Reading Time: 7 minutes
I attended a conference focused on online learning. I’ve been making a push to firm up my understanding about teaching and this was an accelerator. It was noted more than once how dissonant it was to have a conference about online learning where the only way to attend was in-person. The arguments for the in-person format echoed arguments I’ve read about the need for people to work in offices instead of remotely. I didn’t find them persuasive.
As a law librarian, this format discussion struck me as not dissimilar to library discussions about format. Should we keep print or go to digital? If we license digital text, should we consider digital alternatives? Unfortunately, this question sometimes devolves to this: what is best?
Format Choice Isn’t a Value Judgment
We are lucky if we get to a point where we can discuss relative value of a content format. I picked up a book at one of the exhibitor tables and flipped to the back, only to find no index. What? Maybe an index isn’t necessary but it’s a sign of quality to me in a print non-fiction text. I quickly put the text down.
Some content is only available in a single format, print or digital. Some content is priced in a way, and needs to be delivered in a way, that forces a choice without considering whether the format is the best. We learn towards a digital license to reach thousands of people because we know that a book collection can’t scale and can’t reach as easily when an entire class or cohort needs it simultaneously. To that extent, a resource might be better for the selector but we do not have the luxury have knowing it’s better for the person using it.
And can you remedy those defects? I am intrigued by this article by Amanda Sholtis on how e-reading differs from reading physical print. As they note, it’s not a better or worse distinction. It is different and outcomes in use are different. There is a role to play in ensuring that outcomes are maximized, if the skill to use one is different from the skill to use the other. I don’t think legal information is used in a linear format like a lot of text information is (whether print or audio). It is a skill to learn how to work with chunks when you’ve been trained to read cover-to-cover.
The majority of college and graduate students think print is superior to digital text for learning; therefore, they prefer to read in print. Generally students report it is easier to focus, they remember more, and they are more likely to re-read when reading in print.
Medium Matters in Preparing for Law Practice: Critical e-Reading, Amanda L. Sholtis, p. 20.
The online learning conference had a similar challenge. As one person framed it, there is a question about the content and the container. The latter is the delivery mode: asynchronous, synchronous, online or offline. Is one better for a particular type of content or a particular teaching style or outcome?
One impression I got was that this choice might not be in the hands of the teachers. Students were opting for modes that suited their lives and needs. In other words, some students needed to have online synchronous or asynchronous courses. Others were opting in to those courses, choosing them instead of in-person courses that were available to them. Like librarians, teachers may be forced into teaching in formats that they may think are inferior because that is where students want to learn.
Another impression I got was that the format was not the real challenge. A lot of discussions revolved around whether the teaching itself was the issue. How much teaching was done by people who had never been taught how to teach? I had gone to the conference thinking that migrating good offline teaching into online modes was the challenge: adaptation. But I came away believing that one couldn’t assume that offline teaching was good, and so the risk was moving teaching online that had not been validated offline.
This has been a valuable lesson for me. My early teaching experience may or may not have been very good. Like many people in law schools, I taught my experience: how to use networked information systems, how to perform legal research. I didn’t have any training in teaching methods. I didn’t have any way to validate that what I was doing was going to ensure that students successfully learned what I was imparting. I am already light years ahead of where I was the last time I taught. I have spent far more time thinking about the container than the content this time around.
I had mentioned to my partner, when I registered for the conference, how funny it was that there was not an online alternative for an online teaching conference. We are years past the lockdown now. We have decades of online conferences to learn delivery lessons from. An online-only conference is a format choice that excludes, so it should do it for a defensible purpose.
Forced Format
Let me acknowledge that I am not an overly social creature. This comes as a surprise to some people. Over the years, I have become more and more comfortable calling it a day at in-person events and giving myself a break from social activities. I realize that some people love these experiences: receptions, tables of 8 to talk to at a dinner, and so on. Different formats suit different people’s choices.
This is probably why I am so resistant to the suggestion that a singular format is superior. It may be preferred by some people but I don’t think you can point to a format and say, this is the pinnacle, for everyone. It assumes that, no matter cost, or personal mental health, or reach, or availability, or licensing, or whatever, that there’s no reasonable alternative use case.
It takes a certain kind of certainty to believe that the format you prefer is the best format for everyone. I’m not able to command that certainty. If anything, I have seen too many alternatives (print—ebook—audiobook, in-person—hybrid—remote, video—audio—text transcript, chocolate—strawberry—vanilla, etc.) to know that the world is too diverse for my preference to be right for everyone.
