The future of e-learning

Dale Pobega, Wyndham Community and Education Centre

I don't know if it comes as a surprise to most fellow union members, but Adult Community Education (ACE) workers also form a part of the NTEU – though you may not hear much about us or our particular issues. It's a sector made up of community centres and neighbourhood houses that rightfully prides itself on catering to the needs of adult learners who are unlikely, in the first instance, to pass through the doors of a TAFE, college or private provider.

Community based providers deliver both accredited and non-accredited courses. In the English language, literacy, numeracy and digital skills space, teachers have identical qualifications to those working in TAFE – but typically work for half the pay and like our colleagues in the tertiary sector, have problems securing permanency.

So, there are several issues to do with casualisation, workload and remuneration that remain sticking points for many.

When COVID-19 hit and teachers were suddenly asked to do that much more – often with very little or no training in e-learning – I think these issues became quite pronounced.

As we go forward there is a reasonable belief that things can never be the same again and that online and blended delivery will be the order of the day, but you do wonder whether that will be a plus or a minus for most teachers.

What also comes to mind is how do we provide training to those who are new to e-learning?

I teach English as an Additional Language (EAL) at Wyndham Community Education Centre in Melbourne's west for part of the week and do e-learning consultancy, teacher mentoring and project work in the area of Adult English Language, Literacy, Numeracy and Digital Skills (ALLND) the rest of the time.

I've worked for the last 30 years in ALLND with stints in editing and publishing for organisations such as the Victorian Adult Literacy and Basic Education Council (VALBEC). From the late 90s to mid-2000s I managed a couple of Online Learning Networks and conducted teacher training in e-learning through the old TAFE Virtual Campus. The work I do nowadays continues to straddle language teaching, mentoring and developing effective online and blended approaches appropriate for adult learners.

People sometimes ask what motivates me and why I stay in Adult Community Education. The answer is most definitely my adult students.

I lived overseas for most of the 1980s, so I have direct experience of what it is like to be a foreigner struggling with a new language and culture. My parents, too, had very few opportunities to learn due to the dislocating factors associated with war, poverty, migration and disability.

So, I often see reflections of them in my own students. That inspires me to stay where I am needed most and to do the best I possibly can as a teacher.

I think the experience of learning online in the last year or so has been at the forefront of everyone's minds. We are now wondering what lies ahead: what needs to be kept and valued in our traditional teaching approach and what needs to change?

The health emergency has had a hugely dislocating effect, particularly for many adult students with very low English language and literacy skills. As you would appreciate, many of these learners require face-to-face attention as their tech skills are also generally low and they have neither the resources nor support at home to cope well on their own.

I do think, however, COVID-19 opened up opportunities for adult learners studying at middle Foundational levels. These students, whose skills are slightly higher or mixed, have been able to actually enhance the way they study. They have worked more closely with me individually because we were all freed up from the strictures of the timetable.

Last year was a relief in the sense that I did not have to always manage the whole class at the same time and in the same place from one week to the next. I discovered several new ways to engage with students and get them engaging with one another. For example, my students have recently been forming ‘learning circles’ in which they can work effectively together in smaller groups and in their own chosen time on language-based projects.

That’s not to say there is no explicit teaching, meeting as a whole class or individual work they do with me, but there is now a broader range of working arrangements around content that they move between quite comfortably.

Most of the students I have been teaching online for more than a year now like the greater level of flexibility, the time savings, and the way the learning is differently organised than is usually the case in face to face classrooms.

My students tell me they have more time to prepare and look for employment as part of their mutual obligations, to better attend to the needs of their families – to have what we all crave: a better study/work/life balance. I found that students at this foundation level embraced online learning enthusiastically and are mostly keen to continue with it.

Their attendance is better and so too their assessment results. The positive student feedback over almost a year and half I have received convinces me that is very much the case.

This coming term we will study one day in the classroom and two days online. I must say, I'm very lucky to work for a progressive organisation like Wyndham CEC which recognises the value of a mixed approach. I think that the encouragement of blended learning is also a very wise strategy and form of insurance for the future as any temporary worsening of the health emergency means that students are capable of immediately moving back into total online learning mode.

Provided there is a reliable electronic channel for communication, a strategy for timely distribution and return of materials, good use of online synchronous conferencing for the group – and lots of fun – a great deal can be achieved online.

Working online does not have to be isolating or involve sacrificing the social contact students crave to be with one another and their teacher. For instance, my own students have recently been setting up their own 'learning circles', using ZOOM to work together, practice drills, and meet online for a social chat.

I never thought that possible of students with tech skills that were initially very basic. I think it's a sign of just how far they have come in the space of a year. They are now working in a peer-oriented way that you would expect of typically younger, much more tech savvy students in the tertiary sector.

Online learning may not be perfect, but the important realisation I had was that neither is the traditional face to face classroom. The one-tomany teaching approach, poor use of time and limiting resources precludes many other possibilities and configurations for learning.

It makes me wonder whether the COVID-19 experience of 2020 has given some impetus to the vision of two of Australia's most eminent educationalists, Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. For them the future of education holds the possibility of ‘no pedagogical differences [existing] between learning in person and learning online’.

It's a controversial idea and one I am not entirely sure will be realised but, like it or not, we are definitely being pushed towards a blended form of delivery – or one in which we will need to move deftly between actual and virtual classrooms as circumstances allow or dictate. It will be interesting to see how this new way of delivering education evolves.