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(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Rhea Joe.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted many aspects of life, including in the classroom learning at schools and universities around the country.

How has this online classroom changed education and what can be done to ensure the educational experience is still meaningful.

On this episode of Digging Deeper, Penn State President Eric Barron talks to Paul Morgan, Director for The Center of Educational Disparities Research and Kelly Arts, Assistant Professor of Education Policy Studies.

- So, first of all, thank both of you for joining me.

Personally I think this is one of the most fascinating topics related to the pandemic is how it's transformed education.

Now, I guess we could say that COVID has impacted every element of life.

How does the impact on education rank compared to the impact on a lot of other sectors in society?

- I would say from my perspective that it would rank highly in part because of the many ripple effects it is likely to have.

Schools are a backbone of a community when they are closed it affects the workforce across many sectors and as students attend schools, they are receiving instruction and skills and support in terms of their development.

And as that is fractured, it is likely to affect them over time in ways that are predictably negative, I think.

And likely also to exacerbate inequalities that we see educationally.

- Kelly, you want to add something to that?

- I would agree.

I think it's showing the fact that education doesn't, isn't a sector that exists by itself, right?

That our schools play a critical role, our colleges play a critical role in helping and supporting students and the inequities that we saw in the educational system before.

But I think K12 early childhood and post-secondary education are and to what Paul said previously are certainly going to be exacerbated by COVID-19 by the economic recession that we're heading into the economic downturn that we're already experiencing.

I think will certainly exacerbate many of the inequalities that we've already seen certainly by race and by income level as well.

- One of the things that I think is probably important is to understand what we're talking about when we say that education has gone online.

Because I'm sort of imagining the taking a course that is on TV, sort of in Sesame Street mode perhaps, or what high school might be able to accomplish by putting materials online.

The notion of I'm on my own and I'm doing this and I'm taking the test or answering questions at the end and someone's giving me a grade.

Versus online in a class actually meeting together.

So it, you know, whether it's synchronous or asynchronous or whether it's hybrid and even people's perspective is completely different.

So when someone says online to the two of you as experts, what does that mean?

- Kelly, do you wanna go first?

- Sure, yeah, I think online, I think it's really important to distinguish, like we had online before the pandemic, right?

We have world campus at Penn State, we've got, you know, other universities and schools are doing online education.

This is sort of online in a crisis and so education looks really different.

I think in the ways in which we can expect pedagogy to work now are going to look really different than before.

And hopefully after the pandemic is over, I think right now we're sort of in crisis mode, right?

Many of us ourselves are feeling the economic pressures, the pandemic itself, our students are certainly coming into the classroom with that too.

And so the word that keeps coming into my head and thinking about teaching and learning in this environment is compassion.

Because our students are coming in different environments and experiencing education in really different ways.

- My perspective more from the K-12 standpoint is that schools are trying to hold in person instruction when possible that are either adopting given the situation that our community has in regard to the virus either some sort of hybrid model, or sometimes just all remote all the time.

And you can see some differentials I think it's hard for teachers to teach.

Their attention can be split between students in class and who are remote.

And in some of the supports that they students would see, particularly students who are coming from more disadvantaged backgrounds can be lacking based on just remote level instruction.

So mental health supports, regular access to the internet, food insecurity becomes more of an issue.

So I think both Kelly and I have a sense that this is likely kind of exacerbating inequalities in the K through 12 system and possibly in the higher education system as well.

- So let's kind of unpack all of those features that start to make a difference, urban, rural access to resources, not access to resources.

So one thing that comes to mind is technology, is there such a technological divide that we really are exacerbating these differences because in one situation you've got it all at your fingertips and another you can barely manage an online environment.

How important is technology in this equation?

- I would say it's important and I think it manifests in a couple of ways.

One of which is to be able to access the technology.

So there are students who have experienced some difficulties in the country, even having laptops.

So right away, that's an impediment to their instruction because they can't log on.

It can be difficult to make sure that students are logging on especially if they're in homes which are unsupervised perhaps because of the family's work schedules and demands on them economically.

And then I, my sense is that, you know, teachers in schools are doing the best they can and I give them a ton of credit for trying to make the best of a sudden and unexpected situation.

I do think from my sense as an educator, that it is difficult to manage remote learning in ways that are not difficult in person learning.

And so when we have differentials in terms of students who are accessing remote versus in person and the remote is arguably of lower quality, it's exacerbating the learning loss that can be taking place amongst different student populations.

- Yeah, I would emphasize from my point of view the same things that Paul has noted.

But I think it's important from a higher education perspective, right?

I'm a higher education scholar, we've seen enrollment declines particularly largest in the community college sector.

And certainly there's a number of things that are playing into this like the access to technology, access to high-speed internet.

So internet at all is certainly playing a role in the extent to which students can start and continue their post-secondary education.

In addition to caregiving responsibilities, the economic downturn that's affecting these students, but I think it's even in higher education, that's affecting whether students even show up in the classroom and certainly their ability to continue and continuing toward a degree is so important and being able to repay loans that students have taken out and other things, seeing the learning returns to higher education.

