The lights are on but there's no one home - the plight of the modern office

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How often do you go to the office these days? It looks like many people have not fully returned to the old commuting routines and are still working from home at least one day a week. We have discovered that a lot of our work can be done just as well if not better from home and the traditional workplace set-up is increasingly being questioned. Many people have realised that they work more efficiently at home away from disturbances and irritation. Online meetings are short and to the point and no one misses the commuting. Some activities are of course best performed in person and the office reinforces a sense of belonging to a community. But if we have found better ways of working, we need to rethink the value of the office or indeed the university campus. What are the unique values of a common physical working environment and when do we have to be there?

An article on Vox, Why the return to the office isn’t working, describes how many organisations are trying to adapt. Some employers have embraced home working or at least a flexible attitude towards it whilst others are demanding on-site working even if they are struggling to justify it.

The reasons the return to the office isn’t working out are numerous. Bosses and employees have different understandings of what the office is for, and after more than two years of working remotely, everyone has developed their own varied expectations about how best to spend their time. As more and more knowledge workers return to the office, their experience at work — their ability to focus, their stress levels, their level of satisfaction at work — has deteriorated. That’s a liability for their employers, as the rates of job openings and quits are near record highs for professional and business services, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The most common argument for being in the office is the interaction with colleagues and opportunities for creative work and synergy. This can apply for some but many workers spend most of their time working individually and any collaboration can be done very well in video meetings, project tools, e-mail and instant messaging. The stock image of a team working creatively around a table with post-its all over the place simply does not correspond with what most people do in the office. The challenge for employers is to find convincing reasons to come to the office, activities that must be done in-person and with clear rewards. 

For many office workers, the current state of affairs just isn’t working out. So they’re doing what they can to make their experience of work better, whether that means renting coworking space or not showing up for arbitrary in-office days. They don’t necessarily hate the office. What they hate is not having a good reason to be there.

Many have happily returned to work, glad to get back in a routine and being able to meet colleagues, but have found that the office is often sparsely populated. As a result they stay at home more often (if possible) and a vicious circle is created, at least from the office perspective. The inspiration and creativity doesn't happen if half the staff are missing. 

“If I go into the office and there are people but none of them are on my team, I don’t gain anything besides a commute,” Mathew, who works at a large payroll company in New Jersey, said. “Instead of sitting at my own desk, I’m sitting at a desk in Roseland.”

The situation is similar at some university campuses. A recent article in the Norwegian higher education news site Khrono describes the situation at one institution where the students had returned to campus but the teachers prefer to work from home (article in Norwegian: Tomme kontorlandskap i nybygg: Bekymret for at mange holder seg aktivt borte). A new building featuring activity-based working spaces is under-used and teachers only come in to do the most essential activities. This defeats one of the main attractions of the campus: the mix of faculty and students and the academic ethos. Even in the buildings where teachers have individual offices the corridors are often very quiet. So maybe it isn't simply a matter of teachers' aversion to open office space. 

Some students are also staying at home and complaining if they have to travel to campus for a lecture that could have been recorded or conducted online. For them the convenience of online delivery outweighs the advantages of social contacts and sense of community. There are also students, and even staff, whose homes are simply not pleasant working spaces and so the campus is essential for their studies. Universities also have today two very different student groups: young campus students (18-23 years old) who want the full traditional student experience with social activities, network building and a strong community spirit and older students who already have a family, job and social life where they live and are less interested in campus life. Universities are investing vast amounts of money on new campus buildings and facilities but are spending only a fraction of that on their digital campus. How does the digital campus (learning management system, student services etc) contribute to community building and a sense of belonging?  

I don't think we're going to abandon the office or campus but we do need to some creative thinking and question some deeply ingrained traditions. We need to make it clear what the advantages are and make the events there simply unmissable. Active learning on campus is more stimulating and creative and no matter what hybrid technology may be available you are always going to be a bit detached as an online participant. It's fine to demand on-site meetings as long as they live up to expectations and are not just routine information delivery. Forcing people to come to the office or having ad hoc rules simply creates resentment. Maybe 2-3 days a week on-site and make sure they are filled with activities that justify them. Plus a consistent and negotiated policy from employers so that the rules apply to all and are respected. The debate continues ...

Back to the classroom - risk for a post-pandemic backlash?

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Over the last year or so there have been countless articles and blog posts about how the pandemic has finally brought online education to the forefront and how education will now be able to take a leap forward as we fully integrate more collaborative and active learning with the help of digital platforms and tools. This is linked to similarly optimistic forecasts of how work culture will change radically as working from home becomes mainstream. Of course there will be changes in the way we teach and learn but don't underestimate the power of tradition and the desire to return to familiar ingrained practice. 

