Could the energy crisis mean a return to remote learning?
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Could the energy crisis lead to a return to remote learning?
Could the energy crisis mean a return to remote learning?
It's enough to strike fear into the hearts of parents. But one person who believes we should be having this conversation now is Dr. Paul Davis, who's a lecturer in public procurement at DCU. Good morning, Paul.
Good morning, Clare.
Now, many of us remember the difficulty of remote learning when we had to do it during the pandemic. But do you think we could be heading back there in part at least, or should be?
I think we should be thinking about it and we should be planning. This is the time to consider what are the best options coming into winter. We had the experience of COVID. It arrived in and immediately every educational institute responded really well with online learning. with supports put in place, but it was rushed. It was often people struggling to try to figure out what best to do. Here we know we more than likely may have an energy crisis coming in. And when we look at the financial costs to most education buildings, it's energy intensive. Now, primary education, I think I said in the article today was, look, it's critical that that remains open. Any move from physical presence, I think is both educationally and socially regressive.
Secondary education offers opportunities because there are years, maybe second year, whereby we could go online and we stop the ability. Well, we're not stopped, but we actually look at cohorts going through and think about how to reduce their time in class. And again, there's an energy cost to this. There is the transport, there's the commute, but there's also the energy cost of having the classrooms open when maybe we don't need to. But it's at third level. Go ahead.
Third level is where, and I know when you're writing about this in the Irish Times, third level is where you really say that this should happen. And we'll talk about the reasons why and the savings that could be made in a moment. But one of the sort of earliest verdicts from the pandemic, what went right and what went wrong, was around education, wasn't it? And I know you have that concession statement
What lessons did we learn from remote learning during the pandemic?
in what you're saying today to primary but the damage that was done by having remote learning went beyond primary school didn't it?
It did and it went into secondary and we're seeing the effects of it now in third level as well but this is where we have to consider cohorts who they are and plan for them rather than suddenly having an ad hoc arrangement hit us in September October where suddenly we may be facing a crisis, but energy costs may still be increasing. And again, these are all maybes, but we can plan for that now and then choose how we actually carry out our education system in advance, rather than waiting to react in like we did with COVID. We've got a lot of lessons that we learned in COVID, and a lot of them were positive in terms of the ability of teachers and lecturers to be able to deliver online. At very short notice, but who actually thought about what to do.
But we do have to look at the socialisation aspects of it and ensure that the right cohorts are getting socialised rather than then making this large blanket agreement. Suddenly we can't do this because the energy costs are too high. And I'd hate to see that happen because that's the wrong approach to this when we can actually plan for it.
So let's talk about how it might work at third level. Like you say, some of the lectures that are delivered when you're just sitting there listening and taking notes could very easily be done at home. But then we hear about the missed social opportunities around people staying away from college, whether that's because they can't get accommodation or when it comes to energy costs, they might be facing a long commute. So we know that those problems exist as it is. I mean, how do you mitigate against that if you follow through on this plan?
Well, what you do is you choose the days that you want people in, you choose the cohorts that you want in, and you make sure that you balance it out. I said it very clearly that you've got to look at the type of classes that you're actually giving.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
Could the energy crisis lead to a return to remote learning?
0:01–2:09
2
What lessons did we learn from remote learning during the pandemic?
2:09–5:37
3
How can energy costs impact the education system?
5:37–9:49
4
What are the implications of shifting to online learning at different education levels?
9:49–14:17