TechTrends Volume 67, Issue 3 is now available online and includes a special Issue on Race and Racism in Educational Technology.
Category: papers Page 2 of 7
Enilda, Josh, and I are working on a project examining the degree to which access to education research is available to the public, bringing together research interests that all three of us have had for a long time now. Enilda presented some of our early findings this week at OER23 in Scotland and shared her reflections here. Our slides are available at tiny.utk.edu/OER23
Part of the fun in this work is figuring out how to bring together a set of APIs to allow for programmatically retrieving data about published journal papers from different services (e.g., see Josh’s post).
Stephanie Moore, Michael Barbour and I have published a paper synthesizing the results of all the research we could find relating to remote/online learning and mental health. Full paper and abstract below:
Moore, S., Veletsianos, G., & Barbour, M. (2022). A synthesis of research on mental health and remote learning: How pandemic grief haunts claims of causality. The Open/Technology in Education, Society, and Scholarship Association Journal, 2(1), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.18357/otessaj.2022.1.1.36
Abstract
While there has been a lot of debate over the impact of online and remote learning on mental health and well-being, there has been no systematic syntheses or reviews of the research on this particular issue. In this paper, we review the research on the relationship between mental health/well-being and online or remote learning. Our review shows that little scholarship existed prior to 2020 with most studies conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. We report four findings: (1) pandemic effects are not well-controlled in most studies; (2) studies present a very mixed picture, with variability around how mental health and well- being are measured and how/whether any causal inferences are made in relation to online and remote learning, (3) there are some indications that certain populations of students may struggle more in an online context, and (4) research that does not assume a direct relationship between mental health and online provides the best insight into both confounding factors and possible strategies to address mental health concerns. Our review shows that 75.5% of published research on this topic either commits the correlation does not equal causation error or asserts a causal relationship even when it fails to establish correlations. Based on this study, we suggest that researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and administrators exercise extreme caution around making generalizable assertions with respect to the impacts of online/remote learning and mental health. We encourage further research to better understand effects on specific learner sub- populations and on course—and institution—level strategies to support mental health.
Keywords: mental health, online learning, remote education, anxiety, stress, well-being, wellness
Around the first year of the pandemic, we gathered all the student surveys we could find that examined emergency remote learning in Canada and its impacts on students. We made this work available immediately as a pre-print because we knew it would take a while to actually be published, and in many talks and conversations since then. The paper is now available in the Journal of Computing in Higher Education. The abstract and citation are below.
Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic numerous institutions around the world have surveyed students to gain an understanding of their experiences. While these surveys are valuable at a local institutional level, it is unclear as to which findings from individual
surveys reflect the broader higher education environment, and which patterns may be consistent across student surveys. It is worthwhile to synthesize survey findings in order to explore patterns and potentially new understandings that may arise
from such analysis. In this paper, we reviewed and synthesized 21 surveys examining the impacts of COVID-19 and emergency remote learning on approximately 155,000 student respondents in Canada. Findings reveal that the impacts of COVID-
19 and emergency remote learning on students centered around (1) educational experiences, (2) mental health and wellbeing, (3) financial concerns, (4) impact on future plans, and (5) recommendations for future practice.
Houlden, S., & Veletsianos, G. (in press). A synthesis of surveys examining the impacts of COVID-19 and emergency remote learning on students in Canada. Journal of Computing in Higher Education. Preprint (pdf) or https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-022-09323-4
I’d like to share with you a powerful paper that I read yesterday.
As a preamble consider this: The field of instructional design and technology has it’s fair share of problems. Naming them begins the process of tackling them, but it takes ongoing and dedicated work – and courage. I’ve been filled with hope over the past couple of years as a larger and more diverse group of people have led the way in tacking equity, diversity, and inclusion in IDT.
The paper? Romero-Hall, E. (2021). Navigating the Instructional Design Field as an Afro-Latinx Woman: A Feminist Autoethnography. TechTrends, (0123456789). If you have access to the journal: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-021-00681-x If you don’t have access: https://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1007/s11528-021-00681-x
What is the paper about? Dr. Enilda Romero-Hall details some of her personal experiences, as a woman of color and a graduate student, professor, researcher, and instructor in a field dominated by men, and white men in particular. She also describes the ways in which intersectional feminism guided her scholarship and responses. Please read the paper yourself – it’s worth the time reading Enilda’s words in her voice.
Why is the paper important to me (and possibly to you)?
- The kinds of things that Enilda describes – lack of diversity and representation in the field, aggression and micro-aggression, etc etc – aren’t just present in other fields. They’re in IDT too. They’re systemic. They’re not other people’s problems. They’re our problems too.
- If you’ve been to AECT over the past few years, you’ve likely met Enilda. Personal stories, especially when connected to people we meet/know, may have a transformative power (which is partly why the volume that Ana Donaldson edited on Women’s voices in Educational Technology is such a significant piece of work). Full disclosure here: Enilda and I have known each other for many years. Our grad student days overlapped, though at different institutions. We’ve also served in AECT’s Research and Theory division together, and collaborated on a few other areas (a paper, a couple of panels, a grant, etc).
