When Everyone and Everything Moved Online: My Reflections on Transitioning to Online Learning and Teaching

Asrat G. Amnie, MD, EdD, MPH, MBA. Assistant Professor, Education Department

When the coronavirus pandemic descended on the planet in the Winter of 2020, it upended our daily routines of work, life, and leisure. Schools, colleges, and universities transitioned to remote learning. Meetings, conferences, and conventions had to be conducted through virtual platforms. Houses of worship had to live-stream their services to reach their congregants. Major sports events

had to be canceled or postponed. From birthday parties to funeral services—and everything in between, including graduation and wedding ceremonies—life’s biggest moments had to be moved online. The pandemic brought everyday life to a grinding halt for months on end, with COVID-19 excess mortality ranking as a top three leading cause of death in the U.S. ¹ The immediate consequences and long- term ramifications on lives and livelihoods in all sectors, including the economy, business, education, and healthcare are unfathomable.

The advent of the pandemic ushered in a tectonic shift toward digital learning in schools, colleges, and universities, paving the way to a new normal. As a result of the pandemic—with millions of lives and livelihoods lost—the world we live in has already changed so much that the prospect getting back to the pre-pandemic way of life is uncertain. Some researchers are warning that the pandemic is threatening to reverse several decades of economic progress. ^2-4

As colleges and universities across the U.S. moved their classes online in March of 2020, students in many colleges were told to pack and go home. Likewise, halfway through the semester, in-person operations ceased in the main and our classes

had to torpidly transition to fully online courses. During the transition our college operationalized college-wide online learning initiatives, provided educational resources, access to the technological processes, online skills development training, overall support, and technical assistance to faculty. Our online learning initiatives provided me an excellent platform for experience-sharing and a great opportunity to serve and to learn new skills as a course developer, faculty mentor, and course evaluator.

In the time period from Spring 2020 through Fall 2021, I designed four online courses and received certification to teach them online. I have completed

and submitted progress reports on 19 courses being developed to fully online by other faculty members. I have completed a total of 46 course evaluations for courses being developed to fully online. I also participated in the CUNY- WGU Collaborative Online Faculty Development Summer 2020 workshop on

the pedagogy and technology of online learning, the Spring 2021 CUNY SPS Online Teaching Essentials Workshop, and the CUNY Hyflex Summer 2021 seminar. These workshops and seminars provided participant faculty important resources and training, which helped them to acquire new skills for the integration of pedagogy and technology. Also, the workshop was focused on effective best practices, principles of excellence in design, high impact discussion strategies, and provided guidance to students for research online. ^5, ⁶

The process of developing an online course consists of the important components outlined in the online learning initiatives guidelines. These are defining expectations, providing resources and student support, creating course design and student-friendly online environment, establishing communication to ensure

interaction and engagement, and providing assessment and feedback. An effective online instruction presupposes the seamless integration of effective experiences and best practices to meet online course requirements. The pedagogical dimension of online course development is entirely left to the discretion of the instructor. As a matter of fact, striving for instructor presence online is the most fundamental

of all the best practices and principles because presence at the course site defines instructor involvement at the essential factor in the teaching-learning process.

Students will have higher learning outcomes when instructors strive for online presence, make themselves broadly available, and pursue human-hearted, instructor-powered, student-driven learning and teaching.

Providing balanced, timely, specific, and frequent feedback is beneficial to

students. Feedback should be personalized to improving performance by addressing three areas: what students did well, what students need to improve on, and how

to make this improvement. Feedback can take a variety of forms: 1) formative/ summative, 2) individual/group, 3) written/coded comments, and 4) using charts/ rubrics for coursework assessment.Besides peer observations and student evaluation of teaching, a dynamic teaching methodology would be enriched by continued informal feedback and comments from students about teaching effectiveness.

