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>> There are a lot of accessibility implications to on line learning, most of them positive. Personally, I wish I could just stay that way forever.

It's obvious that your quality of education has improved and makes sense that you'd want to kleep it that way. It would be great if we could support people in your situation without greatly diminishing the experience of a huge component of attendees though: all those with learning, attention and focus issues. The stats are truely mind boggling with how many kids struggle to control their behaviour in a virtual classroom.

Question: why DON'T you stay remote? Most of the time the last thing we want to do is isolate people in different situations but it sounds like this would be preferable for you. It would seem to be quite easy to support too.

There are practical difficulties in having some students in the classroom and some students online: it's hard for a single instructor to split attention that way, unless they have some help (e.g., a student assistant) in the classroom. It would be more effective if universities had more dedicated online versions of courses. This had already been happening before the pandemic and would probably be accelerated post-pandemic for a variety of reasons.

Edit: fix grammar + clarify.

I would think it's even worse than that. Do the same teaching aids/rhetorical devices work out for face-to-face, small group, auditorium, remote people? It doesn't seem like they do. I've cringed through a few different videos of someone who developed a presentation for 50 people and then was blindsided by a room full of 400 and their material didn't quite work.

Your presentation is deeply affected by the kind of audience you're aimed at.

Oh absolutely, there are many differences between in person and online, and (as you said) the size of the audience definitely matters. Part of the job of instructors is to work the crowd, and in that sense it is not different from any other kind of performance. Setting matters.

I guess I was making a point in reaction to the many "hybrid" in person / online courses being offered by universities, for the fall and possibly beyond. Hybrid is actually harder than either 100% in person or 100% online.

At my school our professors actually did this split very well. They had a chime sound when an online hand was raised, they always prioritized those students, and they had good tech to display their screens both in the classroom and online.

With the right tech and competent teachers, it’s completely doable in my experience.

Oh, I completely agree with that. One of the issues, especially at large public universities, is that many faculty members who are perfectly effective in person have difficulties with the technology. Asking them to split attention on top of an already stressful situation is hard, and training only gets one so far. So the online experience is hard to make consistent across courses and even sections of the same course.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have students with ADHD who frequently have more trouble concentrating in remote classes. I don't think the accessibility calculus is as simple as you're making it out to be.

Online learning has been almost impossible with my child with ADHD. Screens are the worst thing possible for her.

What's better about the classroom?

I'm diagnosed with ADHD (ADD). The live person speaking and often gesturing while talking is much easier to focus on and fill in the frequent gaps where focus drifts. Something about the talking with minor stops and pauses gives more frequent opportunity to regain focus control and begin contiguous focus briefly before repeating. I was able to successfully get through schooling and college isolating classes with teachers that talked through concepts but failed frequently at classes focused on books and static mediums.

With online, it's brutal trying to retain focus at a monitor and reading while retaining. The focus drifts in and out unconsciously so you can read an entire page of text before realizing you retained literally none.

For text based learning I often need to dedicate a large amount of time "re-reading" material in advance to improve retention during the live discussion part if it lacks enough depth. Calculus was the critical crux of my educational path.

Normally-abled person, with a hearing impaired family member checking in.

My secret weapon in French class in school was a tape deck with treble/bass controls. A big chunk of the work was transcription of recorded material. Rewind, play, pause, play, rewind, fiddling with the nobs to deal with the static on my copy of a copy of the tape. You can't do that with live content. You can with prerecorded materials (IF the designers think of it).

There are a lot of videos with people who take too long to get to the point and I have to increase the speed to stay focused. Slowing things down for any sensory impairment I presume helps other people.

When my family member was a kid he did not want to use the audio assistive devices in classes because he was self-conscious. It's a production. There are resources to be 'checked out' and 'checked in' every day. I don't think I'd be as comfortable using most of the tools I use if I had an audience.

He spends a lot of time online because -everybody- suffers to an extent from his limitation online. The cocktail party effect, the ability to filter one conversation out from many, fails for everyone, not just people with hearing aids. So people have to learn not to talk over each other if they want anyone to hear them, which means his listening comprehension goes way up.

You touched on an important benefit to working from home that I hadn't really thought about until now, which is that the quiet people at my workplace are now able to be heard much more easily.

I work with several quiet people, and when we used to have a meeting outdoors or in a large area, I often wouldn't be able to hear what they were saying.

Now, we all have headphones and microphones, and I can hear what everyone has to say without asking them to repeat themselves. It's improved communication tremendously, and I'm sure they're feeling more heard now as well.

This is really interesting. What's been your experience of platforms like Zoom and MS Teams for your learning - are they built to afford genuine accessibility?

Zoom is excellent in that regard. They're doing an amazing job at accessibility. There's so much hate towards them, but, if accessibility is concerned, there's no better option. Google Meet is not that bad either. Haven't had much experience with MS Teams, but sorta kinda usable is what people are saying. Skype works pretty great. Discord is... kind of okay on pc, horrible on iOS, though that's improving very quickly.