When I hear “online teaching and learning,” I think about all of the access it brings to knowledge and the exchange of ideas. While I acknowledge the challenges inherent in online learning and realize that not all online learning experiences are created equal, I think there is a huge role that online learning can play in leveling the playing field for people around the world to get involved and excited about subjects that they otherwise could not. Online teaching and learning also allows people to connect to each other and learn from each other in ways we never could have before. I feel quite lucky to live in a time when this kind of learning is available to me.

My vision and hope for online teaching and learning is that is continues to become a robust, flexible, and inclusive educational options that harnesses the power of technology to enhance learning. As technology evolves, we are realizing that there are so many new ways to learn. Rather than being afraid of those opportunities, I choose to be optimistic and dig into them.

The COVID-19 pandemic, while tragic and certainly not something I would wish for ever again, brought us new opportunities to consider online teaching and learning. I agree with the article that we need to be careful about how we evaluate this kind of emergency online teaching and learning, which should be considered separate from deliberate, thoughtful, and intentional online teaching and learning. I worry that people are still possibly conflating the two! Hopefully, with more time and exploration of the tools and practices of online learning, we will collectively determine when and where these educational experiences can be most beneficial to us all.

Online teaching and learning are two different experiences for me.

Online teaching requires an instructor to complete a thorough and thoughtful exploration of the entire student experience prior to the first day of class. Providing inclusive, accessible, relevant course materials and course assignments and assessments make the difference to ensure a positive student experience with achievable outcomes.

Online learning is more of an individual experience for the students. This puts the onus on the institution and the instructor to craft activities to bring a social emotional component with community based learning opportunities to online learning. Of course, there are times when a course truly is asynchronous and student driven which would limit collaborative learning. An institution should make careful decisions about what outcomes are essential to the online learning experience and clearly provide them to students in advance.

What happened during the Covid 19 from March to May was truly a stop gap experience. Teachers at my institution really struggled (and many succeeded) in bringing studio based courses to their students’ homes. I taught courses at night and early in the morning to accommodate students who went back home to China and Korea. However, I also taught students who were up in the middle of the night in order to attend the synchronous part of our classes. It was very difficult for everyone. I also had the “black box" experience with students being little more than a name in a square on my screen and a disembodied voice.

Online learning is so much more than what we were able to provide students during the pandemic. In the article by Hodges and others, it suggests that evaluation of the Covid teaching experience should consider: “Was our ongoing faculty professional development sufficient to enable ERT? How can we enhance opportunities for immediate and flexible learning demands related to alternative approaches to instruction and learning?” This was certainly an issue at my college, as was adequate staff and technology to support the student experience. We all survived and students had experiences that enriched their learning, but was it the same as in person? Certainly not.

Online learning must be equitable to the in person face to face (F2F) experience in order to make it valuable to the students to encourage retention and completion.