With online learning in the spotlight of education, how do human needs fit?

Structure & Success Criteria

How does your systems and structures fit your success criteria?

Over the past decade, online learning has been leading a gradual shift in the role of the teacher through increasingly flexible pedagogical learning practices. These practices, enabled by the internet and web based applications, are showing more and more promise for teachers to be able to facilitate learning centered around students. Not only is the teacher gathering their students to lead large group lessons, teachers are able to flex their facilitation muscles as learning guides and coaches right alongside their students. Now jump to 2020-2021: The global health pandemic has put human needs front and center as the mainstream calls for real time cohort style synchronous learning (face-to-face and/or online). Where do both of these worlds come together? Will a preferred combination of online learning and in person learning emerge? Will there be a new ‘default setting’ for learning post 2021? How do your systems and structures fit your success criteria? With students in the center of the learning, where does it all fit?

We as humans like to know where things fit. In life, unlike a 1000 piece puzzle, all of the pieces don’t always fit how you might think. I am not going to attempt to specifically answer all of these questions, but rather provide some observations and connections to us as human beings.

Win in the Dark

In the book “Win in the Dark” by Lucas Jadin (Appleton eSchool teacher who teaches Mindset Mastery and Health), he talks about how ‘some people think you shine under the bright lights’, but Lucas Jadin contests that ‘the bright lights of the performance only reveal your work in the dark.’

During the COVID-19 Pandemic of the 2020-2021 school year, the bright lights of mainstream are shining ever so brightly into schools and education. As communities across the country have gone through ‘safer at home’ orders over the past year, schools along with entire communities, have been compelled to shine the bright lights into solutions that provide the necessary flexibility to conduct school during these unprecedented times. Online learning or related forms of it have been called on to save the day; however, instead of the lights highlighting proven online best practices and veteran programs, the spotlights are intensely focusing on loose correlations to online learning commonly referred to as ‘emergency remote learning’. Because of the nature of the overwhelming size of the current health emergency, these novel and expedited styles of online learning have been forced into the domain of decades worth of online pedagogy. In the majority of cases, the bright lights are not uncovering veteran programs who are carrying on with continued success, instead the lights are showing emergency remote learning as one in the same as proven long standing online schools and programs.

Hierarchy of needs

What else are the bright lights uncovering? From my observations, understandably so, the lights are uncovering very vocal and passionate voices for ‘in person’ learning. However, the voices did not stop there. When circumstances became clear that in person learning was not a current option, the vocal voices shifted to synchronous cohort style learning. Concurrent with the calls for synchronous learning, voices continued asking for individual faces to be visible on web cameras during synchronous zooms or google meets. We also observed pleas for structured hour by hour cohorts each day. When one takes a moment and steps back from this emotional feedback, none of this seems terribly surprising. In fact, much of what we have been experiencing looks to align with a well known gentleman’s work: Abrham Maslov and his hierarchy of needs. Let’s take a look at Maslov’s hierarchy:

https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

A quick summary of Abraham Maslov’s needs from 1943:

Physiological needs: Basic necessities like food, water, shelter, sleep and homeostasis.

Safety needs: Personal and financial security and health and well being.

Love/Belonging needs: Social, love, friendships, intimacy and family.

Esteem needs progress from dignity, independence and a sense of achievement to attaining accomplishments, prestige and respect in the society.
Self actualization is about achieving one’s full potential. This includes creative activities.

When reflecting on the voices calling out during the pandemic, the majority of them seem to align with “deficiency needs” at the bottom of the Maslov’s pyramid of needs. “Maslov said that people are motivated to meet their physiological needs (food, shelter, exercise, shelter) first, before they can attend to higher needs. Then they want safety (personal, emotional, financial). Then comes belonging (family, friends, connection). Only after these basic and psychological needs are met can people concern themselves with achievement and goal setting.” (Heather Staker - https://www.readytoblend.com/post/20-as-schools-cancel-mindthegap)

What also seems logical is that when ‘in person’ learning was taken away from nearly all families, it appears that many people slid from Self-Actualization back to the Physiological, Safety, Social and Esteem needs as many of us had built structures into our lives that we counted on each and every day with little to no major disruptions.

Now what was surprising is that we did not hear loudly in large numbers the cries for flexibility. In fact, it was the opposite, it was voices asking for structure, predictability and familiarity closely tied to real time human interaction.

The top most level of Maslov’s needs is the “growth” need (Self Actualization). Engaging in this layer increases one’s thirst to grow, be better and/or continuously improve. As we take a closer look at how this relates to online learning, I imagine for many people, online learning fits into the Self Actualization slot on Maslov’s pyramid.

Top 3 Reasons Students Select Online Courses

To support this claim, I referenced data from student surveys at the Appleton eSchool. According to Appleton eSchool students, the top three reasons they picked online courses are:

1) Flexibility to decide when I work on the course

2) Opens up my schedule at my traditional high school

3) Looking for course acceleration or enrichment (https://www.digitallearningcollab.com/blog/is-mainstream-the-goal-for-students)

The results show that the majority of Appleton eSchool students are taking online courses for flexibility in addition to or part of their regular programming.

I have written in previous blog posts that online learning is part of what we do and a necessary component to be planned for in our school districts. This argument is based on the observation that humans are seeking one’s full potential through growth opportunities and flexibility is needed to accomplish just that. Maslov’s work is alive and well today just as it was published back in 1943. Students are looking to schools to have fun with friends and to be successful. Flexibility is not lost within the loud voices. Online learning, clunky and fine tuned variations, is currently providing the infrastructure that we all hope will keep schools moving forward long into the future.

Indeed, under the lights a vast breadth of work is on display in the mainstream as large volumes of schools seek refuge into various forms of emergency remote learning. The lights include established veteran online learning programs, but you might have to turn on your ‘location services’ in your ‘online learning gps’ to find them. Successful online learning pedagogy was not born overnight. It is a result of years of hard work that has been put in by countless education leaders and teachers over many years in both K-12 and higher education. As you reflect on the online learning experience within your structures and success criteria so far, where does the future of your online program stack up as you consider the following questions: Will emergency remote learning influence online learning? Will it change our traditional school setting? Will there be a new default setting for learning? What is the expected role of teachers? Will schools be asked to formalize a human need component for learning? Is your success criteria calibrated with students at the center and staff working together to support this system? How does this all fit and what happens next? One thing is certain, a lot remains unknown. As we move forward together, I hope that we all value human needs, choice and flexibility as much as ever.

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