This week (April 11 to 15, 2022) is the MALAT Symposium. There are various presenters from MALAT professors to students, presenting on a variety of topics such as Critical Reading and Writing Skills for Research to student thesis and research projects from the MALAT program. When reviewing the content for the symposium, I came across “Instructional Design In & After COVID-19”, where leaders in the education technology space shared their perspective on the field and how it was forced to respond to the challenges of the global pandemic. This made me think of the things that I changed in order to adapt to the “new normal” of online teaching during the peak of the pandemic and the “next normal” when we returned to in-person classes after the experiences of teaching and learning online.

There are a number of things that have changed in my teaching in order to adapt to quick conversion to online teaching including:

• I now use less paper printouts.
• Technology such as Zoom and Discord have become familiar and standard.
• I’ve discovered collaborative drawing tools for students such as http://draw.io
• I converted my in person, closed book, paper exams into practical, authentic, open book exams.

These above changes have had a generally positive effect on my teaching. I wrote a paper as part of an assignment for LRNT 524 explaining the rationale for and benefits of switching to open book practical exams. I am continuing to use this practical exam format even now that we have returned to in-person classes.

While I, like my students, would rather save the commute, stay in my pyjamas, and attend the lesson virtually from the comfort of my bed at home, something is missing with online teaching. I find it harder to learn my students’ names and I don’t have the opportunity to talk with students outside of class time, if the lessons are online. Indeed, as shown in research, students report that online classes can be less engaging, less enjoyable, and they have fewer opportunities to ask questions, than if the class was done in-person (Dost et al., 2020; Erickson & Wattiaux, 2021; Jeffery & Bauer, 2020; Somji, 2022).

Now that classes have resumed, I am thankful for all the things I have learned as a result of the rapid switch to online learning, such as Zoom and Discord, which I continue to use. But what online teaching lacked was the live student interaction in the classroom, truly seeing their faces and “feeling” the room to get a better sense of how well students have learned the material. Online learning for my classes has been a reasonable emergency solution, but I value the personal connection to my students that it seems to be lacking from purely online instruction.

References:

Dost, S., Hossain, A., Shehab, M., Abdelwahed, A., & Al-Nusair, L. (2020). Perceptions of medical students towards online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic: a national cross-sectional survey of 2721 UK medical students. BMJ open, 10(11). https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-042378

Erickson, M., & Wattiaux, M. A. (2021). Practices and perceptions at the COVID-19 transition in undergraduate animal science courses. Natural Sciences Education, 50(1). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/nse2.20039

Jeffery, K. A., & Bauer, C. F. (2020). Students’ responses to emergency remote online teaching reveal critical factors for all teaching. Journal of Chemical Education, 97(9), 2472-2485. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00736

Somji, I. (2022). Ontario Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Experiences of Ontario First-year Postsecondary. https://heqco.ca/pub/ontario-learning-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-experiences-of-ontario-first-year-postsecondary-students-in-2020-21