AN OVERVIEW OF REMOTE TEACHING: EMPLOYING ACTIVE LEARNING TO ENGAGE STUDENTS DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

Remote teaching is the “new normal” especially in higher educational institutions as the world grapples with the raging COVID-19 pandemic and innumerable changes caused by disruptive technologies. Higher educational institutions have resorted to remote teaching as a means of ensuring student safety and an effective learning approach. For this approach to succeed, didactic methods must be carefully chosen to ensure student active engagement during learning processes. Specifically, cognitive engagement has been often cited as a critical component of students’ educational experience which includes active, constructive, interactive, and passive cognitive modes of engagement. These modes allow students to demonstrate knowledge as node-link structures through different overt behavioural knowledge-change processes that require individuals to store, activate, link, and infer varying stages of learning also known as Active Learning (AL). AL enables students’ engagement activities to construct knowledge, improve subject content retention and better their performance in achieving learning outcomes. AL can leverage both synchronous and asynchronous teaching pedagogical methods. The primary goal of this review was to examine AL literature during COVID-19 pandemic in order to propose solutions for improving student cognitive engagement in higher educational institutions.