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Despite teacher self-efficacy and burnout's influence on student outcomes, little research has been conducted on teacher self-efficacy and burnout in residential treatment schools. This study attempts to fill this need by examining the self-efficacy and burnout of teachers and paraeducators in a residential treatment school in the United States. We explore the relationships between educators' perceptions of school supports and educators' sense of self-efficacy and burnout Our results revealed that while educators' perceptions of school supports were not related to educators' sense of efficacy, there was a significant relationship between educators' perceptions of school supports and reported levels of burnout. Educators who reported lower levels of school supports had high levels of burnout. We discuss implications for larger studies on this topic and for supporting educator well-being in residential treatment schools.

Additional information

Author information

Funding

This work was supported by the William T. Grant Foundation [180276];

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Nathan Simmons and Rebecca Douglass for their contribution to this project. This work was supported by the William T. Grant Foundation under Grant # 180276.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Examining the relationship between perceptions of teaching self-efficacy, school support and teacher and paraeducator burnout in a residential school setting

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Despite teacher self-efficacy and burnout's influence on student outcomes, little research has been conducted on teacher self-efficacy and burnout in residential treatment schools. This study attempts to fill this need by examining the self-efficacy and burnout of teachers and paraeducators in a residential treatment school in the United States.

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Chrissy Romano Arrabito teaches second grade at an elementary school in Hackensack, N.J., a community that has been devastated by COVID-19 in recent weeks.

The school is located just a few miles outside New York City, the epicenter of the crisis in the U.S., in Bergen County, where nearly 11,000 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed.

"In talking to my students and their families, we're finding that just about everybody's been touched in some way by COVID-19, my family included," Romano Arrabito said during a recent EdSurge webinar on social-emotional learning. As such, she's "really trying to put the emotional well-being of these kids first," she added.

What that looks like for Romano Arrabito, at a time when schools across the country are shuttered indefinitely, is being available, flexible and frequently online. She sends a "morning message" to her students via video every day, so that they can see her and hear her voice, and answers calls from parents at 10 o'clock in the evenings, in special circumstances where she knows the family members are considered "essential workers" and are working odd hours.

"We're really in crisis mode here in Bergen County, so [I'm] just trying to keep in touch with kids, make sure that they're O.K. and that their basic needs are being met," she said. "It's a tough time for everybody."

Providing round-the-clock support to students is certainly valuable and admirable, said Christina Cipriano, another panelist during the webinar. But the director of research at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence also wants to make sure that teachers like Romano Arrabito, who are going to great lengths to support their students during these closures, are also making time to care for themselves.

"Your students are lucky to have you," Cipriano said to Romano Arrabito. "I'm just thinking about, you know, when do you turn the screen off, or turn the text messages off? On the one hand, it's tremendously important that you're so available and so flexible to the needs of your students.

But at the same time, this could be going on for a while," Cipriano added. "We need to make sure we're attending to our own emotional health and well-being, too, because it's not good for any of us to be 'on' in that way all the time."

Romano Arrabito was quick to clarify that she is still making time to care for herself. "I am not 'work, work, work' 24/7," she said, emphasizing that she doesn't want to condone that pace of work for other educators either. "You do have to go out for walks, [or] if you're tired, take a nap. I'm doing all those things. I'm making time for my hobbies."

But the exchange raised an interesting question about the expectations placed on educators during the pandemic. Confined to their homes, and often plugged in to their work via the internet, it's difficult to find a reason not to make yourself available to your students and their families, Romano Arrabito noted. So where does one draw the line?

Amy Mason, principal of Madison County Elementary School in Gurley, Ala., and the third panelist during the webinar, shared her perspective as a school leader.

"We can fall into that trap very easily. I find that, in my role, to have a good work-life balance, I kind of have to compartmentalize different areas," Mason said. "But when I'm doing it all in the home setting, it's hard to compartmentalize. I'm still managing that."

Mason, who has a 3- and 11-year-old, shared that in the first few weeks of closures, she was trying to find ways to step away from work and connect with her children.

"We've been trying to get outside every day, doing spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen, things like that," she said. "We're really taking the time to take care of ourselves. I feel like I've been able to sleep maybe more than I have in years with young kids. So that part has been really helpful, too."

She lauded the leadership in her district for being flexible and practical about what teachers and students will be able to achieve during a school day that functions very differently than it did a month ago.

"They asked us to not put instructional demands beyond two hours per day for each student, and I feel like that's a little more realistic," Mason said. "Students can always read and do their own research if they want to expand their learning. But I think that, with parents working from home and kids trying to learn online ... it's just very difficult. We want to educate students on the essential standards that they will need to progress to the next grade level, and that can be accomplished."

Cipriano, too, said she was impressed with Mason's district, especially compared to another school district she'd heard about that was asking its teachers to "clock in" for six-and-a-half hours each day. That district, which Cipriano didn't name, is "trying to create work-life balance for the educators" with its time-counting policy, she said, "but what that's doing instead is putting an immense amount of demand on the teacher ... and creating [unrealistic] expectations."

To wrap up the conversation, Cipriano offered a message to educators who are juggling their responsibilities to their students with that of their own children.

"For all of the working parents that are out there right now, and educators who are working now, nothing about this is usual. So we should not be expected to do business as usual," Cipriano said. "Our children deserve our full attention, just like our students do. We're all learning how to navigate this together."
This is a brief recap of the conversation. To hear the rest, listen to the episode in the player on this page. You can also find the EdSurge Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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For Educators, Being 'Always-On' During COVID-19 Can Lead to Burnout - EdSurge News

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Chrissy Romano Arrabito teaches second grade at an elementary school in Hackensack, N.J., a community that has been devastated by COVID-19 in recent weeks. The school is located just a few miles outside New York City, the epicenter of the crisis in the U.S., in Bergen County, where nearly 11,000 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed.

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Growing up can be tough. As young people's bodies and brains are changing rapidly, they're also grappling with new ideas and influences that will shape who they become.

Kids today might actually have it worse, thanks to technology. They're going through their awkward stages-the braces and bad haircuts and first crushes-on Instagram and Snapchat. And they're trying to make friends while everyone's noses are buried in their phones.

Research tells us these things are taking their toll. A 2018 Pew Research Center survey of kids aged 13 to 17 found that 7 in 10 teens think anxiety and depression are major problems for their peers. The same survey found that 6 in 10 kids feel pressure to get good grades while nearly 3 in 10 feel pressure to look good and fit in socially.

Dozens of recent studies tell a similar story. Students today are distracted, they're under a lot of pressure and they're suffering from mental health issues more than ever before.

The education community is increasingly getting involved in these issues, looping in social workers, licensed therapists and other mental-health services to help students who are struggling. They often talk about these things in the context of "caring for the whole child" or "teaching to the whole learner." The idea is that, in order for kids to be successful academically, their other needs must be met, too. That includes their social and emotional needs.

In the last few years, terms like "whole child" and "social-emotional learning" have become buzzwords. They're all over education conference agendas and making headlines in the news. But behind the buzzwords are programs, often led and managed by schools, that take into account all the different things a child needs to be able to learn and grow, even if those things reach outside the traditional roles of a school.

Earlier this year at the SXSW EDU conference in Austin, Texas, EdSurge sat down with Christina Cipriano, the director of research at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a research scientist at the Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine. Cipriano thinks about and researches social-emotional learning every day, so she broke down for us what SEL is, where it comes and how it works.

Listen to the discussion on this week's EdSurge On Air podcast. You can follow the podcast on the Apple Podcast app, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play Music or wherever you listen. Or read a portion of the interview below, lightly edited for clarity.
EdSurge: Social-emotional learning (SEL) has become arguably one of the hottest topics in education in the last couple of years. For those who are still new to this topic, could you explain what SEL is and why it matters?
Christina Cipriano: Social-emotional learning is thinking about the competencies that underscore our ability to be available to learn and available to teach. There are a number of different frameworks that we use. One of the most dominant frameworks in the field is the CASEL five. It's the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. Those five competencies are self awareness, self management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision making.

When we think about social-emotional learning, we talk about how social-emotional competencies underscore your ability to learn and your ability to teach. These are skills that all people and all learners across the lifespan need to continuously develop and invest their time and energy in to be able to be positive contributors to their life and those around them.
Is this a new concept? Why does it seem like all of a sudden we're hearing about SEL?
It is certainly not a new concept, and it's been around in literature for over two decades. However, it's recently gotten a lot of more air play as folks are realizing that whether you call it character education, peace building or conflict resolution, they all have foundations in the social-emotional learning frameworks and in that research base.

At our center we use the emotional intelligence science to underscore our framing of social-emotional learning. However, depending upon which research institution you talk to, you will see other ways of thinking about and framing the problem. At the end of the day, we're talking about teaching people how to be better citizens and more positive contributors to their society. We realize it's 2019, and that that is an important skill that everybody needs.
In what ways does SEL set up students for success that directly relates to academic learning-and also doesn't?
A good example of this would be thinking about a student or adult's ability to regulate your emotions or, as CASEL calls it, in managing yourself. We all have different triggers of stress throughout our life and different emotions that can hijack our body's ability to be able to process the world meaningfully. If we're not able to regulate or down-regulate in a given situation, we're not able to be available to process the information of what we're being taught.

This week's podcast sponsor is Emporia State University's Instructional Design and Technology program: designed for those interested in creating dynamic, interactive learning environments in both public and private sectors, the master's in IDT from ESU can be completed quickly and entirely online, preparing educators for the new age of the technology-driven learning environment. Learn more here.

So, regardless of how fantastic your teacher may be or how incredible that science curriculum is at engaging and motivating you, if you have a student who's dealing with stress or trauma or unable to kind of get over the interpersonal interaction they had right before they entered that classroom, or the trigger word that the teacher said, like "pop quiz," that set them off into a spiral, they're not going to be able to process the dynamic curriculum that's being presented to them.

And so social-emotional learning really teaches and targets those skill sets and competencies that underscore your availability to learn. In our case, and in our work at the center, we focus on also thinking about the social-emotional learning of the adults in the room and the educators as the co-constructors of knowledge in that environment.
So if this was the first time that anyone's ever mentioned this concept to me, maybe a question I would have is, "Well, that's great, but it doesn't sound like something you can teach." How do you teach things like emotional regulation and relationship skills?
My immediate answer is that if you don't think you can teach them, you have a fixed mindset and not a growth mindset. We need to be always open and available to learning through our interactions around us. The ways in which we teach these discrete skills depend upon the cognitive ability and development of the learner, and how they're going to most access them. For instance, when we focus on emotion regulation, we're thinking about students' cognitive reappraisal abilities and their self-talk strategies.

Now, there's a lot of different ways you can manage your emotions in a given situation. For some of us, like myself, you might want to go for a run to regulate, but not all schools are conducive to that. You can't just get up and do that. When we worked with teachers, we found that they want to know how to teach those skills that they can focus on how students will reappraise the situation to make a situation more positive, problem-focused, challenge-based-so that they think about it as something they can solve, and how they're talking to themselves. Really capture the essence of their self talk strategies in ways that are going to be most meaningful.

This doesn't mean that you're providing a pull-in lesson every week on Tuesdays at 3:00 p.m. to teach them how to reappraise their emotions, but rather that you are modeling those skills in the way that you interact with that student and with that learner before, during and after the situation, so that they're continuously seeing and learning [that].
So it's less about teaching it and more about naming it, addressing it and giving strategies to respond?
I would kind of reframe what you said there. I would say that that is teaching it. It's the ability for us to be able to recognize, understand, label, express and regulate our emotions. That's actually the acronym, RULER, that is our approach at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence for teaching these competencies. Going through that pattern of steps and having developmentally appropriate access points for all of our learners is the gateway in.
What did SEL look like before it kind of became this buzzword-before it was dominating SXSW EDU panels?
If you look back you'll see conversations about character education, moral education in the school, about being a good citizen, conflict resolution programming-all pockets that begin to target social-emotional learning competencies.

When we even talk about SEL as a larger field, there is discrepancy-depending upon what researcher, practitioner or policymaker you speak to-on how they will define what competencies fall within it and where the limits of the skill set lie. That's a bigger conversation in the field right now.

Alongside that discourse is also the conversation of how to adequately assess social-emotional learning. The most popular question that I get asked on a regular basis, weekly I will get an email from someone somewhere in the world who wants to know what the best SEL score is, what the best SEL score is. I set up a call and I have a nice conversation back about how well, you don't want to assess SEL. Having a SEL score is a completely inappropriate way of thinking about it. You want to be thinking about what social-emotional competency you're trying to assess, and what the most meaningful way to do that is.

That's important, because if we're not able to show that children and adults are learning using these programs and have outcomes that are meaningful, then this will unfortunately just become that thing that was and people will move their focus on in 10 to 20 years to the next big thing that comes into the space.

There's an urgency among the SEL community to begin to create those data points and to find that assessment landscape so that this doesn't turn into a conversation like we all unfortunately remember with No Child Left Behind policy, where standardized assessments came into the narrative and started to shift the focus of how programming was being offered in classrooms and created a culture of fear on test taking.
Who does SEL leave behind? What kind of students just aren't being taken into account in these kind of programs?
That's actually the purpose of the panel that I'm here at SXSW EDU giving with my colleagues today. We're looking at all of your traditionally underserved student populations and their inability to access current SEL programming. We're talking about children with specific learning disabilities and diverse learners, ethnic and racial minorities, children who are serviced in therapeutic settings, alternative environments, correctional facilities. So a real wide net of the "other" children in the story and thinking about how there may or may not be access points for them throughout the way our programs are currently structured.

An example I can give you is when we think about how we teach some of the well-known strategies for accessing and instructing social-emotional learning competencies like perspective taking and decision-making involve group discussion. If you have a child who has an auditory disability and you make sure that they have hearing aids, there is a translator, or there is sign language being used, that's only a step in the right direction, because we know that when a classroom of students is talking or when group work is occurring that children can talk over one another and it can be difficult to follow social overtures. Similarly, a student with Autism Spectrum Disorder or emotional behavioral disturbances may not be able to pick up on those social cues, which is the driving force of how the curriculum is originally written. Finding ways to create flexibility within the essence of the program so that it's not just the method of instruction but also how they can engage with the learning content is critical.

Unfortunately, there are few and far between examples of that level of full inclusivity across the kind of mainstream SEL programming to date.
For schools that don't have the resources to build an intentional, aspirational SEL program, what are some things that educators can do that require minimal time and money to improve a school's social-emotional supports?
First is becoming knowledgeable about what we're talking about when we're talking about SEL. I point people to the CASEL website and the wealth of resources that are available there through the national foundation to be able to access information and basic understandings of the frameworks and competencies, as well as how to implement a program in your school.

A second point is that it's important for the leadership to invest in social-emotional learning as something that is important from the top down, not just the bottom up. In order to have students who are increasing in their social-emotional competencies you need to have teachers who feel like they're available to teach, which means you need to focus on their psycho-social health and well being. Which means you need to focus on the leader, and their psycho-social health and well being.

When leaders are not bought in to the importance of it, this just becomes another thing to do that doesn't stick and does not sustain, and that is the complete antithesis of what folks in the SEL field want to happen with social-emotional learning.

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Why Social-Emotional Learning Is Suddenly in the Spotlight - EdSurge News

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Growing up can be tough. As young people's bodies and brains are changing rapidly, they're also grappling with new ideas and influences that will shape who they become. Kids today might actually have it worse, thanks to technology. They're going through their awkward stages-the braces and bad haircuts and first crushes-on Instagram and Snapchat.

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This practical-focused chapter discusses the affordances of synchronous versus asynchronous technologies that can be used to make online learning feel more personal and human. While I consider the pros and cons of various approaches, I offer small vignettes from my own experiences to further convince the reader how each approach can be crucial to bringing out humanity in online learning. The chapter tackles the spectrum of learning modalities from synchronous to asynchronous and from text-based to audio and video, to highlight the affordances and limitations of each modality. I have extensive experience with each approach as a learner, a facilitator, and a supporter of other teachers.
Introduction
It is extremely difficult, but also unhelpful, to make any statement about online learning without referring to context or tools. When we talk about what "works" in online learning, rather than refer to unhelpful universal best practices (DeBaise, 2014), it is often more meaningful to describe how something works (or doesn't) in a specific context and using specific tools. For example, what works for a fully online course for undergrads may not work for a MOOC taken by adults. Statements about asynchronous learning cannot be generalized across discussion forums made for different purposes, nor would they apply to other mostly-text-based mostly-asynchronous tools such as Twitter. And even when we describe Twitter as text-based and asynchronous, we know that Twitter can integrate multimedia and allow for synchronous conversations.

Having said all this, educators know that different approaches work for different learners. So even when one approach is successful with a majority of our learners, we also need to remember that it may not work for others.

