Art by Elizabeth Brummer
Since early March, over 300 American universities have canceled in-person instruction and moved completely to an online platform. While many students and professors continue to express challenges to remote learning, science offers some solutions.
A recent study found that both students and professors believe personalized learning experiences are key to successful online class. Students learn best by engaging in discussion and interacting with their peers. Professors are able to optimize teaching by providing a safe space for students to take responsibility for their learning through problem solving.
Barbara Larson, a professor at Northeastern University who specializes in virtual work research, said Zoom is a great tool for virtual learning because it increases interpersonal communication.
“If you and I were on Zoom right now, we would have much more information about each other — not only who we are physically, but also our state of mind, to get more visual cues, nonverbal cues,” Larson said.
Larson attributed the science behind this idea to the Construal Level Theory, a psychological theory studied in the context of virtual work in the past 15 years. The theory describes a psychological distance people experience in their minds between the abstract and the concrete.
Applied to interpersonal communication, Larson said when someone has a higher level of construal — meaning the mental image they assign to someone else is more abstract — they are more likely to apply stereotypical thinking, making communication between them difficult.
The opposite is also true, Larson said. Meaning Zoom can be a helpful learning tool because students and professors are able to engage with each other visually, thus lowering their construal levels.
Larson said she encourages professors to engage with students by using the tools available to them in Zoom, thus stretching the boundaries of online learning rather than using it as a way to lecture with slides.
Breakout rooms, Larson said, are a great way to facilitate discussion within online classrooms, allowing students to learn by engaging with one another.
Recent research has similar findings, with one study suggesting that social interaction is key to effective online learning. The study found that online interpersonal interaction relates positively to student grades.
Larson said one of the main ways people hinder themselves from finding success on online platforms like Zoom is by turning off their video capabilities.
“They’re not getting the full benefit of the social connection,” Larson said. “People just aren’t going to be able to connect with them or really understand, sort of, what is going on with them if they’re not sharing some kind of visual.”
Larson recommends students resist the urge to multitask and instead participate in online class with their video capabilities turned on. This provides other students as well as professors visual cues that would normally be available during in-person instruction.
“Remotely, it’s easier to drift,” Larson said. “I would say to really fight that.”
One way students can overcome this challenge, Larson said, is to center their minds before class and think about why they are there in the first place.
“Since the beginning of time, there have been people who have fought unbelievable odds in order to have the privilege of learning,” Larson said. “This is pretty minor compared to that, and I just say, really think of yourself as making this effort to overcome the odds, and to overcome the urge to multitask to get the full benefit of learning.”
Chris Heard, professor and director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, said it is important to keep in mind that the current mode of online classes is not typical online instruction for Pepperdine.
Heard created “Keep on Teaching,” an emergency plan for remote teaching in the fall of 2018, after classes went remote for two weeks following the Woolsey Fire. The plan includes best practices and resources for faculty in the event of a temporary transition to online learning.
“We don’t want to give the impression that what we’re doing right now is the normal way that online classes operate,” Heard said. “It’s really just, in an emergency situation, trying to maintain as much pedagogical continuity as possible, given this extreme change in venue that we have got going on.”
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Email Lindsey Sullivan: Lindsey.sullivan@pepperdine.edu
