From KRWG, An Interview with: Dr. David Rutledge, Associate Professor/Interim Division Director College of Education at New Mexico State University. (sound could be better for Rutledge…compare to his interviewer’s sound.)
Mr. Rutledge seems to have very useful and practical attitudes regarding grades for students during the Pandemic. But otherwise his vision seems to be “let’s go back to the way we were doing things prior to the pandemic.”
By which he means everyone back into the “school building” as the best place to learn. (He gives some lip service to OTL for high school AP as being a good thing for rural students who might otherwise not have access to AP courses. That has been the “education institutional party line” since the early days of OTL, as if there was nothing else to consider as a benefit from OTL.)
But beyond that, the euphemism for not doing much with OTL has been the use of the terms “blended learning” and “hybrid learning”.
As with all blending, it’s all about the proportions of the ingredients: “blended” might entail 10% OTL, and 90% status quo classroom, or 50/50, or 10% classroom and 90% OTL. During the pandemic all sorts of blended formulas are being tried out across the nation. Educational Policy not tied to status quo demands, would fully examine what we have learned to date about blended learning formulas, and would devise further experimentation to establish best practices.
Hybrids are complex entities…much harder to envision in their particulars. As with hybrid electric cars, it’s much harder to determine when and how the various parts work together, and apart, to make the car “go”.
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Not sure how typical Mr. Rutledge’s views might be of the educational establishment in general, but presumably, more times than not, the “same old same old” is still setting the limits of vision. We do hear in the interview a mention of a possible greater usefulness of online classes to higher education, where the need has been starkly obvious for decades. Educational policy makers have long ago recognized that 101 level courses taught in huge lecture halls, with little if any interaction with the actual professor, do a markedly mediocre job, at best.
But that’s just a beginning of what is possible, and what is coming, that IF adopted would remake what higher education looks like in the US, and establish what sort of blended learning we will have for K-12.
There are EdTech players in the wings who would move quickly to support more OTL, should workable business models arise. Parents may drive some versions of public/ private education that can demonstrate effective learning using OTL tools. So far the risk of investing in the scale needed for innovative learning tech has been nearly prohibitive, but we currently live in a time of hurried up change on many fronts. Just breaking through the digital divide creates huge new markets.
So Same Old, or Something New.? ..trends in this arena continue to be a primary focus for PSA heading into an eventual “Post Pandemic” educational environment.
To be fair, one should also note this is just one fairly short interview, which may not accurately reflect the totality of Mr. Rutledge’s views on educational policy when offered in a less circumscribed context.