Several posts in the past week have featured the risk of a backlash against the online transformation narrative. Politicians in many countries are increasingly focusing on the need to get students back on campus and return to traditional teaching. This is understandable but it is often combined with a bias against online education as a poor substitute - the assumption that education is always best in the physical classroom. This point is discussed by Martin Weller, Why do education secretaries hate online learning? with reference to recent remarks by UK politicians.

I mean, it’s weird, right? On the one hand, all Governments like to berate education for not fully preparing students for the modern workplace. They unveil plans about how they will be a modern, 21st century, digital economy. And yet, successive education secretaries have berated online learning, which one would think was an essential component in realising both of the previous aims. And not just offer up some valid criticisms around issues of retention or engagement, say, but they use terminology that portrays online learning as, at best, a lazy, cheap option and at worst, some form of abuse.

I wish we didn't always play off the one form against the other. It would be nice to hear that the progress in online teaching gained during the pandemic will now be integrated into classroom practice in order to offer greater flexibility and active learning opportunities for students. But somehow the rhetoric of back to the traditional classroom appeals to voters and any changes to the well-worn system are viewed with suspicion.

On a similar theme is a post by James Clay, Predicting is hard, and we can get it wrong, commenting on an article from HEPI (Higher Education Policy Institute), Five common predictions about COVID and education that now appear to be wrong. It outlines how several predictions have been proved wrong: the number of students has not been reduced because of covid, test results in most subjects have not suffered, drop-out rates have not increased significantly and the graduate work market has not suffered either. Despite all this, Clay notes that attitudes to online education from those in power have not responded.

One prediction made at the start of the pandemic by many involved in education technology was that the forced working from home would (post-pandemic) be a catalyst for more blended and online learning in higher education. The prediction was that following people being forced to use tools such as the VLE, Teams, Zoom, lecture capture, that this would embed such technologies into future teaching and learning. Well we know from the press this week that this may not be the case, with Nadhim Zahawi talking in the Daily Mail that “Students made to pay tuition fees for Zoom lectures should revolt”. This kind of rhetoric makes any (current and future) use of online technologies challenging for universities.

Will the experience of the pandemic period simply be seen as a temporary diversion? If we really want to change education it will require major investments in professional development as programmes are redesigned to integrate more flexible and collaborative models. Institutions will need to change their organisation and strategies, teachers will need to learn new methods and students will also have to adapt. This all costs time, effort and money as opponents will be quick to point out. With many institutions under financial pressure, the temptation is strong to return to familiar practice. 

Whose normal do we go back to?

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In comparisons between online and in-person communication we tend to assume that the in-person meeting is always best and that the online version is a limited substitute. After a year and a half of restrictions and lockdowns there is an understandable desire to get back to normal again and as a result that notion of normal gets idealised. Classroom interaction and in-person meetings are presented in glowing terms whilst online versions are often questioned. However, if you look back honestly you remember how so many in-person meetings and classes were extremely uninspiring and ineffective.

Online and in-person meetings provide different frameworks and affordances, but the success of these meetings is dependent on the planning and communication skills of the teachers/managers and participants. Being there in person is no guarantee of good communication. This is the gist of an excellent article by Elizabeth Stokoe and colleagues, Is communicating in person the “gold standard”? You’re asking the wrong question.  

Communicating in person can also be highly unsatisfactory. We have all been in a terrible meeting, poor medical consultation, or a dire first date. Numerous books, articles and courses are dedicated to how to chair, participate in, and lead, an effective in-person meeting. Why? A meeting can ‘stink’ not because technology makes it hard for us to communicate, but because people are not trained in how to lead or participate in one — or are just poor communicators. Being co-present does not equate to or guarantee quality, inclusion, equality, satisfaction, productivity, interaction, engagement, or connection.

One of the most common complaints about online meetings is that we cannot see each other's body language but the article questions whether this is such a crucial factor. The body language argument has become a communication myth that has spread over the years thanks to misinterpretation and wishful thinking. Body language is a factor but not as major as we assume. In most physical meetings we all sit behind desks and can only see each other from the waist up, very similar to the view we get in online meetings. Of course we can make eye contact with each other in a way that is almost impossible in online meetings, but on the other hand online meetings compensate by using chat messages, emojis etc. Hybrid meetings are especially problematic since we are mixing the two modes and the risk of missing essential communication is high. There are differences between the modes but we are very resourceful in making the most of what is available. We have been using voice communication and radio for over a century and still do, despite the complete lack of body language.

