To have a successful distance learning for students, students need to have a sense of feeling immersed in the “distance learning environment”.

One thing that came to my mind is that an immersed experience through gamification might be an effective way of transfer knowledge, where course materials can be broken down into scenarios, case studies, and role-plays.

An immersed experience is also when one can feel the presence. During those days, we were still able to have face-to-face classroom time, we interact naturally with our students when we’re in the classroom together. By our smiles, eye contact, warm and friendly tone of voice, and other forms of positive non-verbal communication; or simply being in the classroom couple minutes earlier, or stay behind to chat a bit afterwards, subconsciously we gave students our encouragement and support. Yet, emotions in online learning can be an even more powerful and important tool for our student’s engagement, persistence, and successfulness. For emotions/feelings to channel through the digital world, it requires us who are the educator to create our course materials on a human level; when students can find a human element in the course content, they are likely to engage at a much higher level.

Lastly, even though COVID didn’t give us a heads up to better prepare these overnight changes, many educators are also learning how to teach remotely while teaching remotely. However, while we are focusing on teaching remotely, we cannot forget to have an inclusive environment and curriculums, especially if some of our students who have attention and learning disabilities.

Good designs not only benefit our students but also help ourselves.