the necessary reading of literature for my 570/1 project, I also came across (so many rabbit trails! so much research to be delved into like a gold-fevered dwarf after the Heart of the Mountain!) references to many areas of lack relating to K-12 online teaching. Those which caught my attention most sharply were mentions of the need for specific training and targeted, ongoing professional development for online teachers; of the need to improve supervised summative assessment practices; of the need to have some ubiquitous standards for online course design; and especially of the need to recognize that there is an important distinction which exists between an online course designer and an online course teacher.
If I needed to narrow this down into a topic which I would want to pursue in the long term, I would definitely be pointing my feet down the path of research into evidence-based online course design. Since so much of my teaching career has been couched within an online setting, and given the situation I find myself in at this immediate moment, I find that I am at a disadvantage for not having a solid background and training in online course design. Rather horrifyingly, some of the courses I have been assigned to teach are literally what one article said online courses ought NOT to be: digitized from a print-based version of a distance education course!
However, if I take a moment to consider that at some future point I may be teaching in a traditional classroom, then I wish to channel my energy into an alternate focus. Should that be the case, I want to gain greater understanding in how to measure, weigh, choose between and harness the best educational technologies for the benefit of students. Narrowing that further, I am interested in how tech might be used to develop a greater appreciation, deeper understanding, and broader acceptance of higher level secondary mathematics. But in this, there is so much which I myself do not know that it feels like an utterly daunting topic to wade into. And finally, as another sidebar conversation and consideration, I wonder whether there might be a greater and longer-lasting personal benefit into researching specific uses of educational technology specifically designed to support teachers themselves, in all their myriad responsibilities and endeavours…marking, taking attendance, classroom management, planning, designing lessons, creating assessments…
In this moment, I am grateful that I do not need to make a decision just yet. And, as opportunities present themselves, I will continue to do what I can to learn a bit more every day. A drop here often leads to a rivulet there, and it may trickle, perhaps, into a stream, which joins a creek that flows into a river, and with time gathers force into a rushing torrent that may well end up converging with the sea…
Photo credits: Images by Gerd Altmann, David Bruyland, Rosy / Bad Homburg / Germany, and Mohamed Hassan, from Pixabay; photos by Fin MacBrayne, Sir. Simo, Robert Bye and Tomas Yates on Unsplash.
Seek. Grow. Share.