Over the last year, I’ve had a chance to speak to museum associations from Alaska to Oklahoma to New Hampshire about distance learning. One question has come up repeatedly: how do we offer distance learning programs when internet is unreliable?
Photo by Clint Patterson on Unsplash
The good news is, many students are back in school. Schools have more reliable internet and museums are doing more virtual field trips to a whole class instead of 30 students signing on individually from their home. Additionally, educators are able to download digital resources and integrate them into their curriculum without relying on students to do it. Plus:
The IMLS Cares Act from 2020 created grants to “expanding digital network access, purchasing Internet accessible devices, and providing technical support services to their communities.”
A new infrastructure bill that just passed, in the US, provides one billion dollars (I can’t not link to this Austin Powers meme) to expand broadband access
Many other nonprofits and corporations also invest in the work to close the digital divide
The bad news is, the digital divide is still very real. “9.3 million students…attend rural schools…[and about] 18 percent of households with school-age children lack broadband access at home.” Even if schools are open, if students have to quarantine at home and join separately from their classmates, they may not be able to log on.
The digital divide also affects museums. Smaller institutions who didn’t offer digital programs before the pandemic, pivoted; but in the pivot, they found that they didn’t have the technological infrastructure to support it. Like schools, they may have invested in mobile hotspots. And also like schools, they may have found those hot spots limiting.
So to answer the question above: how do we offer distance learning programs when internet is unreliable?
In the near future, create content that can be accessed asynchronously or on a smartphone. According to the U.S. Census, 84% of households have a smartphone, while only 78% have a desktop or laptop and 63% have a tablet.
In the long term, museums invest in their own infrastructure through grants, partnerships, and perhaps even other museums.
So-crazy-it-just-might-work idea: what if live virtual field trips didn’t have video? If video slows internet speeds, have everyone turn off video. Provide images ahead of time they can print out or pull up on their device. Turn on captions for accessibility. Use other features of the platform (like chat, polls, unmuting) to engage.