The strategies mentioned in this chapter are meant to give ideas from my own personal experiences that have worked for me in some context. I leave it up to the reader to judge how well it might transfer or be adapted to other contexts. I suggest readers consider these ideas and ask themselves:

1. Is this an approach I am willing/comfortable to try? Would it be worth going outside my comfort zone to try it? Why is it worth trying? What are the risks?

2. Would this approach fit within my teaching philosophy or at least one I aspire to?

3. Would this approach require rethinking other aspects of my course or can it fit within my course as is?

4. Would this approach work for most of my learners (including is it accessible to all?)? What alternatives can I offer those for whom it wouldn't work?

5. Might this approach result in differences in learner access or comfort that need to be handled by the instructor/facilitator?

6. What would plan B be if this does not work well for me in a particular context?

7. How is the context described here different from mine, e.g., types of learners, the formality of the learning experience, duration of interaction?

In what follows, I discuss some of the affordances and limitations of synchronous and asynchronous learning online.
Why would you consider a Mostly-Asynchronous Text-Based Online Course?
I have a strong preference for mostly text-based asynchronous learning experiences online. In Bali & Meier (2014) I explain why and cite results from a small survey conducted during a MOOC. There are pre-pedagogical reasons for choosing such an approach (summarized from Bali & Meier 2014):

1. Timezones and cultures: If you have a geographically dispersed set of learners, any synchronous events will introduce timezone bias; additionally people may have variant weekend days, national holidays, and other important days they cannot meet

2. Families and busy people: If you teach mostly non-traditional students who have either jobs or families, their time may not be as flexible and they may struggle to commit to synchronous meetings. Recording meetings for them to watch later could work BUT they would have FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and you would lose their active participation in those meetings

3. Technical: If some of your learners have infrastructure issues (e.g., live in remote/rural areas or developing countries where bandwidth is low or unreliable) then audiovisuals will discriminate against them, more so if this is live audiovisual interaction. Even those with relatively stable infrastructure occasionally struggle with connectivity and/or with mic/headset working properly every single time they connect

4. Language: If some learners are not native speakers of, or not fluent in, the language of instruction, then they may prefer the additional time needed to interpret and reflect before responding

Of course, pedagogically speaking, asynchronous learning promotes deeper reflection, provides opportunities for learners to conduct and contribute research, and creates almost unlimited space for every individual to participate (as opposed to the more limited time available for synchronous interaction where inevitably some will participate more than others). Asynchronicity of course allows for a continuous conversation across space and time, something impossible to do with synchronous online or face-to-face interaction. Conversations are easily archived and searchable (whereas audiovisual conversations can be recorded, they are not as easily searchable), which can be great for learners to refer to later. It is also important to recognize the importance of the fact that an asynchronous conversation cannot be interrupted (McConnell, 2002), and as such, offers potential for equity among participants: minority/shy learners cannot be interrupted by dominant or highly talkative others. As one of those "talkative" people face-to-face, I appreciate how online asynchronous communication allows others to speak without me taking over their space - and allows me to listen better as a learner and as a teacher. Of course, this unlimited uninterruptible space also means some highly talkative people could take over space, e.g., by overloading a hashtag on Twitter, making it difficult to find others' tweets, or by posting very long forum posts. But these things do not silence others the way they would be done in a face-to-face context.

The main reasons, in my view, that asynchronous text-based communication can seem to be "less human" are:

1. Formality & Length: Asynchronous text-based communication is often not conducted with dialogue in mind. When I first started my Masters degree online in 2003, I noticed that while some of us (participants) used a conversational tone in discussion forums, others would write essay-length, essay-tone text. This makes one feel like they are reading a scholarly article rather than having a discussion, and these posts are often so crafted, they do not invite a response.

2. Absence of non-verbal cues: This can make text-based communication feel dry and can result in misunderstandings.

3. Lack of immediate response: This can feel disheartening and can result in misunderstandings if someone receives a delayed response to an important issue raised asynchronously. This is a situation where "social absence" is important, which I will discuss later.

4. Fear of Being On-the-record: Some learners feel self-conscious that their writing will remain visible and feel the need to be more careful about what they write.

5. Information overload. In all kinds of asynchronous text-based online interaction, one needs to discover ways of dealing with information overload, particularly when one has been away for some time and others have been active.

Why (Then) would you consider having Synchronous Video-Based Elements in an Online Course?
About a year after writing Bali & Meier (2014), my life changed via Virtually Connecting (VC) which I co-founded with my friend Rebecca J. Hogue (see Bali & Hogue 2015; Hogue & Bali 2015). I realized that when I could not physically attend a conference where I had so many close friends, and interacting via Twitter was just not enough (more about VC later).

Over time, I had gotten more comfortable with synchronous events for several reasons:

1. My child was sleeping better so it was less stressful to join in

2. Egypt's infrastructure improved so we no longer had regular electricity cuts

3. I became more relaxed about synchronous meetings and less anxious over how stupid I would sound

4. I realized that some people found it difficult to be personable in just writing. I collaborated with different people and some needed to meet synchronously via text or video. I also realized that this was often conducive to reaching decisions faster and bouncing off ideas.

So I feel that synchronous video conversations have their place if people involved have the stable infrastructure and circumstances as well as comfort with the environment. My current stance is that if pre pedagogically, synchronous communication can work and people prefer it for certain things, I would do it. The larger the group, the less likely it is for all of these pre pedagogcials to fall into place.
Vignettes of Human Touches in Online Learning
When people assume online learning is not as good as face to face, I think what they think they will miss most is the human touch. While we cannot physically touch online, I have felt warmed and comforted via my online friends and supported and mentored by online teachers and mentors. What follows are some strategies I learned from different contexts.
Café Forum in an Online Graduate Course
My first experience with fully online learning was my Masters of Education in eLearning which I did in 2003. The course was fully asynchronous and all official interaction took place in small groups on discussion forums. One of my favorite places was a café forum which was a place we were not required to use but which we could use for informal discussions beyond our study group. It gave us opportunities (all of us educators of some kind). Even inside our study group, the person who was my tutor most of the two years I did my Masters modelled the difference between forum-speak and formal writing. His posts were shorter and informal in tone, and it made many of us comfortable not to write overly long, academic essays. These were early days of Elearning and people were still negotiating the kind of writing voice you could use in these settings. Those who continued to write in academic essays eventually dropped the masters. Some people built relationships outside the LMS, meeting synchronously on MSN Messenger (audio worked well enough on dial-up at the time, believe it or not). Those of us who continued kept building relationships. I met my tutor synchronously for the first time about 5 years after I finished my masters. We are still friends today...all based on asynchronous discussion forums and staying in touch via email. I have met one of my masters' colleague in person. We had never met online synchronously but stayed in touch via Facebook and email. Our meetings were never awkward.
Synchronous vs Asynchronous Feedback
I worked with two different Ph.D. supervisors. One of them was well able to convey his feedback clearly and supportively via text, whereas the other was much better able to express his feedback constructively in person, on the phone, or via Skype. As soon as we realized that we worked better together synchronously, we scheduled synchronous meetings after each piece of writing of mine was reviewed by him. Some faculty offer students asynchronous audio feedback which they feel is more personal and holistic than written feedback.
Making Student Blogging Personal
I have been teaching an educational game design module which is part of an undergraduate course on creative thinking and problem-solving. It is not an online or blended course, but I have used Twitter and blogs. We tend to talk about face-to-face as the most personable, human interaction and we forget that very often when facing a class even as small as 20 students, we are not facing them as individuals each time - we face them as a group. Conversely, when we read their blogs (or other individual assignments) we interact with them one-on-one. Blogging is particularly helpful here if you encourage student voice and an informal writing style. Moreover, I try to assign personal blog assignments for the first week or two. Successful ones include "Write your unofficial CV" (based on an activity I had co-developed for #DigiwriMo) and "Write about your favorite game and whether you think it can be educational." I learn a lot about who my students are and what they care about and am also able to tell them if we share interests. This makes for a much warmer in-class environment and I get to know my students quicker.
Personal and Private within Massive and Open
How do some people survive the potential chaos of a connectivist MOOC with hundreds of others talking on multiple platforms? My personal approach is to develop personal and private relationships as I meet new people in MOOCs. This involves following some blogs more closely than others, using Direct Messaging on Twitter, and in some cases private messages on Facebook or even friending.

It is more difficult to explain how I build trust relationships online and is beyond the scope of this chapter.
Virtually Connecting - the Pre and Post
Virtually Connecting is a way to enliven virtual participation in academic conferences, widening access to a fuller, interactive, conference experience for those who cannot be physically present, with emphasis on conversation and connection rather than content (Bali & Hogue, 2016).

We expand access to hallway conversations such that a small group of virtual participants can have a conversation with those onsite at a conference, including high profile people such as keynote speakers. Lisa Hammershaimb (2016) says:

Seeing the kind of "unplugged" version of people I've previously only encountered in highly polished + edited perfection is so refreshing. Perhaps it's just me but...I think this modeling of open sharing and community amongst participants as all are willing to jump into an experience that is fully unpredictable and emergent is so inspiring because it reminds me that behind all of these ideas are humans who actually aren't all that different than me.

People who watch a Virtually Connecting hangout miss out on the relationship building that occurs behind the scenes. First in our invitations to speakers. Then in our team collaboration on Slack and Facebook messenger. And with participants just before hangouts go live as we make small talk. Often, after we go off the air we continue chatting and friendships form. We are not just faces on a screen to each other. My Virtually Connecting friends have a relationship with my 4 (now almost 5) year old daughter. They send me physical gifts. We talk as a group and privately most days. It does not get more human than this. And yet many of those relationships also developed asynchronously first and the hangouts strengthened them.
Soliya - Tangents and Humor
I facilitated synchronous video meetings as part of a cross-cultural dialogue program for undergraduates called Soliya. This was pretty serious dialogue on hot topics related to politics and/or culture across undergraduate participants from Arab/Muslim countries and those from the U.S./West. What built the relationships amongst participants and allowed them to have deep, critical discussions, was the tangential discussions we had getting to know each other, and opportunities for humor and sharing personal anecdotes. Some of these were actually built into the curriculum as online icebreakers and helped learners feel comfortable discussing more difficult topics later.
Collaborative Writing
I have been involved in multiple collaborative writing opportunities, and what I find most interesting about collaborative writing (often via Google Docs) with people I have never met, is that while a lot of the work is visible on the document itself, much of the power that enables this collaboration occurs in the comments on the margins, and in private email, or Twitter DM conversations as we negotiate how to move forward. I have had arguments and declarations of deep love happen in those discussions. I have delighted in finding a collaborator writing synchronously with me and at comments, I woke up to find a collaborator had left overnight. An example you may find useful is the playful Untext written by rhizo14 participants and described by Hamon et al (2015) - the combination of article and embedded messy document makes this process almost transparent because we never resolved the comments on the Google Doc.
Conclusion
What I think lies at the heart of all of the above-mentioned approaches is a de-centering of mode and format and a focus on the importance of the social, informal, affective aspects of the environment to bring out the humanity. It is not exactly about nurturing social or emotional presence per se, but about providing third places where these can flourish. In a face-to-face environment, such places exist naturally: the University often has a café or restaurant or lounge or several such spaces for people to bump into each other socially, or even to make planned outings. In an online environment, one needs to intentionally design such spaces, craft out time for them, and invest time in making them warm and welcoming.
References
Bali, M. (2014). Why doesn't this feel empowering? The challenges of web-based intercultural dialogue. Teaching in Higher Education, 19(2), pp. 208-215. DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2014.867620

Bali, M., & Hogue, R. (2015, May 8). Virtual, hybrid, or present? The #et4buddy Conference experiment. Hybrid Pedagogy. Retrieved from: http://www.digitalpedagogylab.com/hybridped/virtual-hybrid-or-present/

Bali, M., & Meier, B. (2014, March 4). An affinity for asynchronous learning. Hybrid Pedagogy. Retrieved from: http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/affinity-asynchronous-learning/

Collins, M. & Berge, Z. (2001). Resources for moderators and facilitators of online discussion. Available online at: http://www.emoderators.com/moderators.html

De Baise, J. (2014, April 22). Best practices: Thoughts on a flashmob mentality. Hybrid Pedagogy. Retrieved from: http://www.digitalpedagogylab.com/hybridped/best-practices-thoughts-flash-mob-mentality/

Hammershaimb, L. (2016). On blank spaces, bring human, and the amazingnes of Virtually Connecting. [weblog post]. Republished on Virtually Connecting. Retrieved from: http://virtuallyconnecting.org/guest-post/on-blank-spaces-being-human-and-the-amazingness-of-virtually-connecting/

Hamon, K., Hogue, R. J., Honeychurch, S., Johnson, S., Koutropoulos, A., Ensor, S., Sinfield, S., & Bali, M. (2015, June 4). Writing the unreadable untext: A collaborative autoethnography of #rhizo14. Hybrid Pedagogy. Retrieved from: http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/writing-the-unreadable-untext/

Hogue, R. J., & Bali, M. (2015, June 15). Beyond Twitter: Virtually Connecting at conferences. Prof Hacker blog, Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from: http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/beyond-twitter-virtually-connecting-at-conferences/60339

McConnell, D. (2002). Implementing Computer Supported Cooperative Learning, 2nd Ed., London: Kogan Page.

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This practical-focused chapter discusses the affordances of synchronous versus asynchronous technologies that can be used to make online learning feel more personal and human. While I consider the pros and cons of various approaches, I offer small vignettes from my own experiences to further convince the reader how each approach can be crucial to bringing out humanity in online learning.

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Abstract

Abstract
Learning from others has been reported as a productive approach for teacher Professional Development (PD) and is seen as a valuable addition to formal PD. Specific insights into whether social learning suits teachers is still lacking. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to develop and apply an instrument to assess social learning mindedness of teachers. A questionnaire called the "Quiz: Social learning, how does it suit me?" was developed and its reliability and factor structure were explored. A total of 110 teachers, ranging from primary school to pre-university education filled out the Quiz. Results indicated that the teachers were already quite social learning minded; they were positively oriented towards social learning. Social learning mindedness encompassed five underlying factors including counteracting social-learning preferences, teachers' opinions and preferences related to learning from colleagues/others, their orientation towards collaboration in new approaches to PD, an autonomy factor, and a more general attitude towards knowledge dissemination. Mostly, teachers like to explain and share their knowledge, like to collaborate with others to enhance their knowledge and ask others for advice if they have a problem. At the same time, they want some control over their PD (e.g. the outcomes). The teachers in this sample did not show much preferences that would counteract social learning, leading to the conclusion that social learning suits teachers as a form of PD. The Quiz, which is accessible online (in Dutch), is a useful tool for teachers to quickly get acquainted with social learning.

Introduction

In the area of professional development (PD), teachers have long been approached as passive consumers of pre-packaged knowledge. Illustration of this is discussions about professional learning at work, that still reflect mostly organisational terminology (e.g. staff training, staff development, performance review) and developmental terms (e.g. PD), rather than more active terms, like learning. According to Webster-Wright ( 2009, p. 713), in a review about the reframing of PD, the discourse reflects that: "something is done to the professional. That is, professionals are in need of 'training' or 'developing' through knowledge being 'delivered' to them in courses". Teachers are assumed to absorb information presented to them, even though they often perceive PD to be fragmented, disconnected and irrelevant to the real problems of their classroom practice (Lieberman & Pointer Mace, 2010). It is widely recognised that the current mode of providing PD needs a radical change (Lieberman & Pointer Mace, 2010). The traditional workshops are becoming less effective in our changing, busy society (Hunzicker, 2011). One-shot workshops fall short mostly because they lack connection to the classroom (Darling-Hammond, Chung-Wei, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009). Wilson and Berne ( 1991) state that teacher learning is a patchwork of opportunities, ranging from formal to informal, from mandatory to voluntary, and from planned to serendipitous. And the awareness arises that teachers need to be in the centre of their own PD (Lieberman & Wood, 2002a). It is now clear that the focus is shifting from workshops, general courses and seminars, to learning in the workplace and to teachers building their own professional capital (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012).

One key aspect that appears under-recognised is that learning is already an integral part of workplace practices (Hodkinson & Hodkinson, 2005). Boud and Hager ( 2012) strongly urge us to start seeing learning as a normal part of working; teachers learn during their daily work by handling the problems they encounter and the challenges they face. They state that more learning occurs when teachers draw on the expertise of their peers and others, compared with formalised activities. Lovett and Cameron ( 2011) also provide evidence in favour of this in a study that states that even though 40% of the influences on teachers' and leaders' PD comes from books, seminars and articles, 60% comes from associations with colleagues, their experiences and associations with students and their families, and their everyday school-based experience. Learning from other teachers has been reported to be a productive approach for PD (Dresner & Worley, 2006; Lieberman & Wood, 2002a, 2002b), and has been seen as a valuable addition to formal PD (van Amersfoort, Korenhof, Moolenaar, & De Laat, 2011).