- Addressing issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion in the field is an ongoing work that shouldn’t be solely relegated to those who do equity, diversity, and inclusion research. For example, one step that we can all take in our teaching is to diversify and decolonize our reading lists. Toward this, the University of Huddersfield provides a toolkit to explore.
The Journal of Interactive Media in Education published a special issue entitled Learning from Lockdown: challenges and benefits. Colleagues and I contributed a paper on the Professional and Personal Impacts Experienced by Faculty Stemming from the Intersection of the Covid-19 Pandemic and Racial Tensions. Our abstract appears below:
The disruption that resulted from COVID-19 in 2020 impacted the ways in which higher education faculty lived and worked. Earlier literature describes how faculty members’ experiences during the early months of the pandemic included emotional impacts such as stress and anxiety, with little support to manage these impacts. In this paper we report on a thematic analysis of interviews with Canadian faculty members which revealed that the sources of impacts on Canadian faculty were both the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as racial tensions. These impacts revealed themselves in both the personal and professional lives of participants. With regard to their professional role, participants reported that the additional time and care that they put towards learning new technologies, implementation of new teaching practices, support of students, and efforts to sustain their perceived obligations as a scholar carried an emotional burden. With respect to their personal lives, participants noted that emotional impacts emanated from increased caring responsibilities for family and friends, reduced in-person connections, and news reports and social media. We conclude by presenting support recommendations for individual faculty members, teaching and learning centres, and university administrators.
Belikov, O., VanLeeuwen, C., Veletsianos, G., Johnson, N., Torcivia, P. (2021). Professional and personal impacts experienced by faculty stemming from the intersection of the COVID-19 pandemic and racial tensions. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 1, p. 8. http://doi.org/10.5334/jime.647
One highlight of this paper that isn’t visible in the final product: Being able to support and mentor Olga, Charlene, and Nicole in publishing. Also: finally being able to identify an opportunity to work with Patrice on a paper!
You may also be interested in the rest of the papers in this issue:
- Editorial: Learning from Lockdown Special Collection
- Moving Teaching Online: Cultural Barriers Experienced by University Teachers During Covid-19
- Professional and Personal Impacts Experienced by Faculty Stemming from the Intersection of the Covid-19 Pandemic and Racial Tensions
- Emergency Remote Teaching During COVID19: The Role of Teachers’ Online Community of Practice (CoP) in Times of Crisis
- Professional Development for Sustaining the ‘Pivot’: The impact of the Learning Design and Course Creation Workshop on Six Belarusian HEIs
- Caring in Practice, Caring for Knowledge
- Teacher Education in the Emergency: a MOOC-Inspired Teacher Professional Development Strategy Grounded in Critical Digital Pedagogy and Pedagogy of Care
- Barriers in Times of Digital Teaching and Learning – a German Case Study: Challenges and Recommendations for Action
- A Case Study in Mitigating COVID-19 Inequities through Free Textbook Implementation in the U.S.
- ‘Engagement’ Discourses and the Student Voice: Connectedness, Questioning and Inclusion in Post-Covid Digital Practices
- The Choices that Connect Uncertainty and Sustainability: Student-Centred Agile Decision-Making Approaches Used by Universities in Australia and the UK during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Many surveys examined faculty member experiences during the pandemic, highlighting the challenges and affordances of a mass transition to remote forms of teaching and learning, but also its unequal and disproportional impacts. In a new study, we wanted to develop a much more detailed and visceral description of what some faculty have been experiencing during the pandemic, informed by our specific interests in online learning and teaching with technology. This study is part of a broader SSHRC grant which funded the postdoc and research assistants who wrote this with me (thank you!). The abstract and citation is below:
VanLeeuwen, C.A., Veletsianos, G., Belikov, O. Johnson, N. (in press). Never-ending repetitiveness, sadness, loss, and “juggling with a blindfold on:” Lived experiences of Canadian college and university faculty members during the COVID-19 pandemic. British Journal of Educational Technology. http://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13065 or author’s pre-print copy.
We report on the lived experiences of faculty members during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, exploring the broader experiences of faculty members as individuals living multi-faceted lives whose homes became their offices, their students scattered geographically, and their home lives upended. Using a phenomenological approach for data collection and analysis, we conducted twenty in-depth interviews with faculty holding varied academic appointments at universities across Canada. Experiences during the early months of the pandemic were described as being overwhelming and exhausting, and participants described as being stuck in a cycle of never-ending repetitiveness, sadness and loss, of managing life, teaching, and other professional responsibilities with little sense of direction. In keeping with phenomenological methods, this research paints a visceral picture of faculty experiences, seeking to contextualize teaching and learning during this time. Its unique contribution lies in portraying emergency remote teaching as an overlapping and tumultuous world of personal, professional, and day-to-day responsibilities.