Learning While Living

Description

I've seen my remote learning students fit their studies into evening hours and weekends, taking full loads of courses while tending to the responsibilities of life outside the university. When the rest of higher education experienced this same problem in early 2020, I wondered how education can best fit into fractured and busy lives. Video lectures, podcasts, and third-party resources offer the ability to optimize content for time and attention constraints, but how should educators balance convenience and focus?

This problem is not limited to education. We increasingly take our work home with us (or while quarantining, annihilate the distinction). Multiple jobs and side gigs have become the norm. Social media and digital platforms have collected our last moments of free time and created an economy of attention. How should remote learning fit into this landscape when it does not have the siloed protection of a university campus?

As someone who has worked in audio/video production and online marketing, I'm aware of many tools and trends in online communication, but I'm curious how other educators think about time and attention, and to see what new forms education can take besides traditional course structures.

Interaction

Can remote learning achieve the enveloping focus of a university setting or should it adapt to fit into the busy lives of students and faculty?

Can digital media and innovative course structures compress education into “micro-doses” for full-time workers and parents? Should they?

Should remote learning compete with the production values and delivery forms of non-academic tutorials and media content?

Outcomes

I’m interested in brainstorming ways to help students get the most out of the time they have available for remote learning, and discussing the tradeoffs of designing courses for convenience. By sharing media platforms and learning resources, I hope participants will leave with new tools for their remote course delivery and some critical ideas on how online education can exist in the same web browser as YouTube and Netflix.

Within the fields of art and design, I’m interested in discussing how projects can be adapted for student’s home environments and communities outside the university, and how content delivery and project design can leverage the affordances of the latest technology. In the future, I may investigate alternative learning structures like one credit courses or free online content.