One year before high-school graduation, I met with an academic guidance counsellor to ensure that I had the correct courses and admittable grades for the universities and programs I was interested in. After discussing my options, I was provided a long list of classes that I could take online from the school computer lab. I wished I had known about this option earlier in my high-school career. I love self paced learning. I took some classes in person face-to-face, some asynchronously online from a course site, and one class that had some face-to-face and some online components. Each mode of learning had a set of things I really liked, and some things I didn’t like so much. Heading into university I expected to only have face-to-face learning, however, with the current global situation, the classes I am in currently are all online, with most classes occurring synchronously.
In that final year the high-school and now because of the covid times, I have experienced multiple educational modalities. This weeks Ed Tech Blog defines modality in education as the way ” we communicate in terms of timing and location”. That is, all of the different ways I engaged with online learning are different modalities.
In the synchronous portion of our online lecture we discussed these modalities, how they can effect learners, and how online learning can create more options for learners.
I am trying not to conflate how I feel because of the pandemic with how I feel about zoom learning. However, I do think I would benefit from some added face-to-face learning!
Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash
