Contact works in multiple ways: Face time is overvalued
According to some learning is best achieved when it takes place in the traditional, face to face setting, where eye to eye contact is often seen as the marker of authentic teaching (p87 of the Manifesto). Learning does not necessarily take place in the class room or lecture theatre though, even in the traditional setting. When students leave the class room, they can still engage in learning. This could be in conversations with other students after class, around the dinner table with family or whilst going for a walk. One could argue that this learning outside the classroom is in fact better organised when education takes place online. During an online course, the students not only engage with the materials and the coursework, but they also communicate with both other students and the teachers through discussion forums, emails, Teams meetings or What’s app groups; the possibilities are almost endless.
Furthermore, face time does not always equal engagement of students. Does a student who is physically present necessarily engage in learning? By making eye contact, the teacher can keep some of the students’ attention or call upon those who are not actively participating, but just being in the same space does not automatically equal engagement. It could be argued that the digital environment is more efficient at keeping track of the student involvement by using the chat function during a synchronous session, following the forums the student’s engage in and so on. Whether student’s engagement needs to be monitored in such a way or if we should trust the students to take control of their own learning, is a different matter.
An argument could be made for the idea that digital teaching actually includes face time, although not in the traditional sense (Fawns 2019). Do you really need to be physically present to enjoy face time? Over the last months during the pandemic a lot of our (social) contact has taken place using electronic ways of seeing each other. Whether we see each other on Zoom, Teams, What’s App or FaceTime. It is a different type of contact, this two dimensional way of communicating, but it can be perceived as face time nonetheless.
Although face time can be achieved in digital education through online mediums, there are some exceptions to this. For practical teaching, a three dimensional meeting is needed and that is currently not possible. The medical students that are trained at the Edinburgh Medical School, still need to practice some Clinical Skills, for instance and currently that is only possible by being physically present. Although we are in the middle of a pandemic, this kind of teaching is still taking place in the traditional setting.
In conclusion, face time is overrated by some who favour traditional teaching as opposed to digital education. Digital education has many ways of meeting the student’s demands and making sure that students are engaged, maybe even more than the traditional setting does. Face time is also present in online education, just in a slightly different way, this does not make it less valuable as a teaching tool. Lastly, although most teaching can be done online there are some types of teaching where co-presence is still the only way, but who knows what the future holds?
Fawns, T. Postdigital Education in Design and Practice. Postdigit Sci Educ1, 132–145 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-018-0021-8Do Medical students, practical learning with patients needs to be f2f, so there are exceptions
This is a good post with a clear and cogent response to the Manifesto statement. the idea that teaching and education and learning occur in many environments including where learning is not the intention i well made. This distributed nature of learning and education is, of course, apparent in on-campus contexts – think of after class trips to a coffee shop of pub that involves social and educational discussions – but can be more explicit in digital environments as teachers and students navigate across multiple digital domains. A theme picked up later in the course is the idea that teaching is achieved not only by the human teacher but can be distributed to various technologies (a book, a chatbot, etc.). Your point about more hands on learning is well made and, perhaps, the Manifesto reflects its authors’ experience in humanities and social sciences? However, I was reading about vocational training in welding that was mainly conducted online with students who learned largely online out performed the in-person only students in the practical tests. In medical education, there is increasing used of virtual and augmented reality, eg, in anatomy as well.