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.

Since I have not had the opportunity to teach online yet I will post from an online learner’s perspective. In my work life in Marketing Technology, I have had the opportunity to experience extremely high quality online learning. It’s rare these days for companies to spend money to send their staff offsite for classroom learning when a recorded webinar or a guided third party learning path may achieve the same objective without seriously impacting work schedules. Even our instructor-led classes are online. All my company’s required HR classes are extremely engaging and well-produced, with professional production quality and interactive experiences that reinforce learning for multiple types of learners. Evaluations are built into the process as well. So, for me, the definition of online learning is participating in well-planned and well-orchestrated digital learning experiences, either synchronously or asynchronously, that utilize the same pedagogical principles used in classroom teaching but bring with them all the added benefits of technology, breadth of resources and connectedness.

During the Covid-19 Pandemic both of my children switched to Emergency Remote Learning. Because I work from home, I had the opportunity to observe their online classes as well as hear about their experiences with remote learning from their perspectives. Unfortunately, the default delivery mechanism tended to be Zoom lectures, and both of my kids were bored and unengaged, as well as consumed with feelings of isolation. As was stated in the article, carefully planned online teaching processes were absent in what my children were experiencing. Teachers were just trying to get the job done and were struggling to simply operate Zoom, let alone fold in any online experiences that were not part of their original course design.

So, my experience and perspective about online learning has not necessarily changed – I have always known how expansive and effective it could be. What has changed since Covid-19 is my perspective on school readiness for operating in an online environment during an emergency. Covid has taught us that we cannot take the status quo for granted. Teachers should be designing their classroom courses to include varied delivery methods; they should already be integrating digital online experiences into classroom teaching. Connectedness is key for active learning, whether students are sitting in the same classroom or on a Zoom call. We need to learn from the past and be open to new ways of working in the future.

“Due to the threat of COVID19” is a phrase that stopped me in my tracks, made me dizzy from the speed at which my eyes sought the date of this article and then just for a moment allowed me to indulge in the nostalgia of what many people I know call the Before Times. Emergency Remote teaching will never be the same as what students experienced in the spring of 2020. The content that was offered bears no resemblance to a well-planned intentional remote teaching curriculunm, with ALL due respect to anyone who taught through it. From the experience of the students in my home, teachers had little to no chance of success in the K-12 environment when they found themselves competing for the attention of students who suddenly had all the distractions of the internet at their fingertips on school-issued Chromebooks, the same students who weeks earlier might have had their personal cell phones confiscated if used in class. Online learning has emerged from it’s ‘lesser than’ status, become more mainstream and strengthened it’s core principles since COVID19. As many more educators have been exposed to online learning concepts either through continuing education or professional development, the word emergency can shift from the panic and danger connotation to the gentler arising from need.