The Burden of Alleviating the Burden During a Pandemic: Emotional literacy as a tool for online course design, adaptation, and evaluation

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most, if not all, courses were shifted to online learning formats. In this article, we share our experiences related to teaching and learning in a completely online, condensed (seven-week) graduate-level course during the fall 2020 semester. More specifically, we discuss the important role of emotional literacy as a mechanism for framing online course design, adaptation, and evaluation. We explore emotional literacy in terms of its necessity in teaching and learning in online contexts during a pandemic, beyond the scope of other obviously important non-traditional literacies, such as technological and informational literacies. To conclude, we offer practical suggestions for online course design, adaptation, and evaluation using emotional literacy as a framework and provide considerations for future research.