The pandemic response in Spring 2020 introduced new dynamics to teaching and learning as we all scrambled to finish the semester and get as many students through as we could. Faculty, staff, and students went into crisis mode, and a spirit of cooperation and collaboration helped us get through the semester together.
The college was forced to trust faculty. Faculty responded to that trust with a level of energy and output that is not sustainable. LCC provided faculty with some support and guidance. But faculty dedication, knowing their disciplines, and knowing their students, was what determined the success of this effort. Dozens of faculty completed emergency online trainings; many others served as mentors (formally and informally) to assist their colleagues in making the rapid adjustments necessary for remote learning. More importantly, faculty reached out to many students, individually, and tried to keep them as connected as they could. Faculty served as a primary connection to these students, not only using videos, WebEx meetings, and chats, but also making hundreds of person-to-person connections through email and phone. Faculty discovered and experimented with other tools such as Padlet, Flipgrid, and many other applications in order to facilitate learning and connection. New sites such as, Live Together, Learn Together – Stories from the LCC Community in the COVID19 Pandemic, sprouted on our OpenLCC.net commons aimed at connecting everyone and maintaining relationships.
Faculty were forced to trust the institution. The college provided significant support to faculty and students to meet these challenges, in part through rapid deployment of technology and training. Additionally, decisions were made quickly and communicated effectively. Communication focused not only on “need to know” information, but also on connectedness and a willingness to reflect on the shared experience of this disruption. The college kept a necessary focus on asking: “What do faculty need to best assist students, and how do we get it to them quickly?” Even after such strong efforts, too many students were left behind.
Once the immediate crisis passed, faculty had an opportunity to reflect both on what worked, and what didn’t work, in the transition from face-to-face to remote learning. This reflection led faculty to a focus on pedagogical questions about how to educate students effectively–not just to deliver information. From the cross disciplinary conversations that began near the end of Spring 2020, we learned that:
- Putting face-to-face students in an online environment led to questions about teaching methods for both formats.
- Online learning, with access to a wide variety of technologies that support our pedagogies, can often be the foundation for how we should design our face-to-face classes, not the other way around.
- There are now at least 3 distinct formats. We used to think of only two distinct formats, online or face-to-face, with hybrid being a mix of the two. It is now clear, though, that there’s another distinct format, what the school has labeled Online Real Time, that has its own unique pedagogical challenges, issues, tools, and implications.
- For years there have been discussions regarding students who were struggling with “life” issues such as being food-insecure, housing insecurity, homelessnes, lacking healthcare or access to technology, but we had tended to think of them as a minority of students. Now, it is clear that the majority of students are stressed from very real “life” issues that can interfere with their learning. We recognize that these “life” issues are part of an ongoing conversation about equity. Faculty responded to the challenges of their students with care and compassion.
- Faculty learned that we had to take care of each other. And we tried. But we’re tired. Now we’re running on empty a few weeks into a new academic year.
These spontaneous conversations surrounding pedagogy also led to a renewed emphasis on the human element, not only regarding content-delivery, but also in terms of overall pedagogy. Many of us recognized how much of this was lost with the transition to remote learning, and/or had to make significant efforts to try to maintain those connections that we take for granted in face-to-face classes. Because bringing on-campus students into virtual environments made some of the gaps more apparent, we also started to question whether our online classes had as much of this connection as we may have assumed.
Asking these questions about what approaches best serve our students, both online and in the classroom, provided an opportunity to re-shape our approaches to student learning. Teaching is teaching, no matter where it happens. Quality online instruction should inform our approaches in the physical classroom. We should develop principles and approaches that we then apply across delivery methods that centers teaching and learning.
This opportunity for reflection was tempered by the recognition that serious equity gaps existed in the experiences of our students. Many students simply could not make the transition to remote learning, or had far greater challenges to overcome in their attempt to do so. In some cases, it was not possible for students to successfully complete classes once the college moved to remote learning. For example, circumstances ranging from access to technology, access to wifi, but also family and work situations, put some students at a serious disadvantage. But it would be a mistake to think these situations are the only considerations regarding equity. Inequity and racism are systemic in teaching, learning, and curriculum throughout higher education, including LCC. The Black Lives Matter protests have energized and intensified the national conversation about race and structural inequities.
These experiences force us to redefine our pedagogical approach so that they reflect our commitment to creating a more equitable and just society. While the specifics of translating this commitment to equity into classroom approaches might vary across disciplines and even individual instructors, core principles of equity-focused teaching and learning must inform our approaches. To facilitate developing a shared core of these principles, we have proposed these Principles of Teaching and Learning.
