Optimizing Student Engagement in a Virtual Environment

The purpose of the chapter was to investigate current student engagement in a virtual classroom with the lens of exploring high engagement strategies in conjunction with learning styles and diversity in a virtual classroom. The authors researched three different educators' experiences with virtual learning and strategies they have used including their current learning management system (LMS). The chapter highlights potential strategies and next steps for moving forward and increasing the reflection on creation of new lessons for students both asynchronous and synchronous that include strategies, and tasks educators with refocusing to include learning styles and diversity.

Teacher Motivation During Emergency Distance Learning

The rapid shift to virtual teaching in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in emergency remote teaching (ERT) and has highlighted the numerous multilevel challenges associated with it in the countries from the Global South. This chapter aims to explore how this shift to remote teaching has affected English language teachers' level of motivation and how they have adapted to it. In addition, this study offers quantitative and qualitative insights into the effectiveness of the resources employed by EFL/ESL teachers. This is done by analyzing the surveys of 34 teachers and interviews of four teachers from Uzbekistan and Pakistan. Through thematic analysis of the interviews, a detailed account of the challenging factors and their coping strategies were found. This chapter concludes with a discussion on the lessons learned and recommendations on how to make a relatively smoother transition to remote teaching.

Teaching Through a Pandemic

During the times of COVID-19, teachers quickly had to address the barrier of virtual learning and adapt to a new world of online teaching. This chapter will look into effective practices for online teaching and learning. Additionally, it investigates parent communication in the classroom and how that has changed and developed during this season of COVID-19. This chapter will explore how the learning environment rapidly changed, developed, and improved. It also looks at useful resources that allow for online learning to continue to evolve and grow. In addition, this shift into an online world and how it can be transferred over when learning returns full time to classrooms to grant continued, uninterrupted learning are explored. Looking at how students from low socio-economic backgrounds were affected with the immediate shut down of schools and services, we must examine how to better set our students up for success for the future. Reflecting how schools can better prepare families will create an environment that is proactive, not reactive.

Using Online Learning Environments With Kindergarten Children During the COVID-19 Emergency

This chapter explores kindergarten children's use of specific online applications such as WhatsApp and YouTube to maintain social relationships between each other and with their classroom teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Using Vygotskian theorisation of learning through interaction with more expert people (teachers and parents) and Leontev's theory of functional organ, this study verifies that children often learned without an expert's presence, using strategies such as trial and error and discussion, and through maintaining social relationships among themselves and with their teachers. Specifically, the study involved two Italian kindergartens (42 children) and six teachers. Analysis of the children's work and of teacher interviews shows that, during the Italian lockdown, the pre-school children used applications as learning environments in the form of functional organs, and this proved useful for carrying on kindergarten activities and for maintaining social relationships.

COVID-19 and the Learning, Teaching, Assessment, and Personal Experiences of UK-Based International Students During Lockdown

COVID-19 has brought challenges to the education systems globally. This chapter aims to examine the impact of the pandemic crisis from the viewpoint of international students. This involves a survey-based descriptive study distributed during lockdown to international students studying at UK universities. Students were affected by raised stress and anxiety levels, particularly female PhD students who identified as having lower levels of resilience than their male counterparts and other cohorts. International students perceived positive issues resulting from the experience, for example the use of digital assessments and online interaction, as well as negative issues including lack of support and poor communication. Implications include improving communications, training, time allocation for educators, support for students lacking adequate ICT software and connectivity, and provision of key support for mental health.

Online Scratch Programming With Compulsory School Children During COVID-19 Lockdown

In Spring 2020, the COVID-19 health emergency caused all Italian schools to close from March to the end of the school year. An intervention was organized with the aim of offering primary and lower secondary teachers the possibility to organize remote coding activities with their students. Nine workshops were held to introduce teachers to the Scratch online programming environment, and then a coding day was organized involving students from the last year of primary and lower secondary schools. The chosen activities proved to be motivating to the students, favoring social interactions and participation, and increasing their interest in coding. Teachers were positively impressed by the ease with which their students managed programming in Scratch, but some of them felt that they did not master programming well enough to autonomously support class activities. A longer teacher training period is needed.

Unexpected Opportunities

In the spring of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation's schools closed. Students and families were asked to shelter-in-place and the nation's schools were charged with the challenge of educating students through online modalities. Novice and veteran teachers alike needed to quickly assimilate to virtual teaching and online learning modalities. Students were asked to adjust from face-to-face lessons to screenshots of material from within the confines of their homes. Parents were asked to assume the roles of teacher assistant, tutor, and learning support, all while juggling other personal or work challenges. Leading and coordinating all of these efforts in towns and cities across our nation were school leaders, many of whom may have felt lacking in their own skill set related to online teaching. This research study will explore the perceptions of these leaders. Almost 50 North Carolina leaders shared their perspectives on their own experiences. Conclusions from this research will be pertinent in recommending steps and considerations for future events of this magnitude.

Pandemic Panic!

In this chapter, the authors will discuss their daily classroom rituals and routines in a typical face-to-face setting (in both the primary and elementary classrooms). Additionally, the authors will be comparing and contrasting how they maintained and/or changed their rituals and routines as a result of online learning. Furthermore, the authors discuss their experiences and insights learned from being suddenly thrust into a COVID-19 teaching role, how this model affected their students' growth, communication platforms with all audiences, content and lessons, resources that were utilized during that stressful time, and modes of assessment.

Is It Accessible?

This chapter discusses the role of accessibility in higher education institutions during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Under the law, administrators in higher education are obligated to provide accessible programs and services to students. They are also required to provide accessible work environments for employees. Administrators also have other incentives for doing so, such as building a sense of community. As a result of the shift to hybrid and or totally virtual delivery models of instruction, institutional administrators need a research-based methodology to assess their programs and services for accessibility consideration. This chapter provides higher education administrators with such a methodology. It also makes recommendations for creating return to campus plans, including how universal design can be implemented as part of the plan.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on E-Learning Strata Among University Students in Morocco

This chapter investigates the e-learning experience of Moroccan public university students during the COVID-19-prompted quarantine. It aims to identify and analyze the effects of the online learning context during the pandemic on students' actual learning process as divided into three main stages. It consequently attempts to determine and measure means of receiving—technically, mentally, and emotionally—cognizing or understanding, and appropriating class contents online amidst the unintentional shock of the pandemic and the limited affordability and accessibility to web-based education. A sample of 448 students was randomly selected and surveyed by means of an online detailed self-prepared questionnaire in order to test three hypotheses. Results show that learners did not manage to succeed in all the three stages of the e-learning process, which puts their actual e-learning usability and usefulness into question.