Internationally, there is growing attention to learning in professional communities and to networked learning. Lieberman and Pointer Mace ( 2010, p. 80) describe that "the development of learning communities has become a worldwide focus for teacher learning". Programmes or projects in which teachers become part of professional communities have provided evidence of meaningful changes in local knowledge, the exploration of solutions to problems and practices that occur in particular contexts (Katz & Earl, 2006; Lieberman & Wood, 2002a; O'Brien, Varga-Atkins, Burton, Campbell, & Qualter, 2008), deepening of teachers' knowledge, skill-building and instructional improvements (Darling-Hammond et al., 2009). Additionally, learning in networks has been reported to be beneficial for teachers (Goodyear, Banks, Hodgson, & McConnel, 2004; Harasim, Hiltz, Teles, & Turoff, 1995; Lieberman & Wood, 2002a) and creates major opportunities for PD (De Bruijn, 2008; Gellert, 2003; Lieberman & Wood, 2002b).

In literature, several different names have been used in the study of social learning or learning in teams in PD. Congruous with Wenger, Trayner, and de Laat ( 2011), we classify communities of practice and learning networks as two examples of social structures in which learning takes place. On the one hand, in (learning) networks, the focus is on the connections between members, their relationships and personal interactions. (Learning) networks are aimed at the flow of information, joint problem solving, knowledge creation and learning. On the other hand, the concept of community emphasises the shared identity that is developed around a common topic or problem. It focuses on the collective intention to work together, on a common domain of knowledge in which to learn. Ideally, a combination of both community - and (learning) network processes take place because this seems to lead to the best social learning (for more information, see Wenger et al., 2011).

Next to the different indications for the social structures in which we learn, many different definitions of social learning have been used in the literature (for an overview, see Reed et al., 2010). The definition we apply incorporates three key, required, elements for learning to be classified as social learning. First, learning has to occur through social interactions and processes between members of a learning network/community, school or other institute. These contacts can be face-to-face but can also take place via technologies such as the Internet. Second, the learning has to spread beyond a specific learner, the way knowledge spreads in a community of practice or a learning network, or even throughout the school as whole and beyond. And third, the learning experience has to lead to an actual change in the understandings of the learner; for instance, a new procedure is applied, or a new insight into a problem has emerged (Reed et al., 2010).

Despite the many positive outcomes of several studies into the effects of social learning described above, there is still much unknown about teachers' social learning mindedness. Personal opinions regarding and stances, behaviour and motivations preferences and attitudes towards social learning have been studied only sparsely. Lieberman and Wood ( 2002a) described that teachers that joined a community for PD were enthusiastic about the results. O'Brien et al. ( 2008) reported that school professionals and (head) teachers thought that their learning network did not contribute to their daily practice, but that it contributed to their PD over time. And van Amersfoort et al. ( 2011) reported that teachers thought that networked learning made learning more enjoyable. A systematic study into preferences and attitudes towards PD and social learning, and thus into how social learning minded teachers are, has to our knowledge not yet been executed.

Studies into social learning are most often qualitative in nature; making use of instruments such as interviews or case studies, that lead to interesting findings but are often small scale and fragmented (Borko, 2004). To be able to gain systematic insights, a quantitative study is needed. An advantage of the use of a quantitative instrument (e.g. a standardised questionnaire) is that more teachers can be reached, and they all answer the same questions and follow the same procedures. Since such an instrument was not available yet, we developed one called the "Quiz: Social learning, how does it suit me?" The Quiz had the goal to: (a) demonstrate the social learning mindedness of teachers, and (b) to serve as a guide to teachers that are "starting" social learners. The quiz can help teachers get acquainted with social learning, provide educational managers with information to better guide PD and can facilitate discussions in communities of teachers about their levels of social learning mindedness and preferences. This enhances openness, which, in turn, enhances social learning.

The Quiz was developed in two versions: a paper-and-pencil version and an online tool (with an immediate presentation of the results) so it can be used in face-to-face meetings and as well as in online interactions of learning networks or communities.

Theoretical and empirical background of the development of items of the quiz

In this section, we will present how the items of the Quiz were developed based on the existing literature on social learning. We clustered items into aspects that refer to common topics that are related to PD and social learning.

Aspects related to forms of PD

Teachers do not always accept traditional PD forms and want to replace these with new, meaningful forms of PD (Wilson & Berne, 1991). Social learning is seen a relatively new form of learning within the domain of PD, and might lead to innovations. Innovations bring "something new" within a context, so benefits can be gained from them (De Jong & Den Hartog, 2005). Performing new or challenging tasks during practice might lead to enhanced work-related learning (Doornbos, Simons, & Denessen, 2008). However, social learners that are just starting off might not have yet experienced the gains of social learning. Thus, we explored whether teachers are willing to try out new forms of PD, even without exactly knowing the gains (item 15; see Table 3).

In social learning, meeting each other (face-to-face or online) is a prerequisite for the production of results. To explore if and how this "suits" teachers, we asked whether they might prefer a course or a seminar over meetings with colleagues (item 12; see Table 3).

In social learning, sharing of tacit (not explicit) knowledge is central. This mostly requires face-to-face or online meetings. However, more explicit knowledge can be shared without actually having to meet each other, as also happens in Networks of Practice (NoP) (Duguid, 2005). Not only can computers be used for meetings or email contacts, they can also be used to find new information, through contacts or via Internet. Thus, computers can be useful for social learning. Van Berkum ( 2009) even states that the use of e-mail, social communities and other information media will enhance the number of contacts of a participant. More contacts means more social capital because participants can make more use of each other's knowledge and information that becomes more accessible. Therefore, we also explored whether the participants like PD programmes that involve the use of computers (item 8; see Table 3).

Traditional forms of PD are often obliged activities (e.g. a scheduled study-day or workshop), whereas social learning can be more informally organised. It often happens spontaneously, and there is more freedom in what, how and when there will be learned. To explore whether teachers have a preference for obliged PD activities, this was included in the Quiz (item 14; see Table 3).

Social learning requires the teacher to be an active player when acquiring knowledge. Knowledge is created within the networks (Earl & Katz, 2007). This is in contrast with the more traditional form of PD that requires a more passive role, in which the teacher only has to absorb knowledge (Lieberman & Pointer Mace, 2010). Therefore, we explored whether teachers preferred passive forms of PD over active (item 6; see Table 3).

Aspects related to collaboration

One of the core elements of social learning is collaboration with other participants (colleagues). Katz and Earl ( 2006) described collaboration as an intensive interaction, in which teachers (and other professionals) open up their beliefs and practices to investigation and debate. This would enhance their own practice as well as help build their profession. Hunzicker ( 2011) described that collaboration during PD makes it more effective because it engages teachers in both active and interactive learning. Learning becomes active if teachers engage physically, cognitively and emotionally, through, for instance, discussions. Learning becomes interactive when teachers share problems, viewpoints and ideas and work together towards solutions. This can be achieved by learning from and with each other, which is a key feature of social learning. People engaging in networked learning communities will create new ideas, new information and new skills (Earl & Katz, 2007). The findings above led us to explore whether teachers like to collaborate with others in order to enhance their knowledge (item 1; see Table 3), and whether they like to share and explain their knowledge to and with others (item 4; see Table 3). Since it might also be that teachers prefer to work alone (which then could counteract social learning), we explored this as an option (item 13; see Table 3).

As a member of a learning network (or community), the contacts you have with other people make it easier to keep up with new developments and, possibly, new innovations (De Jong & Den Hartog, 2005). Additionally, participation in a (learning) network can have a positive influence on work-related learning (Doornbos et al., 2008), for instance, by the promotion of collaboration among members and they provide the sharing of interests, work and struggles (Lieberman & Wood, 2002a). In working together, the members of a (learning) network create new knowledge and share this with others, which can eventually lead to the development of new skills (Earl & Katz, 2007). A learning network (or community) is not only important for the PD of the participant, but provides profit for the organisation (or school) as well. Networks constitute social capital; the "hidden" knowledge that all members of an organisation share (Cross & Parker, 2004; Cross, Parker, & Sasson, 2003; Duguid, 2005; Moolenaar, 2010). The size of a (learning) network (or community) is related to the amount of social capital because more participants may exchange and build knowledge. This might even play out globally, as in the case of global NoP (Duguid, 2005). But at a smaller scale, the optimal usage of the (learning) networks (or communities) within an organisation can lead to the development of the organisation as a whole (Van Berkum, 2009). Therefore, we explored whether the teachers were part of a learning network (item 7; see Table 3).

Aspects of learning from others

Teachers that form professional communities, recognise the power of learning as a social phenomenon (Lieberman & Wood, 2002a). When members of (learning) networks/communities share methods, materials, ideas and opinions, they make their practices accessible to others. Teachers can ask each other questions and request each other's help. Teachers expect help from each other, and also have sympathy and concern for one another (Katz & Earl, 2006). Furthermore, teachers indicate they see networked learning as a valuable addition to formal training (van Amersfoort et al., 2011). The perceptions that teachers have about ways in which their learning is most effective are important, so this led us to explore several ways in which teachers can be mindful of social learning, such as: whether they think that they can learn more from colleagues and in practice than from traditional development activities (item 5; see Table 3), whether they preferred to learn from colleagues (item 10; see Table 3), and whether they asked other for advice if they encounter problems (item 11; see Table 3).

Aspects of autonomy

Social learning is not like a certified course and is not planned by management, but mostly occurs spontaneously during practice or may occur more deliberately during self-planned meetings. Another core characteristic of social learning is that participants decide for themselves whether they want to participate or not, what the learning will be about, when they will meet and how they meet (face-to-face or via email, etc.). Thus, in social learning, teachers have more control or autonomy. The Self Determination Theory described by Ryan and Deci ( 2000) states that autonomy is one of key factors fuelling motivation. And a study by Hunzicker ( 2011) clearly shows that if teachers have a say in their own PD (direction and pace), they function best. In many high-achieving nations, teacher collaboration is already the norm and teachers influence the design of their own professional learning (Darling-Hammond et al., 2009). Autonomy creates an environment for exploration, information exchange, testing and trying out. If the working conditions are too strictly defined, this might be detrimental for the degree of challenge people experience in their work. This might, in turn, lead to less innovative behaviour (De Jong & Den Hartog, 2005). Van Berkum ( 2009) even states that obligations negatively influence the motivation to share knowledge or to give others access to knowledge. More productivity is expected when teachers are in charge of their own PD (Wilson & Berne, 1991). When teachers are relatively more involved in educational decision-making, this is related to more stable and productive professional communities (Darling-Hammond et al., 2009). The findings above led us to explore whether teachers prefer to choose their own topics for PD (item 3; Table 3).

Aspects of control

Social learning may occur unintentional and not deliberate during practice, or more intentional and deliberate if groups are formed to collaborate in the study of a certain topic. However, the process of the learning and the outcomes are, in contrast to most formal courses, not predefined. To explore teachers positions regarding the possible lack of certainty about de social learning processes, we asked whether teachers wanted to know exactly how they were going to learn (item 2; see Table 3) and whether they preferred to know exactly what the outcomes and benefits would be before they started (item 9; see Table 3).

Social learning mindedness

All these aspects of the Quiz explore social learning mindedness in the context of teacher professional development. We aimed to develop a reliable instrument to measure them. These aspects of social learning mindedness might be interrelated and based on communalities, and we will explore the possibility of underlying latent factors.

There are some indications that preferences and attitudes towards social learning differ for teachers that work in various sectors of education (De Jong & Den Hartog, 2005). O'Brien et al. ( 2008) reported different attitudes towards networked learning for primary and secondary school staff. They studied the processes involved in establishing effective learning network and their role in promoting collaborative PD to improve learning of both teachers and pupils. Overall, primary school staff had higher expectations of the benefits of networked learning than secondary school staff, probably because the primary school teacher had more background knowledge of the learning network-project (for more information, see: O'Brien et al., 2008). To get more insight in these aspects of social learning mindedness, teachers and other school-staff from various sectors of employment, ranging from primary schools to University were surveyed.

We formulated the following research questions

Method

Participants

The Quiz was completed by 110 Dutch participants, which we will refer to as "teachers", even though some participants were school staff members (e.g. management or special care advisors), involved at that time in the same PD programmes, administered by Welten Institute (Research Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology), Open University (see Table 1 for the spread over education sectors).

Procedure

The Quiz was printed on an A-4 form, with on the front page the 15 items. Answers could be given by checking the boxes behind the items belonging to five answer categories: (1) Strongly disagree, (2) Slightly disagree, (3) Neutral, (4) Slightly agree, (5) Strongly agree. To prevent tendencies in answering, eight items referred to facilitating aspects and seven items referred to counteracting aspects. Teachers could get a first impression of their score by adding up points. Their total score corresponded with three types (printed on the back side of the form) that differ in their preferences and attitudes towards social learning; "Social learning does not suit me" (sum score 15-45), "Slightly social learning minded" (sum score 46-60) and "Social learner at heart" (sum score 61-75). For the calculation of sum scores, the scores on the items that inquired counteracting aspects were reversed. The types were described with a comic-picture, a fake name and a description of a fictitious person with statements regarding aspects of social learning. The specific formulations used in the Quiz varied slightly according to the local context and situation within the schools (e.g. in some schools, they spoke of networked learning, in others, they spoke of social learning), but the items still referred to the same concept of social learning and measured a degree of social learning mindedness.

The researcher collected the Quiz's and processed the data using IBM SPSS Statistics 20. Note: the Quiz can be administered via computer. The score is automatically calculated (see http://srv-hrl-194v.web.pwo.ou.nl/mrIWeb/mrIWeb.dll?I.Project=QUIZT1 only in Dutch).

Analyses

The reliability of the Quiz was checked by calculating Cronbach's α (after the items that inquired counteracting aspects were reversed). The exploration of possible underlying factors was studied by a Principal Component Analysis. Differences between the factors were studied by means of a General Linear Model, multivariate analyses, with the mean factor scores as outcome variables.

Social learning mindedness of teachers in the context of PD was studied in two steps. First, we studied whether social learning generally suited the teachers, by calculating the sum of the scores on the items. We used the reversed scores on the counteracting items. Second, we explored social learning mindedness in the context of PD, by calculating the mean scores per item. To indicate deviant scores, we set a mean score of 3 as the cut off point for considering an item as deviant because a score of 3 is the mean of all possible scores on a scale of 1-5 and represents "Neutral". For the counteracting aspects, a score above 3 is deviant and for the facilitating factors, a score below 3 is deviant. Additionally, we set a mean score of 4.5 as the cut off point for extremely high scores for facilitating aspects and a mean score of 1.5 as the cut off point for the counteracting aspects. Differences between factors were studied by means of 10 Paired-samples t-tests with de factors as paired variables. The α-level was set to .01 to correct for Type-I errors.

Differences between teachers from various sectors of education on (a) general social learning mindedness and (b) the factors, were studied by means of Several Independent Samples Tests (Kruskal-Wallis test) with sector as grouping variable and social learning mindedness type and mean factor score as test variables ( α level .05). Sector was defined as: PO ( n = 13), MBO ( n = 34), HAVO/VWO ( n = 46) and a higher education (combined category for HBO and University; n = 15; see Table 1).

Results

Reliability

Cronbachs α calculated for the Quiz was .701 ( n = 110; 15 items), which can be rated as adequate because this is .1 above the lowest boundary for complex concepts (Baarda, De Goede, & Van Dijkum, 2007; Field, 2009), such as social learning mindedness. Field ( 2009) reports that it is unrealistic to expect a Cronbachs α above .700 if the measured concepts are very diverse, as is the case with the preferences and attitudes related to PD and social learning, and vary according to background of the aspects. Since the Cronbach's α is sufficient, the items of the Quiz can be summed and interpreted as one social learning mindedness scale. We explored the reliability of the scale after deletion of certain items, and found two items that, if removed, would lead to a higher Cronbachs α (items 3 and 5). However, deletion of these items leads to a maximum increase of .0200-.721, and we decided this was not worth losing the items and what they represent.

Factor extraction

Principal component Analysis was performed, even though the number of participants was rather low ( n = 110). De rule of thumb is 10-15 respondents per item. This implies at least 150 participants were needed to able to perform a factor analysis. However, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy (KMO) showed a value of .700, which is rated as mediocre to good. This measure indicates that factor analysis could be performed. Most values on the diagonal axis of the anti-image matrix were above .5, which is the lowest boundary. The only exception was item 3, with a value of .428. We chose to include this item, based on theoretical grounds, because it reflects an important aspect of social learning, namely the autonomy to determine the topic of the PD. Additionally, the Barlett's test of Sphericity was significant (.001), which is another indication that performing the factor analysis was justified (for more information regarding factor analyses, see Field, 2009). We chose to perform an oblique rotation (Direct Oblimin) because we expected a correlation between the underlying factors, since all items inquire PD.

