Transforming Online Teaching in Higher Education: Essential Practices for Engagement, Equity, and Inquiry

Our presentation is based on three years of research culminating in the book, Transforming Online Teaching in Higher Education: Essential Practices for Engagement, Equity, and Inquiry, available from TC Press (October 2023) and will focus on how the disruptive innovation of online education influences pedagogy. Disruptive innovation, a concept defined by Clayton Christensen in 1995, was added to our cultural lexicon at the same time the first seeds of online education were being sown. Disruptive innovation brings the opportunity to think about what we want our teaching to look like: to rethink our practices and to challenge the constraints of our physical classrooms. Four walls and a door are no longer essential for teaching and learning. In addition, connectivity is less of an issue and access to the internet more prevalent in institutions of higher education. Devices such as smartphones and tablets allow students to engage more easily and consistently with classmates and instructors; educational technologies continue to evolve with the ever-growing need for sophisticated digital resources. At some point the term “online education” will be antiquated, as education will no longer distinguish itself by the spaces where teaching and learning happens.

From the moment you make the decision to teach online you are agreeing to reimagine your pedagogy. Case in point: when one of the presenters committed to teaching online, she had to reconstruct how she facilitated engagement. She accepted that she needed to try approaches that were unfamiliar to her while redefining what it meant for students to be present and engaged, and what presence and engagement meant for her as well. Going online means making a commitment to break free from familiar approaches to teaching and learning. 

This presentation will contribute to the audience’s understanding of what the affordances of  online teaching and learning are. We will examine how the practices of educators can be useful for teachers new to the online classroom and for experienced online educators seeking to enhance their existing practices. Going online encourages teachers to think about the true meaning of engagement because one can no longer fall back on the presumption that learning is happening simply because we are sharing the same physical space with our students. 

If teaching online provides opportunities for educators to disrupt their practice, then a progressive approach may also be attractive to those moving into online spaces. Historically, progressive education was seen as a response to the public’s demand to define the purpose of schooling. Progressive practice is often represented as a disruption to traditional teaching and learning. Traditional, in this sense, can be understood as the adoption of trends and techniques using predetermined curricula to produce productive members of society. These efforts are often established by policymakers and authorized by administrators with little input from the teachers and students they impact. Conversely, the principles of progressive education promote highly personalized, active and collaborative learning experiences with a focus on the learning community. It is these progressive principles that carry the potential to disrupt familiar practices. 

This presentation will focus on three essential concepts for sound online pedagogy: engagement, inquiry, and equity. We will demonstrate how these concepts serve as a light to illuminate compelling practices for online education. 

Engagement 
We will explore the concept of engagement as central to the online classroom. We will describe what engagement looks like as an active contribution to the class inquiry by distinguishing it from participation and connecting it to a view of the classroom as a community. Engagement originates from the experiences that develop when getting to know each other as learners in the community, so the aim of the activities is to get the students engaged in conversation. We also will offer ideas on how to assess engagement. The data most valuable to the teacher is the overall view of engagement within the community as this data helps the teacher learn and make adjustments to improve course engagement overall.

Inquiry
We will  define inquiry as the experience of seeking understanding through authentic questioning that promotes knowledge ownership and engages all learners in a collective intellectual endeavor. We will discuss an authentic approach to inquiry that requires a commitment to believing in the capacity of students to ask questions and pursue answers, and that of teachers to let go of the need to provide definitive answers. The design of the online classroom can be structured to make students feel that they are in a good place to ask questions. We will demonstrate how teachers can encourage their students to question the learning environment itself and commit themselves to designing the online classroom as a flexible and fluid environment for student learning.

Equity
We will discuss how online teaching addresses equitable access for all students. We will look at equity as access to the technologies used for teaching and learning, addressing what it means to let others into your home, and the privilege of having a private space. We will share the importance of offering guidelines and giving choices to students for bringing themselves to the classroom and inviting them to lean in with their whole selves.  We will also discuss how the online classroom can be less hierarchical than the traditional classroom and provide examples of multiple pathways where students come to know their authentic voices and arrive willing to engage. 

To support attendee engagement, the presenters will encourage audience engagement by opening the presentation with a group discussion on what these terms mean to participants in connection to their teaching. Throughout the presentation we will ask the attendees to share stories of their experiences of online teaching and learning and how they’ve created practices that attend to inquiry, equity, and engagement. This presentation will showcase of the practices that we’re discussing.