Many tasty choices in post-pandemic teaching modalities--but...

Seeking one of the greatest treats ever, the Rita's chocolate-chocolate Misto, he dutifully waits in line.

A customer in front of him says, "I'd like a chocolate custard and banana water ice Misto."

"Please, a Misto with vanilla custard mixed with chocolate water ice," says the customer directly before him.

All was well.

He knows what he wants when it's his turn: "I'd like a chocolate-chocolate Misto." The Rita's team member shows consternation: "I'm sorry, but we can't mix that combination."

He stands, befuddled. He has seen the possibilities. He sees the water ice tub. He sees the chocolate custard dispenser. "Why don't you just, uh, put the chocolate water ice in the chocolate custard?" It's all so close, so tantalizingly close.

"It's just not the way we do it." Despite the protest, the worker seems equally befuddled. Both are frustrated.

Fortunately, Rita's does offer the extraordinary chocolate-chocolate Misto, which combines these two chocolate flavors and seems to shunt them to an extra-dimensional space from where they return as an exponentially more chocolatey dessert.

This tasty and seemingly ridiculous analogy is really not far off from where many institutions stand in terms of teaching modalities now that the pandemic is (hopefully) subsiding. Many teachers have demonstrated clearly that they can offer courses effectively not only using a wide array of modalities but, more interestingly, through mixing those modalities. Many students have also leveraged modalities to access content and engage in class community.

I am not saying all professors should teach anything-goes Hy-Flex courses, using advanced in-class technologies and accompanying pedagogical techniques to meet every student request. But we've been mixing for a while through hybrid teaching, and now since 2020 students and teachers dipped in and out of modalities as they suffered through the ongoing assaults of COVID. Both groups have experienced modality fluidity. For instance, for better or worse, everyone realizes snow days might be a thing of the past because students can be engaged for a day of school-related online activities. Quick shift.

But institutions are often limiting the modalities through which classes can be offered, sometimes strictly. Mostly, they are compelling courses to be offered  in person as part of the collective return to normalcy.

I do get it. For institutions, things are complicated. They are pressured to provide to students an onsite, on-the-ground, face-to-face experience--both in and out of classrooms. Faced with difficult decision-making, as is often the case in such situations, some have resorted to a frustrating absoluteness: Strict, firm rules about modality.

We're in the middle of a pedagogical shift, an unprecedented moment of offering instruction in a wide array of "flavors." I don't fault institutions for trying to control some of it. They are under these real pressures from students and sometimes parents.

But we must remember that the choices are right in front of us, and everybody knows it. Professors have recorded video of lectures in the classroom. Zoom rooms have provided synchronous conversation platforms. Asynchronous discussion groups have served for recitations and in-class conversation.

In The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Strategic Student Engagement, in the Classroom and Beyond: What college leaders need to know," Melody Buckner, associate vice provost for digital learning and online initiatives at the University of Arizona, said, “You don’t walk into Starbucks and just get offered a black cup of coffee anymore. You have a whole menu of options to choose from, and I think that the success of higher education depends on offering a menu of modality of learning environments and investing in each one of those” (1).

When students are told they can't Zoom into a class one day or watch a video of the lecture they missed  or use an asynchronous lesson for a class when they were sick, that one size fits all, they only have to think back to a few terms ago when on-the-fly alterations were a regular occurrence. They know it is not true.

They can see how easy it is to scoop some chocolate water ice into whatever flavored custard is available--and they can't understand why anyone would deprive them of the glory of the chocolate-chocolate Misto.

Note:

1) This 2022 research brief was written by Alina Tugend.