Initially, 4 factors were extracted based on the Kaiser criterion (eigen value above 1). However, the number of nun-redundant residuals with absolute values above .05 was 55%. This is 5% above the limitation of 50%. Additionally, if there are around the 100 participants, then the communalities should be around .6. This was not achieved for several items. Hence, it would be better not to comply to Kaisers criterion. Based on the Scree plot, which showed a point of inflexion on 5 factors, and on the fact that the communalities increase if the number of factors increase, the advice was to extract more factors, in this case 5. If we extracted 5 factors, the communalities increased (between 5.19 and 7.14), but the number of non-redundant residuals with absolute values above .05 increased to 61%. Even though this increases the non-redundant residuals, we choose to extract five factors because the communalities were better and this was what the Scree-plot (see Figure 1) indicated. Thus, the exploratory factor analysis resulted in five distinct factors. If the sample exists in 100 participants, then the factor loadings would best be minimal .512 (see Table 2). Our sample comprises 110 participants and therefore, we included factor loadings of .505 in our results. Lower factor loadings were not interpreted, but may give indications on weak correlations between items.

If we want to consider the factors with multiple items as scales, the reliability of these factors needs to be checked. For each factor that comprised more than one item, Cronbachs α was calculated and showed values that can be tolerated, respectively .689 for Factor 1, .612 for Factor 2 and .633 for Factor 3. Even though these reliability values were below .700, Field ( 2009) states that values above .600 are acceptable if the construct measured is complex. Thus, the items within the factors can be summed to calculate mean factor scores.

Teachers' social learning mindedness turned out to encompass five complementary factors (see also Tables 2 and 3):

Since the structure matrix (Table 2) showed some items loading on several components, we will discuss these cross-loadings shortly below.

Two aspects that loaded on factor 1 represent aspects of control in social learning processes (item 9; "I want to know exactly what the outcomes and benefits of the PD are before I start", and item 2; "I want to know exactly how I am going to learn during my PD"). These items also loaded on Factor 4: Autonomy. This suggests that autonomy and control are related, and future research should explore this relation in more depth. Still, it seemed that in the factor analysis, the counteractive nature of these control-items turned out taking precedence over their relation with autonomy. Item 9 (see above), together with item 13 ("I prefer to work alone") also loaded on Factor 5 (orientation towards knowledge dissemination). The relation between the preference for working alone and a positive orientation towards sharing and explaining knowledge is understandable, because the two aspects contradict each other (high score on one aspect should relate to a low score on the other aspect). The relation with item 9 is less clear, and needs further exploration.

Factor 2 comprises items which indicate a preference for learning from others over static, traditional PD material. We expected that item 11 ("If I have a problem, I ask others if they have knowledge about it and if they can advise me"), was an aspect of learning from others, but it loaded more on Factor 3 (Collaboration).

Factor 3 comprises items demonstrating preferences related to collaboration with others for PD (such as being part of a (learning) network or community, whether they preferred to ask for advice from others if they encountered a problem, and whether they preferred to collaborate with others to enhance their knowledge). The item stating teacher motivation to try new approaches of PD (without exactly knowing the gains) also loaded on Factor 3. This aspect is somewhat different from the other three aspects, but if the "new approach" was considered "social learning" - which is possible given the title of the Quiz - than the loading of this item on component 3 appears logical.

Social learning mindedness

Table 3 shows all mean scores on the items. These scores were summed to calculate teacher types. Almost one third of teachers might be considered "Social learner at heart" (30%, n = 33). The majority of the teachers can be characterised as "Slightly social learning minded" (66.4%; n = 73). A small minority (3.6%, n = 4) had scores that indicated that social learning did not suit them.

At the item level, the overall mean scores similarly suggested that the teachers had at least "Neutral" preferences or attitudes towards these aspects of social learning in the context of PD (see Table 3). One item's score that was deviant from the mean was the item stating "I want to know exactly how I am going to learn during my PD"; 74.5% of the teachers scored 3 or higher on this item, suggesting that the teachers preferred to know in advance how they are going to learn. Extremely high item scores were found for the item stating "I like to collaborate with others in order to enhance my knowledge" (94.5% of the teachers had a score above 4.5) and the item stating "If I have a problem, I ask others if they have knowledge about it and if they can advise me" (92.7% of the teachers had a score above 4.5).

Paired Samples t-tests showed significant differences between all but three factor pairs (see Table 4 for the exact statistics). Factor 1 ( Counteracting preferences) had the lowest mean score, Factor 2 ( Learning from colleagues/others) had a higher mean score than Factor 1 but a lower mean score than the other three Factors. Factors 3 ( Collaboration and PD), 4 ( Autonomy in PD choices), and 5 ( Knowledge dissemination) did not differ in mean scores.

Figure 2 shows that the participants scored highest on their orientation towards "Knowledge dissemination", "Autonomy", and "Collaboration and PD". Lower scores were attained on their opinions and preferences related to "Learning from colleagues/others", and they scored lowest on the "Counteracting aspects of PD and the organization thereof". We would want scores on factor 1 to be low (since these are counteractive), but the lower (still, positive) mean score on factor 2 ( m = 3.78; see Figure 2) indicates that teachers do not always have positive opinions and preferences towards learning from colleagues/others (e.g. they do not always think that learning from colleagues and in practice enhances knowledge more than traditional PD activities).

Sector effects

No significant effects for sector were found on social learning mindedness type (Kruskal-Wallis test χ ² = 5.355, df = 3, p = .148). No significant effects for sector were found for the factors (Kruskal-Wallis test χ ² = 5.694, df = 3, p = .127, Kruskal-Wallis test χ ² = 6.585, df = 3, p = .086, Kruskal-Wallis test χ ² = 7.089, df = 3, p = .069, Kruskal-Wallis test χ ² = 3.703, df = 3, p = .292, Kruskal-Wallis test χ ² = 2.633, df = 3, p = .452). Thus, teachers employed in all included sectors of education showed the same degree of social learning mindedness and did not differ in underlying factors in preferences and attitudes towards PD and social learning.

Conclusion and discussion

To be able to gain systematic insights into how social learning minded teachers are, a systematic study was necessary in a time in which social learning as a form of PD for teachers is becoming more and more popular. Positive effects of networked learning, professional communities and other collaborations between teachers have been demonstrated, but until now, there was no instrument available to assess the underlying preferences and attitudes. The Quiz which was developed based on previous empirical studies proved to be sufficiently reliable as an instrument. This enabled the calculation of a "sum score", that indicates a social learning type.

The factor analyses revealed that the Quiz entails five underlying factors, which means social learning mindedness can be described by (1) a factor encompassing counteracting social-learning preferences, (2) a factor capturing opinions and preferences related to learning from colleagues/others, (3) a factor demonstrating teachers' orientation towards collaboration and new approaches to PD, (4) an autonomy factor, and (5) a factor capturing a general attitude towards knowledge dissemination. The resulting factors show some overlap and some differences with the aspect as initially formulated based on the literature. First, the counteractive aspects formed a latent variable, regardless of the theoretical aspect they refer to. For instance, Item 13 ("I prefer to work alone") was developed as a negatively formulated item related to "learning from others", however, because its counteractive formulation it loaded stronger on Factor 1, measuring counteracting preferences. In future studies, maybe only items with facilitating formulations should be used, to explore whether our formulation caused this relationship. Second, items representing collaboration and items representing learning from colleagues/others seem to be distinguished; in which asking others for advice is more related to collaboration than to learning from colleagues. This difference is subtle in formulation, but clear in the factor analyses. Third, autonomy is an aspect the factor analysis showed to also be related to control. This is an important finding, since autonomy is in turn related to motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000). The fact that social learning enables the teacher to have more control, could increase motivation for PD. Last, sharing and explaining knowledge to others (knowledge dissemination) turned out to be an independent factor. This probably reflects a general disposition that teachers possess, regardless of their preferences of social learning. Nearly all teachers (90% of the teachers score at least "Neutral" on this aspect) indicated that they liked to share and explain their knowledge. This is a high percentage and we assume that is aspect tapped on the general underlying disposition of being a teacher since this is the core business of teachers in practice. Therefore, this aspect is not related to social learning per se but it reflects a necessary basic behaviour for teaching but for social learning also.

Almost all participating teachers (96.4%) had outcomes that indicated they were at least slightly social learning minded. Even better, 30% of these teachers had outcomes that indicated that they were social learners at heart. This is a positive finding given the potential benefits of social learning (De Bruijn, 2008; Dresner & Worley, 2006; Gellert, 2003; Goodyear et al., 2004; Harasim et al., 1995; Lieberman & Wood, 2002a, 2002b). Since, 60% of the PD activities are influenced by contacts with, amongst others, colleagues, it is imperative that teachers are willing to learn with and from each other (Lovett & Cameron, 2011). This is in line with the finding that teachers indicate that social learning (or networked learning) is a valuable addition to the traditional forms of PD (van Amersfoort et al., 2011). Thus, suggesting social learning as a form of PD suits the majority of the teachers, making it a promising form of PD next to "standard" courses and seminars.

When considering the differences in average teacher scores on the five discerning factors, we found no differences between scores on factors 3, 4 and 5. However, the teachers had lower (still positive) preferences and attitudes towards the aspects of factor 2 (belief in being able to learn from colleagues, and preference for learning with colleagues). Learning from colleagues was less preferred (74.5% of the teachers had a score above "Neutral"), for instance, than PD through collaboration in general (94.5% of the teachers had a score above "Neutral"). This "learning from colleagues" factor might then still warrant more attention. The fact that outcomes of social learning are not always obvious might be to blame, for instance, for the fact that not all teachers strongly belief that "learning from colleagues and in practice enhances your knowledge more than traditional PD activities such as courses or reading a book".

The higher scores on the collaboration factor might also indicate that the teachers do not want to collaborate (only) with their direct colleagues, but that they prefer to learn from others in general. This necessitates larger learning networks or communities, which enhance the change of information flow and the creation of new knowledge. More collaboration within and between schools might spark more innovation and enlarges social capital. However, only 54.5% of the teachers indicated to already be part of a learning network or community. Since the findings indicate that the teachers had preferences and positive attitude towards social learning (which does not necessary has to take place in learning networks or communities), stimulation and facilitation of the formation of collaboration is promising and advisable for successful PD.

There were clear, significant differences between scores on factor 1 and on the other four factors. It is promising that teachers attained low scores on factor 1 (only 31.8% of the teachers had a score above "Neutral"), because the aspects comprising this factor are counteractive to social learning.

Several individual items of the quiz warrant separate consideration. The teachers indicated, for instance, a strong preference for knowing exactly how they were going to learn during their PD (74.5% had a score above "Neutral"). In social learning, the "how" of the learning often is opaque, and there is no predefined path that has to be followed. Social learning may occur informal, spontaneously and unplanned, embedded in daily practice (Villegas-Reimers, 2003), or it can be more intentional, if meetings and activities are planned ahead (such as in learning networks or communities). However, one thing that is clear in the process of social learning is that the learning occurs with and from each other, with the spreading of knowledge from one person to another (Reed et al., 2010). Even though this process is hard to plan ahead, the current study implies that teachers wanting to engage in social learning need guidance to support this preference and to follow their own learning path, without exactly knowing how this will enfold.

Almost all of the teachers indicated that they liked to collaborate with others to enhance their knowledge (94.5% was above "Neutral"), and that they asked others for advice if they had problems (92.7% was above "Neutral"). These aspects are core features of social learning and showed that social learning is a form of PD that would suit teachers well. Still, the working environment of teachers does not always facilitate them in building extensive networks, and many teachers still operate (innovations in) their classrooms in very autonomous ways.

The finding that 80.9% of the teachers indicated to be willing to try out this "new form" of PD without knowing the gains is encouraging. At the moment, social learning is often not officially considered PD by management or by other assessors of PD. In order to stimulate social learning, this is an important policy issue that needs to be addressed.

Another aspect that stood out was the strong wish of teachers to decide for themselves which topic they were going to learn about. This aspect relates to autonomy, and 82.7% of the teachers at least slightly agreed that they wanted to decide what topics would be subject of their PD, instead of having this to be a decision made by management. This form of autonomy is one of the key aspects in social learning. Autonomy is related to motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000) and therefore, networked learning might enhance the motivation for PD. Being in charge of their own PD enhances productivity (Wilson & Berne, 1991) and therefore being able to decide what topics will be part of PD can lead to more learning. It is also highly valued by teachers that the process of social learning can be determined largely by the social learners themselves. This enhances the success, and the gaining, of social learning.

No differences between the sectors were found for social learning mindedness and on the factors, thus overall, the teachers from the various sectors of employment were equally social learning minded and had the same pattern of scores over the factors. This finding seems to disconfirm earlier findings by O'Brien et al. ( 2008), but in that study, it was reported that the primary school staff had more knowledge of the project, which could have influenced the results to show that teachers of primary schools had higher expectations of the benefits of networked learning. This showed that the found preferences and attitudes were not different for teachers employed in various educational sectors and that the degree of social learning mindedness in general was the same for all the teachers.

Limitations and future research

All included teachers took part of PD projects that were aimed at PD. Thus, these teachers were somehow involved in PD which might have led to more motivation for social learning, leading to possible bias. An additional bias was that the moment of administration of the Quiz was not the same for all teachers. Most teachers were at the start of social learning, however, some teachers were already more experienced. This inequality is not solved easily because there will not be a group of teachers at a school that all have the same backgrounds, at the same moment, in the same practice.

Another limitation was that the projects they were involved in, differed from each other. Therefore, the emphasis on social learning differed. For instance, in primary education, the focus was on the formation of learning networks, whereas in higher general secondary education (Dutch: HAVO) and pre-university education (Dutch: VWO), the teachers were classified in teams based on educational level and age-group of the students. This leads to subtle differences in the approach of social learning and the description of the Quiz (see Method section). However, without participation in the projects, teachers could not be approached. No (school) context is the same and no PD project is the same. Controlling of external conditions is hardly possible, and not desirable, and therefore, this problem will not readily be solved.

Further, we included teachers of various educational sectors but not all. Therefore, a larger, and more various sample of teachers should be used in order to verify the findings, especially, the underlying factors. This is needed to study whether these findings can be applied to all teachers.

In sum, the current study showed that the teachers were social learning minded and that social learning is a promising form of PD. Most of all, the teachers liked to explain and share their knowledge, which is probably a common trait of teachers. They want to have control over their PD as indicated by, for instance, their preference to depict the topics where they were going to learn about. Additionally, they prefer collaboration that leads to PD, of which social learning is one form. The teachers had the lowest preferences and attitudes towards aspects of PD that counteract social learning. This indicates that they had lower preferences for aspects that are part of traditional forms of PD than for aspects that are related to social learning. All taken together, social learning might be a suitable form of PD for teachers.

Sector

N

Primary education

13

Secondary vocational education (Dutch: MBO)

34

Higher general secondary education (Dutch: HAVO) and pre-university education (Dutch: VWO)

46

Higher education (higher secondary vocational education (Dutch: HBO) and university)

15

Unknown

2

Total

110

Factor

Nr

Facilitating (F) or counteracting (C)

Mean (SD)*

% above 3

Item (text)

Factor 1
2.58 (.672)

31.8

Factor 2
3.78 (.861)

74.5

Factor 3
4.27 (.553)

94.5

4

3

F

4.23 (.820)

82.7

I want to decide what topics will be subject of my PD

5

4

F

4.46 (.762)

90.0

I like to share and explain my knowledge with and to others

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Social learning as approach for teacher professional development; how well does it suit them?

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Abstract Abstract Learning from others has been reported as a productive approach for teacher Professional Development (PD) and is seen as a valuable addition to formal PD. Specific insights into whether social learning suits teachers is still lacking. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to develop and apply an instrument to assess social learning mindedness of teachers.

