Students what will you

Morning meetings will be helpful for students of all ages— all the way up through high school. These gatherings prepare the nervous system for learning and allow everyone to check in with one another. Passing a small drum is a novel and engaging choice—as students pass the drum, each one can choose to share their own rhythmic beat that aligns with how they are feeling in that moment. They can drum to the rhythm, speed, and volume of their nervous system each morning, during transitions, or the end of the day.

Then teachers can lead a discussion of the patterns they noticed. Was the rhythm soft and slow? Was it fast and loud? Was it chaotic, or did it have a smooth, coherent beat? When students are feeling rough and dysregulated, what types of rhythms feel relaxing or comforting to them? Our students have not been required to sit for seven hours a day working on academic assignments for quite some time. They are emphasizing empathy and flexibility in their syllabi, more conscious than ever of their own need for such affordances.

Right now, teaching excellence is more likely to take the form of granting students flexibility so that they can care for out-of-school children rather than handing them another tightly conceived assignment. It will be interesting to see if this embrace of flexibility sparks a broader shift in higher education. For too long we have mistaken rigor for academic integrity when in fact, from a definitional standpoint, rigor simply means rigidity, severity and harshness -- the exact opposite of the flexibility we so need during this crisis.

Issues of equity have been central to our work. Our campus has traditionally been pretty decentralized, and faculty and students have been accustomed to highly personalized, bespoke support and training. That model has privileged those with time and access to campus and is ill suited for crisis situations. The one-to-many model includes, among other things, dynamic instructional and operational continuity pages, a student help page focused on remote learning and access to technology, live Zoom-based crash courses recorded for asynchronous use , and a publicly accessible course template that enables faculty to focus on customizing, rather than building from scratch in the LMS.

For me, this crisis has confirmed how much we need to refine processes across higher education. Bottlenecks and single points of failure abound. Professional and disciplinary provincialism inhibits collaboration and leads to costly duplication of effort. Our planning is more often performative rather than strategic. We consistently overestimate the capacity of faculty and undervalue the expertise of staff.

And yet the crisis has also offered glimpses of what could be -- diverse teams mobilizing to creatively solve problems as they arise, bureaucratic hoops jettisoned so that common-sense action can proceed quickly, and academic and workplace constraints loosened to allow us all -- faculty, staff and students -- the flexibility we need to be productive colleagues, attentive caregivers and balanced human beings.

I am hopeful that higher education will emerge from this crisis with fresh ideas and structures. Can we expect that pandemic-related pedagogies, policies and approaches will somehow change the face of education?

Or is this a short-term thing that serves a purpose, fills a gap? The pivot to online is a response to an unprecedented emergency, triage at best. Digital pedagogy is an emerging field -- may always need to be -- and not something hastily discovered in the aftermath of a crisis.

The nuanced work of digital pedagogy has been being done, improved upon, iterated again and again, by dedicated teachers and scholars for decades. It was never meant to be a quick solution for every teacher in every situation. If there is anything I hope emerges in the new normal of higher education after this crisis passes, it would be a clearer, more widespread awareness that we must commit time, resources and scholarship to digital pedagogy.

Lora Taub, professor of media and communication and dean for digital learning, Muhlenberg College. At Muhlenberg College, our best resources for teaching remote -- in a pinch and panic -- are our guiding principles. They remain unchanged, but distinctly amplified. Our care and commitment to our students' learning and growth are more visible than ever. These principles guide the choices we are making in reframing and reimagining our courses -- in a pinch and a panic -- for remote teaching and learning.

Everything is different for our learners. But working in our favor, working to keep us knit together while flung across the country, is the community that students and faculty built with each other in the first eight weeks of the semester.

That is the foundation that shapes what is possible for our learners now, under varied and dynamic conditions and constraints. We began cultivating the environment and practices for learning online in the liberal arts six years ago. Forty faculty have completed our faculty development program for online course design and pedagogy.

In nearly every department on campus, there is a faculty member who has experience teaching online, and our culture of peer learning and mentorship runs deep. This collective wisdom, and a culture that values and practices peer mentoring, is more important than the particular technologies we are invoking for remote learning.

We also have a culture of peer support among students and an award-winning digital learning assistantship program for students. Eight digital learning assistants, students with deep interest in digital technologies and practices, are now holding remote virtual drop-in hours daily, from 2 to 6 p.

