The phone call

Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep!

– Hello, this is teacher XX speaking?

– Hi there teacher, Corona here. I just want to let you know that from now on, you need to teach everything online. Just make sure you include all students, provide social, cognitive, and teaching presence (or learner-learner, learner-content, and learner-teacher interactions), create a safe athmosphere for everyone involved, have plenty of digital tools to activate your students and stimulate interaction. That’s it. Oh yeah, you better not just shift everything online that you’ve done on campus up until now, but rather design an online and blended learning experience. Good luck!

– But… but… OMG?! Nooo! How do you think I will do that, in so little time? Where can I get the adequate support? What tools should I use? How about the quality of my teaching? Do I need to include video, tape my lectures, put them online? And how about my students, how do I get them onboard and participating all engaged and active?

– Yeah, well, I dunno. Ask your educational developer, I guess, or your instructional designer, and the IT department and student support services too, while you’re at it. You’re smart, you’ll wing it. No more time to chat, gotta call other teachers. Cheerio!

The inner dialogue

My goodness, that’s a lot to think about for every single class! Let’s see, there must be some help somewhere, some way of putting it all together. If I check with my networks via LinkedIn, Zoom, Teams, and Facebook, and combine the tips I get there with what I learned in various workshops and webinars on digital tools and online learning, I’m sure it’s a good start.

The design process

I remember some useful concepts, models, and frameworks. Let’s see. I need to ensure that all students are included in my teaching, that I reach all of them. The Universal Design for Learning framework is the perfect starting point. And then, Community of Inquiry seems a good framework for online and blended teaching and learning. It combines all the different ”presences” that Corona talked about on the phone. If I add some hands-on principles of good practice, it’ll be even easier to check what I should do.

Then we have Gráinne Conole’s 7 C’s of Learning Design, where my to-do list as a teacher is divided into seven active verbs, as it were. And if I look at this practical list of activities to activate my students, I should be able to actually DESIGN my online and blended learning experience!

The wishing list

I guess that all teachers now have to educationally develop ourselves, do instructional learning design, and become learning technology experts. Or do we already have such faculty roles at our university? (…) Yes! It appears we do! Hurray! But what I would really like for us teachers is to have ONE place to go to when we need support in all this. One place where we can find pedagogical and technical support, or sign up for a short workshop on digital tools or online teaching or the use of video in education. Let’s see if the university website has information on where to find such help… Well, blimey! No need for a wishing list; it already exists!

The reflection

After having taught online for almost two terms now, I’ve learned a lot. I also learned that it wouldn’t have been possible to do without the community we have, my different networks, and the support services. The fact that I as a teacher had to learn a lot in a short time helped me understand my students much better. It also made me realise that we gain a lot by helping each other, and communicating to the students what we do, why and how. And last but not least: we should not feel inadequate because our teaching has not been perfect; good enough is good enough!

The references

For references, just follow the links in the text to get to the source!