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Abstract

International student mobility has been increasingly subject to turbulences in politics, culture, economics, natural disasters and public health. The new decade has witnessed an unprecedented disruption to international student flows and welfare as a consequence of the covid-19 outbreak. This health crisis to hit international education presents a range of challenges for host universities. In such a fallout, the connection between university communities and international students is more critical than ever. This connection is vital not only to university's operations but more importantly, to international students' learning and wellbeing. This in turn will have longer-term impacts on host countries' and universities' sustainable international recruitment and reputation as a study destination. Therefore, it is timely to reflect on how we view and conceptualise the way we engage and work with international students. This article presents a new frame for conceptualising the teaching, learning and engagement for international students, which emphasises people-to-people empathy and people-to-people connections.
Conceptualise student connection not only through formal but also informal curriculum
Dis/connection has been argued to play "an important role in shaping international students' wellbeing, performance and life trajectories" (Tran & Gomes, 2017, p.1). Therefore it is important to frame international student connectedness not only within the context of formal teaching and learning on campus, but also in a broader setting, taking into account the dynamic, diverse and fluid features of transnational mobility. Some of the primary dimensions of international student connection vital to their academic and social experience and wellbeing have been identified as:

Connection with the content and process of teaching and learning

Bonding between host teachers and international students

Engagement with the university communities

Interaction between domestic and international students and among international peers

Integration into relevant social and professional networks, the host community and the host society

Connection with family and home communities

Online and digital connection

In our interviews with around 400 international students, teachers and international student support staff across different research projects, most people stressed the importance of understanding international students' study purposes, needs, expectations and characteristics in the first place in order to meaningfully and productively engage with this cohort (Tran, 2013). Secondly, effective teaching of and engagement with international students is based on understanding not only their academic needs but other aspects that are inter-linked with and impact on their academic performance, including pastoral care needs, mental health, employment, accommodation, life plans and aspirations. Thirdly, a sense of belonging to the content of teaching and learning and the pedagogy used by teachers is essential to international students' engagement with the classroom community. In this regard, connection is intimately linked to international students being included and valued intellectually and culturally in teaching and learning, and in being treated as partners (Green, 2019; Tran, 2013) rather than 'others' in the curriculum. Fourthly, to position international students as truly an integral component of campus communities, it is essential to develop explicit approaches to engage them not only academically and interculturally, but also mentally and emotionally, especially during hard-hitting crises in international education such as the 2019-2020 Covid-19 outbreak, the 2003 SARS epidemic, and the 2001 September 11 attacks.
Productive connectedness
The lack of engagement between international and domestic students is often identified as a primary area for improvement for universities that host international students, especially in Anglophone countries (Leask, 2009). While international education is supposed to strengthen people-to-people connection and enrich human interactions, ironically it is this lack of connection with the local community, including local students, that international students feel most dissatisfied about in their international education experience. To support and optimise the learning and wellbeing of international students, productive connectedness is essential. Productive connectedness is not simply providing the mere conditions for interaction between domestic and international peers (Tran & Pham, 2016). These conditions alone cannot ensure meaningful and real connectedness but can just lead to artificial or surface engagement between international students and the host communities. Productive connectedness is centred around creating real opportunities for international and local students to not only increase their mutual understandings, but importantly to reciprocally learn from the encounter of differences and share, negotiate and contribute to building knowledge, cultural experiences and skills on a more equal basis. In this regard, productive connectedness is integral to optimising teaching and learning for international students.
Teaching and learning for international students
Over the past 15 years, we have undertaken significant research on conceptualising the teaching and learning for international students, an evolving and dynamic field of scholarship (Tran, 2013; Tran & Pham, 2016; Tran & Gomes, 2017). Figure 1 summarises the six interrelated dimensions of teaching and learning for international students emerging from our research: connecting, accommodating, reciprocating, integrating, "relationalising" and empathy.

Figure 1: Framework for teaching and learning for international students

Connecting: It is critical in effective teaching and learning for international students that conditions are provided to engage them intellectually, culturally, socially and affectively. Curriculum, pedagogies and assessment activities should aim at supporting international students to make trans-national knowledge, skills, experience, culture as well as people-to-people connections (Tran, 2013).

Accommodating: Effective teaching and learning for international students cannot be achieved without an effort to understand their purposes to undertake international education, their cultural and educational backgrounds, their characteristics, their identities and their aspirations. Good teaching and learning practices in international education are often built on educators' capacity to tailor their curriculum and pedagogies to cater for international students based on an understanding of their study purposes, backgrounds and identities.

Reciprocating: Reciprocal learning is integral to international education. It is centred around positioning international students as co-constructors of knowledge and educators as reciprocal co-learners. It refers to extending beyond mutual understanding and respect for diversity, to validate and reciprocally learn from diverse resources, experiences and encounter of differences that international classrooms can offer. This is vital to making international students feel included and valued as an integral part of the curriculum and the university community.

Integrating: Integrating refers to the purposeful incorporation of international examples, case studies, materials and perspectives into the curriculum. Strategies to diversify the teaching and learning content and pedagogies are closely connected with de-Westernising the curriculum and moving away from Euro-centric content. Integrating contributes to enriching students' global awareness, world mindfulness and intercultural competence, which are central to internationalising student experience and outcomes.

"Relationalising": "Relationalising" is crucial in assisting domestic and international students to develop open-minded and ethno-relative perspectives. Engaging students in a comparing- contrasting and reflexive process about professional practices, prior experiences and cultural norms in different countries represents a critical step in assisting them to develop multiple frames of reference and build capacities to relationally learn from richly varied perspectives and experiences that an international classroom can offer.

Empathy: International students' sense of belonging to the classroom and university community significantly depends on the empathy local teachers and students display towards them. Teachers can develop activities that enable students to develop an understanding and empathy towards what it feels like to be an international student in an unfamiliar academic and social environment, studying in a language that is not their mother tongue. One of the teacher-participants in our research shared an activity she used to help all students develop empathy:
I asked for volunteers, I'd speak to them in English and they had to answer in their language. The group had to try and figure out from their body language and tone of voice what they were actually saying to me...But what I try and make them understand that part of the reason we're doing that, not in English, is because it's like excluding the local students and it's making them look like foreigners and to understand the challenge. Conclusion
Effective practices in engaging, teaching and learning for international students enrich the international classroom community and optimise learning for all, including international and domestic students and teachers themselves (Carroll & Ryan, 20075; Tran, 2013). Good pedagogical practices in teaching and learning for international students depend on teachers' commitment to step outside of their comfort zone and take on a new learning curve (Tran, 2013). It is however vital that internationalising teaching and learning and building intercultural interactions among students from diverse backgrounds and - in particular between international and domestic students - should be prioritised at both programme and course development levels, making them explicit in course objectives and assessments (Tran & Pham, 2016). It is crucial to have a coherent whole-institution approach towards a purposeful, transformative and empathetic internationalisation of teaching and learning content, pedagogies and assessment, one that is supported by the broader institution's core goals about internationalising the student experience and graduate outcomes. An internationalised program of learning for international and domestic students alike should prioritise enhancing their abilities to learn from global encounters, abilities to connect and empathise, skills to navigate intercultural relationships and skills to capitalise on opportunities but also to deal with pressures and challenges. Importantly, the teaching and learning for international students needs to be built on an approach emphasising people-to-people empathy and people-to-people connections.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
International student mobility has been increasingly subject to turbulences in politics, culture, economics, natural disasters and public health. The new decade has witnessed an unprecedented disruption to international student flows and welfare as a consequence of the covid-19 outbreak. This health crisis to hit international education presents a range of challenges for host universities.

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When Times Higher Education surveyed leaders of prominent global universities in 2018, the 200 respondents - from 45 countries across six continents - were emphatic on one point: online higher education would never match the real thing.

Although 63 per cent expected established, prestigious universities to be offering full degrees online by 2030, only 24 per cent thought that the electronic versions would be more popular than traditional campus-based degrees (" How will technology reshape the university by 2030 ", Features, 27 September 2018).

Lino Guzzella, president of ETH Zurich, asserted that "meeting people, interacting with peers, students and supervisors - in short, a real university environment - is the key to deep understanding".

An Australian vice-chancellor said that "face-to-face interaction will never be matched in quality by other modes of communication" - even if current "fads temporarily appear to be tilting the balance towards non-human interaction".

Jane Gatewood, vice-provost for global engagement at the University of Rochester in New York state, likened the difference between residential and online learning to the difference between visiting a new place and merely "watching a video" of it.

And Yang Hai Wen, vice-president of Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China, said that online education would "create more unhealthy graduates and [create] more frustrations in interpersonal communication".

Chinese social media is currently filled with anecdotes of such frustrations with online education. Students recount having to rush out of toilets to answer professors' calls or turn off their video feeds to block out relatives yelling or playing mah-jong in the background. One group of students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong all changed their usernames to "NO SOUND" after a hapless professor continued to lecture with his microphone turned off.

Then again, such teething problems are only to be expected given the breakneck speed at which universities in China have been forced to move all of their teaching online - precisely to preserve the health of their students - in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak that has paralysed the region. The world's largest higher education system has been thrust into an e-learning experiment of unprecedented scale and scope, as university medical staff scramble to address an epidemic that, by early March, had infected in excess of 100,000 patients and killed about 4,000.

All students in mainland China and Hong Kong - from kindergarteners to doctoral candidates - were asked to stay home and pursue their education online after the Lunar New Year break ended in late January. At the tertiary level, this affects 30 million learners at 3,000 institutions, many of which have responded by rushing to develop and launch mandatory online classes to fill a void that may endure for the rest of the academic year in the most severely affected areas.

Nor is it only Chinese students that are affected. Many of the half-million international students enrolled at universities in mainland China and Hong Kong have had to log in from their home countries to continue their courses. Meanwhile, Australia is also seeking online solutions for the estimated 100,000 Chinese international students who went home for the Lunar New Year and were then prevented by Australia's China travel ban from returning to campus. The issue is particularly fraught in Australia given that the 2020-21 academic year has already begun but, if the epidemic endures, the same issue could affect other nations with large Chinese cohorts, such as the UK and Canada.

Universities in other Covid-19 hotspots, such as Italy, Iran and Singapore, have also closed their campuses, and Singapore has replaced in-person teaching with online alternatives for the time being.

But how realistic is it to suddenly shift large amounts of teaching online? Are the university leaders surveyed by THE right to assume that students will see the virtual student experience as a poor substitute for the real thing? Or might it be that online higher education becomes the new normal far earlier and to a far greater extent than any experts were previously predicting?

Asian universities were initially slow to embrace online learning. While The New York Times dubbed 2012 " the year of the Mooc ", the first Asian massive open online course, developed by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, emerged only the following year.

But enthusiasm for Moocs has since waned and East Asia is strongly placed to pioneer a global move to deliver more mainstream university teaching online. Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore all have internet penetration rates of 85 to 95 per cent, and while that figure drops to a little over 50 per cent in mainland China, that still amounts to 840 million internet users: the largest national cohort in the world.

Moreover, "China is one of the most technically enabled countries in the world", according to Hamish Coates, director of the Higher Education Division of the Institute of Education at Tsinghua University. In particular, he cites the Haidian district of Beijing, which houses a dozen university campuses, including Tsinghua's, as well as the headquarters of Google China, Microsoft China and domestic technology firms Baidu and Xiaomi. "It is one of the biggest edtech hubs in the world," Coates says.

Hong Kong had a head start on transitioning to online education when its public universities replaced in-person classes and assessments with digital alternatives last November, owing to campus closures caused by the anti-government protests and police violence. Hence, apart from a few weeks in January, Hong Kong's campuses have already been running digitally for a few months.

"The hardware, software and systems are all there," says Yeung Yau-Yuen, an expert in IT and science education at the Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) and a visiting professor at Sichuan Normal University. "We don't have enough bandwidth yet, but that will likely be solved with 5G."

But Yeung recognises that the somewhat patchy and impersonal experience of Moocs is not a good model for universities to follow: "With the exception of some very top courses, the overall quality of Moocs may not be great," he says. "And there's a high dropout rate. Moocs are not the solution, as online teaching requires guidance. It needs to be interactive, with as much face-to-face learning as possible."

EdUHK chose to deliver lectures and seminars via the web conferencing site Zoom. This required some training of lecturers, but the digital switchover was achieved with minimal delays.

"It's not such a big deal. Hong Kong universities did it in two weeks," Yeung says. "And the mainland has also been very fast. University students are already all online, and almost everything can be done on a mobile phone."

EdUHK has established schedules and standards for the online lectures, and marks attendance for group classes. Regular absences, except under exceptional circumstances, can lead to failing a course. And despite the fact that the students are all sitting alone in a room, "there's a sense of spirit, of enthusiasm, when you're all together, even if on a screen", Yeung says. "When you're just learning online by yourself, it's hard. You need learning companions. It's good to see other students asking questions."

He concedes that students can still find it hard to focus when they are surrounded by the distractions of refrigerators, games consoles and other home comforts. Hence, "you don't get as great a response as you do being face to face. But it's better than individual self-learning," he says.

The digital shift has suddenly thrust universities' IT departments to the forefront of managerial attention. Ian Holliday, vice-president and pro vice-chancellor (teaching and learning) at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), is now playing a direct role in the institution's Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative (TELI). Staffed by two dozen designers, developers and IT specialists, the programme long predates the recent upheavals and was focused on facilitating flipped classrooms, Moocs and other digital innovations. However, the previous assumption that online learning was only a realistic option for tech-savvy teachers has been swept away, requiring TELI to "reach out to everyone at the same time", Holliday says.

"Online learning has become central to our teaching model," Holliday says. But he adds that he expects this to be the case only temporarily. Hence, some of the more difficult aspects of switching to online tuition wholesale have not been addressed. The teaching timetable has been rejigged such that "material that can be [easily] taught online comes first", Holliday says. The university has also had to "rethink student assignments, especially as the logistics of group work are very challenging for students who are often living in very different time zones". Assessments may also change, giving more weight to weekly assignments and less weight to mass final exams, which some HKU schools may struggle to hold online. But practical applications of knowledge learned, such as laboratory-based classes in medicine and science, have been postponed until the end of modules, by which time it was initially hoped that the campus would have reopened -although HKU announced last week that classes will now be cancelled for the entirety of the current semester, which runs until the end of May.

It is not only IT departments that have been stretched by the online switch. Lecturers, too, have had to make major changes to their work habits, and many report heavier workloads as they scramble to post their teaching materials online and get to grips with what online lecturing involves. Yeung, for instance, spoke to THE via a headset from his book-lined office during his seventh Zoom meeting of the day. He reports sometimes recording 10 videos for use in just one class, and now needs to do student assessments one by one, instead of as a group activity.

Meanwhile, Areum Jeong, an assistant professor at the Sichuan University - Pittsburgh Institute (SCUPI) in China, worked remotely from her native South Korea to prepare materials for online English composition and Korean film classes that began in late February, delivered via the BigBlueButton conferencing site. She compliments the university's administrative staff for working "tirelessly, around the clock" to provide training sessions on how to use the site, and she is also grateful for the practical tips shared by fellow faculty and staff on the popular Chinese messaging platform WeChat.

Jeong has been practising lecturing with and without video, sharing clips and slides. She has revised her syllabi, set up course homepages and uploaded required readings. To try to keep her students interested, she has prepared in-class activities, group discussions, online polls and even updated her PowerPoint presentations to make them "more eye-catching".

She admits that English writing can be a "boring and difficult subject" for students even at the best of times, especially for non-native-speaking science majors who may feel "uncertain and stressed" by lengthy essay assignments. "Establishing rapport with the students can be a very important factor in keeping them encouraged and engaged," she says, adding that she normally tries to meet in person with students as much as possible during her office hours. In the absence of that opportunity, "adaptability and flexibility will be key".

Still, there are some learning experiences that cannot be replicated digitally. Originally, Jeong wanted to hold regular movie viewings, plus Q&A sessions with Korean film-makers. Now, one of her students is helping her look for Chinese streaming platforms where the films can be viewed online, but she is sorry that the students will miss out on the shared experience of watching them together.

"I imagined classes filled with students eagerly sharing their opinions about specific scenes and asking questions about the film's relationship with Korean history and society," she says.

Hard evidence for the superiority of the classroom to the online experience is actually scarce. Indeed, educational researchers Robert Bernard, Eugene Borokhovski and Richard Schmid, from the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance at Concordia University, Canada, told THE in 2018 that they knew of "no empirical evidence that says that classroom instruction benefits students (compared to alternatives) from a learning achievement perspective". More important than the medium was whether university teachers could "capture and challenge the imagination, based on the learners' pre-existing knowledge".

The enforced pace of the online switch in China has not always made that easy to achieve, however - as the social media comments mentioned above illustrate. Anyone who has ever tried to set up a Zoom meeting knows that there are inevitable technical and scheduling problems when trying to link up 30 people, much less 30 million. Indeed, in the first few days, several major Chinese web conferencing platforms, including those of the huge domestic technology firm Tencent, experienced crashes after receiving tenfold jumps in traffic, such that the hashtag #TencentClassroomCrashed trended on Weibo, a popular social media channel.

China's Ministry of Education announced in February that the nation had 22 online platforms providing 24,000 free higher-education courses, covering 12 disciplines for undergraduates and 18 at a "higher vocational education level". These options will be helpful for regional or smaller institutions that may not have the means to produce online alternatives quickly.

Meanwhile, some elite institutions have gone beyond merely shifting their teaching online. Peking University, for instance, is also offering online trauma counselling, employment advice, thesis supervision and other support services. And some senior sector figures are convinced that while physical campuses will retain enormous value once the epidemic is over, there may be no going back to a fully analogue model of university instruction.

HKU's Holliday, for instance, expects that "many colleagues will make permanent changes to their teaching practice as a result of what happens in these few weeks. Already we're finding that while there are bound to be problems and challenges, some students and teachers are writing in to applaud the things they really like about online teaching. Our task will be to retain those aspects and integrate them with face-to-face teaching once the campus returns to normal."

