Vulnerability and Resilience in Course Adaptations for Online Modality: Anytime, Anywhere, Any Climate

Abstract

It has been found that university professors in the global south, working in online courses, have a great “dilemma” to transfer and extrapolate the different curriculum, syllabus, teaching ideas, messages, cooperative activities and concepts from a face-to-face teaching-learning environment to an on line or virtual modality. The big problem is the lack of resilience of teachers to adapt the education of the past, to a future one, that is already present and needed, especially today with drastic climate changes and pandemic events. Thus, a critical and transcendental question to answer is how, in an online classroom, teachers are prepared to deal with vulnerable students, regardless of its ability or any environmental conditions, including climate management. This question refers to an equal treatment to all alumni, respecting their differences in cultural lives, social, economic and weather conditions, beliefs, and special capacities. Every student, regardless of its ability and geographical residence, should have equal opportunity to contribute with their ideas in an online or virtual class or event; this is a crucial question to be answered and treated for an online environment. Usually, university professors use a course management system for their classes as a repository (deposit) of documents and isolated activities, instead of a series of connected participatory activities, gradually developing from simple to more difficult tasks in order to really help learners with their academics under any type of conditions.