Introduction to the Special Issue on the COVID-19 Emergency Transition to Remote Learning

Shanna Smith Jaggars

doi:10.24059/olj.v25i1.2692

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic began in December 2019, and within three months had spread across Europe, the United States, and almost every other nation in the world. To help contain the deadly virus, countries across the globe closed the doors of K-12 schools and colleges. Students residing on university campuses were sent home. School administrators and instructors scrambled to devise plans for teaching and supporting their students from their own homes. Depending on their local context, their experience and training, and their students’ desires and needs, some teachers turned to teaching by correspondence, some to asynchronous online learning, some to synchronous remote class sessions, and some to a unique mix of these elements. Administrators, teachers, and students may have expected these emergency distance education practices to be temporary – a few weeks at most – but many were required to continue with remote teaching through the spring of 2021. More than a year after it began, the pandemic may at last be coming under control as vaccines are distributed across the world, and teachers and students are cautiously looking forward to a return to “normal” schooling conditions in the autumn of 2021. However, lessons from this extended period of universal remote learning will influence student instruction and support practices for many years to come, for both online and in-person courses and programs. The articles in this Special Issue provide a rich portrait of the teaching and learning challenges which characterized the initial emergency transition in Spring 2020, and detail the approaches of administrators and teachers as they attempted to overcome those challenges. Along the way, these studies provide lessons in terms of how to better prepare for future public emergencies, as well as how to improve student success more generally, in both online and in-person settings. Throughout the issue, readers will also see a multitude of challenges related to the “digital divide” – or the fact that students have unequal access to reliable high-speed Internet and other academic technologies, due to underlying inequalities in household income and regional infrastructure.

Highlights

Introduction to the SpecialIssue on the COVID-19 Emergency Transition to Remote LearningShanna Smith Jaggars The Ohio State UniversityThe COVID-19 pandemic began in December 2019, and within three months had spread across Europe, the United States, and almost every other nation in the world
School administrators and instructors scrambled to devise plans for teaching and supporting their students from their own homes. Depending on their local context, their experience and training, and their students’ desires and needs, some teachers turned to teaching by correspondence, some to asynchronous online learning, some to synchronous remote class sessions, and some to a unique mix of these elements
Administrators, teachers, and students may have expected these emergency distance education practices to be temporary – a few weeks at most – but many were required to continue with remote teaching through the spring of 2021

Summary

Section II: Brief Case Studies on the Pivot to Emergency Remote Teaching

In response to the Call for Submissions for this special issue, the editors received a large volume of submissions which focused on how a specific course or academic program managed the transition to emergency remote learning during the spring of 2020. In “Motivating Students to Learn AI Through Social Networking Sites: A Case Study in Hong Kong,” Tsz Kit Ng and Kai Wa Chu report on a threephase action research process, in which teachers of an extracurricular course on artificial intelligence iteratively improved its delivery based on student feedback These studies shed light on how extracurricular activities could be delivered remotely even in “normal” times, and could potentially provide more access to students who have financial or geographical barriers to participation in traditional in-person extracurriculars. Study abroad offices might consider offering both in-person travel programs and virtual reality experiences, in order to provide opportunities for lower-income students, or those with work or family obligations, who may not have the time or financial resources required for international travel As another example, Whited’s study suggests that nearby in-person clinical settings do not always provide an optimal context for students’ learning, and that complementing in-person experiences with virtual “telehealth” approaches can expand students’ participation in high-quality clinical experiences

Section III: International Perspectives

Conclusion