It's not about the mode of communication but the skills of those using it. The key takeaway is this:

Good communication depends not on the modality or technology but on the communication skills of the people using it. We noted earlier that being in person is no guarantee of a high-quality interaction. Communication succeeds when everyone knows why they are talking and where there is parity of opportunity to participate.

Another issue is the language used to describe in-person meetings and work. An article by Joshua Kim in Inside Higher Ed, Stop Using the Language of “Normal” for Face-to-Face Academic Work, questions the use of the word normal. What we consider normal work or education does not suit everyone and never has. Many people accepted it because there was no choice, but now that we have seen that many tasks can be performed as well if not better online then there are strong arguments against forcing a return to the office or campus. The rituals of office life need to be questioned and a more flexible approach is needed. Less commuting benefits the environment and the opportunity for more home working can increase productivity and efficiency. Physical presence does not always guarantee focused activity. Normality is in the eye of the beholder.

What needs to change is the language around work.

Let us all try to remember that what feels “normal” to many (especially many leaders) is particularly challenging for some.

Let us not devalue the lived experience of our colleagues who are more productive and happier when working from home.

And in recognition that “normal” means different things for different people, let us strive to listen to what many of our colleagues are telling us about where and how they wish to work.

Instead of going back to normal we need to move forward to something different. The climate, environment and society depends on it.

Digital resilience - navigating a myriad of tools and platforms

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Digital resilience for me is the ability to adapt in a digital world: being able to use a variety of devices, tools and platforms and being able to carry out standard checks and routines when something doesn't work as expected. Vendors always claim their products to be intuitive and user-friendly but that only applies when you've learned how to use them. That resilience has been tested to the limit during the pandemic as we all work from home and are completely dependent on all our digital devices, tools and spaces.

Most organisations offer staff a limited but structured range of digital tools and platforms for everyday use. Those are maintained, regularly tested and updated and there is support, backup and security for all. Even within the organisation the range can be wide enough to cause confusion, but as soon as you start working with external partners the complexities increase. Most days I move relatively nimbly between the university's platforms to all sorts of external ones. Meetings are mostly in Zoom but also in Teams or Google Meet or even Skype. I have contacts spread over e-mail, Zoom chat, Whatsapp, Messenger, Twitter, Facebook groups, Slack as well as various discussion forums. I share documents in Microsoft 365, Box and Google Drive. The list goes on. Navigating all these takes time and energy and maybe our overflowing toolboxes are an energy drain rather than an advantage. 

The more tools we use the more inefficient we get and this is the gist of an article in TechRepublic, Remote working technology is creating a productivity nightmare. It describes results from a survey produced by Cornell University and Qatalog, Workgeist Report ‘21, that investigated over 1,000 employees' attitudes to the plethora of digital tools used during the home working period of the last year. The price of this digital diversity has been high with 43% of those surveyed saying that they spend too much time switching between tools and using up to an hour every day checking for and answering messages on different platforms.

As a result, employees are wasting up to five hours every week switching between different digital tools, cycling through tabs and digging through messaging channels. It's also fuelling workplace slip-ups, with 48% of respondents admitting to making mistakes as a result of being unable to keep track of what's going on across different channels.

The report claims that productivity tools are killing productivity with information and communication distributed over a growing number of platforms, tools and apps. Information often gets lost in e-mail conversations or in Slack groups that are simply invisible to everyone else. Restricted communication is of course essential but these spaces can sometimes hide important enclosed documents that are not stored anywhere else.

People are losing time scouring messaging channels, navigating project management boards, and digging through cloud storage systems. They spend about of their typical workday doing this; it’s time that could be better spent doing focussed work like designing a new product or getting user feedback.

Some people take a dislike to their organisation's recommended tool and decide to use an alternative. This tool may well suit their purpose but using it means that the information shared there is invisible to the rest of the organisation. Important information risks being stored in silos that only a few people know about. According to Tariq Rauf, CEO and founder of Qatalog, in the TechRepublic article:

There's been an explosion in the number of apps we rely on to do our jobs, but the result isn't greater productivity – it's total chaos. ... No matter their individual merits, each tool is adding to a noisy digital environment that is, quite literally, driving workers to distraction. The more time that we waste on this mess, the less we have for deep thought and meaningful engagement with our colleagues.

