The big transition begins as faculty switch to online learning in response to COVID-19

With most of the country now under provincial state-of-emergency orders, and many cities on quasi-lockdowns, Canada’s universities have essentially shut down. Now begins an unprecedented educational experiment as faculty attempt to transition their courses en masse to online learning.

But of course, these aren’t classes that were designed with distance learning in mind. Instead, many instructors had a week, or maybe just a day or two, to scramble and rejig their courses for a new delivery system. While this is a less-than-ideal method of course development, say education experts, there is simply no other option at this time. And so, collectively, universities are making the switch.

At Carleton University, President Benoit-Antoine Bacon says the decision to cancel in-person classes was not taken lightly. “We all recognize that the scale of this shift, on a tight timeline, is a significant challenge. As we transition to teaching online, instructors should be pragmatic and realistic, focus on a straightforward approach, and communicate regularly with students,” he says.

Annette Trimbee, president of the University of Winnipeg, also acknowledges the impact of this decision to move online, but says she’s so far been impressed by the response from faculty and staff. “As a leader of the university, I tell people our role is to absorb chaos, portray calm and convey hope. But I’m going to add a fourth one: our role as leaders is also to bring out the best in people.”

With all in-person classes cancelled for the rest of the semester at a minimum, and some universities already announcing that spring and summer courses will shift to online as well, faculty are moving quickly to avoid major disruptions for students. Online learning experts say there are a number of things to keep in mind, especially for faculty entering the distance-learning arena for the first time.

First, prioritize the content that students still need to learn, and jettison what can be left behind, say online educators. With the semester coming to an end, it’s likely that students have already absorbed the majority of the coursework. With what’s left, decide what needs to be the focus and stick to one delivery method.

George Veletsianos, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Innovative Learning and Technology and is a professor in the school of education and technology at Royal Roads University, suggests that now is not the time to start experimenting with new technologies. Pick one platform: “in some cases it might be email; in other cases, it might be your learning management system; in other cases, it might be a real-time synchronous learning platform.” As long as faculty are consistently communicating with students, the delivery method isn’t as important as the content, he says.

And it’ll be clarity that makes or breaks a lesson. Marc-André Carle is the director of teaching and research at Université TELUQ, Quebec’s French-language distance-learning university. He notes that in a traditional class setting, with three hours or so a week spent face-to-face with students, faculty have approximately “15 opportunities to readjust or reassess, and you have a lot of constant feedback.” Not so online. Instead, says Dr. Carle, it’s up to the professor to be explicit about the course material and the desired outcomes, guiding students through the instruction.

Instead of simply posting a reading to the class web forum, Dr. Carle suggests clear descriptions of timing and expectations at the top of each assignment. “Giving the student simple guidelines such as: this next topic you need about 90 minutes to do it, and we suggest you do it in one shot.”

Dr. Veletsianos says now might be the perfect time to get creative with assignments and final assessments. Instead of in-person exams, “we might ask students to create other artifacts, like videos or audio recordings and so on. We might also ask students to do live presentations, asynchronous presentations, one-to-one presentations with the faculty member,” he says.

Then there are courses that simply do not translate easily to an online substitute. However, there are more options than might seem obvious at first, says U of Winnipeg’s Dr. Trimbee. “For example, if you’re an education student and at the end of March you were to be in a classroom for a couple of weeks, maybe instead what you’ll be doing is you’ll be working with a teacher to figure out how to do work with students virtually,” she says.

Neil Fassina, president of Athabasca University, Canada’s other fully online university, says his university has offered help and resources to colleagues around the country who are looking at distance learning for the first time. He hopes that while these solutions are a temporary fix in a time of crisis, this period of forced change could spur innovation.

“When we think about the technologies that are available today in online learning, they are quantum leaps beyond what was available even three or four years ago,” says Dr. Fassina. “This will hopefully create a general awareness for the general public around what’s possible.”

But most importantly, now is the time to be flexible and compassionate. Both students and faculty are undergoing a massive cultural shift and struggling to find a new normal. Terence Day, a professor at Okanagan College in B.C., has studied the efforts to maintain academic continuity in the face of disruption. Indeed, his 2015 paper, “Academic Continuity: Staying True to Teaching Values and Objectives in the Face of Course Interruptions,” is one of the few out there dealing with “class cancellation associated with natural disasters, acts of violence and the threat of pandemics.”

In his study, “I found, for example, that students were more responsive when they could see a picture of me on the screen then when they could just see a PowerPoint slide on the screen,” Dr. Day explains. “Teaching and learning is a very human experience, and trying to relegate it to a machine or a PowerPoint slide just isn’t going to work for many people.”

It’s that human element, say experts, that will carry students and faculty through to the end of this term – and, more broadly, through this crisis as a community.