Analyze

When I read the commentary on COVID-19 and Higher Education, it reminded me an article published in the early days of the transition to online teaching. In this article entitled "The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning," the authors emphasize the importance of naming (what we regularly refer as) online teaching as "emergency remote teaching": 

"Online learning carries a stigma of being lower quality than face-to-face learning, despite research showing otherwise. These hurried moves online by so many institutions at once could seal the perception of online learning as a weak option, when in truth nobody making the transition to online teaching under these circumstances will truly be designing to take full advantage of the affordances and possibilities of the online format."

"Researchers in educational technology, specifically in the subdiscipline of online and distance learning, have carefully defined terms over the years to distinguish between the highly variable design solutions that have been developed and implemented: distance learning, distributed learning, blended learning, online learning, mobile learning, and others. Yet an understanding of the important differences has mostly not diffused beyond the insular world of educational technology and instructional design researchers and professionals. Here, we want to offer an important discussion around the terminology and formally propose a specific term for the type of instruction being delivered in these pressing circumstances: emergency remote teaching."

Let's re-read a quote in the commentary by Robert Pose in the light of above notes: 

"The sudden brutal switch to online learning is the most obvious consequence for higher education of the pandemic. Everyone now accepts online teaching because everyone regards it as necessary to reduce serious health hazards. But after the pandemic recedes, it is likely economic forces will seek to keep online learning in place, because it is far cheaper than education before the pandemic."

I think we need much more nuanced and careful approach to the possibility of continuing online teaching in the aftermath of COVID-19 without reducing the discussion to the terms of economics. Since many universities have shifted to emergency remote teaching without necesarily having the required experience and infrastructure in online teaching, there appear many concerns beyond economics, at least in my university, e.g., the lack of regular communication between students and educators appear as a concern of the authorities beyond of teachers.  

The aim of this organization is to use medicine and science to record and focus on mass atrocities and human rights violations. The organization was founded on the idea that health care professionals possess skills that pose credibility to those who are persecuted sexually, morally, socially and economically. As health care professionals, they have the opportunity to hold people accountable for their actions. Examples of this include torture, sexual violence, civil unrest- it is their job to protect civilians' basic human rights.

Their membership consists of scientists, healthcare professionals and doctors. 

This organization has invesitgated ad exposed the use of chemical weapons on civilazations in Iraq, exhumed mass graves in Bosnia and Rwanda. They seaked to expose government torture and abuse of civial rights in many countries including-Columbia, Mexico, Peru, Sierra Leone and others. They approach disaster and emergency response through trying to stop them by exposing abuses to human rights. They investigate using human accounts and first hand experience. Through using their resources to expose injustice. They have won a noble peace prize for documenting landmine injuries and calling to ban them.

This group claims to have a new way of addressing emergency situations through using their process of stopping events that are already in progress through investigating the abuses, documenting evidence and stories and using their evidence as a call for action.

The events that motivated their ways of thinking about disaster and health was in 1981 a physician in Boston was called to go to Chilie to investigate the 'disapperance' of three physicians. Johnathan Fine entered the country and met the doctors who were psychologically terrorized. He heard their testimonies and recorded the,. It inspired him to go to Guatemala, Philipines and South Korea to educate about human rights globally. Dr Fine's visit caused the doctors to be released; he decided he wanted to help these people in situations about this full time. In 1986 Robert Laurence, Jean Mayer and Fine created Physicians for Human Rights.

The funding that enables their work to go and help others is through many methods of donation, they recieve grants and investments.

The data/reports they have collected to support their approach to help disaster include annual reports and newsletters that define the issues they are currently focusing on: what it includes, how one person can help. Their website also includes resources that describe the issue they are tackling their position and what is going on to prevent/cure the problem. Their website has experts, a university that specializes on 'empowering global communities' in order to be able to recoginze their lack of human rights. They also have a blog and first hand video accounts.

The research the organization has done in the past year is calling for the closure of Guantanomo Bay and ensuring that the US accepts Syrian refugees. They have taken first hand accounts of individuals in both circumstances. They provide annual reports for each year of the work they have accomplished these reports are extensive and explain what human rights were taken away and what PHR has done to help.