The report offers recommendations to organisations on how to streamline their use of digital tools and find smarter solutions that facilitate transparency and ease of use. However, the problem for many of us remain - no matter how well-planned your internal communication channels are, whenever you step outside and work with external partners your collection of tools starts growing again. While we wait for the ultimate solution (Godot 2.0?) we will need to become even more resilient.

Avoiding Zoom fatigue and finding new ways to collaborate online

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Many of us spend several hours a day in online meetings and the term Zoom fatigue has become a popular topic of discussion. Our extreme dependence on video meeting platforms is of course due to the exceptional times we live in and when we are able to meet face-to-face again the number of online meetings will no doubt decrease, though still much more frequent than before the pandemic. But what is missing in these online sessions? We can certainly see each other, smile, laugh, gesticulate and interact but what makes it all so tiring and rather repetitive?

A new study by Jeremy N. Bailenson of Stanford University, Nonverbal Overload: A Theoretical Argument for the Causes of Zoom Fatigue, has investigated the factors behind Zoom fatigue and offers some remedies (see also a summary of the report in an article in New Atlas, Stanford study into “Zoom Fatigue” explains why video chats are so tiring. Bailenson highlights four main issues:

• Eye-gaze at a close distance. We see a gallery of faces, many complete strangers, looking at us all the time. This would never happen in a physical meeting and can be rather disconcerting. Are they really looking at me and what are they thinking? Do I look all right or do they notice that my hair is a bit untidy or there's a pile of junk on the desk behind me?
• Cognitive load. We often exaggerate our non-verbal signals to make them clear, like nodding very deliberately or looking straight into the camera. It's impossible to turn and smile at a colleague or exchange a knowing glance when a common issue is mentioned. We also have chat messages and other communication tools to deal with.
• All-day mirror. We spend a lot of time looking at ourselves and being very aware of our appearance. This is a distraction and something we never have to deal with in physical meetings. One remedy for this is to cancel the self-view option in the platform. 
• Reduced mobility. In physical meetings we sometimes stand up or stretch our legs for a few minutes but in online meetings we generally sit still for long periods, gazing at faces or slideshows. We also tend to sit very close to the computer camera and this adds to the strain. Maybe if we sometimes switched to audio-only we could all move around while we discuss and thus take a break from the gallery gaze.

But with Zoom, all people get the front-on views of all other people nonstop. This is similar to being in a crowded subway car while being forced to stare at the person you are standing very close to, instead of looking down or at your phone. On top of this, it is as if everyone in the subway car rotated their bodies such that their faces were oriented toward your eyes. And then, instead of being scattered around your peripheral vision, somehow all those people somehow were crowded into your fovea where stimuli are particularly arousing (Reeves et al., 1999). For many Zoom users, this happens for hours consecutively.

We also need to realise that we all need some recovery time before entering the next meeting. Although you can feel super-efficient by stacking online meetings one after the other, you will be much more efficient if you schedule at least 10 minutes between those meetings to simulate the time you would spend walking from one physical meeting to the next. Get up, go outside for a few minutes and mentally tune in to the next task.

So what's the alternative to the talking heads format? Maybe we need to stop gazing at each other and do things together. A post by David White, Spatial collaboration: how to escape the webcam, introduces the concept of spatial collaboration, where we focus not on our faces on the screen but on interacting in a shared space such as a whiteboard, collaborative documents like Google Drive or a storyboard like Padlet, Mural or Miro. We can all write or draw on these spaces and the focus is more on the activity and collaboration than our faces. One simple but effective method is how to create a discussion with the help of a simple drawing of a table and names around it.

My suggestion was to draw a very simple diagram of a table (just a square) and place each of the participants’ names around it for each group. We then shared this simple ‘map’ into the non-space of the platform and asked the groups to go clockwise around the table. This was an easy way to establish the order the discussion should go in, but I also noticed that there was suddenly a greater sense of togetherness and place. You could imagine who you were sat next to or opposite, and while this didn’t change the functionality of the technology it did change the psychology of it. It didn’t take much to help people imagine themselves into a shared location.

This spatial collaboration does not have to be noisy to be effective. You can have very rewarding silent collaboration (see my earlier post on this), at least for a few minutes, thus providing variation and reducing fatigue.  

Of course it's great to see each other, but maybe not as much as we do now. 

2020 - the year education went online

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Everyone seems to be writing reviews of this crazy year so here's my attempt. At the end I include some really good articles for deeper insights.

