There is little research
with regard to supervision in an online or digital learning environment. One
possible reason could be the mass delusion of the effectiveness and perceived better
learning opportunities that surrounds educational technology. This Spanish
study suggests that because the world is increasingly more digital and virtual,
education is following suit, and that schools need to better improve and
integrate digital supervision of both students and staff. A new supervision
model is needed to guide and monitor teaching and learning that is either heavily
or completely dependent upon Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The
changes are needed to facilitate better digital supervision to comply with ministry
of education curriculum, to ensure a better use of resources, and to examine
effective teaching and learning strategies and evaluation in a growing online
or virtual learning environment. The authors state that ICT has the potential to
be valuable in the functions and processes of supervision in ICT mediated
contexts (Vázquez-Cano
& Sevillano García,
2013, p. 77). A supervisor would log
into a Learning Management System (LMS) and use videoconferencing software to
monitor the digital activities of teachers and students. The authors also contend
that scheduled supervisory times will mitigate rescheduling issues, since
supervisors do not have to physically be onsite, and this would eliminate the associated
anxiety of inspection. A digital archive of multiple supervisory sessions could
afford later assessments for administrators and act as a beneficial depository
for snapshots of teacher and student performance, which could provide a media for
ongoing reflection, and improvement. They point out the need for a new
supervisory model, but do not deal with many of the underlying institutional,
human, and resource based obstacles.
There are many
deficiencies with this study since this issue is not even on the academic
radar. Firstly, a lot of what happens in schools does not take place in a digital
format and cannot be captured via virtual supervision. Thus, only a small
section of the supervisory whole of monitoring and collaborating with teaching
and learning will be addressed. This limitation arises from the digital medium,
not the process.
Currently in Spain, a
blended local and state supervisory model is used with a substantial inspection
component. The tendency, in evolved educational agencies, is to favour the more
beneficial outcomes of a supportive and collaborative relationship-building
model of supervision. This people-centered style cannot be adapted well to the
virtual and digital processes, where the aforementioned outcomes are deemphasized,
if not actively demoted. The majority of educators are not well versed in using
educational technology in the classroom for purposes other than those at the
lowest levels of Blooms Taxonomy. Supervisors would be an even smaller subset
of technological proficient educators, and would be a scarce commodity for
universal adoption or implementation on a large scale. Virtual supervision
would be yet another administrative task, with the added burden of a high
learning curve for using software effectively for a deep understanding of the
suitability of ICT to pedagogical processes and data protection (p. 78). The
barriers to successful integration of ICT: competence, confidence, and
accessibility, are still paramount even in our privileged, first-world milieu.
These barriers would be amplified if this model were adopted for supervisors to
follow.
A final issue which is
not addressed is the fact that neither students nor teachers will want a
digital archive of their activities in which vulnerabilities will most
certainly be exposed. As mentioned before, this could be beneficial, but the
potential for misuse of these digital artifacts, which transcends even temporal
boundaries, is too great for those assuming all the risk. In fact, those being
supervised will be less inclined to take risks for potential personal or
professional growth and development if there is a digital record of their
trials or triumphs.
The fact that there is
little literature on the subject of digital supervision does not mean we should
abandon it. In fact, it has to take greater importance as we digitize our
formal and informal learning using online resources. However, just as we are
successful with practices and processes for teaching and learning in
traditional offline methods, we must also examine what currently works best for
supervisors and evaluate whether these methods are transferable into digital
entities that can be effective. We must not look at every process as a digital
nail for which a digital hammer is required.
References
Vázquez-Cano, E., & Sevillano García, M. L.
(2013). ICT strategies and tools for the improvement of instructional
supervision. The Virtual
Supervision. The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, 12(1), 77-87
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