Winter 2024 - Volume 27, Issue 4

We’ve all heard about our critical need to adapt for survival. For better or worse, change comes. Such is the case with online learning and even telecommuting. So many fight to unspill the milk and return to the days of overflowing dorms and face-to-face lectures brimming with hundreds of students. We see desperate attempts to force it. Yet online learning continues to grow rapidly with no end in sight.

In the K-12 arena, we read of rural schools moving to a four-day week and others operating on a pandemic online model to cover teacher shortages in critical areas.

Some large tech companies have notoriously tried to bring their talent back into offices to placate the commercial real industry and to gain a false sense of control.

As we witness these failed attempts to return to 2005, as distance learning administrators we bear responsibility to understand these forces.  It’s not really nostalgia for an imagined togetherness in the office, but rather deeper economic pressures.  Those who thrive will find ways to dramatically reimagine schools, colleges and workplaces that leverage our new reality. Our role is not to disparage, but to experiment and help guide and support a future focused foremost on the success of a generation that is very much unlike ours. Remember how out-of-the-box we were when online learning got rolling?  We’ve done this before, and we can do it again.

Best wishes for a joyful holiday,

Melanie N. Clay, Ph.D.

OJDLA Editor-in-Chief

December 17, 2024