Tsinghua's Coates also thinks that "there will almost certainly be a post-virus boom" in online higher education.

"We didn't even know this was possible," he says of mass online learning. "But now you have major university systems proving it to presidents, funders and governments."

He adds that the main development that has taken place in the past few weeks is not so much a technical one as a cultural one among administrators and governments. "Online education has matured into the mainstream," he says. "The big thing is legitimisation."

Nevertheless, there remain likely limits to how far the longer-term digital switchover might go. That is because, however successful a university is in conducting its teaching online, there would appear to be no good virtual substitutes for field trips or academic exchanges - never mind the social and cultural attractions of campus life, from band nights to sporting events.

Christy Kan, a master's student in journalism at HKU, has taken Moocs before, so has had no technical difficulties adjusting to online learning. However, she feels that interactions online can be "quite weird", as some students prefer to turn off their computers' cameras and microphones, leaving teachers to lecture to "black screens" for hours on end. In her experience, students also tend to ask fewer questions online, and some have had trouble making class because of time zone differences.

Asked about the prospect of longer-term campus closures, she responds: "No one wants this to happen!" Echoing the view of the university leaders who responded to THE 's 2018 survey, Kan adds that "as a student, I value campus life very much. Of course, the university can switch face-to-face learning to online learning any time, but the real-life campus experience cannot go virtual."
joyce.lau@timeshighereducation.com
Tsinghua University's digital revolution

The sudden outbreak of Covid-19 came at a particularly challenging time. Students in China were due to commence the spring semester around 17 February, but, under nationwide measures to control the spread of the virus, those not already on campuses were instructed to delay their return.

On 3 February, I chaired a special university-wide briefing to outline new semester arrangements at Tsinghua University. Live streamed to 50,000 students, faculty, staff and alumni, the briefing included lectures by the university president and chairperson and evoked previous arduous periods that Tsinghua has endured. The university's determination to continue come what may is perhaps best encapsulated by the insistence of Mei Yiqi, one of Tsinghua's most influential presidents, on delivering basic education and research in the face of persistent civil war and foreign invasion in the 1930s and 1940s.

Hence, although all campus-based classes have been suspended, except for some laboratory and practical course components, t eaching for all courses has continued via online platforms. Extraordinary efforts were made to prepare faculty and students for the digital switch, and a total of 4,254 Tsinghua courses, taught by 2,681 faculty members to more than 25,000 students, are now being successfully delivered this way.

Even courses in creative arts and physical education have been conducted online. Physical education instructors use online tools to monitor students' exercise and to instruct them on health and fitness. In addition, to ensure the holistic well-being of all students and staff during this uncertain and anxious period, mental health courses have been made available, and additional resources have gone into counselling services.

Many students and teachers have been excited by the move to remote learning. Faculty have supported each other during the implementation period, sharing their discoveries and tips as they navigate the online teaching systems. And observing colleagues' online courses has become a convenient and worthwhile way to promote faculty development.

Meanwhile, the new online teaching model has encouraged those students who are typically shy about speaking in public and prefer to contribute in written form, so participation and engagement level are also expected to improve.

Tsinghua has been able to lead the way in China's online transition because we had already made decisive moves into online teaching, in an effort to facilitate the learning of post-millennial students.

In 2016, for instance, we launched the Rain Classroom teaching platform, which is the most advanced and effective online teaching platform in China and currently has more than 19 million users, the second highest in the world. Online classes consist of three 30-minute sessions: a duration deemed more suitable than longer lectures for the pace of online learning. Students are encouraged to submit questions during live interaction with their teacher, which the software can collect and classify. Time is allocated for instructors to answer the queries and further discussion is arranged in each section of the course. Rain Classroom also facilitates course assessments and the setting and evaluation of both standard homework and extracurricular learning tasks.

But digital education isn't only for registered students. Tsinghua has also decided to release all 1,600 of its Moocs free of charge, and we will open more than 2,000 Rain classes to the public, too. We will also set up "clone classes" so that teachers and students from other schools can share Tsinghua's courses simultaneously. Several universities and local educational institutions, including secondary schools, have contacted Tsinghua in the hope of obtaining support.

Like many universities with medical schools, Tsinghua faculty have been assigned to research and develop medical responses to the coronavirus, and medical personnel from our affiliated hospitals have been dispatched to Hubei province, the centre of the epidemic, to assist in the treatment of patients.

In all these ways, Tsinghua is living up to its commitment to the academic community, and to society more broadly.

Once the immediate period of virus prevention is over, conventional classes will return in some capacity. However, the impact of the online switch will endure. Students and teachers will have collectively experienced a new benchmark of contemporary education: a more interactive, real-time and innovation-oriented learning experience. I am confident that teachers will embrace the digital switch, and even seek further opportunities to develop online and blended education models.

Some will still be resistant to change. In particular, some teachers still have concerns about using Rain Classroom and are reluctant to change their existing methodologies. But I know a professor in her sixties who had never used the online tool before the training sessions. She was understandably very resistant at first, but, after realising that her unique teaching style will not be compromised, she now supports Rain Classroom's adoption.

In this unforeseen and unpredictable landscape, technology has offered credible solutions to an unprecedented problem. The online tools and upgrades to existing technologies that have been pushed to the forefront of university teaching will emerge as epoch-making platforms in China. They may well establish new global standards, too, and new norms for online and blended education.
Bin Yang is vice-president and provost of Tsinghua University.
Will India's demographics reap a dividend for online education providers?

India has the third largest higher education system in the world, but it is marked by significant disparities in access to high-quality institutions. Official figures put the current enrolment rate only at about 25 per cent, and the student body is largely dominated by people from urban areas and higher income groups.

However, internet access is more widely distributed; cheap data costs mean that more than 40 per cent of the population are already online. With rural aspirations for a white-collar future increasing, conditions are ripe for solutions that can democratise knowledge and skills, and pundits are optimistic that online education can deliver that.

India's edtech market is projected to be worth $2 billion (£1.5 billion) by 2021, based on 9.6 million users, according to a 2016 report by KPMG and Google. In 2016, it was worth $250 million, with 1.6 million users. A 2018 report on Indian edtech start-ups by industry body NASSCOM and consultancy Zinnov found that 3,000 edtech start-ups had been incorporated in the previous five years, backed by venture capital funds and other high-profile investors, such as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Google and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

So far, the industry is dominated by apps that supplement school-level education or offer professional reskilling. The latter reflects India's demographic dividend, with working-age people making up 62.5 per cent of the total population; industry experts predict 10 million enrolments in online/distance courses by 2021, with high demand from semi-urban and suburban areas.

Other rapidly growing market segments are preparation for undergraduate and other competitive exams, such as the GMAT (used in MBA admissions), civil service entrance exams and professional engineering exams.

There is obvious further scope. A 2019 report by Indian employability evaluation company Aspiring Minds claims that 80 per cent of Indian engineering graduates lack the skills for the knowledge economy. However, while edtech platforms such as Udacity and India's own Unacademy offer courses on future-facing subjects such as AI and data science, prohibitive pricing limits access. A self-paced certificate on AI can set a student back over £600: a lot of money for a young graduate from the suburbs. An online MBA from Amity University costs more than £6,000.

Moreover, online education and edtech in India is still not integrated into the mainstream education system for the most part. There has been significant push towards online education by the government, which runs a slew of online courses on everything from languages to cybersecurity through its premier higher education institutions. And, in 2018, the University Grants Commission, India's higher education regulatory body, finally approved new rules that allow all colleges and universities to offer fully fledged online courses, subject to meeting certain quality criteria. Proposals for new online degrees have also been solicited from other universities that fulfil those criteria, so more can be expected to start offering such programmes. However, such offerings are yet to take off on a larger scale.

Hence, while the emergence of edtech is undoubtedly a significant development in a higher education system which, by and large, still swears by traditional pedagogies, the jury is still out on how much it can actually deliver in terms of increased equity.
Rudrani Dasgupta works for ActionAid in Kolkata, India.

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Will the coronavirus make online education go viral?

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The sudden closure of university campuses across China and elsewhere has necessitated the virtual delivery of vast numbers of courses. And while there have been inevitable teething problems, observers are wondering whether the future might just have become the present. Joyce Lau reports

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Amidst the excellent advice and community spirit shown for the online pivot, it has also become apparent that non-specific, non-academic support is going to be valuable. I blogged before that with our GO-GN network we know that emotional support is as valuable as academic support.

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Introduction

In many ways, the passing of another decade is nothing remarkable. The world does not transform periodically every ten years. Nevertheless, the fact that the 2020s are now upon us provides good reason to reflect on how education (and wider society) is changing. This special issue of Learning Media & Technology takes the new decade as a prompt to look forward to the near-future. It asks what issues relating to education, media and technology might be at the forefront of our minds when 2030 comes around? More importantly, it calls us to consider how we should be preparing ourselves in the meantime.

Regardless of what the future holds, we are undeniably in the midst of what is a very distinct (and perhaps even unusual) time. Popularism and political instability is gaining hold in all manner of alarming ways. It is now regularly claimed that globalisation is dead, that we are living in a post-digital age, and that we are on the cusp of an 'industrial revolution 4.0'. Even if we discount these headline claims as hyperbole, it is clear that digital technologies are a significant factor in the ways in which our day-to-day lives are now distinctly different than they were 20 years ago. It makes sense then to expect that digital technologies will continue to be a significant part of how our future is shaped as the nature of the world's economies, politics, cultures, and societies steadily (and often unpredictably) shift.

As major shifts unfold, education the world over faces considerable change, but many of the problems that have long blighted education systems stubbornly persist. Schools around the world continue to face deficiencies in resourcing, significant inequalities of educational opportunity, alongside poor-quality teaching, curriculum and school organisation. These are all issues that pre-date the first 'computers in the classroom' and the subsequent forays into 'digital education'. Indeed, the simple goal of securing access to basic primary education for all children looks unlikely to be realised by 2030 (if ever at all). Such fundamental problems have haunted education for centuries and are likely to remain long beyond 2030 even though many of the ways education is organised may change. All told, these are worryingly familiar and unfamiliar times for everyone in education.

Looking to the 'near future'

So how can we orient ourselves toward the technology-related challenges that will face education over the new decade and beyond? This special issue contains a number of papers responding to the provocation of ' Education and technology into the 2020s: speculative futures '. We have amassed contributions from some of the leading international groups and collectives working on critical studies of educational technology, and the resulting set of papers provides plenty of food for thought. In this introductory piece, we want to do more that provide a perfunctory synopsis of each article. Instead, we have attempted to work up a collective list of important and/or interesting issues that we feel will be shaping educational technology in the 'near future' - that is, in the next five to ten years.

This modest time-frame is deliberate. We could have chosen to speculate on what (post)digital education might be like in 2070, yet this would be of little practical benefit to most readers. Instead, it is far more useful to imagine the problems and concerns that educators are likely to be grappling with only a few years from now. As with our special issue as a whole, this introductory article starts from the premise that 2020 is an opportune moment to reflect on the potential educational technology challenges of the next 10 years.

With the caveat that as with any look into the future, everything that follows is inevitably subjective, the following six 'hot takes' on critical EdTech have been developed in a manner intended to keep our thoughts on-point and of practical benefit. This involves three guiding principles ...

speculating on the future in plausible (rather than fantastical) terms;

distinguishing between what is probable, what is possible, and what is preferable;

thinking of 'futures' plural - that is, being open to the idea of different variations and directions that may well unfold over the next few years.

In this spirit, then, here are six substantial challenges that we expect critical educational technology scholarship to meet as the new decade progresses. In no particular order ...

New forms of digital in/exclusion

Concerns about inequalities in the ways that people use technologies for formal and informal educational purposes are not new. These have endured for decades, moving initially from binary models of 'use' and 'non-use', to more complex recent models that reflect the interplay of various nuanced factors in understanding who benefits most from using technology. While the technologies are fast-changing and these explanatory models are increasingly sophisticated, the basic message remains the same. Those individuals who are well-resourced and have strong educational backgrounds are likely to benefit the most from digital education.

To date, policy makers have tried to 'fix' these problems by focusing on improving technology access in schools and homes, and/or supporting the development of digital skills. These responses are problematic for two fundamental reasons. Firstly, they encourage a focus that problematises individuals and makes them responsible for their position in society, thus ignoring inequalities in wider social structures. Secondly, these responses treat technology as an inherently 'good thing' that merely offers educational opportunities, thus ignoring the complex socio-cultural aspects of technology and the strong neo-liberal ideology that drives much of what is developed for education. As the 2020s progress, there is a significant risk of offering more of the same. Initiatives that focus on access and skills are likely to remain an 'easy' way for policy makers to signal that they are 'dealing with' inequality. Instead, the 2020s need to be a decade when researchers spearhead a change of approach. It is time to better theorise the links between developments in technology, inequality and education, while also striving to actively design technologies that facilitate more equitable futures for all.

Platform economics in an age of artificial intelligence

Similar to questions of digital in/exclusion, the spectre of digital data and datafication has been a prominent feature of education for some time. Nevertheless, the continued adoption of artificial intelligence into mainstream education throughout the 2020s will initiate datafication on an unprecedented scale. All these disparate forms of artificial intelligence (from deep learning to adversarial networks), are undeniably hungry for data. Leading the charge to extract data from educational settings will be digital platform providers for whom 'user' data is their most valuable commodity.

As with social media platforms in the 2000s, educational platform providers will be working to expand the scope of their 'walled gardens' to encompass as many user practices as possible, leading to classrooms on platforms rather than platforms in classrooms. Artificial intelligence will increasingly become the engine of education, and student data the fuel. Critical EdTech researchers therefore need to pay close attention to the fate of these educational platform providers and to the ecosystems of nested platforms and services hidden by the everyday interfaces that students and teachers work with. Will educational platforms act as data brokers for the advanced AI backends delivered by competing US and Chinese giants? Will platform providers be bought up, or simply be replaced by versions from these larger conglomerates themselves?

'Divisions of learning' across humans and machines

Grappling with the implications of increasing datafication of education raises significant questions about the powerful models of human behaviour being 'learned' by machines as they surveil our everyday interactions with digital technologies. From our shopping routines to our political leanings, machines now seem capable of learning our habits and influencing our choices in unprecedented ways. Indeed, one might be forgiven for assuming that effective and unadulterated 'machine learning' is now more salient to the future prosperity of our political economy than the learning undertaken by human beings.

As the 2020s progress, we need to consider a set of difficult questions about 'learning'. For example, where is the most significant and influential learning happening in our societies? What kind of systems are undertaking learning? How is 'our' learning (as citizens, students, workers) intermingled with the ways that machines learn? Who is ultimately benefiting from the outcomes? These questions address a vision of learning that extends well beyond the boundaries of formal education - highlighting the extent to which educational researchers need to expand their horizons and extend their interests. Prominent work in critical data studies over the 2010s has foregrounded the need to shift attention from divisions of labour to 'divisions of learning' as perhaps the dominant 'axial principle of social order in an information civilization' (Zuboff , 179). If this is the case, then critical EdTech research needs to work to re-establish the value of formal education in an era of ubiquitous learning (by machines, from 'our' data). Above all, then, we need to challenge accepted views of what constitutes meaningful and worthwhile knowledge for our future societies.

IT industry actors as a leading educational force

None of the changes highlighted so far will occur of their own accord. Indeed, the 2020s will see the expansion of the commercial 'ecosystem' that already exerts considerable influence on what takes place in the area of educational technology. School systems will continue to be subject to major pushes for privatisation of the digital infrastructures. The global digital education agenda will continue to be influenced by big corporate 'edu-businesses' such as Pearson alongside wealthy philanthropics such the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Alongside these established corporate behemoths, the most profitable EdTech businesses will most likely emerge from 'new' markets such as China and India. These actors will be accompanied by portfolios of 'start-up' companies (often financed by powerful venture capital interests) pushing educational 'innovations' and 'solutions'. Critical researchers therefore need to be alert to how corporate actors that are shaping educational technology agendas around the world.

While there nothing inherently wrong (or especially new) with these commercial contributions, questions need to be asked about regulation and oversight of corporate activities in educational settings. For example, should major 'big tech' corporations continue to exercise 'soft power' in influencing and shaping education decision-making, while all the time profiting from the decisions being made? How might we better ensure that commercial actors respond primarily to the ideals of public education rather than working to create demand for their products? How can educators be supported in maintaining their role in guiding and leading the development of our youngest members of society? What counter-narratives can be developed against the prevalent forms of high-tech behaviourism that companies are promoting through the development of data-driven personalised learning systems? Critical EdTech research has a key role to play in supporting educational communities to confront the challenge of preserving the past while adapting to the future.

Reimaging forms of EdTech suitable for an age of climate change.