So I certainly worry about students being able to enter and to continue college.

- So let's take another piece of it.

How important in terms of the success of the education is age?

I mean, can I say that if you're in a second grade, the socialization factor is just extraordinarily important, while if I'm 17, I'm used to all sorts of gadgets and I can adapt, and if I'm in college, I've already had an online class, if I'm lucky and so this is just a different phase of what I've already experienced.

Is the age and development of students of profoundly important in online education?

- That's a good question.

My sense generally is that children are resilient and short-term impacts they can overcome if given the right supports.

I would say there's two things, one of which is across age, you might see sort of differentials in terms of opportunity.

So for a student in second grade, who's doing mostly distant learning and doesn't have a close attachment with a teacher that might notice the student struggles.

The student may not be given additional supports.

If say the student has a learning disability or some kind of difficulty that's leading to learning loss.

For an older student, you might see something similar, but you also might see a lack of opportunity in the sense of not exposed to the supports through in-person instruction that might take place that leads to accounts or noticing the student and supporting the students accessed, took that access to higher ed or guiding the students through the financial aid process.

So students are resilient, but if they're losing supports as there, the negative impacts of the pandemic are being experienced by them, it's likely to exacerbate different kinds of inequalities.

- I don't think school leaders and campus administrators are faced with any easy decisions in a pandemic, right?

We have not much prior experience to kind of draw on for how to respond to this.

And so you are seeing as Paul indicated, like really difficult decisions around who should we prioritize to get back into schools first, when we aren't in a situation where it's safe for all students to return to schools.

And so I, you know, I've seen the discussions around, was it, is it, can we get our elementary and early childhood education, like early childhood students back into schools and have our high schoolers say, whoa, maybe the assumption that these are students who are really more technical, like they just, they're able to use computers more and able to kind of guide their education a little bit more than say my two year old might be able to.

So I've seen discussions around this, I think it's really important to note that the decisions that we're making though have implications for students mental health and things like that, because socialization is so important for every age.

It's important for our students in our classes, in college and in graduate school, it's important for faculty, for staff at the university and in our schools to be able to interact with each other and to have these opportunities to talk to other people.

That's so lacking right now and so I think these are really, really difficult discussions to have and decisions to make that we're in a situation where we just have a virus that we haven't been able to stop and to be able to, we're just having to make these difficult decisions.

But I think we have to acknowledge that in doing so we are making decisions around educational outcomes, health outcomes for people too.

- We really don't have experience here, do we?

We haven't sat back and said, well, a pandemic might come, so we need to examine education and delivery and these different modes just in case so we can make a decision about who should go back first and how should we do this and do this well.

Do you have a sense of, you know, you've described a few elements of what is really lost in a virtual education?

- I, my sense is the personal connection with the teacher.

- That level of engagement.

- The level of engagement, the socialization that's taking place amongst peers.

I know my boys really miss going to school because they don't see their friends.

So I think that it's hard, it's a harder job for the teacher, I think, to deliver the instruction and the students are losing out in socialization opportunities.

And I think the additional supports that schools often provide in terms of mental health and counseling are more difficult to provide in a remote based platform.

- And what about retention?

There is, you know, a big retention differences in an online education which is a synchronous, which is basically on your own learning a class.

Do we have a sense of changes in enrollment patterns and completion or even participation?

- Kelly, do you want to.

- That's a great question, I think, I mean, once again, I think it's really important to distinguish between like online education and online education during a pandemic.

We have a sense of how to deliver high quality online education.

I don't know that we have a sense and good evidence for how to do this during a pandemic when our students are coming to us in crisis at times, but certainly in situations that are really difficult when we are in situations that are difficult, right.

It's hard to show up for a class to teach it when you have, you don't have child care, you might be caregiving for a parent or a grandparent or aunt or uncle or something.

And it's hard to learn when that's happening.

So I think we're still kind of early to know what high quality looks like in this environment.

But I think again, like compassion, a lot of things are, I certainly worry about retention and completion at pre-sec and post-secondary education and K-12 education as well, given the circumstances.

But it's hard to know what high quality looks like right now, but I think.

- We're in the midst of it.

It's hard to study when you're in the midst of it.

It really is, I keep telling people, I look forward to the time when I can look back and say, you know, what could I have done more?

What could I have done better?

But when you're in the midst of it and you're steering like this, it's a huge, huge challenge.

So what is your perspective if this continues in time that you know, vaccines don't work, that you go into spring and everyone, while you hear someone talking about it going well beyond the first quarter of 2021.

Cumulative effects greater stress versus we figure out how to do it as best we can.

- My sense is that the longer that we're relying on more remote based instruction, the more negative the impacts on children's life course.

We're already seeing some indication of declining enrollments.

I think in an in-person instruction created by kindergarten.

McKinsey recently re estimated that just a three month time-span of more remote than in-person instruction, they were estimated would increase high school dropouts around 200,000 students and the longer that we rely on remote based instruction, the more drop-outs they were predicting would occur as well as losses and lifetime wages.

