Szilárd VAJDA's blog

Marquez put his characters in the time of the cholera, right now we are living in the time of COVID-19.  The virus is one thing, but the fear, the uncertainty, the unknown, the rising number of fatalities all around the world is creating panic everywhere. It is scary but still, life is going on.  Even  though some of us would like to freeze the time this is just not possible. As the horrors from WWII engraved in our parents and grand parents memory, we'll have to live with this pandemic the rest of our lives. Sad.

Education.  While people are infected and dying and we just acknowledge the numbers, we have to make sure that the next generation of intellectuals are educated properly no matter what. We can not have f2f meetings, schools are closed and restrictions are in place everywhere all over the world, however, we educators are trying our best. Not all of us, but at least some of us. And students need us more than ever. Not just really to teach them how to add two numbers, but also to keep them busy and assure them that their intellectual skills will be at the highest level once they go look for a job on a market which most probably will considerably shrink in the upcoming months. 

Zoom. Most of us never heard this name before and over the night it became a new entry in our vocabulary. Zoom good, zoom bad, zoom amazing, zoom free, zoom bombing, etc. A video chat tool which was used by 10 million people just became the toy and daily working tool of some 200 million users worldwide. Impressive. Teams or Skype just simply suck. Sorry Microsoft. Same with Google Hangouts. I am not blaming them, their business focus is somewhere else but "we the people" just voted: Zoom.

Like any other tool, Zoom is a video chat application which can host hundreds of people and compared to other solutions it is just working. Yes, it does. Actually it is flawless compared to other solutions which companies or educational institutions are offering nowadays. I've heard and seen many halfway integrations lately but things done in a hurry lead to unstable, not reliable often crashing and useless solutions. [Remark: Open a software engineering book and you will see the reasons.]

For students it is very important to have an intuitive, easy to use tool which can give them access to classes, to professors, to fellow students and in general they need some way to interact. Interaction is the soul of education though some administrators/educators think differently. Unfortunately, each faculty is using a different tool which can create confusion among the students. However, you can not force the hand of the faculty either. Some of us we barely manage to use a computer not to mention some sophisticated tool with authentication, settings on some obscure pages, etc. We are just not there yet. Sorry, we are old school.

Online education. Yet another enigma. It is surrounding us for years but we all know the quality is ... Of course there is a niche for such type of education, but my opinion is that online is just not how you  can transfer good quality knowledge. If it would be, there would be no more universities and schools. However, they are still there. Are they not?

Online educators. Hmm. Wow. Can you imagine that somebody is teaching/educating all her/his career in a classroom f2f with the students and now over the weekend it should change to online. The Hungarian PM switched the whole education in a weekend to online stating "we solved the education problem". No. He didn't! Not at all. Same with universities. You can not ask somebody to make such a huge paradigm shift over the night. And please do not come with "good tips for online education" type of links. A teacher is learning trough the whole career to be a good educator, so some links and videos are not helping. No, they do not help! Those who are sending those links they usually do not have a clue what education means and what is to have interaction with students. The more links they send the more is showing their complete lack of knowledge, but usually it is the only thing they can do.

Online interaction. Very hard to get to the students via a chat software. First, students they do not want to show themselves over the camera and they switch off their mic too, so it is pretty much radio silence over all the courses and the interaction is minimalistic. How somebody should judge if a concept was perceived or not if there is no eye contact, no body language to observe, etc. Even if you can see your students trough the cameras no way to pay attention to the lecture and to each camera separately. Impossible. And of course your speech, the slides if any, the cameras, the voices and the chat discussions. It is just too much. 

Quality. I am seeing educators all over the world talking about the quality, more precisely about the lack of quality in this teaching scenario. Some classes can be taught online, no doubt about that, but some classes are just not meant to be taught that way. On top of that many of us we re just not prepared for such type of classes, many of us do not even believe in the efficiency of such classes, so the verdict is obvious.

Students. We talk about everything but nobody asked the students what they want, how they handle the situation and if they consider this "online education" appropriate. They are pretty much spectators in this game, without much to say and nobody is listening to them. Are they happy when some professor is just sending them some slides with some dry concepts on it? No, they are not but nobody cares. Educational officials they give sound speeches, write articles how great they did, but nobody is mentioning that in US 20+% of students do not have broadband Internet access. How those poor souls are they going to access those "great materials". They do not have computers, they do not have software, etc. Nobody is thinking about those students. Are they not important? Unfortunately it does not look like that they do matter. So, instead of all these empty speeches those in charge should think  more about those students and give them equal opportunities. 

At the end of the day, we have to realize that online education is just not the solution, but currently is the only possibility to reach out to students and to try to some extent to transfer some knowledge. We were not prepared for such a switch and the negative reverberations will be seen soon. As a transitionary solution it can be accepted, but a lot of time and effort is needed from students and educators to find that solution which works for both parties. Nobody is wining here! The students will not receive the education they need and the educators will be frustrated. 

I hope soon all educators and students can return to the classrooms to restart the real education, but till then we are just innocent bystanders in a show for which we did not paid a ticket.