Student feedback and comments become an impetus for continuous improvement in instructional delivery. A flexible, tailored approach to learning constitutes the basis for applying personalized learning. Broadly defined, the term personalized learning refers to “a diverse variety of learning experiences, instructional approaches, and academic-support strategies that are intended to address the distinct learning needs, interests, aspirations, or cultural backgrounds of individual students.” ^7,8 It is the tailoring of pedagogy, curriculum and learning platforms to meet the needs and learning styles of individual students. Personalization is more comprehensive in scope than just individualization or differentiation in that it provides the student a menu of options to make informed choice about what is learned, when it is learned and how it is learned.⁹ In the context of online learning, first, it is important to overcome any cognitive inertia and go through a skills development process.

Second, make every attempt to intentionally integrate technology and pedagogy into the course design. Third, work to achieve sustained, authentic, and effective student interactivity during instructional delivery.

Every effort should be made on the part of the instructor to provide a learning environment that is exciting, interactive, and attractive to students. To begin with, the stage has to be set for cultivating a classroom culture where students feel safe, accepted, included, and free to engage in learning through discussion and dialogue. It will make learning more productive when the instructor provides clearly articulated instructor presence schedule and anticipated response time for student questions and communication preferences. A learning space hallmarked by mutual trust and respect presupposes a degree of self-awareness and learning to monitor and manage interactions with students. A good measure of patience and visceral compassion on the part of the instructor, and being flexible with assignment due dates, and providing make-ups for justifiably missed coursework improves student engagement and learning outcomes while continuing to nudge each of them with great kindness to stay engaged!

Setting standards and fine-tuning student expectations from the outset is a smart undertaking. The inclusion of online etiquette in course shell development

and adherence to the pre-set code of conduct help to ensure a learning space where dignity and respect for student peers and professor prevail. Students with accessibility needs are properly accommodated in online classes through the application of tools designed to provide the needed support and assistance. The instructor communicates to students that the assessment parameters are designed to reflect academic performance, and not the extraneous personal, and social circumstances of students. Research indicates that student factors account for 68% of academic failures whereas life/socioeconomic factors and factors related the educational system account for the balance. ¹⁰

Thus, the prevailing personal, and social circumstances have their share of impact

on student engagement and learning outcomes.

Students need to have access to optimum technology requirements to successfully complete an online class. One notable challenge is the digital divide that exists across demographic variables in communities. Awareness of the digital disparity between those who have ready access to computers and the Internet, and those who do not have it helps to provide information to those students in need of resources that could be made available by the College or affiliate organizations.

A general consensus points to the fact that the future of higher education is online and technology will be the predominant learning space. Sad to say, for many students from disadvantaged communities, the future of education is also on the line because of perpetual existence of the digital divide as one of the factors for

racial achievement disparities, and other structural social and economic inequalities, including income, health, housing, and neighborhood disparities. Therefore, it is imperative to invest in digital inclusion. Digital inclusion in education refers to the activities necessary to ensure that all students have access to technology and the necessary skills to use educational technology resources and benefit from their use in ways that are personally meaningful and relevant. This includes having access

to (1) affordable high-speed internet service; (2) internet-enabled devices such as computers and tablets that meet the needs of the user; (3) digital literacy training and quality technical support; and (4) applications and online content designed to enable and encourage self-sufficiency, participation, and collaboration. ¹¹

Needless to say, online courses could be either fully online or hybrid. Hybrid courses combine both an online and a brick-and-mortar in person classroom component. Online courses are delivered via the Internet in either synchronous or asynchronous formats. Synchronous learning is online learning that happens in real time, whereas asynchronous learning occurs online without real-time

interaction.^12-14 Asynchronous learning allows a student to follow the curriculum at their own pace without having to worry about scheduling conflicts. A fully online course or the online portion of a hybrid course may also be either synchronous or asynchronous or may be designed to have both components (i.e., a mixed mode of instruction).