The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 caused a sudden and unplanned shift to online education in almost every country in the world. Universities, colleges and schools were forced to close and all activities switched to online mode almost overnight, with very little time for planning or redesigning courses that were designed for traditional classroom delivery. The fact that this sudden transition was managed surprisingly well in most countries was a tribute to teachers’ adaptability, creativity and dedication. However, it would be wise to differentiate between what is now termed as emergency remote teaching and well-designed online education and when the crisis is over we need to spend time redesigning our courses to the required standards of quality online education.

Institutions that managed the digital transformation well have a number of common factors. Firstly they had experience in online course delivery and a strategic approach to digitalisation with a good digital infrastructure including a learning management system, media platform and anti-plagiarism tool. Teachers were already trained in designing and running online and blended courses, often with the support of educational technologists, media specialists and course designers. Furthermore, they used a mix of synchronous and asynchronous interaction forms to ensure student engagement.

At the same time the crisis revealed many problem areas, though some were societal rather than educational issues. Many students were marginalised due to poor internet access or not being able to afford a digital device, whilst others did not have a suitable study environment in their homes. Since they had enrolled on a campus-based programme, many students lacked the necessary study skills to learn effectively online and became isolated from colleagues. Even when students have been satisfied with the online teaching they received, they found the lack of social interaction extremely demotivating. Teaching online is not just about delivering course material and tests, it is vital to create a community of trust and opportunities for social interaction and informal discussion. Building relationships is an essential part of learning. Future course design teams must take these factors into consideration and build in more support structures.

However, there have been many positive effects of the crisis. Firstly, it has placed an unprecedented focus on online education and forced all institutions to rethink their operations. This involves offering teachers training programmes and workshops to share good practice and develop a coherent approach to online education. Institutions have discovered the need to employ educational technologists who combine technical and pedagogical skills and can help teachers manage the transition in a structured manner. Teachers have also begun to create a culture of sharing by forming, for example, social media communities where they can ask questions, discuss, share good ideas and resources with teachers from other institutions around the country. There has also been a wave of guidelines, resources, online courses, webinars and digital conferences offering support to teachers and students on how to teach and study effectively online.

What lessons can we learn from this experience and what conclusions can we make?

• Online and distance learning requires careful planning and new skills. Institutions need to implement strategies for digital development and provide necessary competence development for teachers.
• Courses must be reviewed and redesigned to fully integrate digital elements. This demands teamwork between different competences: teachers, educational technologists, media production, librarians. Digital platforms and tools are integrated into campus teaching.
• New forms of assessment and examination are needed in the digital space. There will be increased focus on formative assessment, oral examination, project and problem-based learning.
• Greater flexibility of how students access their courses with greater integration between online and on-site as well as more blended learning solutions. The digital campus will become an established concept with a variety of platforms to facilitate networking, socialisation and collaboration as well as teaching and learning.
• Online conferences will continue to thrive, largely replacing expensive and unsustainable international on-site conferences.
• Virtual mobility programmes will become the most widespread internationalisation strategy as physical mobility becomes more restricted due to sustainability concerns and travel restrictions in the wake of covid-19.

Further reading
A global outlook to the interruption of education due to COVID-19 Pandemic: Navigating in a time of uncertainty and crisis. Asian Journal of distance education, Vol 15 Issue 1, 2020.

Bates, T. (2020) A review of online learning in 2020. Blog post.

Downes, S. (2020) Lessons from the pandemic. Blog post.

Hodges, C., Moore, S., Lockee, B., Trust, T., & Bond, A. (2020) The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning, Educause Review.

Martin, F., Polly, D., Ritzhaupt, A. (2020) Bichronous Online Learning: Blending Asynchronous and Synchronous Online Learning, Educause Review.

UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank (2020). What have we learnt? Overview of findings from a survey of ministries of education on national responses to COVID-19.Paris, New York, Washington D.C.

Vollbrecht, P. J., Porter-Stransky, K., & Lackey-Cornelison, W. L. (2020). Lessons learned while creating an effective emergency remote learning environment for students during the COVID-19 pandemic. https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00140.2020

What if ...? Planning for uncertainty

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Many discussions about the digital transformation of the past months centre around whether online is "better" or "worse" than the physical classroom. These either/or discussions seldom lead anywhere since it is not about any form being better of worse but about how we teach and learn in different environments and circumstances.Of course many teachers and students long to return to the familiarity and convenience of the campus because that has been the norm for so long that it is seldom questioned. The digital transition was a stressful time and many teachers and students will therefore associate online education with feelings of isolation and good enough solutions. However, the digital element is here to stay and most if not all universities will need to learn how to blend online and on-site teaching in a more seamless way. Of course there will always be advantages of meeting, working and discussing in a physical space, when possible and applicable. That qualification is so important to stress. Digital spaces can extend the reach of education and be so much more inclusive than the physical space. The physical and digital can complement each other. It's not a competition.

