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DIGITAL PE AT THE HEART OF THE
convergence: canada
B y R o b e r t G ré g o i re / / E x e c u t i v e D i re c t o r , R E FA D The somewhat mysterious expression “digital pedagogy” has become part of everyday vocabulary with the introduction, in 2018, of the Digital Action Plan for Education and Higher Education in Quebec. In the past, we spoke more simply about online teaching and learning, and educational technologies. The Réseau d’enseignement francophone à distance (REFAD [French only]) is a nationwide organization that brings together institutions, businesses and professionals from all levels of education and training. Its mission is to facilitate coope ration among stakeholders and to encourage the development of innovative practices for distance learning and pedagogical approaches. The REFAD’s mission statement tasks it with being a constant presence among its members and stakeholders through the pooling of expertise, the sharing of knowledge and practices, professional development, networking and monitoring activities. The REFAD brings together more than 30 Canadian Francophone educational institutions in seven provinces and three levels of education. When it was founded in 1988, members of the REFAD worked on best practices for correspondence courses, that is, services offered to distance learners, for which the primary method of involvement consisted of exchanging educational material, feedback and occasionally evaluations by mail. This was only thirty years ago. We've come a long way since then!
TERMS FOR DISTANCE LEARNING As a result of the pandemic, the terms synchronous/ asynchronous, face-to-face/online, and hybrid have become part of popular jargon, creating healthy scepticism among some. These terms are used to describe how a course is delivered and how students learn remotely. Thus, when a
student registers for an online course, they connect to the course through a learning content management platform, where they identify themselves and progress through various learning sections. This method is in contrast to tradi tional classroom-based courses, which are often characterized as in-person courses (or sometimes referent to as “face-toface” courses). When online (i.e., from a remote location), students can log in at any time to pursue their learning. This type of learning is considered asynchronous because students progress at their own pace, regardless of how their peers are advancing in their own learning at their own convenience. For most online courses, in which learning topics are by definition taught through a learning content management platform, the instructor also schedules some time for discussions to ensure that the course is running smoothly. Any scheduled time, when all students log in at once with the instructor, is called synchronous. Prior to the pandemic, the minority of institutions offering online programs did so in a hybrid mode. This meant that students enrolled in an online course could learn at any time and from anywhere, but had to be present at regular times with their instructor and classmates in synchronous mode. Such hybridity occurred because students generally progressed asynchronously, at their own pace, while also being present synchronously at specific times. While it is still too early to generalize, the pivotal shift to online courses as a result of the pandemic has frequently required delivering so-called synchronous remote courses as a quick solution, with little or no pedagogical design to steer the students’ progress with online activities structured in a more pedagogical way. While synchronous teaching is a legiti mate approach, and one that most might think of as occurring through Zoom meetings or webinars, it should be noted that
