[LINK] Absence of evidence to support contact-tracing apps (or evaluation remote education)

[Tom Worthington]

On 28/4/20 8:48 am, jwhit at internode.on.net wrote:

> If anyone is looking for the Remote Education reports ...

Thanks, I was about to start a Snark Hunt for them. ;-)

Here are links to the reports: 
https://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2020/04/five-reports-on-impact-of-remote.html#rlreports

Some items of note:

Brown, Te Riele, Shelley, and Woodroffe found that nearly half students 
are at risk of significantly compromised learning, and this is not 
confined to low socio-economic status families. They call for a social 
workers, psychologists, speech pathologists, and school nurses to be on 
site when students return to school. This seems to me to be unrealistic, 
and it is likely help will be by professionals who now provide online 
support.

Drane, Vernon and O’Shea estimated 20% of students would face "long-term 
educational disengagement, digital exclusion, poor technology management 
and increased psychosocial challenges". They cite UNESCO's "COVID-19 : 
10 Recommendations to plan distance learning solutions" (2020).

Masters pointed out that younger children need more scaffolding and 
support, particularly those who are vulnerable. This is supported by 
Lamb, who also points out the challenges for indigenous students, who 
had less less experience with ICT before COVID-19.

Clinton recommends increased digital inclusion. I suggest that while the 
focus should be on teaching return to the classroom quickly, the 
potential benefits for all students from online learning to supplement 
classroom education should not be neglected.

> My question: how can they write these reports when remote education
> during this pandemic hasn't even been running for a matter of
> days? ...

When asked for advice in an emergency, it is not an option to spend 
years conducting research, you have to reply promptly based on what you 
know. I did a bit of this at the Defence Department, and I now teach 
students at ANU how do it.

While online learning is now taking place on a scale not seen before, it 
is not new. The impact of distance education is a well researched field. 
There thousands of studies over decades, most involving just a few 
dozen, or a few hundred students, but some with thousands, or tens of 
thousands. I had to sift through a lot of this stuff as a student of 
education and have attended education conferences with, and talks by, 
some of the people who wrote these reports.

> This is an entirely different situation.

This is not an entirely new, or unanticipated situation. After SARS, 
educational institutions in the region planned how they would switch to 
e-learning if students where quarantined at home.

The level of preparation by Australian education departments and 
institutions, might be one useful area for a Royal Commission into 
COVID-19 to explore. This would include an investigation of the general 
preparedness by Australian governments, and if Ministers exercised their 
duty of care by initiating, and participating in, pandemic preparedness 
exercises, similar to Exercise Eleusis '05. 
https://web.archive.org/web/20070904023819/http://www.daff.gov.au/animal-plant-health/emergency/exercises/eleusis


-- 
Tom Worthington, MEd FHEA FACS CP IP3P http://www.tomw.net.au 
+61(0)419496150
TomW Communications Pty Ltd. PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia
Liability limited by a scheme approved under Prof. Standards Legislation

Honorary Lecturer, Computer Science, Australian National University 
https://cecs.anu.edu.au/research/profile/tom-worthington