But what if everything went online forever? That is the topic of an article in Inside Higher Ed, What if Everything is Online Forever? Many activities simply cannot be done online, but those that can may stay that way. It is very likely that a lot of university staff have discovered that they can work more effectively at home and be reluctant to return to the office, especially as long as the threat of covid-19 remains. Will the role of the campus diminish as more activities move online? What if there is no return to "normal"?

What about online learning? Here is what I think. As soon as possible, face-to-face learning will return. Everyone -- students and professors -- misses the classroom. Residential learning, however, will be forever different. Post-pandemic, what we will see in higher education is a new integration of residential and online learning. Face-to-face classes will come back, but online will not go away. The new residential class will have digital components. The line between face-to-face and online will blur.

How do we plan for such an unpredictable future? Another post in Inside Higher Ed, Higher Ed’s Next Black Swan? speculates further. We fondly hope that a vaccine for covid-19 will be available in the coming months but it may take years to develop a vaccine that really works. During that time a new virus could take off. We all need to develop plans A, B, C and D and realise that a combination of online and campus is the best we can hope for in the coming months and maybe even years. How many universities are asking this question, for example:

What would we do differently if we knew that the next four years will look -- from a public health perspective -- much like the fall of 2020?

What happens if international student mobility becomes impossible? What about climate issues? The future is impossible to predict and therefore we need a greater sense of resilience and flexibility to be able to meet whatever comes our way. 

Massive for-profit online courses

"Paywall" (CC BY-SA 2.0) by GioSaccone

I wrote a few years ago that it was time to forget the acronym MOOC and realise that this umbrella term was too limited to cover the number of variations trying to shelter under it. Today a majority of so-called MOOCs are just regular online courses that can cost you quite a lot of money if you want any kind of certification or even credit for your efforts. Even the content is disappearing behind paywalls as the platforms focus on return on investment. One major platform, the Australian Open2study has recently closed down completely. Of course there are still genuinely open MOOCs delivered in a spirit of sharing and outreach, but they are generally low-profile and hard to discover unless you know where to look. Free and open education sounded great but in the end someone has to pay.

A possible obituary for the MOOC as we imagined it appears in an article in University World News, MOOCs fail in their mission to disrupt higher education. It refers to a new study from MIT in the journal Science, The MOOC pivot, that examined MOOC statistics from the platform edX and found that the vast majority of participants do not return to take other courses and that there has been virtually no change in the extremely low completion rates in the last six years. Furthermore there are no real signs that MOOCs have succeeded in reaching the original intended target group, those who are unable to access traditional higher education. On the contrary the participants are mostly affluent professionals with a traditional university background and of course they are the people most likely to be able to pay for certificates, tuition and so on.

Rather than creating new pathways at the margins of global higher education, MOOCs are primarily a complementary asset for learners within existing systems.

The main reason why non-traditional learners are not attracted to MOOCs is that they are unfamiliar with the concept of online learning and need support and encouragement, generally face-to-face, in order to get on board successfully. This is where most MOOCs fall short since they often assume that the learners have good digital and study skills.

Reich and Ruipérez-Valiente point out that there is a basic problem if MOOC providers are competing to undercut traditional providers in this market and attract the less traditional consumers – potential students from less well-off families, especially from families with no history of attending higher education – since research shows they typically perform worse in online courses and most need human support in the form of tutors and peer learning groups.

The courses formerly known as MOOCs are now competing with all other online courses and degrees and are thereby part of the system that the media hype claimed they were going to disrupt. Of course the universities offering these courses have learned a lot from the experience and there are now alternative and more flexible pathways to higher education, but I don't think the results are particularly disruptive. The people who have been unable to access higher education due to socio-economic factors are still unable to access higher education. If we have to use acronyms let's call them MOCS, minus the word open.

Creating integrated online and on-site workspaces

By Deskmag - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Just as the borderline between classroom and online learning has become blurred so has the concept of the workplace. Technology enables many of us to work effectively from just about anywhere with decent internet access and you would think that the traditional office and the daily ritual of commuting would be on the way out. There's little sign of that but the concept needs to be redesigned.