The 2020s will be the decade where we finally face up to the imperative to establish sustainability and ecological responsibility as central elements of educational provision and practice. One key aspect of this will be properly facing up to the ways in which digital technologies have been excessively consumed and discarded over the past 20 years in the name of education 'innovation'. Regardless of how daunting such changes might seem, the education community needs to quickly curtail the environmental and ethical impacts of its digital technology consumption if there is to be a viable future for EdTech. Put bluntly, the priority for everyone working in the area of education and technology needs to be a rapid collective change of attitude and action.

So what might be done? One suggestion is for critical EdTech scholarship to follow the lead being set by the 'Computing Within Limits' movement that is growing within various areas of academic computer science (Nardi et al. ). This attempts to identify and promote forms of computing that are best suited for a resource-constrained planet. The emphasis here would be on planning future education technology use with a primary aim of 'coping with finiteness'. This involves abandoning the 'cornucopian' assumptions of limitlessness and abundance that have bloated digital technology use over the past 30 years. Instead, we need to develop radically leaner and ecologically-mindful approaches to rethinking how digital technologies might be best deployed (or not deployed) in education.

Finding alternatives: solidary economies, convivial technology, respectful design

Amidst all these 'big' challenges is the need to remain hopeful and continue to 'think otherwise'. In an era when many commentators presume 'there are no alternatives', one of the key roles of critical scholarship is to find alternatives. We therefore need to focus on developing not only potential/possible futures, but also developing alternatives to all the forms of data colonialism and Big Tech implicated in everything outlined in this paper so far. This is not a case of identifying 'best practices' or 'next practices', but engaging in critique that highlights contemporary lines of flight away from (over)centralisation and excessive commercialisation. In solidary economies, for instance, how might not-for-profit organisations or the open educational movement shift EdTech priorities? Reimaginings such as these can foreground concerns of care rather than competition; cooperation rather than rivalry; imagination rather than corporatized creativity.

Alternately, how might schools and other educational institutions adopt and adapt 'convivial technologies' (Vetter ) which are not designed for profitability, efficiency and growth, but instead orient toward de-growth, and to more equitable, participatory, democratic, interrelated and ecological societies? Elsewhere, what possibilities are there for decolonising technology, or using what Tunstall () calls 'respectful design'? These approaches contest the currently dominant racist, monolingual, ethnocentric and sexist discourses of EdTech by foregrounding relational and community approaches to design. This would involve educational technology designers taking time to think about who they are designing for, who their most vulnerable users are, and who their designs might harm as well as benefit. Any proposal for new EdTech should place emphasis on carving space for experimenting with 'alternative' (although this word is itself too binary) ways of thinking about what education is, and what education should be. Highlighting such alternative EdTech futures is not necessarily an optimistic endeavour, but it does retain a modicum of hope that is otherwise easily lost sight of.

Conclusions

All six of the challenges raised above point to uncomfortably big shifts in direction for us to contemplate. Yet while these are undeniably complex challenges, they offer a decent foundation from which the field of critical educational technology scholarship can work in a hopeful (rather than hopeless) manner. So, where should this speculative list of near-future concerns take us now? Clearly there is a need to set about developing a critical EdTech agenda that addresses all these issues - making use of recent theoretical and methodological approaches that are emerging outside the usual purview of 'education research'. Indeed, some of the most interesting new ideas that can drive these reimaginings of digital education can be found in interdisciplinary areas still forming in-between the computational and social sciences - i.e. critical data studies, anticipatory studies, critical design. It is crucial that critical EdTech scholars continue to pay close attention to such hybrid areas of debate and inquiry.

An additional task for researchers in critical EdTech is to develop shared spaces for international discussion. While all of the concerns highlighted above may be of cross-national interest, actual material circumstances and existing arrangements across (and, often, within) national boundaries vary widely. This makes potential 'impacts' of digital technologies in national educational systems significantly different. While some contingencies may be distributed in similar ways across the globe, they will nevertheless take on varying local forms and nuances. Critical EdTech research will undoubtedly profit from cross-cultural dialogue to not only better identify and understand broad issues, but also to create alternatives to the globalised (and globalising) forms of education being advanced by commercial interests.

There is much to take in here, but do not simply accept our word for all this! The present paper has outlined a few probable challenges, and begun to hint at a few broad directions that academic research might now focus on. However, these are our own speculative futures, and it is likely that every reader will have additional responses and preferences. It is important that as a concerned community, we commit to engaging in sustained collective conversations about how we might work together to successfully drive critical educational technology scholarship through the 2020s ... let alone the remainder of the twenty-first century. By the time you are reading this, our new decade of scholarship will be already be under way ... we should all be taking a proactive role in how it continues to unfold.

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What's next for Ed-Tech? Critical hopes and concerns for the 2020s

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In many ways, the passing of another decade is nothing remarkable. The world does not transform periodically every ten years. Nevertheless, the fact that the 2020s are now upon us provides good reason to reflect on how education (and wider society) is changing.

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Arundhati Roy: ‘The pandemic is a portal’ | Free to read

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The novelist on how coronavirus threatens India — and what the country, and the world, should do next

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Digital Culture & Education (ISSN: 1836-8301)

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As an open-access journal focused on the overlaps between technology, education, and culture, we at Digital Culture and Education (DCE) believe there is a pressing need to critically explore and reflect upon the ways in which we find education and technology are enmeshing in this unique and pivotal moment.

Beyond much-needed practical advice about how to use the many systems that are being proposed to address practical and pedagogical challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns remain about a number of issues. For example, concerns about the ways in which educational technologies create and perpetuate inequity; about which voices are emphasised online and which are minimised; about whether this is a pivot point and what it means for the future of higher education; about the creeping data surveillance and the information we reluctantly give away to access these pedagogical solutions; about the ethics and agendas of the companies producing these interventions; and about whether these technologies are fit for purpose.

We are therefore calling for expressions of interest from people at all stages of their career, and particularly welcome early career and higher degree researchers to join us in a series of short critical reflections to be published online on the Digital Culture and Education journal. As an open-access journal we are uniquely positioned to respond quickly and in a flexible manner, and are aiming to have the critical reflections publish by the end of May

We invite researchers, practitioners, activists, policy makers, students, and interested parties to take part in curated online monologues or discussions exploring the intersection of technology, education and culture as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. The current situation requires us to be flexible in how we engage in these discussions. As such, these short discussions can be video recorded, audio only, or developed in a written format as a think piece or blog, and will be made publicly available on our website, DigitalCultureandEducation.com. We actively encourage contributions from a broad range of backgrounds and interests, as well as from projects in early stages, and are willing to work with a range of formats. Should you have suggestions or queries about formats for this, please do email the address at the end of this call.

Topics include, but are not limited to

inequity and inequity in digital education, and how this impacts education in the current crisis

Digital divides and issues of access

The legacy of COVID-19 on Higher Education

Data surveillance and Big Data in a time of crisis

The role of capitalism in digital education and what this means for education moving forward

The efficacy of digital education

Issues of temporality and the myth of 'free time'

Resistance to digital education

Digital education as resistance

A topic of your choice around digital education and culture in the current pandemic

Whilst it is uniquely difficult to reflect upon an ongoing situation, DCE believes that opening up a space to critically examine and discuss these issues is vital for researchers, policy makers, and practitioners, especially as the choices we are making now have the potential to heavily impact the future of education and technology.

With this in mind, we issue this call for contributors to a series of critical reflections. You can either submit as a group, or individually. Should you wish to take part in a recorded discussion and you submit individually, we will endeavour to pair you with relevant partners. We also welcome individual monologues, think pieces, and blogs. All submissions are subject to a light-touch review before uploading to ensure they meet the values and standards of DCE.

To signal your interest, please email a 250-300 word abstract and short bio, or CV for each participant to harry.t.dyer@uea.ac.uk. The deadline for signalling interest is MAY 12th. Questions and suggestions are welcomed and appreciated.

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Call for critical reflections: Digital education in a time of crisis - Digital Culture & Education (ISSN: 1836-8301)

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As an open-access journal focused on the overlaps between technology, education, and culture, we at Digital Culture and Education (DCE) believe there is a pressing need to critically explore and reflect upon the ways in which we find education and technology are enmeshing in this unique and pivotal moment.

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Back to home
Digital innovation to combat COVID-19

In the midst of the global pandemic, digital technologies have captured our imagination for their potential to support us in the fight against COVID-19. Before the current COVID- health, education, social and economic crisis, the most visible uses of emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, have been their applications in entertainment, in increasing productivity and convenience.

Now, however, the potential of digital technologies to go beyond that have been revealed to the larger public. Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) help to expedite the development of a vaccine; predict which public health measures would be most effective; and to keep the public updated with scientific information. They have also allowed us to move much of our lives online, maintaining economic and education systems when most people are staying home and helping us to remain connected to one another.

Yet, not all regions and social groups are equally able to harness the potential of digital technologies to combat the virus. According to the State of Broadband 2019 Report, although internet user penetration rate is 51.2%, it is only 45% in developing countries and 20% in least developed countries. The digital and knowledge divides have always existed, but in a situation where many people have to stay home, it transforms from a disadvantage to a debilitating disability. Work is needed in the long-term to increase access to digital technologies, and in the short-term, to ensure that lack of access does not translate into an inability to continue daily life.

This page features some of the initiatives that UNESCO and its partners have undertaken to harness the potential of digital technologies against COVID-19, including in regions which are digitally isolated. In the long-term, the COVID-19 crisis reminds us that we should nurture the socially-beneficial applications of digital technologies and focus on improving access and uses in countries where it is lacking.

AI Enabled Public Health Mobile Application to Manage the COVID-19 Pandemic

Harnessing AI to mitigate COVID-19 while protecting fundamental rights

UNESCO is supporting efforts to develop and deploy AI-enabled mobile app solutions to mitigate COVID-19 which respect fundamental rights, including data protection and privacy. A number of countries have developed and deployed mobile applications with different levels of Human Rights safeguards for users. UNESCO is supporting efforts of the Quebec Institute for Artificial Intelligence (MILA ), a non to develop and deploy an open source peer to peer solution, currently one of the rare solutions that protectis fundamental rights related to data protection and privacy.
The application will empower individuals to monitor their own health by alerting them if they have crossed paths with an infected individual, provide them with a real-time evaluation of their exposure to COVID-19, provide behavioural messages, in consultation with UNESCO, , and facilitate easy customised access to information, all while maintaining the highest standards of data and privacy protection. It will also facilitate the work of public health authorities by providing path-tracing information of voluntary, self-disclosing users, providing input into informed data-driven decisions about social distancing measures.
More broadly, UNESCO advocates for the assessment of privacy, non-discrimination, and personal data protection in all ongoing initiatives which use AI to counter COVID-19.

Mobilising young innovators against COVID-19: partnering for a Hackathon

From 6 to 30 April 2020, UNESCO, IBM and SAP are joining forces in the organization of the global hackathon CodeTheCurve. The initiative calls for young developers, innovators, data scientists, and designers to use their digital skills, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit, and to team up to inspire digital solutions to current and future pandemic-related challenges.

Through this online event, UNESCO and its partners aim to highlight how times of crisis might also engender opportunities to rethink our daily lives: imagine different forms of education and learning, step up efforts to combat the spread of disinformation, improve the quality of information in an ethical manner, and reinforce scientific cooperation at a global scale.

Participants will also have the opportunity to receive training on innovative solutions from the various organizations brought together under the umbrella of CodeTheCurve. Please find more information here.

From 6 to 30 April 2020, UNESCO, IBM and SAP are joining forces in the organization of the global hackathon CodeTheCurve. The initiative calls for young developers, innovators, data scientists, and designers to use their digital skills, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit, and to team up to inspire digital solutions to current and future pandemic-related challenges.

Through this online event, UNESCO and its partners aim to highlight how times of crisis might also engender opportunities to rethink our daily lives: imagine different forms of education and learning, step up efforts to combat the spread of disinformation, improve the quality of information in an ethical manner, and reinforce scientific cooperation at a global scale.

Participants will also have the opportunity to receive training on innovative solutions from the various organizations brought together under the umbrella of CodeTheCurve. Please find more information here.

Fostering OERs to support learners and educational professionals in online learning

Given that the pandemic has caused widespread school closures in 185 countries and 89.4% of learners forced to stay home, OERs are important to supplementing formal online classes and even temporarily serving as the main form of education for those who are unable to access online learning. Many educational institutions, both schools and private publishing and assessment companies have opened up their resources so that students in quarantine who may not otherwise have access to learning resources at this time may still continue to learn. UNESCO has also identified a number of MOOCs and OERs which can provide online courses and self-directed learning content through both mobile and desktop platforms.

In the framework of the UNESCO OER Recommendation, adopted by UNESCO Member States in November 2019, UNESCO is enhancing cooperation with the OER Community to support openly licensed teaching and learning materials. UNESCO has made a call to the OER Community working on the implementation of the UNESCO OER recommendation to collect and share information on Covid-19 resources, to support learning during the Covid-19 crisis.

With a view to supporting teaching and learning materials developments to enhance the capacity of instructors delivering online UNESCO has made available openly licensed tools that can be used by Governments and institutions that can be used for the implementation of the UNESCO ICT Competency Framework for Teachers OER - Hub. These resources have online openly licensed resources to support teacher training for the use of ICTs. With regard to persons with disabilities, and online education, UNESCO also has an openly licensed tool 'Learning for All: guidelines on the inclusion of learners with disabilities in open and distance learning'.

UNESCO has joined IIITE in the OER4Covid initiative launched by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) and the OER Chair in New Zealand. The objective of this initiative is to provide support for those making a transition to online learning using OER during the Covid-19 pandemic.

UNESCO also provides openly licensed media and information literacy messages on the Covid-19 crisis on public health and social media messaging that is available in all UN Languages and transmitted through social media platforms.

How to support the use of OER, with a focus on developing capacity, policy, inclusion and sustainability are also part of the themes in the UNESCO's CodetheCurve Hackathon challenge.

Call for Joint Action: Supporting Learning and Knowledge Sharing through Open Educational Resources (OER)

In response to the massive disruption of education due to the Covid-19 pandemic affecting 1.57 billion learners in 191 countries, UNESCO has issued a Call to support learning and knowledge sharing through Open Educational Resources (OER) world . The Call is co-signed by Moez Chakchouk and Stefania Giannini, respectively Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, and for Education at UNESCO, and encourages implementation of the OER Recommendation, which identifies actions in five main areas: Capacity building and use of OER; Developing supportive policy; effective, inclusive and equitable access to quality OER; Nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER; fostering and facilitating international cooperation. Read the Statement

In addition, UNESCO Education Sector has developed resources that are accessible on the page COVID-19 Educational Disruption and Response.

Crowd-Sourcing Creative Content to Fight the COVID-19 "Infodemic"

#DontGoViral campaign

The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by a viral load of often deadly disinformation that has been described by the United Nations Secretary General as humanity's other "enemy" in this crisis.

Emerging technologies have become a battleground to widely disseminate online disinformation, but also to identify and help contain it. UNESCO research has identified nine key themes prevalent in the "disinfodemic" about the COVID-19 crisis. The themes range from false information about COVID-19's origins, incidence, symptoms and cures, through to political attacks on journalists. The formats adopted include the familiar modes of highly emotive narrative constructs and memes; fabricated, fraudulently altered, or decontextualized images and videos; disinformation infiltrators and orchestrated campaigns, and; bogus websites, data sets and sources.

To contribute to tackling this issue, UNESCO, in partnership with the Innovation for Policy Foundation (i4Policy), launched the #DontGoViral online campaign in Africa to crowdsource local openly-licensed content from artists and cultural entrepreneurs to inform communities about COVID-19 (see UNESCO news item). The campaign addresses the urgent need for culturally relevant and openly licensed information in local African languages to facilitate awareness-raising about how to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 on the African Continent.

Through UNESCO's Offices in the African continent and the i4Policy community of more than 170 innovation hubs in 45 countries across Africa, this campaign is empowering communities across Africa to host, mobilize, and develop information campaigns to support national and global health agencies to reach the most at-risk communities and to combat the spread of disinformation.

The #DontGoViral campaign is designed to harness artists' influence and the role of the cultural and creative industries in awareness-raising. Artists can share and amplify crucial information among fans and followers, reaching large audiences by using their talent and diverse forms of cultural expressions to engage with people in response to the crisis. UNESCO is actively supporting artists to reach communities most at risk including offline.

As part of this campaign, partnerships have been established with both African media outlets and global outlets, notably the BBC World Service, who has agreed to pass messages produced as part of the campaign on all available platforms (TV, radio, web,etc).

Other initiatives to counter disinformation

UNESCO will launch two new policy briefs to combat the COVID-19 "disinfodemic" available in several languages. The policy briefs give insight into what responses are available, including technical and algorithmic responses; monitoring, fact-checking responses; legislative and policy responses; curatorial responses by platforms and online services. The UNESCO policy briefs address ways to strengthen and protect the right to information through countering the contamination of disinformation and by empowering global citizens with digital skills and literacy.

