This week we had the honor of having Dr. Valerie Irvine guest speak our lecture. She spoke about digital learning and the concept of multi-access learning. This made me think about my personal education journey with online learning. Like Dr. Irvine said online learning did not start when covid began but it definitely became more valuable at this time. I recall the first time I experienced an online class it was a fully online course that was a do-it-yourself pace with no online class component’s when I was in high school in 2018. I remember having a negative experience and never wanted to do online learning again. At the time I did not have the self-restrictions to be successful in a self-pace course. When covid happened, I opted out for the winter semester of university hoping that it would only be a short period of time I would be out of school. As we all know covid restrictions got more intense and I was eventually forced to adapt to an online learning setting.

Multi-Access learning

Multi-Access learning was my first expense with online learning since I was in high school. Because of my previous experience with online learning, I was hesitant, but I found it to be successful for me. Obviously with covid students were unable to meet in person so because of that professors and teachers resorted to online apps like zoom and google classroom. Before this experience I had never enjoyed online learning and though I could never be successful at it but because I was able to meet with my professor and classmates over zoom I felt that there was less barriers when it came to my education.

Dr. Irvine argues that the term “blended learning” is an incorrect term because courses can sometimes blur the distinction between online and face to face learning. She promotes the concept of multi-access learning because students have access different learning experiences through different avenues. Some attributes of multi access learning that I find helpful are synchronous online participation and asynchronous online activities. This means having mandatory online class meetings at specific times but access to complete online assignments at any point. Throughout my degree, after covid I still continued to take an online class each semester, and I was just as successful as I would be in the traditional classroom. I think that multi-access learning is a great educational tool and it still helps keeps students engaged and on top of their work.