Are webinars the learning environments of the future? Are they the super learning machines that we are looking for post Covid 19? They may allow the faculty in an academic institution to share their knowledge and inspire a number of learners, not only within their own institute but anywhere in the country, or even across the globe but can they create the emotional connect?
The pandemic has brought a surfeit of webinars into our drawing rooms, our kitchens and even our bedrooms at the expense of our privacy. I loved the idea of a webinar as a medium of learning, since it had the ability to connect with peers, friends and experts. I could ask them a question and even discuss and debate in the true spirit of learning. However, I haven’t been liking them of late for several reasons. They seem to be far too long, not sufficiently interactive, too crowded with panellists speaking everything but the required. Sometimes have to contend with an uninterested speaker mouthing monologues with a completely docile moderator who is ineffective and indifferent. Often, these are followed by inane questions which attract equally inane answers.
Polling, asking direct questions to make sure the other side is participating, sometimes may liven up proceedings. What can be achieved if someone is bent on pursuing something more exotic, even when a webinar tool is spying? Can we really force an asynchronous learner to focus? While there is nothing that is intrinsically wrong with webinars, there are potential problems that can occur without proper preparation, research, planning and practice.
Institutions are increasingly resorting to webinars to reach their students even with mothballed teachers, as if to only prevent them from reaching the courts. A maximum of 30 minutes may interest people at most, not the 60-minute monologues. Transformed into a guide or a mentor, a teacher must realise that he needs to be concise, to the point and interact more than act. Must be more enterprising in sending out the prework on mail and other social media platforms. A variety of videos on the subject must value add.
Recorded and uploaded webinars could be effective for students to watch them at their leisure, may be a shade better than scribbling notes in a traditional classroom. The flip side is that they are unattended and unsupervised leaving the turf open for misuse. A motivated learner probably will attend 20% of the webinars and watch 80% afterwards, that fits his calendar. Combining it with social platforms, pointing them to the webinar post in an email invitation and making use of the commenting ability of the platform to receive and answer questions can help, but the delays can also hurt and push slow learners completely off learning. Some high-end learning management platforms even use concepts of gamification to engage the learner. The question However, is, can it hook millions of learners across the country, like the 1996 role-playing video games Pokémon Red and Blue would?
Covid 19 is imposing severe penalties and pain which can manifest in myriad ways, effecting as it is, different players in this new experiment. Whereas students can complain on the very dynamics of learning online, that completely blocks overall personality development that the campus environment offers, the teachers also could be exploited. Whereas the school/college may charge fees that may not be commensurate with the expenses, the faculty may be paid less for their services. From saving lakhs of rupees every month on electricity bills by not having to use air-conditioners and other power guzzling gadgets, to saving on expenditure on extra-curricular activities like hiring of play grounds for cricket, soccer or for other campus activities, the schools and colleges could amass wealth without having to share. They do not have to provide nutritionists, dieticians, doctors, nurses or housekeeping staff. Even travel costs are dispensed with, when shared content of the best in the business is used.
Is it not exploitation then, if the teaching staff is asked to buy stationery, laptops, smart phones, whiteboards or get a WiFi connection for the online classes? In a way the changing ecosystem is empowering the schools/colleges to shift the burden of expenditure to either a student or a teacher. Webinars could be cost effective if only the benefits were passed on to its users.
The social dimension of webinars is even more intriguing. They seldom have any connect with the participants. They allow participants to register, akin to attendance in a physical class room. Once registered, who guarantees their continued presence? One may register, show on the application and vanish, switch off video and mute the audio and continue doing their bidding. Innovative among them may even shoot off a question and vanish. Even the motivated sometimes find it difficult to emotionally connect, on an unstable internet service. What if internet failure is cited as an excuse for not attending? A face-to-face program also suffers from the indefensible, but at least the peer pressure may make them perform better. Another farcical innovation perfected by webinar organisers is issuing online certificates of participation to all and sundry. What value must be assigned, when a certain faculty proudly announces accumulation of 25 such certificates in the past three months?
Most of us live in 2BHK homes or even smaller ones. Now questions galore. Imagine a family of a husband, wife and two school/college going children, all seemingly busy, in their own world of webinars with their own devices. Is this community learning? Where is the privacy? It’s another matter that none is interested in dressing well. The frazzled dress sense seems to have ticked off many hilarious moments making one ask, if there is any need at all to wear anything below the neck for a webinar, as long as the face is presentable.
Webinars must leave us feeling wonderful, inspired, and ready to take on the world like good movies do. The bad webinars, However, are more like B-Grade or C-Grade Movies. After two hours, we begin to wonder how somebody could have possibly been paid to make something so unapologetically terrible.
Karl Marx once said, “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He had forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” History must not record webinar learning as either tragedy or farce.