A personal reflection on the rapid transition from traditional classroom teaching to the COVID19 pandemic pivot that was required in March 2020. With my 10 years of online teaching experience the transition was full of lessons.
Moving fully face-to-face (F2F) courses to fully online, no problem?! I have taught fully online class as a full-time professor for ten years. I got this!. No, this was not the case and highlights both the difference between online teaching, rapid remote learning, and the value of reflective practice for educators. While the Spring 2020 semester was stressful and unique, it should not just be limited to a footnote in a career. There are lessons in all things. The lessons learned from the Spring 2020 rapid pivot to online include:
- There is a major difference between a designed and planned out online course and what happened in March 2020
- Student’s good mental health is vital to learning
- Provide an open time to talk to students – talk story
- There is a digital divide for Internet access
- Loss of the on-campus community aspects was a grieving process,
- Trim down lesson and course objectives to make the reasonable given the situation.
Additional “lessons”; be flexible with yourself and with students, administration may push for a specific type of delivery, asynchronous or synchronous – do what is best for your students, keep reaching out – you may get a response, self-care is important model that for your students, maintain learning goals just be innovate and flexible on how they are achieved, be responsive and accessible. Additionally, the hours of video content can be used in future F2F classes.
Interactivity
An audience poll will be used at the beginning of the presentation to ask the audience – “Post one word to describe your feelings on the transition to rapid remote learning in the spring 2020 semester”.
This will be a lightning session with 7 to 8 minutes allotted for the main presentation and 5 minutes allotted for questions from the audience. A prompt or poll will be used to open up the Q&A portion; “what lessons did you learn from the Spring 2020 semester that could influence your teaching practice in the future?” If there is time a final poll will be used: “Post one or two words on how you believe your students felt about the Spring 2020 semester”.
Takeaways
This presentation will provide several personal takeaways learned from transitioning face-to-face (F2F) courses to rapid remote learning. These are listed below.
- Rapid remote learning is not the same as online education.
- F2F community may not continue online. There has to be intention and work to maintain the connection that was lost due to the teaching pivot.
- Emotions are a core element to learning. Both for you and for your students.
- Keep the end goal in mind.
- Focus on the positive and the next educational step for the students.