In 2020, the global pandemic shook the foundation of almost every aspect of our everyday lives, and education was no different. Educators needed to change how they taught and change it fast. It was a world of Zoom calls and Google Classroom assignments.
But now that we’re almost five years out, what things actually stuck? Was this new way of learning successful and is it feasible for schools to implement these changes long term?
Learning today
The Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is a professional association of instructional designers, educators and professionals who provide leadership and advise policy makers to sustain a continuous effort to enrich teaching and learning. Members of AECT offer their perspectives of how learning today was impacted by the sudden shift and new uses of technology during the pandemic.
Dr. Theodore J. Kopcha, a former secondary mathematics teacher and AECT board member whose current research explores the integration of innovative technologies into the classroom, has seen mixed responses. “There are some schools where the pandemic pushed teachers to create an online asynchronous learning experience that could complement in-classroom teaching but also function in the absence of the teacher… In the meantime, we’ve returned to in-person teaching, which, for some teachers, is only strengthened by this online repository of information.”
Now, though, we’re seeing a bit of a rift between various groups of educators with some continuing to embrace the benefits of virtual learning and others who want nothing to do with the online space again.
With these two opposing views, the educators who support online learning end up stepping up and becoming technology leaders in their buildings without stepping into a new leadership position. “These teachers are often our best teachers, and is too often the case, we are asking our best teachers to do even more than they already are,” said Dr. Cecil R. Short, assistant professor and director of secondary education at Emporia State University and AECT’s Teacher Education Division board member. However, there are many ways for educators to use these new technology integrations.
Best practices
Beth Willoughby, district librarian in Dunellen, NJ and active AECT member has observed that “teachers are more comfortable utilizing technology in their lessons… [and] are collaborating more both in their grade level or subject area and with other teachers.” She also notes that “students are more willing to email a question than talk to a teacher which is a great help for the extremely shy students.”
As a parent, Dr. Kopcha has seen through his children that these new online systems create a bit of a ‘lost in cyberspace’ experience. Each teacher tends to organize materials in a different way. “As a parent and educational technologist, it became apparent that teachers and students would benefit from efforts to keep the online learning experience more standardized across classes and teachers.” This sort of standardization would take away some autonomy from the teachers, but the student experience would vastly improve.
Final thoughts
The impact of the pandemic on schools continues through today. As Dr. Kopcha said, “the pandemic was more of a ‘blip’ that came and went, and what was left was a vast amount of online resources that teachers created and continue to build upon to this day.” Dr. Short observed that “going into the pandemic, we knew from several research studies that teachers and schools were not prepared to support virtual teaching. Coming out of the pandemic, many more teachers, schools, and even states are now requiring educators to be prepared for teaching across various modalities — in-person, online, and blended as a combination of both.”
