The Student Beyond the Screen: Rediscovering the Human Element in the Digital Age

With  the growth in technology and the “everything online” movement,  the Institute of Accounting Science (IAS) has been at the forefront of this innovation within the educational space, and have seen immense value from the tools we now have at our disposal, allowing us to transform how we teach and learn.,. Yet, in the midst of this revolution, I recently had a sanity check.

One of our past students, Sarah, now a qualified CA (SA), who is quite literally changing the world, popped in to see me to get a qualification verification. We had a good chat, and then she mentioned something phenomenal - she had been reminiscing with some of her classmates about their time at IAS with us, and they agreed that their PGDA year was the best year of their lives. Her words struck a chord and this got me to thinking.

PGDA is a tough year, and it will certainly test your discipline and resilience, but yes, for Sarah and her group of friends who attended class regularly, and supported each other through the battle that is PGDA, with us fighting alongside them, it was the best of times. Sarah had access to the online format with IAS, but chose the campus experience to have access to the human element although the convenience of live streaming was most certainly occasionally used, as were the recordings.

But then in marches COVID, changing everything, and students were forced into a bigger proportion of online, and for many, that has stuck. We have embraced it as an institution, however, Sarah’s visit reminded me of something critical – while we are embracing the online movement, we should always check ourselves and ask, is there anything we have lost?

Those connections, the human element, the sharing of the experience, the building of networks, the building of friendships… It is not the same in an online format As an institution, we have firmly resisted the conversion to fully online because we felt we needed the best of both, and this was a stark reminder that the one side of the both needs more work.

Fully online learning when contrasted to face-to-face learning is a lonely journey, and any PGDA student will tell you, the emotional is as important as the technical. You should not do PGDA alone, and online by its very nature is that. We make every effort to keep our livestreams interactive, and to give the in-class feel to our online attendees, and while it does work, I can’t shake the feeling that we need more. We need to use online for its good, but we need to make sure we keep the benefits of the human side.

The IAS programme is not fully online,  but it is fully flexible from a remote perspective, providing remote live streaming, on campus face to face, or video after the lecture, and that is by choice. Because we have always treasured the live human element. The easiest thing would be to make it fully online. However, we believe that human connection needs to be retained for short term emotional support and sanity, as well as for longer term friendships and network building, and most importantly is also vital in building the skills side of student development which is becoming elevated in the CA of the future SAICA syllabus, fondly referred to as the PVAA’s (professional values & attitudes and acumens). For us online certainly demonstrates its limitations here, and we need to be cognisant of that. 

All things considered, there’s one crucial angle that I’ve left out - We need to bring back the fun! The “best year of your life” aspect because that seems to be severely lacking in the current model.. That was something we didn’t even have to think about managing  when we had on campus only - it just happened naturally. Now it requires intentional effort with care, and we need to stoke those fires to reignite the fun.

One may argue that social media can help, and it does to an extent, but I don’t think it quite fills that gap. What we are talking about here is much deeper, human interactions can’t be replicated by likes  and comments on social media, so it ends up being an inadequate substitute.

Ultimately what stuck with me after my interaction with Sarah was that online tools are fantastic. They provide efficiency and invaluable support, but they must not be at the expense of the experience, the support, the humanity, and building the whole of the student. We are people, and we should study and develop as people.