Crisis Online Format - COF in a COVID-19 Work and Education Environment

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Organizations and individuals are changing how they work and study given COVID-19. (Dion Hinchliffe of Constellation Research & ZDNet offers valuable guidance here.) Businesses and universities around the world are moving activities online for remote access. Many have noted that this may be the push needed for broad-based acceptance of online courses and remote work. However,  Michael B. Horn, Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation and an educational design expert has raised an excellent point: “Many courses will be poor substitutes for the originals.” 

In his post, Covid-19 Boost to Online Learning May Backfire, he examines whether this implementation of online education will serve as a trigger to successful disruptive innovation:

The theory of disruptive innovation predicts that primitive services take root in areas where all they have to beat is nonconsumption. From there, fueled by a technology enabler, they improve and, over time, become capable of tackling more complicated problems and serving more demanding users. Enticed by a value proposition of relative convenience, affordability, and simplicity, people migrate to the improving disruptive innovation over time.

I’ve long noted, in Education Next (“Disruptive Innovation and Education,” “Taking Tablet Learning Global”) and elsewhere (Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools), that online learning bears the hallmarks of a technology that can enable disruptive innovation.

Horn goes on to say that the current COVID-19 environment is a scramble to keep classes going versus offering a purpose-built online option. Because of this, he remains skeptical about whether this will create a strong foothold for new forms of learning -- and, in fact, these experiences may create barriers to long-term success.

First Impressions Last

We run the risk of creating enemies of online formats with poorly designed and implemented courses (and forms of remote work of all types). Quality online course design requires a huge shift in thinking and the time to bring a team to a project. We don’t have time for that now and we need to be clear that our efforts may be more akin to first aid than fully-resourced healthcare.

Branding Matters — Even If It’s a Negative Brand

Be clear that the strategies we’re putting together with days or hours of notice are not examples of thoughtful remote work and education options. We are doing the best that we can in crisis mode and I thank all my colleagues who are working overtime in service of our students. In some cases, we may get it right, but more likely, these are rough prototypes at best. Given that branding matters, let’s call what we’re doing right now something other than online learning and remote work. These are COFs—Crisis Online Formats.

Moving from a COF to Online Learning and Remote Work

In the long term, let’s have a plan that takes us from COFs to longer-term, thoughtfully designed forms of online learning and remote work. Use this tragedy to do what we must now, but then put resources into transitions to online formats for the long haul. 

For those of us in front of students and decision-makers, help people see that we are doing what we must and that longer-term designs will build on things we learn now — but that what they are likely seeing is not online learning or remote work. It’s a COF.

Resources

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