One year later...

Hard to believe, but online learning for the sake of Covid is now over a year in.

I’m back at VCC doing “Design & Develop Interactive eLearning”. With a solid year of teaching online under my belt, I’m excited to be doing this again. There hasn’t been a lot of time to reflect or research in the break neck pace of the last year.

To be honest, it has felt a lot like survival a lot of the time. Especially teaching International students, many of whom are Indian, and many of whom were still in India, this last semester has felt like trying to keep the flower beds watered when the house was on fire. My students were in literal life or death situations, and the collective burnout was palpable in the virtual room.

Things I usually don’t struggle with had become daily discussions among faculty like plagiarism, and students falling through the cracks.

Meanwhile the subtle niceties of everyday life were just absent. Little conversations in the lunch room and smiling at people in the hall became things I sorely missed.

But at the end of it all, as we transition into another new normal, there are many aspects of my teaching that are forever changed. There is so much that can be done that I’d never done before, from using shared documents to posting videos. I see two huge advantages to the skills learned going forward. One is the ability to provide the students with a variety of ways to learn the material. So many more virtual resources will be there for them. The second is the ability to reuse formats and materials, thereby actually making the job of instructor less about prep and more about engagement. I’m glad to be taking this time to really hone these skills.