scholarly journals A Qualitative Study of Faculty Responses to Teaching during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Creating a Culture of Support

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. p67
Author(s):  
Paula Smith-Hawkins

This study examines the online teaching and learning experience of twenty-one (21) faculty members at a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) research university from the initial campus closure of the university in February 2020 in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, through the end of Fall 2020 semester. The methodology entailed one-on-one interviews with instructors, reviews of the course materials in the Learning Management System, and the examination of email and videoconferencing exchanges. Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction and the Quality Matters Rubric guidelines for instructional design framed the methodology. This study finds that faculty benefitted from close connections with colleagues and continuous institutional support during the pivot to emergency remote teaching and into a hybrid learning environment. These two factors – collegial connections and university resources – were crucial in sustaining faculty work during the period of this study.

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara E. Truman

The University of Central Florida was honored to receive the 2003 Sloan-C Excellence in Online Teaching and Learning Award for Faculty Development. The environment at UCF has doubled in the last ten years with the number of students, faculty, and developing campus locations. Rapid growth in brick and mortar on campus has not deterred the creation of a robust virtual campus where students and faculty interact essentially, but in different ways. Producing the faculty support architecture to achieve UCF’s instructional potential as a metropolitan research university is a constant struggle for staff. This article describes the dynamic interplay of UCF’s emerging ecosystem of institutionalized faculty support.


Author(s):  
Charles B. Hodges ◽  
Raleigh Way ◽  
Sonya S. Gaither Shepherd

This chapter includes a report of a study conducted to investigate the perceptions of faculty teaching online at a doctoral research university in the southeast United States. Research literature regarding faculty satisfaction with online learning is summarized. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyze the results of an online survey administered in the Spring of 2010. Major findings are that faculty enjoy the convenience and flexible scheduling that teaching online offers them and their students but consider teaching online to more labor-intensive compared to teaching face-to-face courses. Faculty expressed the need for reliable and current technology for online teaching, improved technical support and training, and clear institutional policies regarding online teaching and developing online courses. Methods for improving faculty satisfaction with online teaching are suggested, which include collaborating with academic librarians to enhance the online teaching and learning experience.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Sam Baddeley

This article, written at the start of April 2021, is a personal reflection on what has and hasn't worked in remote/online education. I have drawn on my own experience of teaching over the course of the past year, observations of classroom practice I have undertaken as a mentor and middle leader with responsibility for teaching and learning in my school, and conversations I have had with colleagues in my school and elsewhere; it is, therefore, highly anecdotal, and the reader is asked to bear in mind the fact that, like many others, my journey into online teaching was enforced by the closure of schools during the first nationwide lockdown in March 2020. My core aim during both lockdowns was to provide for my students the best experience possible until such a time as we could all return to the physical classroom. As it became clear towards the end of 2020 and the start of 2021 that we were going to need to return to remote education, I began to think more deeply about the strategies I was employing in my online teaching, how effective they were for my students, and what I might do to maximise their learning experience and outcomes.


Author(s):  
Girija S. Singh

COVID-19-related disruption in teaching in the University of Botswana led the school to prepare new strategies for running classes and to design innovative way of instruction.  The most notable change was to replace face-to-face lectures with online teaching at least partially (blended teaching and learning). This posed many challenges, especially in the teaching of science and technology subjects. In a laboratory-based discipline such as chemistry the problems encountered were especially daunting.  Moreover, writing mathematical equations, chemical reactions and reaction mechanisms posed their own difficulties.  The present communication provides a brief overview of how chemistry education at the University, the premier national university of Botswana, has been transformed during the last three semesters.  It is based on experience of the author and as judged by the feed-back received from colleagues and the students. Admittedly, the experience is limited and much discussion is still in progress to meet the unresolved challenges. Theory classes at undergraduate levels are now mostly taught online using packages such as Moodle and MS Teams. The tutorial and laboratory sessions have faced the greatest disruptions and the instructors continue to explore ways to conduct these virtually.  Online examinations were found to be limited in their effectiveness, especially in the assessment of drawing chemical structure and reaction mechanisms as well as the students’ ability in scientific writing.


Author(s):  
Paul Joseph Stengel

During the summer of 2010, a graduate school of education (GSE) at a leading research university launched a 14-month teacher residency program (TRP) aimed at producing high quality teachers for urban schools that need them the most. Guided by a framework of inclusive education (Hamre & Oyler, 2004), residents were scheduled to complete various components of teachers education, including a technology component designed to familiarize residents in the use of new media web technologies to purposefully enhance teaching and learning. The educational technologist (ET) charged with the development of the workshops for this program decided to focus on helping residents think about meaningful methods to teach for understanding with technology. The framework supplies a flexible set of guidelines that help developing teachers see how technology may provide “significant educational leverage” (Wiske et al., 2005). Although this approach has been successful for building a framework for the workshops, a series of challenges have developed that must be addressed before proceeding to the training of the next cohort. These challenges include providing time for residents to practice new skills taught during the workshop sessions, solving the varied access to up-to-date technologies in under-resourced urban school classroom placements, identifying and harnessing technology platforms that are ubiquitous, inexpensive, and accessible to stakeholders inside and outside the university system, and maintaining workshop sessions that are relevant to the theory taught in various tracks of the TRP. This case study outlines the instructional design process the ET used to approach the development of the workshops for the technology component of the TRP.