At many universities faculty corridors are becoming rather lonely and quiet as more and more staff chose to work from home or elsewhere according to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Our Hallways Are Too Quiet. One major reason for this trend is the fact that you can often work more effectively away from the office.

A big reason for decreased faculty presence in their campus offices is technology. Networked computers that allow one to write anywhere also allow us to have conversations with students and colleagues that used to take place in person. Creating new course materials and ordering books is easily done online. Cloud software has made pretty much all our work processes easily done from home, a vacation cabin, a foreign conference hotel. For many scholars, this has been a very liberating occurrence, giving them wondrous flexibility.

The growth of working in national and international projects where physical meetings are a luxury and most meetings are online means that for many people (including myself) the office has become a digital rather than a physical space. I work in many different organisations and networks and a day at the office often consists of five or six online meetings, one after the other, and my only contact with my colleagues in the building are at coffee and lunch breaks. As virtual organisations grow then the importance of the physical office space will logically decrease but this change was forecast 20 years ago and it hasn't really happened. Distance working and virtual teams sound great but many organisations are unwilling to trust their staff to work from home and in many cases office presence is demanded even if it is often not necessary. Somehow the ritual of going to the office is a hard one to break. It's partly about trust and a fear of losing control but it's also about retaining a sense of community and identity. An organisation based on solitary home workers will not generate much loyalty or sense of belonging. We need to gather somewhere to develop working relationships.

There's a similar situation when it comes to students on campus. For many it is perfectly possible to study and collaborate with colleagues from home and if lectures are recorded why come to campus at all if you don't happen to live there? Many were worried about this when more and more content went online and with today's collaborative tools you can also have close face-to-face online contact with tutors and study groups. The role of the campus is therefore being revised from being a place where you were a consumer of content in lecture halls to a place where you actively discuss, experiment and produce in flexible learning spaces. Classroom time needs to be made be unmissable, the time when you can solve problems, discuss issues in depth and carry out practical lab work that cannot be simulated. You simply have to be there.

So back to the office. The online element will continue to develop and we can't expect everyone to be at their desks from nine to five. We need to create workplaces that are worth going to but where the online element is nevertheless essential. Both the physical and the digital spaces need to be integrated. Many workplaces have become creative and flexible environments with space for teamwork, online collaboration and silent concentration but sometimes the focus is so much on the on-site work that the online element is only included in some activities rather than being ubiquitous. In the academic world however both teaching and research have traditionally been solitary activities. I suspect that this, rather than technology, is the main reason for the empty corridors mentioned in the article. Technology has simply made it easier to stay away but the tendency has always been there as long as the focus has been on the individual.

The key is more collaboration and teamwork. If course development is a team activity then the workplace needs to be designed to facilitate this. The same goes for research teams. Maybe we also need to create spaces where staff and students can mix and work together. However it's not just about the physical space. Most teams and projects will always have colleagues who are elsewhere and it's essential that the on-site and online spaces are as seamlessly connected as possible. You simply can't expect everyone to always be on-site and you will always need external expertise.

To enable this video communication needs to become even more ubiquitous so that meetings with online colleagues can be set up easily and with a good quality connection from every part of the office space. Online colleagues can then be brought into any discussion without the need to book a certain room or spend time setting up headsets or external speakers. Document sharing, collaborative writing, online work spaces and asynchronous discussion spaces also need to be standard practice. Are there ways to allow online colleagues be part of social occasions in the office? Maybe allow them to drop in on a coffee break or celebration. We can invest a lot in redesigning the physical space to facilitate collaboration but we also need to redesign the online spaces so they offer similar inspiration and ensure that the two worlds are integrated. The office space can and should be repopulated but we need to expand the concept and see the office as both a physical and a digital space.

Working nine to five ...

  by brianhendrix

For many years we've seen articles about hi-tech companies creating stimulating creative workplaces as well as encouraging employees to work in coffee shops or at home. Greater freedom and flexibility fosters greater creativity and responsibility, or so the story goes. However when the going gets tough the flexibility tends to disappear and companies revert to the controlled and familiar workplace of the 20th century. Deep down organisations are not really comfortable with independent home- or road-working employees and there's a strong belief that everyone should be in the office when they're working.

