#RemoteLearning is the hashtag for school taught at a distance, usually online, with students at home rather than in a classroom. The term is old, but it became a household phrase in spring 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools around the world and teachers, students and parents moved lessons onto video calls and learning platforms. Posts under the tag range from teachers sharing virtual-classroom setups to parents describing kitchen-table school days and debates over screen time, internet access and lost learning.
Origin
- Distance education before the internet. Wikipedia’s Distance education article describes the field as “the education of students who may not always be physically present at school,” and notes that today it usually involves online education, “also known as online learning, remote learning or remote education.” It traces the first modern course to Sir Isaac Pitman, who taught shorthand by post in the 1840s.
- 1985, the first online degrees. The same article reports that “The first online courses for graduate and undergraduate credit were offered in 1985 by Connected Education through The New School in New York City.”
- March 2020, the closures begin. Wikipedia’s Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education records that UNESCO’s first global count found 22 countries with closures affecting 290.5 million students, and that UNESCO urged countries to “facilitate large-scale inclusive distance learning programmes.”
- April 2020, the peak. The article states that “UNESCO estimates that at the height of the closures in April 2020, national educational shutdowns affected nearly 1.6 billion students in 200 countries: 94% of the student population and one-fifth of the global population.” That moment turned remote learning from a niche format into the default for most of the world’s students.
How It’s Used
During the closures, schools moved lessons onto whatever tools they could. The Distance education article lists platforms including “Zoom, Blackboard, Cisco Webex, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Skype, D2L, GoTo Meeting and Edgenuity.” It also notes that the pandemic “exposed gaps in teachers’ preparedness to use digital pedagogy effectively.” Long days on camera fed a related complaint, #ZoomFatigue, a term Wikipedia says “was popularized during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Much of the conversation under #RemoteLearning was about who could take part. Wikipedia’s Homework gap entry notes that the pandemic “increased attention on the homework gap because many students depended on internet access and digital devices for online learning.” The COVID-19 education article adds that in many Western countries the shift to remote learning “revealed massive disparities in technology access and interpersonal interaction.”
The tag sits alongside #DistanceLearning, #HybridLearning, #Homeschooling and #LearningLoss, and is now used for any online class, not only pandemic schooling.
Remote Learning by the Numbers
Each figure below comes from the linked source.
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Students hit by national closures, April 2020 | Nearly 1.6 billion, in 200 countries | Wikipedia (UNESCO estimate) |
| Average length of closures | 41 weeks (10.3 months) | Wikipedia |
| U.S. 9-year-olds who recalled learning remotely in 2020–21 | 70 percent | NAEP |
| NAEP score change for 9-year-olds, 2020 to 2022 | −5 points reading, −7 points math | NAEP |
| Fall 2021 math scores vs. fall 2019, grades 3–8 | 0.20–0.27 standard deviations lower | Brookings |
Recent Developments
- 2022, U.S. test scores. The NAEP long-term trend report found that 9-year-olds’ 2022 scores “declined 5 points in reading and 7 points in mathematics compared to 2020,” calling it “the largest average score decline in reading since 1990, and the first ever score decline in mathematics.” Among students who learned remotely, higher performers had greater access to a computer, a quiet place to work and a teacher’s help, though NAEP cautions that its results “cannot be used to establish a cause-and-effect relationship.”
- March 2022, widening gaps. Researchers writing for Brookings tracked 5.4 million U.S. students in grades 3–8 and found that gaps between low- and high-poverty elementary schools “grew by approximately 20% in math” and 15% in reading. The same authors wrote that the drops “in no way indicate that these students represent a ‘lost generation’.”
- After reopening. The Distance education article notes that “while some educational institutions went back to physical classes, others switched to blended learning or kept up their online distance learning.”
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic_on_education
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distance_education
- https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/ltt/2022/
- https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-pandemic-has-had-devastating-impacts-on-learning-what-will-it-take-to-help-students-catch-up/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homework_gap
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_fatigue