Author(s):  
Cristine Martins Gomes de Gusmão ◽  
Josiane Lemos Machiavelli ◽  
Patricia Smith Cavalcante

This chapter describes how a public university has met the challenge of changing inside the educational culture and preparing its teachers to manage online teaching-learning processes using learning analytics to contribute to the design, evaluation, and improvement of SMOOC. From the results obtained with a survey answered by the teachers, a twenty-hour class SMOOC was developed that focuses on instrumental aspects of digital technological resources in the teaching and learning contexts, as well as in the pedagogical issues, which concern the appropriate use of digital technologies. The findings of this research demonstrate that the SMOOC has been able to meet the teacher training needs, which are changing the way they work since remote education has been the viable alternative to guarantee the functioning of the university in the coronavirus pandemic period. However, it is believed that the knowledge that teachers are acquiring will contribute to changes in professional practice even post-pandemic.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 791-811
Author(s):  
Lesley Gourlay

Abstract The term ‘quarantine’ is derived from the Italian quarantena, from quaranta, referring to the forty days of isolation traditionally imposed during the era of the Black Death in Europe. This paper examines this and related contemporary terms, in order to consider the complex and contradictory nature of enforced sites of isolation, with reference to the historical literature. The centrality of spatial practices in the current pandemic is emphasised, with a focus on the normally unobserved, micro practices of individuals under ‘lockdown’. The paper reports on an interview study conducted at a large UK Higher Education institution during the Covid-19 ‘lockdown’, and analyses the accounts of six academics, focusing particularly on their embodied and sociomaterial practices, with reference to the etymological analysis. The paper considers the extent to which their reported experiences reflect the various meanings of the term sequestrato, going on to propose that their working practices, particularly focused on screens and video calls, are characterised by a need to ‘perform the university’. I speculate on how the ontological nature of the university itself has been fundamentally altered by the closure of the campus and lockdown, proposing that the site of the university is now radically dispersed across these sequestered bodies. I conclude by calling into the question the accuracy of the term ‘online teaching and learning’, instead suggesting that in a fundamental sense, none of these practices is in fact ‘online’ or digital.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-182
Author(s):  
María Perramon ◽  
Xus Ugarte

Abstract At a time when the advances in information and communication technologies meant that new approaches to virtual teaching and learning could be proposed, the teaching staff on the degree in Translation and Interpreting at UVic decided to offer part of the degree in distance learning mode. This learning mode was launched in the 2001–2002 academic year, with optional face-to-face teaching sessions some Saturdays and coexisted with the traditional face-to-face courses. During the first years, the fourth-year interpreting specialisation subjects were not taught online for technical and pedagogical reasons. Since the 2014-2015 academic year, we also teach these subjects online. The challenge that we face starting the 2017-2018 academic year is twofold: 1. To adapt the online teaching of interpreting subjects to groups with a high number of students in the new Inter-university Degree in Translation, Interpreting and Applied Languages jointly offered by the University of Vic and the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). 2. To adapt the contents and methodology of interpreting subjects to changes in professional practice: telephone and videoconference interpreting, especially in liaison interpreting. In our paper, we will show some online teaching resources, as well as several online tools which we use in our courses.


Author(s):  
Monir K. Parikh ◽  
Robert W. Hitchcock

The University of Utah offers a two semester capstone biomedical engineering design course (bioDesign) where products are developed and prototyped using the guidance of FDA Design Control mandates. During the two semesters, students are required to develop a project plan, marketing requirements, specifications, test plan, results and working prototype. Additionally, design reviews are regularly held in order to provide student teams with constructive feedback from clinicians, coaches, and course instructors. To foster a rich environment for innovation and to better instruct students in problem based learning, we partner student teams with design ideas that have been conceptualized by clinical advisors. This collaboration creates high value relationships maximizing the students’ learning experience while exposing them to best practices. This course offers unique challenges to the students; they must balance the creativity and innovation of design work with the documentation and regulations mandated by the FDA and other regulatory agencies. Since the inception of this course, we have identified various problems with student learning. Over the past 25 years, educators have begun to understand the importance of hands-on, interactive learning experiences in the undergraduate engineering curriculum [1,2]. Therefore, by overcoming the teaching and learning issues associated with this program, we hope to develop a course that empowers student teams to become effective, innovative engineers.


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