5 Ways the Pandemic Transformed Teaching and Learning

Exactly five years ago, students, faculty and staff wished roommates, friends and colleagues a good Spring Break before leaving campus a day early. In most cases, they wouldn’t greet them in person again for more than a year.

A nationwide lockdown that began March 12, 2020, also set off one of the most challenging periods in the University of Maryland’s history, with students and instructors suddenly navigating a transition to emergency remote instruction, and many staff trying to figure out how to do their jobs at home. In the background for everyone was a rising toll of fear and sadness as deaths from the then-mysterious novel coronavirus climbed, authorities seemed at a loss and people tried to fend it off by folding up bandanas as masks and disinfecting groceries.

It's been nearly two years since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lifted the public health emergency declaration, but society is still sorting through its lessons. On the UMD campus, it left behind enduring changes in how students and faculty work with each other.

“What we’ve seen is essentially a ‘breaking open’ of the classroom, and an effort to  put learner needs at the center in a way that’s more personalized, in a way that is more adaptive to new technologies,” said Mary Warneka, interim executive director of UMD’s Teaching and Learning Transformation Center (TLTC).

Maryland Today sat down with Warneka to discuss lessons for educators and students that arose from the pandemic.

Recorded lectures have staying power.
Instructors shifting in the early days of the pandemic to remote classes quickly noticed that their recorded lectures were popular with students who could not always get online at scheduled class times. Crowded houses and family laptop shortages are no longer an issue for most students, but the recordings remain popular. “They’re great tools for study and review; they're helpful for student-athletes and for students for whom English is a second language. Learners watching recorded lectures can control the speed for easier note taking,” Warneka said. And increasingly, instructors employ a “flipped classroom” approach—assigning lecture videos as homework, and then using in-class time for practice problems or active learning.

“I have to give a shout out to the Academic Technology and Innovation team within DIT (Division of Information Technology). They are rapidly upgrading classrooms to make recording even easier for faculty,” she said.

Low-stakes learning sticks.
That nail-biting sensation of walking into an exam that feels like it can make or break your grade may be declining. Worries about both stress on students and academic integrity during the pandemic led the TLTC to recommend an increased emphasis on low-stakes assignments and assessments, which many instructors are continuing. “It provides more opportunity for feedback to guide the learning process,” Warneka said. “It helps the faculty understand what students don’t know, allowing for earlier intervention for students who are struggling.”

Caring approaches have endured.
Loneliness and isolation were an epidemic unto themselves, and university students additionally weathered anxiety about the pandemic’s effect on future careers and mourned the loss of their on-campus experiences.

Faculty, who were dealing with their own COVID-induced difficulties, became more aware of how trauma impacts cognitive functioning, Warneka said; the TLTC has seen a rise in attendance at workshops on trauma-informed pedagogy. Additionally, sessions on motivation, course climate and transparent learning design have been popular with instructors who are eager to attend to the personal well-being of their students.

Students are also more likely to get content warnings now so they can prepare for potentially distressing material in a class, and instructors likewise are looking more deeply into strategies to make courses more inclusive and to give students more agency and choice in their learning process, she said.

Digital literacy has soared.
Of course, while most of us have become adept at facilitating meetings over Zoom, there’s more to our metamorphosis than just ease with teleconferencing, Warneka said. Faculty and students have become comfortable using new applications and operating in learning technology environments they might never have considered prior to lockdown.

“Guest lectures over Zoom, the use of online whiteboards, ELMS-Canvas discussions, in-video quizzing in Panopto—our dedicated faculty are using so many tools to enhance in-person instruction,” she said.

We’re staying flexible.
Pre-pandemic, course design often boiled down to dividing content between 15 weeks of three, weekly in-person classes, plus additional lab time. That remains an option, but the “blended” approach—combining in person and online learning (both synchronous and asynchronous)—continues to expand, Warneka said.

“From a teaching and learning standpoint, I would say the biggest legacy of transformation was the disruption to the concept of the formal, in-person class schedule,” she said. “We are seeing faculty consider what is best for learning, what is best for their students, and purposefully transitioning between modalities as needed. I think this truly exemplifies what adaptive innovative learning will look like in the future.”