Pitfalls of Remote Learning Rant
To preface this piece, my experience with remote learning was from my experience at the Flatiron Bootcamp and not at an accredited institution.
With the pandemic raging across the United States, students of all levels have been remote learning. During the third phase of the Bootcamp, students traditionally were to meet with their teams in person and sometimes their clients. This helps simulate what it would be like to be in a room full of UX designers and researchers working on a product: Whiteboard sessions, office banter, etc. In addition to the client project, classes would be held to help bolster our knowledge in the UX field.
However, with the push to remote learning, I noticed a particular issue with this type of learning. Again to preface this, I’m not putting blame on the instructors of the program. Given the political and social climate across countries with the addition of quarantine, they did an outstanding job. I would like to give one particular critique in regards to their online curriculum.
Online material presented by the instructor should be flashier and more interactive and not a slideshow presentation. The reason I feel you instructors get away with lame PowerPoint slide presentation is that a student is rooted in a physical location with no other place to go. There is less interference or distraction when it comes to on-site learning. But in the comforts of your own home? It’s a nightmare. My attention was not fixed on the presentation. It was fixed on the billion tabs I have open in addition to my hobby shelve six inches away from me. What I’m saying is distractions at home are often too great to ignore at times. Does it mean I have little self-control? Possibly. Would that happen in a physical classroom with just my notebook and pen? Definitely not.
The remote learning process should be designed to maximize the attention of the user. It means designing interactive activities with time limits to facilitate a sense of urgency and participation.
The problem with just PowerPoint presentations is it does a terrible job of holding my attention. Even back in college, I had a terrible time focusing on a monotone professor drone on as he/she goes through slide by slide. It’s equally just as terrible being at home and looking at a small screen of text. Remote Learning cannot follow a design structure like on-site learning. There are too many external factors that can draw a user away from the content they are supposed to learn.