This may be because we don’t define what our goal is very clearly, perhaps because if we did so, we wouldn’t end up at the destination we hoped for. If you state that an in-person conference is the only format that works, you need to ask what the outcome is that you’re trying to secure.
We know that you can build online asynchronous communities. I am not on the site but we only need to look at LinkedIn for a place where a lot of lawyers interact asynchronously. People post information, and, later, others reply or react to the original post. People make “connections” (“Dunbar’s Number” … BINGO!) attenuated to varying degrees.
We know that people create virtual communities in computer games too. I know this because I’m in a 500-person guild in a game. The members come from all time zones and, while there are some structured events (that I do not attend, just as in real-life), mostly guild mates just exist. I know the most social by their online handles, and I’ve interacted with a few handfuls of them. Mostly I engage with new people who are needing a hand getting started: sharing materials, crafting gear, tips with add-ons. These experiences are synchronous, for the most part. We engage with each other when we’re online, although there’s also a mail component for asynchronous.
And, of course, we have years of hybrid work. Lots of library work can be done remotely. Even the in-person modes that we value may not be as valuable to others, although I think this varies dramatically depending on the sophistication of the library user. The more comfortable they are with the information, the less they may need in-person support.
One need only look at the longevity and success of the CALI Conference to see an organization that has successfully delivered hybrid learning.Attend it in person. Attend it simultaneously online. View the entire program after it’s over.
An organization that requires in-person attendance, to a conference or to a workplace, tells me that they have outcomes that are different from the obvious one. We see this even with hybrid workplaces that have a days-in-days-out requirement. If everyone has to be in the office 2 or 3 days, we are not looking at what it is they are doing and determining which jobs can be done 100% remotely, which require 100% in-person, and which are between that.
What is an outcome that requires in-person presence? It’s not networking. However, it probably is accelerated connections. My online gaming guild, or people on LinkedIn, accumulate connections and connectivity over time. If you want to meet people and learn about them quickly, a synchronous in-person event may be the best way to do that. You are still limited by Dunbar’s number time: how many people can you meet beyond your table-of-8 at dinner? how many people can you actually make a meaningful connection with at a reception where you are encouraged to move from person to person? how many coffee one-on-ones can you have in the course of a multi-day conference?
As you can tell, I’m skeptical that time and interest scale sufficiently to justify this sort of interaction as a requirement. I expect that the smaller the group that meets, the more likely they will spend enough time interacting that they will create those rapid connections. But I just recently had an 8 week virtual project with a colleague I’d never met and feel more connected with them than people I’ve met multiple times at an in-person conference.
One conference attendee commented that they valued the in-person mandate of the conference. If it had been hybrid, they would have dropped in for a single session and then dropped out. The in-person mandate forced them to participate, to be physically present.
This suggests to me that perhaps I’m just not very good at in-person network development. That could be totally true. But that doesn’t mean forcing me to participate will give me better outcomes than giving me options. It also doesn’t ensure that people are mentally present, even if you have them physically present. I’ve been in plenty of conference sessions where people are sitting near me but are elsewhere, based on their device screens. Same with corporate meetings.
Format Honesty
It will come as no surprise that I don’t think there’s an ideal format, an ideal container. The guiding principle I have is to be as inclusive as possible. When I was able to make the choice, my employees would work where they wanted, so long as the work got done. Systems that require specific days-in-days-out or even specific hours of the day for everyone seem to ignore the value that flexibility offers to individual staff.
When a conference selects in-person only, it is making a choice to exclude. It excludes people who do not want to be in gatherings. It excludes people who can’t afford to be present. It excludes people who might only be able to partially participate but whose limited participation might still be a net benefit to the conference.
It is also making a choice to avoid complexity, which is totally understandable. It can be tricky to live stream a conference. Some conference speakers are not accustomed to being involved in online communication, even at an online teaching conference: where to stand, how to present information, how to handle questions from the audience.
Complexity is the choice that makes the most sense to me. It is the most like licensing an ebook instead of buying a print format of the same text. It gets to the difficulty or ease of delivering a format, probably the cost too.
As time goes by, I think I will be less and less forgiving about in-person requirements for collaboration and learning. In-person may be beneficial to the people organizing it, just as in-person work is primarily beneficial to executive officers who do not want to adapt their management styles to the post-lockdown world.
If that’s the case, they should just be honest that it is for that personal preference that they are making the choice to force in-person participation. They should acknowledge that they have chosen not to be inclusive—of some people’s life choices or resources or obligations, of how some people work or socialize, of whether some people learn or work more effectively online—when, often, they could make an alternate format choice.