Kurucay and Inan (2017) as applied to pandemic learning

 Kurucay and Inan (2017) studied just under 80 undergraduate students enrolled in online learning, to study the extent to which peer interaction is beneficial in this distance education model. While I feel that some of these implications can extend beyond its original context, my focus will be to relate this article to:

(a)   our experience teaching virtually during the first pandemic lockdown 

(b)  my experience teaching an online summer school course, again during the pandemic

(c)   our experience as graduate students in the Professional Masters of Education Program

With respect to the word count suggestion, I will discuss my response to the article and then connect it with focus (c). For my discussion on (a) and (b), I will please direct you to my course blog. Thank you!

 

 In preparing this week's discussion posts, I realized I would run out of words to explore Kurucay and Inan's (2017) implications to the degree I wanted to. Their article explored the benefits of student interaction and collaboration in the context of a distance learning model. While there were discrepancies in what students perceived and actual, demonstrated results, for the most part it seemed that collaboration led to positive results in terms of the process of and output from learning. 

In early-mid 2022, many of us found ourselves teaching online for the first time. Depending on where you were in the world, perhaps you had spring break to at least predict that we wouldn't return to school, and to start to prepare your resources. Others had little to no turnaround time, as cases rose suddenly. 

First, before relating pandemic learning to Kurucay and Inan's study (2017), I need to state that I was in a privileged position. I lived alone in a microstudio and, while this offered challenges of its own, I was not immediately responsible for anyone other than myself. I. had access to food and toilet paper, I was in regular phone contact with my partner and our families. I recognize that, were I in different conditions, the online teaching component would have looked and felt very different. 

Our province, district, and school had specific limitations around what the March - June learning experience was to look like for students. The primary objective was to ensure the safety and wellbeing of students and their families, and so there was a priority around SEL. We did not push content, but we offered it to students able to participate. This was a way not just to "get curriculum done," but to offer students even an intellectual distraction from the ongoing pandemic. 

With the time limitations, we delivered asynchronous learning material once per week. This was typically on the Monday. I held office hours, but also attended to email for students who could not log into Zoom sessions. Our weekly assignments all had to be designed for individual completion, but my colleague encouraged me to add group options. We both taught the same course, so we worked together to design ways in which work could be completed asynchronously and virtually, in groups. We didn’t have Microsoft Teams at the time, so students who chose to work in groups, did so largely through Google docs. There were some students who also used other chat programs, and sent me screenshots that way. While I can’t remember what percent of students engaging in online learning chose to work in groups, I do recall the number who chose to attend our virtual office hours. These were held on a weekly basis, and from the first meeting, they turned out not to be traditional “office hours,” but just an informal space to talk about whatever poem we were learning that week, and about any thoughts and feelings students had. This was less learner-learner interaction, and more learner-teacher-learner interaction. But the students who attended usually seemed keen to participate. 

In this context, peer-peer engagement was helpful largely from a socioemotional standpoint. Of course, this was also specific to our pandemic context, and the limitations of this example would also include the fact that students had met each other in person, and were friends prior to the start of this short-term online learning experience. 

 

That same year, I taught summer school where the course ran entirely online. Classes were synchronous, and taught through Zoom. Especially being an English course for English Language Learners it was determined that formative group work was important to the curriculum. I was asked to have regular opportunities for students to discuss and share their ideas. But the course was designed for students who had never taken a full English course before, based on ELL level; plus, they didn’t know each other, as students came from a variety of schools across the district. As such, it was challenging to generate language output practice in a Zoom class of 24. So, with the Zoom technology, I set up regular break-out rooms where students were to engage in our course content with each other (i.e. learner-learner). I would pop in to breakout rooms during this time, with the help of the district ELL Coordinator (who supported our class virtually, as well). Because one of the learning outcomes of this course was to communicate in our target language, I do feel that, as found in Kurucay and Inan’s study (2017), there was positive washback from peer engagement, in an online learning model. 

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