According to an article on CNN, CEO right: Yahoo workers must show up, Yahoo's new CEO, Marissa Mayer, wants employees back in the office instead of working from home or on the road. Things are indeed extremely tough for Yahoo and she believes that it's time to get everyone back in the building and in their cubicles from nine to five to be able to focus on getting back on track. The article claims that despite advances in videoconferencing and social media top management still spend about 80% of their time in face-to-face meetings. I would suggest that top management are often the last people to embrace new means of communication such as social media, preferring the traditional channels and structures. I'm not sure face-to-face is always as productive as it's often claimed to be. Although some face-to-face meetings can be very rewarding and productive I find many of them an unnecessary waste of a lot of time and a shorter e-meeting would have solved the problem much faster. In an asynchronous net discussion everyone has a say and there's time to think before you write, a luxury you don't have in a f2f meeting. In some cases we probably don't even need to have a meeting.

Is this a knee-jerk reaction that you have to be gathered in the same building to be able to work together? Is it a desire for more control, making sure that everyone is "on duty"? Does it show a lack of trust in the workforce? I think it's an instinctive and understandable back-to-basics move in the face of a serious situation. However the article in CNN reveals a lot of common stereotypes about flexible working - that people working from home have an easy option or may not be focusing on the right tasks (are office workers really more focused?). The article only mentions e-mail as communication channel for home workers, nothing about the successful use of e-meetings, communities, collaborative writing, crowd-sourcing, video forums and so on.

Flexibility can and does work if people feel empowered and motivated. Sometimes the strictest boss on earth is the one inside your head and I've found working days at home to be much more productive than many in the office.

Outsourced grading

In a world where just about everything seems to have been outsourced it was no surprise to read in the Chronicle of Higher Education that a university in the US is sending student papers to India to be graded (Some papers are uploaded to Bangalore to be graded). Courses with hundreds of students make it impossible for the teachers to do all the grading and so there's now a company that will take strain by sending papers to Indian graduates to grade. The argument in favour of this is that it provides neutral assessment and allows the teachers more time for teaching and discussion with students. Another argument against teachers grading their own students is the risk of subjectivity and favoritism.

In reply to the Chronicle article is a blog post by Dean Dad on Inside Higher Ed, Outsourcing grading, claiming that this type of outsourcing is far from new. Larger universities have always used graduate students to grade undergraduate papers and whether these graduates are on campus or in Bangalore shouldn't really matter much. Neither should we claim that such outsourcing will lead to poorer quality in grading:

"I don't buy the 'quality' argument against it, either. If radiologists in India can read images, and programmers in India can work on developing and fixing incredibly sophisticated software, then surely some smart folks in India can handle some freshman comp papers. Seriously. Other information-based industries have endured outsourcing without the quality of the work suffering. Given the inarguable indifference with which our large universities have handled undergraduate teaching for so long, to suddenly get huffy and puffy about standards is disingenuous at best."

When education resembles industrial mass production as in classes of hundreds it is probably inevitable that industrial methods are used. The academic ideal is a low teacher student ratio but there is seldom the money to finance it. Curiously the smaller (and often less prestigious) institutions are the ones who can often offer closer student teacher contacts.

Nine till Five

Remember that seventies comedy with Dolly Parton about life in an office? Thirty years on, we've dumped the typewriters but most of us are still stuck in the office working nine till five as the song goes. We study more and more on-line and flexible learning has become an relatively accepted part of educational terminology but what about distance working? We can network with people from all corners of the globe and all knowledge is just a mouse click away but we still spend hours commuting to get to the place from where we do all that.

There's an article on this theme in Inside Higher Ed, Decentralized Work: The Final Frontier. Many universities that have extensive distance learning opportunities have not developed distance working to the same extent. I must admit I work very seldom from home even if there is seldom any good reason for not doing so. But very few of my colleagues do so and it just doesn't seem totally acceptable unless in exceptional circumstances. There's no law against it but the important point is there's no encouragement to do so either.

We're still set in our old industrial ways and somehow the feeling that if you're at your desk you're being productive is hard to erase. With all the fuss about swine flu I would guess that home working would be one way round the problem of infection but I haven't heard of any organisation that has tried this. Of course most people enjoy the social side of the workplace and there's no doubt that all the corridor and coffee room chat is important. However I find some days that I have more interaction with people in other towns and countries than I have with colleagues in the same building and therefore I could probably be able to do most of my work from home without interfering with my social contacts.

As the article writes:
"Whether you call it teleworking, Web working, telecommuting, distance working, or e-working, the concept is the same: Work isn’t some place you go, it’s something you do. It focuses on the information-age idea of decentralizing the office, as opposed to the industrial-age idea of bringing everyone to one single location."

Many people would probably work more efficiently from home and many would benefit from not having to commute every weekday but it requires the management to lead the way and make it not only possible but accepted. The technology is all there it's just the mindset that hasn't caught up.