The policy briefs draw upon and will inform ongoing work by an international consortia of researchers to address disinformation globally, commissioned to be published in September by the Working Group on Freedom of Expression and Disinformation of the ITU/UNESCO Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development.

Enhancing access to the Internet

Access to the Internet, and with the current uses, to Broadband, has become decisive and vital for our societies and all spheres of our life.

On the 3rd of April 2020, the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development members launched the Agenda for Action: For Faster and Better Recovery outlining immediate measures that stakeholders can adapt across three pillars: Resilient Connectivity, Affordable Access, and Safe Use for Informed and Educated Societies. The agenda is a framework for the Commission's 50+ Commissioners and their organizations to share and support each other's initiatives, make new commitments, and foster collaboration and partnership combatting COVID-19 through digital innovation and transformation.

More countries are seeking to further enhance their Internet, and the Internet Universality ROAM-X Indicators (Rights, Openness, Access and a Multistakeholder approach) offer a helpful framework for governments or organisations, which wish to enhance the Internet and use digital technology to combat the virus and its impact. The ROAM-X approach has also been applied to AI in UNESCO's publication ' Steering AI and Advanced ICTs for Knowledge Societies ', which provides a number of key recommendations on ensuring that use of AI is human-centred. UNESCO will continue to engage the governments, private sector, Internet intermediaries, technical community and academia to ensure adequate safeguards of privacy and personal data protection are put in place in AI related apps and countering measures.

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Fighting COVID-19 through digital innovation and transformation

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Back to home In the midst of the global pandemic, digital technologies have captured our imagination for their potential to support us in the fight against COVID-19. Before the current COVID- health, education, social and economic crisis, the most visible uses of emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, have been their applications in entertainment, in increasing productivity and convenience.

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Schools and parents

The British Educational Suppliers Association, with the support of the UK Department for Education, has developed the LendED website to help schools get the most out of their existing resources, and provide teachers with easy-to-use home learning materials. You can search resources from trusted suppliers, read teacher reviews and request free access during school closures. This site includes over 200 UK companies.

Cambridge Assessment International Education is making available free resources to help schools deliver effective learning outside the classroom.

Oxford University Press are offering free access to their education platforms here for an extended period and are committed to supporting teachers through professional development training that can be accessed anytime, as well as offering teaching support for through Oxford Owl and this website about Oxford Owl for schools.

Pearson is providing access to expert faculty, best practices, and other online learning resources for people who are studying, teaching or working remotely. They are regularly updating their site which includes K12 resources.

Twinkl has created home learning and school closure packs and made them available for free, including content tailored to specific markets. Content is available on LinkedIn & Twitter for sharing.

Twig Education is offering free access to schools and ministries of education of its K-12 STEM resources.

GetMyGrades helps students to keep track of progress, and is allowing schools affected by COVID-19 to use its platform for free.

Century Tech creates personalised learning pathways for students and powerful data for teachers to ensure that every child gets tailored, high quality education. They are offering free maths, English and science resources.

Mangahigh is offering full and free access to Mangahigh for distance learning maths to schools closed due to COVID-19.

Your Favourite Teachers is offering free access to their online GCSE platform to ensure students are able to continue their studies and revision uninterrupted.

My Online Schooling provides a full-time British education online to all children of school age. My Online Schooling offering a variety of free learning resources.

2Simple provides excellent, accessible and inspiring software to encourage children to love learning and prepare them for later life. 2Simple are offering free access to both Purple Mash and Serial Mash for schools and home users..

Firefly provides a modern learning experience platform. They are offering free access to their platform to schools in need until the end of next term and have best practices webinars to show how to implement distance learning.

Classoos is offering 90-day free digital textbooks to international schools following the British Curriculum.

Innovate My School showcases exciting new practices and products by teachers and education suppliers. It includes a search engine for finding the best education technology on the market, including home learning and COVID-19 filters, of 1200 products. There are over 400 COVID-19 offers.

COBIS provides information on safeguarding, online learning, guidance for parents/owners/governors, whole school well-being, university admissions and examinations during the pandemic. They also have webinars and case studies.

The British Council offers a wide range of classroom resources to help students explore other cultures and discuss international issues, and to provide the basis for international partnerships between schools. The Connecting Classrooms, through Global Learning programme, helps young people engage with the sustainable development goals through free project-based resources and training for teachers.

Universities

FutureLearn is a digital education platform offering short courses, programs and online degrees. There are over 1300 courses available for free. New courses include COVID-19 Diagnostics and Testing.

The British Council delivers the Study UK campaign providing practical information, resources and insight on UK higher education for international students, including free online courses.

Pearson is providing [access to expert faculty, best practices], and other online learning resources](https://www.pearson.com/news-and-research/working-learning-online-during-pandemic.html) for people who are studying, teaching or working remotely. They are regularly updating their site which includes HE resources.

Oxford University Press is offering free access to Epigeum's award-winning online training courses. The courses support higher education institutions to deliver training in key areas including teaching online, blended learning and university teaching.

Cambridge University Press are providing free access to reference works and academic textbooks on Cambridge Core to university libraries and their associated students and faculty.

Kortext has a Free Student eTextbook Programme, is making free textbook content available from a host of publishers, in partnership with JISC and Microsoft. Over 120 UK universities signed up and the programme is open to universities worldwide providing textbooks that are relevant to the course being undertaken by the students.

The Open University free online learning platform provides access to health, wellbeing and educational content during the pandemic. The online site offers a chance for anyone to explore relevant topics, from teaching online and courses designed to aid mental and physical health, to family friendly interactives and content to help with the effects of Coronavirus. There are more than 950 courses available, offering 15,000 hours of free learning.

The University of London is one of the largest, most diverse universities in the UK with over 120,000 students, and a further 50,000 studying across 190 countries for a University of London degree. The University of London is also part of this initiative from Coursera helping to take student learning online in response to coronavirus.

The University of Liverpool is a leader in online postgraduate education and has now made a range of learning and teaching resources available for the wider higher education community. The University of Liverpool Centre for Innovation in Education have made available resources related to curriculum design plus videos and case studies on using Teams for learning and teaching.

Coventry University has a library of short courses available online for free on the FutureLearn platform. In response to COVID-19, Coventry have collated 3 courses to help users make the most of their time at home.

Jisc are working with university libraries to ensure access to key digital resources for teaching, learning and research. Jisc are cataloguing details of publishers and content repositories who are widening access to their resources with the list available here. Contact Jisc to access any of the resources.

The University of Edinburgh offers a range of free online short courses for academic skills and personal development.

Vocational and technical training

Pearson: for career-focused learning, Pearson provides access to the Learning Hub, which contains a range of short online courses supporting BTEC, Apprenticeship and Employability.

The National Skills Academy Food and Drink are the industry experts on skills for the food and drink industry and have a range of programmes available through their Online Academy. Their e-learning] is available in areas such as compliance (Food Safety, Health & Safety), technical (allergen awareness, IOSH), personal development, IT and management and leadership.

The Skills Network is a leading provider of distance learning qualifications with over 1 million users on The Skills Network learning platform and over 40 UK Accredited qualifications and 100 CPD certified online courses. Courses include infection control and health and social care.

COVID-19 training

Health Education England has launched online e-Learning for Health content to support the upskilling of health workers in relation to COVID-19. This content is free and will be updated and expanded shortly.

Skills for Health, the leading provider for healthcare e-learning across the UK health sector, has developed a free COVID-19 awareness resource. Skills for Health is also offering the Core Skills Training e-learning bundle at a heavily discounted rate; this includes Infection Prevention & Control, basic life support, Safeguarding and more.

Kineo are e-learning specialists and have developed e-learning courses to support people with the management of COVID-19 as they come to terms with new ways of working. These are available for free.

Highfield Learning, a leading provider of technical e-learning and offers training in food safety, manual handling, health and safety, fire safety, spectator safety, customer service, first aid at work, plus a range of standard workplace awareness programmes. They are offering free training in infection prevention and control, accessed through their website.

The University of Edinburgh created a set of free online resources COVID-19 Critical Care: Understanding and Application for healthcare professionals working in a critical care setting.

English language training

The British Council has an extensive range of free online resources for learners and teachers of English. British Council have something for children, teenagers and adults at all levels of English. EnglishScore, the British Council's free mobile-delivered test is available to download globally.

Macmillan Education is a global publisher that is operating in over 120 countries worldwide. They are making digital components and resources available for free for both Teachers and Learners.

Oxford University Press has created home learning guidance including links to blogs, course related content suitable for distance learning, and professional development content, alongside course material to maximise home-based learning.

Pearson is offering webinars on distance teaching and learning, and free 60-day access to their Digital Citizenship Online course providing professional development for teachers in an online environment.

LanguageCert is offering additional slots to accommodate candidates who wish to take their English language certification exams with remote invigilation.

EF English Live offers English courses including live classes and interactive lessons online. They are offering a 14-day free trial.

Cambridge Assessment English has lots of free online activities to help teenagers and adults practise their English.

Nile is a world-leading centre of excellence, offering training and development from initial qualifications to Masters, both face-to-face and online. A new course 'Take your teaching online' is being offered for free.

East Sussex College is offering an Online English language classes with flexible hours and small class size. There are General English, IELTS and Cambridge exam options.

InTuition provides personalised 1-to-1 English language courses including English online. This includes a 30-minute trial lesson.

ELT Jam help clients through every stage in designing a successful learning experience and at present have a focus on adapting in-person courses and training for online delivery as quickly as possible.

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UK education providers are helping teachers, parents and students respond to the impact of COVID-19 worldwide

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The British Educational Suppliers Association, with the support of the UK Department for Education, has developed the LendED website to help schools get the most out of their existing resources, and provide teachers with easy-to-use home learning materials. You can search resources from trusted suppliers, read teacher reviews and request free access during school closures.

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Teacher, Interrupted: Leaning into Social-Emotional Learning Amid the COVID-19 Crisis | EdSurge News

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Dear educators,

There was life before COVID-19, and there will be life after.

We didn't choose to have our schools and colleges closed; our carefully constructed routines halted in their tracks; our field trips, concerts, sporting events, fundraisers and finals all canceled. We didn't expect this and had little warning.

We weren't ready for this either. Or were we?

At this very moment, there are so many questions swirling through our own heads and the education ecosystem across the globe. What impact will this have on student learning, on families, on the economy-now and in the long-term? How will we support students who rely on school for meals or the stability that their classroom provides? How will our students without access to computers or technology continue to learn? What will this do to our school and campus communities? How will this impact our school's funding, our careers?

And then there's the uncertainty around when teachers and students will be allowed to return to school-and what school will be like when we do.

As psychologists, we at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence are concerned about everyone's emotional state. How will students and educators cope with life being turned upside down so quickly?

Right now our media feeds are being inundated with anecdotes of our nation's parents jumping on the homeschooling and digital learning bandwagons. They are at the mercy of the information available to them and the technological tools their children and households may have access to. Districts and colleges across the nation are requiring educators to provide plans and digital resources, despite their varied levels of knowledge about and support for which instructional technologies are most effective for whom, how and under what conditions. All of this is rapidly evolving with a finish line that gets pushed back daily.

This is not a snow day. It's not a holiday break. It's a crisis.

So what can we do to support ourselves and our students in getting through these difficult times? We need to look to social and emotional learning (SEL) for evidence-based practices to help us now and to support us when we eventually return to school.

SEL is for everyone. It's especially critical for students with the greatest needs-the ones who will be severely impacted by the psychosocial and fiscal effects of this pandemic. But it's also for teachers and students in the most well-resourced districts and institutions.

The crisis around COVID-19 is leaving an indelible footprint on the hearts and minds of multiple generations of children and adults-even our youngest ones who are not yet old enough to realize it. The impact and ripple effects across our collective livelihoods is likely too vast to comprehend.

It's scary. But it's not hopeless.

Now is when we need to apply everything we've learned about SEL. Recognizing your emotions and leveraging the science of SEL is more important now than ever. SEL skills are real skills that can support us in managing the roller coaster of emotions we will be having over the coming days and months. For many of us it's dealing with daily uncertainty and new ways of interacting socially.

Be Cognizant of Stress and Its Effects

Fear manifests in our actions, including well-intentioned, research-based mandates to engage in social distancing with our world and all the people in it, including our own families. In times of high stress, negative emotions like fear, anxiety and panic diminish our mental resources and ability to think clearly, make healthy decisions and behave prosocially and productively.

Stress, in moderate doses, is healthy. It's our body's way of responding to events that threaten or challenge us. But chronic stress impairs our ability to function well and impacts the quality of our relationships. Navigating uncontrollable, unpredictable, ambiguous situations like the new coronavirus, in addition to being confronted with many new demands, is challenging and for many of us amounts to chronic stress.

As educators, practicing social distancing during a pandemic while implementing digital learning with your students-in some cases, for the first time-is overwhelming in itself. Then add juggling your own family and their evolving physical, social and emotional demands while bracing for the unknown, and it becomes exhausting, if not impossible.

These intense and seemingly insurmountable demands can make us feel insecure and inadequate. In school, safety is both physical and psychological. Clorox wipes, toilet paper and social distancing are only going to get you so far in the promotion of your safety. We must also ensure psychological safety for ourselves, for our students and for our families. SEL can support us here, too.

The RULER Approach

Briefly, SEL is the teaching of an interrelated set of cognitive, affective and behavioral competencies that underscore our capacity to learn, develop and maintain mutually supportive relationships, and be both physically and psychologically healthy. The field of SEL is replete with programs and approaches, which support schools in embedding five large dimensions into teaching and learning. These include self-awareness, self-management, social-awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision making.

At the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, we use the power of emotions to create a healthier, more equitable, productive and compassionate society, today and for future generations. Our approach to SEL, the RULER Approach, provides tools and resources grounded in the theory of emotional intelligence to promote the psychosocial health and well-being of educators and their students and parents.

RULER is an acronym for the components and process of emotional intelligence, including:

Recognizing emotions in self and others,

Understanding the causes and consequences of emotions,

Labeling emotions accurately,

Expressing emotions appropriately, and

Regulating emotions effectively.

These skills can help us navigate this uncharted territory in our socially-distanced world and do our part to control the imprint it leaves on the mental health and well-being of our students and school communities. You can find additional resources here from our center to specifically support your well-being and manage your anxiety during this sensitive time.

Routine Reminders and Checks

You can make choices every day to support yourself, your students and your families. First, check in with how you are feeling a few times per day. Avoid judging your own and others' emotions. From an emotional intelligence perspective, all emotions are information. Accept them all. They are information to be attended to, not denied.

Be kind to yourself and flexible (as permitted) with your schedule. Look for easy and small ways to bring yourself and your loved ones joy. Make breakfast a different way. Take creative pictures from different angles. Find a new way to organize your closet. Call old friends and family members to check-in. Try a new exercise routine at home.

There also are things you can monitor carefully, including your media consumption. Digital platforms are pretty incredible at enabling us to connect with people in a socially distant world. We have perhaps never been more prepared to practice social distancing as we are today. But keep in mind there are over two decades of research correlating social media usage with loneliness, depression and unhealthy behaviors including addiction. After using technology, ask yourself this question: Is this helping me feel greater well-being and connection, or is it making me feel more isolated? Find the "tech" routine that works for you and your family. And leverage resources and expertise across networks for support.

If the thought of being home for a couple of weeks or months-or returning back to school-is overwhelming, take a meta-moment. Try to imagine your best self-visualize a positive image of yourself, who you want to be and how you want to be seen and experienced by your family and students. And in each of your interactions, whether face-to-face at home or when connecting with others through technology, try to be that person for your students, for your families, for your community.

While the world is turned on its head, we have the opportunity to leverage the power of emotional intelligence to keep our feet on the ground and our minds directed toward building the future that we want for our students and ourselves. We can't control what has happened, but we can control how we respond to what is happening. Give yourself and everyone around you the permission to feel all emotions. It starts and ends with self- and social-compassion. Lean into SEL.
Christina Cipriano, Ph.D., Ed.M., is the Director of Research at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and a research scientist at the Child Study Center at Yale University. Follow her on Twitter @drchriscip.
Marc Brackett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor in the Child Study Center at Yale University. He's also on the board of directors for CASEL and the author of the new book Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive.

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Teacher, Interrupted: Leaning into Social-Emotional Learning Amid the COVID-19 Crisis - EdSurge News

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Dear educators, There was life before COVID-19, and there will be life after. We didn't choose to have our schools and colleges closed; our carefully constructed routines halted in their tracks; our field trips, concerts, sporting events, fundraisers and finals all canceled. We didn't expect this and had little warning.

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Social-Emotional Learning Should Be Priority During COVID-19 Crisis

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