In my last post, I wrote about the future of hybrid/remote work and the opportunity that businesses had to hire the best person for the job, regardless of location. Businesses are no longer limited by geographical distance when hiring if the position can be fulfilled by someone working remotely.
I ran across this today, from the New York Times - “The Future of Offices When Workers Have a Choice” and it mentioned Stripe’s position on remote:
“Stripe, one of the world’s most valuable start-ups, went a step further. In 2019, it “opened” a remote hub, hoping to “tap the 99.74 percent of talented engineers living outside the metro areas of our first four hubs” in San Francisco, Seattle, Dublin and Singapore.”
Is there any doubt that this is a very real trend? Location already matters less and less if the work of the business can be accomplished remotely. So, it makes sense that for students to be competitive in the workplace, they had better be able to demonstrate their ability to work remotely. And to do so, they need to start building the necessary skills and dispositions in school. Their future depends on it.
If this need is to be realized, schools must offer high-quality hybrid and online learning experiences for students. The connection between school, learning the requisite skills to learn and work online, and the quality of future employment opportunities is indeed real.
The problem is this: it doesn’t seem schools are very good at online learning.
Here might be a solution: schools should adopt an approach as these businesses have. If businesses can hire people to work and conduct business online, why can’t schools? Like businesses, schools don’t have to be limited by a 30-mile radius either. Schools can hire the best teachers, the teachers that know how to teach online, regardless of their geographical location. Perhaps the solution is to create an entirely new set of positions, composed of people from around the world, that are masters of teaching online and can demonstrate it. And while I realize there are already online course providers, I’m always more interested by schools that want to develop their own platform that is aligned with their teaching and learning goals than purchasing a turn-key solution.
So, why couldn’t a forward-thinking school hire a group of talented educators from around the world to teach in their online school? Why couldn’t school systems move to a staffing model where online teachers are not required to be in the same geographical location as the school? How would that change the interest in and potential success of online learning? How would that change what could be offered as a course? Imagine developing co-teaching relationships (schools already do this) between a classroom teacher and their remote counterpart. Image the opportunity to bring in visiting scholars. Imagine a book author teaching a course on writing fiction. And on and on…
Imagine the possibilities.
It’s time to discard the geographical limitations of hiring educators. It’s time to move to a hybrid learning experience where the expertise is assembled from around the world. Admittedly, a huge leap but #makenolittleplans.