My daughter is 16 and in the midst of learning how to drive (fun times). Of course, this pandemic has disrupted her instructor-led training, but it has gotten me thinking about the parallels between driver education and distance education. In fact, there is a lot we can learn about “doing right” in distance education when we think about what it takes to teach a teen to drive, especially now that remote learning has become our “temporary normal.” Distance education is not the same as face-to-face education. They are two different beasts, and the lack of online pedagogical training for K-12 educators is becoming painfully apparent from where I sit as a parent of an 11th grader and as a professionally trained instructional designer. So, here are some key takeaways from driver education that can help inform all distance educators.
The student is in the driver’s seat.
In driver education–at least the driving part–the student takes control. Learning by doing is essential. That’s probably the toughest thing for any parent to adapt to. Same goes for distance education. Teachers are no longer in control of the classroom. This means greater responsibility for learning is placed on the shoulders of the student. Instead of passive learning, there should be plenty of opportunities for active learning. It also means that teachers need to stop trying to fit their teacher-centered classroom habits, like lecturing, into an online format. There is nothing more deadly boring than an hour-long Zoom lecture! Bottom line, distance education should be student-centered and student-led. This requires self-regulation and individual responsibility on the student’s part, which is why distance education is really not appropriate for everyone.
The expert blind spot becomes glaringly obvious.
The expert blind spot happens when a teacher’s content expertise becomes so automated that he or she forgets how much is not known by the novice student. Any parent who has taken his or her teen for a driving session learns this very quickly. We have to think carefully about ALL the skills needed to achieve the learning outcome and ALL the knowledge and skills gaps that the student might be missing. Instructional design thinking is essential to this task. For distance education, that means that designing and developing good learning experiences takes time. Obviously, with this pandemic, there wasn’t much time for rolling out well-designed distance learning. Going forward though, I hope that all school districts take away the wisdom that they need to have a well-designed and well-developed e-learning plan in place for future use, just in case.
Communication is key…and different.
As the parent of a new driver, another lesson that you learn very quickly is the importance of explicit communication. There should be no room for interpretation in directions because it breeds uncertainty, which can become anxiety-inducing and lead to incorrect (and possibly unsafe) actions. This lesson is equally important for distance education because the student cannot immediately clarify the meaning of instructions. So, everything from learning objectives to assignment directions to test-taking rules to navigational instructions for the learning platform should be clear and precise. In fact, because of the limitations of asynchronous communication (lack of body language, lack of tone of voice), it is always good to err on the side of over-communication. And always check for understanding.
Feedback must be immediate and continuous.
When teaching a teen to drive, the feedback must always occur alongside or immediately after a task, as well as continuously during a driving session. In addition to safety, not much can be learned otherwise because driving requires multiple simultaneous skills (cognitive, behavioral, motor). This applies to distance education as well. For example, waiting a week for feedback on a math assignment is not a particularly effective way to learn. Rather, frequent opportunities for immediate feedback improve learning. With technology, this can be achieved via well-designed tutorials, games, quizzes, etc. Absent effective feedback strategies, it is much more difficult to gauge learning, both for student and teacher. In fact, this is where the digital divides the haves from have nots and once again, illustrates that distance education is neither effective nor even possible for all.
Designer Librarian 