Coronavirus will buttress distance learning

So, how are we holding up? Are you dug in? Working out of the house? Trying to be productive while watching the kids? Do you provide an essential service and have to brave the threat of illness head-on? Or are you in a high-risk group and even more wary of exposure than the rest of us?

There was some speculation, more rooted in hope than science, that we might be free of our bonds by Easter Sunday. That’s not going to happen. For what it’s worth, a quarantine, by definition, should last for forty days. It’s right there in the name, and this appears to be no exception..

When the Black Death swept through Europe between 1347 and 1351, the medical community had not yet developed an understanding of the source of the contagion. They did notice, however, that transmission of the sickness followed exposure to previously infected people.

Having observed as much, Medical progressives in the Sicilian port city of Ragusa (then under the control of Venice), took it upon themselves to seclude sailors arriving from other ports for a period of time, until they could be assumed healthy. Initially, they were held on their ships for a period of thirty days under a law known as “Trentino.” The hold was then extended to forty days, which was called “Qurantino,” and subsequently became the medical standard and what we now know as a quarantine.

While we’re on the Black Death, let’s not forget that it was just another name for one of many incarnations of the Bubonic Plague. There is a lesson in there for us. “Black Death” is a prime example of sound, effective, grab-you-by-the-throat branding. Critics who claim we were too slow to respond to the current coronavirus should take note. The clinical sounding “COVID-19” simply doesn’t command attention quite like its medieval counterpart. Black Death gets right to the point. I can’t imagine people dragging their feet on the Black Death. One does not trifle with the Black Death.

On a more serious note, as I look forward to the post-COVID-19 world, I am seeing a bit of a silver lining. A factor that has occupied no small part of my life in the past decade is distance learning. In the grand scheme of life, it’s a relatively recent contrivance that most people have managed to evade (advertisements for online Universities notwithstanding) until now, but our new intimate friend, COVID-19 has brought it front and center for our public school students, teachers and parents.

When I first landed on the shores of the mighty Republican 26 years ago, I was still a few credits short on my undergrad degree which hadn’t really been a bother for me. I had remained gainfully employed in Denver and had always intended to take a couple of night classes to wrap it up. When I looked for opportunities to close that gap here in McCook, there weren’t any. The online education world back in the 1990s was limited to the over-priced University of Phoenix, and a smattering of unaccredited degree factories. By the early 2000s, traditional brick-and-mortar Universities had begun to offer a few core classes online, but there were no degree programs yet available.

The mainstream academic community, and to some extent, the general public weren’t quick to jump on the online education bandwagon. It didn’t help that some of the early innovators in the field were designed more to mine student loans than to teach, so the reputation of online education was initially tarnished. There was also a discussion within academia as to whether the online experience could sufficiently replace classroom interaction, which I personally find to be a bit overblown.

I have attended a variety of schools over the years, ranging from state Universities to Jesuit institutions, and every now and then, I have been fortunate enough to have a professor who runs a class that is stimulating and interactive. Participating in those classes is a privilege and perhaps even life changing when it happens, but we can’t all be John Houseman in “The Paper Chase” and very few classes, in fact, offer anything even approaching that experience.

The designers of online classes, however, continue to strive for the John Houseman ideal, and as a result, online education typically requires a burdensome amount of journaling and correspondence with a professor and classmates. The writing is casual in nature, relative to academic papers (i.e. does not require footnoting) but cryptic chat/text language is not used and expectations for volume and frequency are set high. People who aren’t comfortable communicating on a keyboard tend not to do well with online classes. I have seen good people, who would probably have been successful in a traditional lecture hall situation, go down in flames in the online environment.

The current exposure to online learning at the K-12 levels, however forced and inconvenient, can only improve the appreciation for the capabilities and challenges associated with distance learning at higher levels. This benefits rural areas in particular. For theoretical and most core disciplines, home and remote study, aided by technology, can be helpful to non-traditional students who aren’t located near a four-year-college or graduate school. Perhaps even more significantly, it can also play a role in reducing the overall cost of higher education.

Still, brick-and-mortar institutions have nothing to fear from distance learning. Pottery classes, the dissection of cadavers, the arts and lab-based instruction will not soon be replaced by online study, but as more people are exposed to distance learning, I expect it to play a role in leveling the academic playing field for rural America. As our school closures continue, parents, teachers and students alike are forced to confront the possibilities and challenges, but my hope is that in doing so, we are building a bridge to distance learning at higher levels.