Avoiding Information Overload... Quality & Kindness

"By 2002, Eppler and Menjis were identifying five causes of information overload:
-multiple sources of information
-too much information
-difficult-to-manage information
-irrelevance or unimportance of information
-lack of time to understand information."

(Open University, 2020)

I was reading this the other day and it really got me thinking about learning and teaching.  I was thinking about myself as a teacher and how I've felt overloaded with information over the past 12 months and how much of this overloading makes teaching more difficult?  Moreover, it got me thinking about whether or not we, as teachers have been guilty of overloading our students too?  So by extension I started thinking about what constitutes quality in online learning?  How can educators create a quality online learning experience without the need for overload?  

("Information Overload" by DeaPeaJay is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

I know that, at the start of our lockdown experience in the UK, many students were probably buckling under the weight of what seemed like a million emails.  On reflection (and I don't know if anyone agrees with me) but perhaps there was something of a flurry of activity whereby every lecturer/teacher/educator tried to make their voice heard and get in contact with their students resulting in something of a tidal-wave of outgoing communication.  Similarly, a reciprocal tsunami was received by institutions around the world as learners clambered for help and guidance.  I'm sure all of these messages were very supportive and necessary, but I wonder how many voices got drowned out in that clamber to be seen/heard?

As a student, how do you react when all of your tutors are messaging you asking you to prioritise their work?  Meanwhile back in the real world you're busy facing very real personal challenges.  Wouldn't it be easy just to throw in the towel?  

It made me think of a book I read recently where the author stated:

"We live in a world of talkers - 24/7 people are talking on television, radio, and digital media.  Words, words and more words are spilled through blogs, status updates, and content.  With so many people talking who is listening?"  (Hug, 2019).

This is an extract from a book entitled Digital Kindness - please give it a read.  It's a book that really inspired me.  I found myself  thinking how overwhelming and unkind it is to simply bombard people like that that.  Yet, in the online pivot, that's exactly what we've done.  So perhaps a kinder curriculum is possible?  Perhaps in employing strategies of Digital Kindness educators can implement a higher quality of curriculum.  A curriculum whereby communication with our students is simplified and the risk of overload is reduced.

I mean really, just stop and think for a second.  At the outset of this article, multiple sources of information, too much information and difficult to manage information were cited as three of the five main causes of information overload.  I'm sure it's not beyond the capabilities of the education sector to come up with a system which enables student to have a single contactable person who is responsible for ensuring that you you get all the information you need, when you need it and in a form that is manageable.

Moreover, Kelly (2008 as cited by Weller, 2011) comments about eight ways in which digital technology provides amplification to our voices in reaching a wider audience, more quickly, removing geographical barriers, and if your voice is recorded for later viewing then your voice is also amplified in time too.  Though technology has been invaluable over the past year in providing at least some form of social interaction, one cannot ignore the down sides too.  Given that the World Health Organisation has now documented the phenomenon of an infodemic (WHO, 2020), arguably the last thing we need at the moment is amplification.  

("megaphone" by kimba is licensed under CC BY 2.0)

The advertising industry realised some time ago that our attention is a premium commodity and therefore, by definition, it's scarce.  That's why our email and social media streams are bombarded with spam on a regular basis, all these people just battling it out in an online space for a little bit of our attention.  So, in making the online pivot, it's no surprise that the education sector has adopted similar tactics.  If the attention of our students is a scarce and finite commodity, then we a want to get our share of their attention to.  But the reality is that we are competing against lots of other attention grabbers too.  So what happens when it runs out?  What happens when our students have no more to give?

The fact remains that, for any learning to take place, learners need time to actively engage with the learning content.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to recite the mantra, "Content is King".  Personally, I subscribe to the view that "Pedagogy is paramount!"  And in online learning, based on the pedagogy of social constructivism, learners need time first to absorb the material and analyse it, then discuss it with others before finally forming and sharing a view of their own.  But if we overload our students with lots of other time consuming stuff when do we expect them to make time for active learning?      

So, after a lot of soul searching, I find myself wondering what might an educational eutopia look like?  Could we achieve that kinder curriculum, with simplified communication structures that is more flexible in meeting the need of real people and real families?  At the risk of sounding like a cliche, in my mind's eye, what if our weekly curriculum delivery simply took the form of a single communication sent to learners each week with all the information they need for their lessons.  Each lesson supported by relevant synchronus and asynchoronus learning content.  A simple weekly to do list?  Wouldn't that be nice?  Interestingly Salmon (2013) gives us guidance on how to do that.  She calls it an invitation.

The truly terrifying thing is that this vision is not impossible to achieve.  In fact it's very achievable, if only we weren't overloaded with other things to do.

References

Hug, L M.. (2019)  Digital Kindness:  Being human in a hyper-connected world [ebook reader], Colorado Springs, Lauren Collier.

Salmon (2013)  E-tivities:  The Key to Active Online Learning [ebook reader],  Oxon, Routledge.  

Open University (2020) Getting noticed in an age of information overload [Online].  Available at:  https://www.open.edu/openlearn/education-development/the-power-infographics-research-dissemination/content-section-1 (Accessed 8th March 2021).

Weller, M. (2011)  The Digital Scholar:  How Technology is Transforming Scholarly Practice,  London, Bloomsbury.

World Health Organisation (2020)  Managing the Covid-19 infodemic: Promoting healthy behaviours and mitigating the harm from misinformation and disinformation [Online].  Available at:  https://www.who.int/news/item/23-09-2020-managing-the-covid-19-infodemic-promoting-healthy-behaviours-and-mitigating-the-harm-from-misinformation-and-disinformation (Accessed 8th March 2020).