How the Coronavirus Pandemic Will Change Our Future Teaching

Abstract

Higher education has experienced pandemics and economic downturns over its long history. Recent events have invited comparisons to small pox scares, worldwide flu epidemics, and other moments of fear for student, faculty, and staff health. Campus leaders are nervously watching the bottom line while students and parents worry and contemplate different modes of learning, deciding whether they want to buy what colleges and universities can offer. Faculty, meanwhile, forged new sorts of relationships with their students during spring semester 2020 and wonder about how this environment might continue going forward. Among many in higher education, there is a sense that something has forever changed. For over a decade, we have talked about the differences between face-to-face and remote classes, debating their relative pedagogical and financial merits. With recent events blurring all forms of instruction into virtual classrooms and online assignments, Facebook pages and websites sprung up for faculty to share ideas, teaching modules, and assignments. Social distancing has, ironically, added a new appreciation for the larger learning community, reminding us of the value of quality online materials and revealing again that good teaching is as collaborative as good research. Having learned new things about teaching and learning, how will this experience be built into our courses going forward? In other words, how has the pandemic affected how we will teach in the future? What has forever changed?