By Laura Schlenke (opens in new tab) and Ken Mead (opens in new tab)
Image credit: iStock
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected people worldwide, from IT administrators to information workers, teachers, and students. While this blog has previously discussed the changes seen in the K-12 segment, (opens in new tab) we wanted to investigate what is happening in higher education to understand what challenges are new or remain, and how students are navigating the complexities of distance learning.
Innovating for informal communications
Consistent with what we have seen in consumer research, for the education audience, email is used primarily for formal communications. Examples of formal communications would be between a student and recruiter, or between two teachers if they were not already familiar with one another.
Most exchanges regarding school matters, however, are informal, and take place across a wide variety of non e-mail channels. GroupMe, a Microsoft product, was one of the most used chat apps for student discussions during class and in general for collaboration with others. Many students said their peers were setting up their own unofficial class-wide chat through GroupMe for peer-to-peer class discussion and information sharing. With assignment information spread over multiple systems, and official class online calls being “awkward” forums to ask clarifying questions, GroupMe is a place for students to confirm due dates, assignment details and ask “those questions you’re too afraid to ask in class.”
Although informal exchanges are happening elsewhere, students nonetheless report that email is vital—as it is the primary way they are connecting to their professors and with potential recruiters, as well as accessing their school directory.
Overcoming distraction amidst the loss of structure
Adapting to remote and hybrid learning has been difficult for many, including school administrators, teachers, parents, and students. In addition to overcoming the basic hurdles of hardware, internet connectivity, and new tools, other more subtle challenges have cropped up over time.
Students’ sense of staying on top of things has been further undermined by:
- Losing the daily structure and segmentation of their days provided by in-person learning, including:
-
-
- Class and passing periods/bells.
- Impromptu check-ins with teachers and support staff.
- In-class working sessions with peers.
- Indirect lessons in time and task management.
-
- Lacking the time with others to learn basic socialization skills e.g., manners like sharing and waiting one’s turn, or the ability to pick up on non-verbal cues.
In addition, students are struggling to remember their class schedules, when they need to be in-person or remote, and which of their teachers prefer their classes to use what set of tools. Digging further into this last pain point: The tendency of teachers to vary in the scheduling they keep, their preferred online communication and work channels, and the calendaring system, if any, they provide to students seemed the hardest for students to overcome. To have a semblance of consistency and ownership over their schedules, many student participants reported adding all class lectures (in person and remote), labs, and assignment due dates to their personal online calendar by hand.
Navigating a bewildering array of tools
Another aspect of the move to distance learning has included having to learn and manage multiple new web-based communication channels, learning management systems, and tools, often with little to no support from educational institutions.
In addition, not every student or teacher within a school is given or chooses the same set of tools, making collaboration and turning in assignments often more difficult and time consuming. Then, to add insult to injury, these communication channels and tools are often used inconsistently by students’ peers, teachers, and even schools, leading many to feel overwhelmed and their attention fragmented.
College students we interviewed who used the Microsoft 365 suite say they must learn and use a complicated array of tools to be successful at school. And it’s not only the number of new tools to learn: inconsistent usage by professors and apps that don’t play well together only add to students’ feelings of being stressed and overwhelmed.
Here are a few examples:
- At one university, incoming students could choose their digital tool suite. Difficulties sometimes arose when students using different tools had to collaborate on a class project, causing confusion and sometimes negotiation for which tool within which suite to use.
- Several students reported that some teachers would primarily use one communication channel and then inexplicably send an announcement or assignment via a different channel, causing the students undue stress.
- One school provided teachers with different types of laptops and a different tool suite than what students received. For teachers, this meant teaching using one set of applications, while students turned in assignments with another.
- Some schools would provide one suite uniformly, but if an individual teacher didn’t like a particular tool within that suite, they’d choose to require a different tool be used by their students. Students would have to adjust to the demands of each of their individual teachers or professors.
Just as students grapple with a large and fragmented ecosystem of tools, teachers are confronted with learning new and disparate technologies to successfully conduct class in a remote or hybrid environment. They are frustrated by the amount of time and energy spent dealing with technological issues, which cuts into precious class time and lesson planning.
Even while higher education students are encountering their fair share of difficulties and distractions with distance learning, they are continuing to learn, while finding ways to adjust, adapt, and innovate. We will continue to look at ways to not only ease pain points, but help students and teachers work more seamlessly across platforms, tools, and form factors for a more productive and positive learning experience.
What do you think? Are you a student, parent, or teacher in higher education? How does this resonate with your experience and how do you think technology can adapt to help? Tweet us your thoughts @MicrosoftRI (opens in new tab) or follow us on Facebook (opens in new tab) and join the conversation.
Laura Schlenke is a senior user researcher at Microsoft. She is experienced at leading strategy, planning and logistics for various forms of design research and usability efforts and at collaborating with multi-disciplinary teams throughout project lifecycles. Schlenke is driven by her passion to combine interpersonal communication, usability, and human advocacy in order to assist diverse populations.
Ken Mead is UX Researcher with a strong design background. He has 6 years of industry experience in fast-paced start-up environments, helping organizations implement digital business strategies to improve their work environment, productivity and growth. He has a Master’s in Human-Computer Interaction from UC Irvine.