*sigh* https://twitter.com/dandrezner/status/1359480274468433926

I will grant him that if your online course is online lectures or recorded lectures and that's it, then yes, your online course sucks.

But I expect better of academics - all academics. And this is an area where we seem intent on showing our collective ass again and again.

I expect better of academics because we are supposed to be the place where evidence matters, where quality and rigor of investigation matters. AND YET people are trying to draw conclusions from emergency remote teaching during a pandemic AS IF (a) it's some carefully controlled

experiment and (b) ERT is the same as online learning.

We have a piece on that. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning

But beyond that, what we're actually seeing is how moving online magnifies really bad classroom practices that are receive far less scrutiny because they're often far less transparent. Regardless of medium, faculty are bad at estimating time on task and frequently on the weakest

instructional strategies of lecture and quizzing / testing. To have a meaningful conversation about what works and what doesn't, we have to talk strategies,.not technologies. Blaming technology is lazy.

As to "regardless of medium," there is a LOT of research. I've posted threads on this already, and I'll link to it when I'm on my PC because I DO have receipts, but this sort of "media comparison" has shown that (1) there's no significant difference, time and again, because

(2) the methodology turns out to be quite flawed because the medium isn't the interesting variable. It's all the things we DO WITHIN.

This makes sense if you think about it for a moment. Nothing about the 4 walls of a classroom turns your class into a better class or you into a

better teacher. It may be all you know so you're comfortable there, but a lot of bad instruction takes place on classrooms, too. The research on online ends up documenting that the classroom isn't the gold standard to which we should compare ... anything.

So what matters? Our instructional choices: primarily the instructional strategies and methods (and assessment strategies and methods) that we select.

But aren't there a lot of things we can't do online?

This is what I call the "sacred cow" argument. "Well, you can do THAT

online, but you can't do what *I* do online." Because of this belief and fear (not evidence) that online is substandard and anything that can be done online is not "high education."

Baloney, and also just a bad way to think about it.

A more robust way to think about it ALL is affordances - classroom learning affords some things online does not, and online affords some things the classroom does not. But where that line actually is (on what can't be done online) is usually more a failure of imagination.

You can't play a soccer match or foot all game online. You can't hang out with your buddies at the local bar online. These are really the things students are missing - the college "experience." But so far, I have yet to run into things we can't do online.

Engineering labs? Been there done that. Designing one right now using Augmented Reality for a mechanical lab, using online to rethink constraints of time in space.

Can it be done in 2 weeks? No. So ERT doesn't work. But can it be done? Yes, and it affords some new possibilities.

I have to get coffee and get to meetings, but I'll post links to threads of research in a bit.

Just, let's have a better research-informed discussion. Otherwise we're short-changing our ability to think strategically, imaginatively, and better serve learners with diverse needs.

Ok, here's one thread with research citations on these issues: https://twitter.com/steph_moore/status/1281601233384603651?s=20