This culture of peer support for digital learning links up with the expertise of our digital learning team -- designers, technologists and librarians -- who have ensured training and support through the initial transition and continue to offer sustained guidance and support as we all move forward. Equitable and inclusive access for learners is an ongoing conversation and commitment at Muhlenberg, and faculty recognize that this conversation extends critically into the spaces and practices of our remote experience now.

This means critically examining some of our unreflected-upon assumptions -- about technology and about our students. The dean of students, together with senior leadership, have ensured the resources and a process by which students can request funds, items, equipment and other support they might need to participate fully in their remote learning. The digital learning team has encouraged faculty to prioritize asynchronous activities that aim to lower barriers to access and inclusive participation -- that afford student flexibility in their schedules, in modes of participation, in ways of connecting.

This has helped a great deal. Muhlenberg College has been intentionally, purposefully evolving our landscape for teaching and learning digitally since The existing frameworks, practices and values emerging from that early work certainly open up the possibilities for us now, to respond urgently, effectively and ethically to the COVID crisis and other challenges and uncertainties ahead.

I imagine that this experience will help create broader understanding of what the critical digital pedagogy community has known and has been saying all along: technology will not save us. Online learning is a human -- not a technological -- endeavor. We lose sight of that central reality at our own peril. I have been heartened to see the outpouring of appreciation and recognition for the instructional design and technology experts on our campus.

The opportunities for pedagogical partnership with our digital learning team have always been present -- now they are urgent, and our success as we turn towards the remainder of the semester owes everything to this group.

First, our teaching modality changed. We are still content specialists. So our ability to transmit our passion of our discipline is still in the process of being explored. That has not changed. It is still our guided principle -- student success. Such principle guides how we think about faculty support, supporting remote learning tools and providing students the necessary hardware to support their educational goals.

What has changed is the tone and flexibility of our tone. Even though faculty might complain and even grumble between each other, the backbone of our work and delivery of content is still to support student success.

My priority aligns with my own teaching philosophy. I want to level up student success in my learning environment. I want to continue to give them the same energy I give them in front of my class, dress up when I shoot a video, wear my bright lipstick while keeping up a rigor that still feels challenging. However, my design will have a strategic, empathy-minded approach that emanates kindness, care and flexibility. Life is different. Family responsibilities, economic liquidity, the feeling of tranquility, the ability to physically engage with classmates in the classroom, cafeteria, common spaces, talking to their instructors, just to name a few.

But in my case, we are connecting now more than ever through our silly check-ins via Pronto or through emails. What is different about their learning environment will depend on how the instructor will deliver and connect with students. Students who signed up for an Ethnic Studies class still expect an Ethnic Studies class.

But they are expecting great content, guidance, stressless course navigation and connection with the class and instructor. It will be enhanced. It has to be. It is my social and professional responsibility to continue our learning -- whatever it takes. I will establish a partnership so that students can also provide input on what is working and what is simply not working, relevant or valuable.

My content and instruction still has to matter. I have to. Come April 1, I still get a check. That thought keeps me motivated and focused on my duty! Of course it will change -- the modality will change. The physical presence will change. The weekly design will change. The technology will be fluid -- depending on what is functioning, bandwidth friendly and accessible. Delivering content is easy. We can all put a bunch of stuff on PowerPoints and send it out.

Heck, maybe add animations and cool transitions, But enabling meaning, relevancy and purpose? We have to be able to humble ourselves, step back from our own expectations and see where we can improve or augment without causing collateral damage.

But the connection, feedback and communication? RMIT Online. Search field. The future of learning and teaching: Big changes ahead for education As the world we live in changes to embrace tech futures, how and what we teach in our education system will also be reshaped to keep up to date with the growing demands of the 21st century.

Back to Education The future of learning and teaching: Big changes ahead for education Demand grows for STEM educators What your first year as a teacher is really like. Connectedness, collaboration and co-creation. The formal classroom will be replaced by learning areas that allow individuals, small groups or larger groups to collaborate face-to-face or virtually on learning projects.

Anywhere, anytime learning. Customisation for a learner-first approach. Classrooms of tomorrow need to focus on a combination of student engagement in learning, enquiry-based approaches, curiosity, imagination and design thinking.

Putting testing to the test. McLaughlin believes that testing on its own can be a dangerous approach. Educators of the future.

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