Before the Christmas break I had the opportunity to have a zoom call with my learning partner, Chris Avis (https://avisonacademia.blogspot.com/), to speak about trends in our field, and trends in adult education.

Chris is currently a physics instructor, and has been through the abrupt shift to online and blended learning. With most of the schoolwork being done remotely, there is less face to face interaction between students and instructors, and this has lead to some students “contract cheating”. Contract cheating is essentially farming out homework, or written projects, to other people on the internet in exchange for payment. This is a double edged sword as the instructor isn’t getting an honest look at how the student is grasping the information, and the student is cheating themselves out of the opportunity to learn. How do we deal with contract cheating? We’re not exactly sure yet as mass distance education has come on so quickly, there hasn’t been time to iron out all the quirks that come with it.

Another interesting note we touched on also had to do with online learning, but from a completely different aspect. Since most students and instructors are used to online education by now, why do the students need to be limited to one instructor? Everyone has specialties, and things that they’ve worked their entire life to refine, why not use multiple instructors with varying areas of expertise to teach a single class, and with online learning, the instructors don’t even need to be working for the same educational institution! This of course brings along a whole array of logistical issues, but is definitely a possibility as the world evolves into the new normal of online learning.

Thanks for the chat Chris, it definitely opened my eyes talking to a current instructor to what has changed in the last couple of years!