A Hybrid-Flexible or HyFlex course is a model of class delivery that can integrate in-person instruction, online synchronous video sessions, or asynchronous content delivery. A Flex-Sync (allow me to rename it Sync-Flex and make it rhyme with HyFlex) is a much more comprehensive model of instruction designed to provide a flexible learning solution using advanced technology.¹⁵ The online learning could be a course-level or a program-level online learning. In a program-level online learning,degree and certificate programs can be designed either as fully online or partially online with a mix of traditional and online learning courses in order to serve student populations who have different levels of access to campus .¹⁶

In conclusion, online mode of instruction has rapidly transitioned from being just an option to becoming the modus operandi of teaching and learning in higher education. Thanks to effective Covid-19 vaccines and appropriate public health measures, in just about a couple of years since the advent of the pandemic, epidemiologic projection are showing sign of the outbreak abating. The resumption of in-person classes will make possible the delivery of the full package of collegiate experience to students. Even post-pandemic, online learning will continue to be

an important delivery mode of education. Therefore, competence in the design, development, and delivery of online instruction will continue to be crucial going forward. The application of best practices in instructional design and delivery, student counseling, academic advisement, and technology support will have an

added layer of positive influence toward ensuring student engagement and improving learning outcomes. The acquisition of adequate course level online teaching skills across the board will also pave the way for the potential initiation of program-level online teaching, making it possible for students to start and complete their degree programs fully online. Finally, a personalized digital learning initiative such as a digital literacy education across the curriculum based on student digital skills assessment may facilitate e-learning and contribute to improving career prospects for students in this ever-evolving digital society.

References

Peterson-KFF. (2020, October 21). The pandemic’s effect on the widening gap in mortality rate between the U.S. and peer countries . Retrieved from https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-pandemics-effect-on-the- widening-gap-in-mortality-rate-between-the-u-s-and-peer-countries/
Ahmed, K.(2020, April 9).Coronavirus could turn back the clock 30 years on global poverty. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/global- development/2020/apr/09/coronavirus-could-turn-back-the-clock-30-years- on-global-poverty
John Hopkins University & Medicine. (2020). COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. Retrieved from https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Walsh, B. (2020, May 6). How the coronavirus could throw global progress in reverse. Retrieved from https://www.axios.com/how-the-coronavirus- could-throw-global-progress-in-reverse-5f6619cb-4226-4afa-8c15- 4bc3b3329dc0.html
CUNY. (2020). The City University of New York-Western Governors University Collaborative Online Faculty Development: Helping Bring the Classroom to the Screen: Faculty Support for Course Design and Student Engagement in the Online World. Accessed athttps://www.cuny.edu/ academics/faculty-affairs/faculty-development-across-cuny/cuny-wgu- collaborative-online-faculty-development/
Stanford University (2019). Providing timely and frequent feedback. Retrieved from https://tomprof.stanford.edu/posting/1288
Great Schools Partnership. (2013). The glossary of education reform. Retrieved https://www.edglossary.org/student-voice/
Great School Partnerships. (2015). Personalized Learning. Retrieved from https://www.edglossary.org/personalized-learning/
Talent LMS. (2020) Synchronous e-learning vs. asynchronous e-learning tools and technologies. Retrieved from https://www.talentlms.com/ebook/ elearning/synchronous-vs-asynchronous-elearning
Horton, J. (2015). Identifying at-risk factors that affect college student success. International Journal of Process Education, 7(1), 83-101.
Digital Inclusion Alliance. (2020).Digital Inclusion. Retrieved from https:// www.digitalinclusion.org/definitions/
Kurt, S. (2018, May 18). Fully and partially online courses: Definitions, Educational Technology. Retrieved from https://educationaltechnology.net/ fully-and-partially-online-courses-definitions/
University of Colorado Boulder. (2020). Hybrid Course Design. Retrieved from https://www.colorado.edu/assett/faculty-resources/resources/hybrid- course-design#cu_faq-entity_view_1-0
Online Learning Consortium. (2015). Online Learning Consortium Insights: Updated eLearning Definitions. Retrieved from https:// onlinelearningconsortium.org/updated-e learning-definitions-2/
Minnesota State University (2022). FlexSync Class Rooms. Available at https://mankato.mnsu.edu/coronavirus/return-to-learn/course-delivery-and- definitions/flexsync-classrooms/
The Best Schools. (2018, January 31). Synchronous Learning vs. Asynchronous Learning in Online Education retrieved from https:// thebestschools.org/magazine/synchronous-vs- asynchronous education/

Individual Chapters