So I think the longer that we're having to rely on remote based instruction, the more negative effects we'll see on children's life course.

- You know, I've been quite proud of Penn State and I've been quite proud of the World Campus for many years, because it's taught by our faculty, the same faculty, they deliver the same course.

And we get a lot of positive feedback on the quality and also touted it, not just as, here's the way education will go, but the ability to provide an education for people that might be home-bound or want that Penn State Degree and they don't have an option wherever it is that they're living in the world.

At service, a person overseas is a good example of providing a high.

So there are many good things about it, so do you think there are, you know, this is partly me not wanting to say, okay, this is hard, this is hard.

Are there some good pieces to this?

Good benefits of a virtual education?

- You can find reports of students who seem to be doing better.

And again, I'm talking more from the K-12 perspective.

Students say with disabilities who are experiencing less bullying, right?

Are feeling less distracted by difficulties that they may have themselves or are experiencing from their classmates.

So I think for some students it can work and I'm coming at this more from teachers who are trained to do in-person instruction having a sudden shock and having to triage and deliver the same instruction they typically provided in a remotely or some hybrid mix.

There are many analysis studies of studies that suggest that remote based instruction, computer-based instruction can be effective.

It just needs to have certain features built into it to maximize student learning.

- So I know we have a very little time left.

The time with the two of you went very, very quickly.

Do you just have a prediction for whether or not we will take advantage of a crisis and we'll watch a significant evolution of K through 12 and higher education because of the pandemic?

Really just a few word answer maybe.

- I hope what sticks is compassion.

I think it was there before for many of us, but I hope what sticks is compassion and meeting our students where they're at and understanding that in a crisis, in a pandemic, in economic recession.

that certainly concerns around basic needs security for our students, but that always exists.

And so my hope is that we continue to meet students where they're at and to focus on our most vulnerable.

- It's a really good way to end.

So thank you so much, the two of you for joining me today.

Such an interesting topic.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- So thank you, Dr. Baron for being here and talking about one of the most relevant problems right now.

So my first question is one of the biggest changes with the onset of COVID is such a large portion of online of classes have gone online, obviously.

So what are the challenges of online classes from the perspective of students and teachers?

- Yeah, so this is an incredibly important topic.

We, you know, first we were very proud of the fact that we made a decision over Spring Break and on Monday after Spring Break, we had 63,000 students in a classroom.

So step one in this is making sure we have the students in the classroom.

And step two is getting them to the finish line, a lot of effort there in making sure we distributed technology and people had access and that the classrooms were set up.

But the most important part about it is how do you deliver that same level of quality and engagement?

I mean, we have a faculty that are incredibly focused on delivering an education and doing it in a way that is an engaging.

And for many of them, this is the first step and a completely changed environment.

And there was no intentional design at the beginning of a class.

I think this is just meant that it's a tremendous amount of work and what if you have kids at home?

What if you have technological issues to make that transformation?

I think we're getting better and better at it.

I think it's harder and harder if it's a giant class, I can't see you, I hear so many faculty members say, you know, to be able to see you and see your reaction that's something that's incredibly important, so many different facets.

And we don't want to put a lecture up and put an experiment that you can watch in a video that level of engagement and concern and care for students and their success is just too important.

It's really hard to manage that personal connection that we like to have.

- Yeah, now I definitely seen it, even in my classes, it's definitely a problem for me and the professor.

So moving on, what percentage of students have decided to postpone their Freshman Year or even take a Gap Year?

And what is your opinion on that?

- Yeah, so we know just released that nationally the number of freshmen dropped in the country by about 16%, that's a big number.

And I suspect a lot of them are waiting and watching to see what happen or there could be other factors in terms of finances or just not wanting to be online.

Penn State has been very fortunate, the census that just ended has us down about two to 3%.

So we have done a good job, but interestingly enough, we had 1400, 1600 if I remember right, don't hold me to the precise number of individuals who decided to defer and or take, to take a gap.

And so if they were to be here, we'd probably be whole in the number of students that we have and we hope that we're going to recapture them, we're gonna do everything we can.

We do try to make it personal in terms of understanding what a student is deciding to do, because there is, there are a lot of statistics that suggest if you take a Gap Year, that you're more likely not to finish.

And that's something that we wouldn't want to have happen and we're going well, okay, you're not likely to have a job in the pandemic.

You're not likely to be able to be out and about doing things.

So why is it that you want to defer a semester or take a Gap Year?

And by the way, you're more successful if you don't.

I shouldn't go on and on here about it, but just imagine that you're coming out of high school and you've done your education, you've done your math education, and now you wait a year and you come into college and you have to take the next level class.

You actually put yourself at a disadvantage.

(upbeat music) - Yeah, so thank you so much for talking to me about these questions.

Obviously it affects me, it affects you, affects everyone.

So thank you for talking to me.

- My pleasure.

- Support for Digging Deeper comes from, The Penn State Alumni Association, connecting alumni to the university and to each other.

The alumni association is powered by Pride, learn more @alumni.psu.edu.

and from viewers like you.

Thank you.