When I chatted with her in May, the second-year journalism student at Centennial College in Toronto, who I taught in the winter 2021 semester, spoke fondly about her pre-pandemic classes. “We would always go out,” she says, referring to class activities that required her and her fellow students to physically track down sourcefor a story or photograph. “Even if you’re physically in class, sitting there for three hours or four hours is not ideal.
Exercise increases blood flow throughout our bodies, including to our brains, which actually makes it easier to think. So a jog, a hike or even a quick stretch helps us absorb information. “In general, we think differently when standing or walking, and when we can move around to study something that interests us,” says Susan Hrach, director of the faculty centre and professor of English at Columbus State University, and author of the new book.
According to Hrach, this emphasis on efficiency is a by-product of Industrial Age education. “Adults are better at tolerating these expectations, but humans on the whole are built to move,” she says. “Just recall pre-pandemic all-day meetings and conferences; even hard-core academics would start complaining by the end of the day about our butts hurting. It’s ironic we didn’t consider the obvious solution: to exchange information in a different way.
But what she’s describing isn’t necessarily a problem that comes from physical distance, Scott says. It’s actually more aboutdistance. When a course, online or in-person, is designed well, it reduces the feeling of distance between students and their peers, their teacher, the content and the institution itself.