We cannot allow remote learning to create undereducated students

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated just how vital and valuable technology is to education. It’s also shown how far we still have to go in leveraging that technology to improve learning and prepare students for college and beyond.

When the pandemic shuttered schools across the country and sent tens of millions of students home, many institutions quickly shifted to remote teaching to prevent catastrophic learning loss. While necessary, this stopgap solution had an inherent flaw: Few teachers were actually prepared for the transition to online instruction, particularly in K-12.

The past year and a half has been a largely passive learning experience for many high school students. Attendance in virtual classrooms paled in comparison to traditional classroom environments. When students were present, teachers often struggled to keep them engaged. Assignment completion rates were down. For others, issues outside of their control, such as internet access or distractions at home, proved to be a hindrance.

The pandemic exposed and exacerbated a persistent problem within education: Students possess the technological tools for learning, but educators still haven’t figured out the best way to use those tools to improve instruction. Underlying this issue of how technology is impacting education, for good or ill, is the reality that high schools and universities often have very different strategies for how to deploy it.

Colleges and universities have harbored concerns about technology’s influence over students’ ability to learn and retain information long before COVID. In a world where the answers to many questions are merely a click or a “Hey Alexa” away, educators worry that students are losing valuable metacognition and career skills, such as critical and dialectic thinking.

These tools offer convenience, providing easily digestible information in small chunks or soundbites, but students aren’t integrating and synthesizing this knowledge. There’s something to be said for finding information on your own, reading it, comprehending it, and writing a paper about it. In many cases, however, this isn’t happening and, as a result, students may struggle when they make the transition to college, where these skills are essential.

We’ve seen this developmental decline manifest in a number of ways in higher education. Students who have grown up with smartphones and social media and learned to communicate in short, coded messages may struggle to write in full sentences. Even concepts as simple as studying and note-taking can be a struggle for students who are accustomed to technology doing the heavy lifting. Some students indicate a preference for electronic textbooks, because you can easily use a glossary to find a word without having to read it in a passage or see it in context. Add remote learning to the equation and you have a recipe for a potentially undereducated population of students.  

While the pandemic presented tremendous challenges to educators at every level, colleges and universities, already equipped with more experience in virtual and hybrid instruction, were better prepared for the sudden shift to remote learning than their K-12 counterparts. Higher education institutions relied on backwards design methodologies — in which instructional methods are determined based on pre-set goals — to tailor their curriculum to a virtual learning environment.

High schools, on the other hand, were less well-equipped for online instruction, lacking much of the physical and pedagogical infrastructure that higher education institutions possessed. In their rush to set up online classrooms, many schools were singularly focused on the modality and less concerned with content and outcomes. 

While the country has begun to reopen and more and more students are returning to campuses and classrooms, the reality is that remote and hybrid learning are here to stay, along with an abundance of other educational technology. So how do we improve upon these resources? How do we ensure our technology meets the moment?

Similar to the way intelligence agencies came together to share resources and information after 9/11, high schools and universities must form better partnerships in a post-COVID world. There’s much that we could learn from each other, to the mutual benefit of both sides.

High schools have been much quicker to embrace new technology, from e-textbooks to learning applications. They could help guide higher education institutions, which traditionally have been slow to adopt these tools, through the process of implementing technology in the classroom. Meanwhile, colleges and universities could lend their expertise to help high schools improve the content of their curriculum, especially for remote learners.

Simply starting a dialogue between these parties is a critical first step, yet there is little evidence that these conversations are taking place. If educators and administrators at the college and high school level don’t get on the same page when it comes to integrating technology into instruction, student development may remain or become even further stunted — which could have ramifications when they enter the workforce. Students who lack critical thinking and complex reasoning skills may struggle to graduate. And if they do, they may struggle to land higher-skilled jobs.

Better cooperation between secondary and higher education long has been needed. Add to that the influence of technology and the incongruity with which it’s deployed in high school versus how it’s used in college, plus the gaps in learning created by COVID and remote education, and it becomes even more clear that this dialogue is long overdue.

Expanding the use of transitional programs, such as dual enrollment and summer bridge programs, is one way to improve the synergy between secondary and higher ed and better prepare students for college. Dual enrollment, in particular, has been shown to not only increase the likelihood that students will attend college, but also to improve their performance once they get there. Unfortunately, many of these programs were canceled or scaled back over the past year and a half. Increased funding and a heightened emphasis on these programs, post-pandemic, could help high school students get back on track.

Ultimately, departments of education and offices of higher education across the country need to facilitate these conversations, getting university administrators and district superintendents at the table. We all have the same goals: educating students and giving them the skills they need for work and for life. It’s past time we talked about how we can achieve that.

Anita Thomas, PhD, is the executive vice president and provost at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minn.