Policy and contextual considerations for enabling learning support roles in digital environments
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Policy and contextual considerations for enabling learning support roles in digital environments Jill Stefaniak1 Accepted: 22 October 2020 © Association for Educational Communications and Technology 2020
Abstract This paper is in response to Nacu et al.’s (Educ Technol Res Dev 66(4):1029–1049, 2018) guidelines to enable educators to fulfill learner support roles in online education from a contextual perspective and how their heuristic method can be utilized in today’s current pandemic. It also explores how learner support roles can be leveraged to balance affordances offered by the learning environment and the learners themselves. Additionally, this paper discusses the implications for addressing social inequities in digital environments and education policy reform. Keywords Learner support · Teacher development · Educational policy · Online instruction Nacu et al.’s (2018) study, Designing for 21st Century Learning Online: A Heuristic Method to Enable Educator Learning Support Roles, explored the extent that supportive roles upheld by educators can guide learners within a learning management system. The authors expanded upon a framework they had previously developed, the Online Learning Support Roles (OLSR) framework (Nacu et al. 2016), and presented heuristics to help educators embody a more supportive instructor presence in youth-centered online learning environments. The authors made a strong argument for a heuristic method to support educators’ adoption of learning support roles in online environments. Their paper upheld the premise of empathetic design by examining how educators can fulfill several supportive roles, both intermittently and concurrently, to meet their learner’s needs. As teachers pivot to delivering online instruction and promote some sense of normalcy to their learners during the pandemic, Nacu et al.’s (2018) heuristics for embracing different supportive roles is of great benefit to both experienced and inexperienced online learning educators. These unprecedented times have highlighted several social inequities that have been impacted by schools’ decisions to make drastic changes to instructional delivery. Examples of inequities impacting students’ abilities to shift to digital environments include access to the internet, accessibility, and resources available for students requiring individualized education plans. Other contextual factors influencing students’ learning environments include * Jill Stefaniak [email protected] 1
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their parents’/guardians’ ability to support and assist them with learning, having appropriate space to learn at home, and time allocated to complete class assignments. While many of these inequities existed pre-pandemic, many could be mitigated through resources provided in physical classroom environments. Now, more than ever, educators must gauge the extent that these factors are interfering with their learners’ abilities to
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