A Brief Look Back

by Paxton Riter, CEO & Co-Founder of iDesign

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Unpleasant as this may be, it’s worth remembering where we were two years ago. In late December of 2019, we first heard about a kind of “pneumonia”that was presenting itself in China. By the end of January, 2020, the W.H.O.declared a global health emergency. After that, we watched the slow, eerie approach of COVID into our daily lives. A diagnosis here. A cluster of cases there.  And then the massive wave.

Spring break vacations were put on hold and nixed altogether. As the middle of March approached, the N.C.A.A. abruptly made the astonishing decision to cancel their annual Women’s and Men’s basketball tournaments. Depending on where you stood, this made a lot of people mad. It also made a lot of people scared. We stayed home and stopped socializing with the people dear to us. Most importantly, in the coming months, hospital emergency rooms and ICUs would be pushed to their limits. There would be unimaginable loss of life and loss of livelihoods. Large, menacing questions loomed about what the virus would mean in the longterm for the economy and our communities. There were urgent concerns about what the disruption would mean for learning.

Yet in that fast and frenetic switch from in-person education to video-driven classrooms in March of 2020, something remarkable happened nonetheless.

From elementary schools to Ph.D. programs, administrators, teachers, students, and parents faced a new reality—education, for the foreseeable future, would require a change in modalities. The phrases “Zoom” and “remote” entered into our everyday lexicons. This shift would be almost entirely supported by technology. On the one hand, this immediately brought certain disparities to light. Those who lacked functioning computer equipment or access to adequate internet were sorely disadvantaged from the start. Only in the years to come will we be able to grasp the full ramifications of this divide, which continues to accelerate day by day.

Yet in that fast and frenetic switch from in-person education to video-driven classrooms in March of 2020, something remarkable happened nonetheless. The learning lives of many managed to move forward. Degrees were granted. Graduations occurred. Technology made it possible for children in schools to progress to the next grade. People in the workforce continued to receive training and advance in their fields. No one would suggest that the tradeoff was perfect or seamless—that remote or online instruction provided the same experiences of in-person learning. But the capacity and flexibility to establish a provisional educational alternative so swiftly merits contemplating.

Well before the pandemic, we in EdTech were working to expand learning opportunities and accessibility for an increasing portion of the population. Impactful pedagogy has always been critical to our mission and the value we offer our partners. What remains to be seen is how the sector itself will learn from these past two years. One of the salient conversations we face as we move forward and inevitably out of the COVID era will be about the classroom. The pandemic has unquestionably influenced the many ways in which we consider that space, be it physical or virtual. Our educators—the original essential partners in delivering a meaningful learning experience—will be particularly crucial to our success in this regard. Incorporating their insights and expertise about engagement will be the measure of how we process and respond to the challenges all of us have recently faced in delivering the highest quality instruction possible.

When we look back on these past two years, we will recall a surreal, long pause in our lives. We will consider the way things might have been handled differently on any number of levels. We will also recognize the unequivocal circumstances that re-shaped the landscape of learning in our time, circumstances that require us to reflect and debate and work even harder to get our model right. After all, our common cause—fostering curiosity, imagination, understanding, and personal growth—depends on it.