The Immediate Impact of COVID-19 on Postsecondary Teaching and Learning

Figures & data

Table 1 Characteristics of postsecondary institutions

	Macalester College	The Chinese University of Hong Kong	Okanagan College	The University of Texas at Austin	Sinclair Community College	Kennesaw State University
Location	Saint Paul, MN	Hong Kong, China	Kelowna, BC	Austin, TX	Dayton, OH	Kennesaw, GA
Types of degree awarded	Bachelor’s degree	Bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD	Associate degrees and diplomas	Bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD	Associate, certificates, applied bachelor’s	Bachelor’s
Total enrollment	2,039	21,051 (17,374 undergraduate, 3,677 graduate; publicly funded programs only)	9,244 (academic and trades)	51,832 (40,804 undergraduate, 11,028 graduate)	25,000+	37,807 (34,499 undergraduate, 3,308 graduate)
Primarily residential?	Yes	No (most live at home or outside campus)	No (most live at home or outside campus)	Yes	No campus housing	Mixed
No. of full-time (tenured) faculty	195 full-time faculty	1,701 total	227 (academic)	1,500 (total = 3,133, includes tenure track, and non–tenure track)	300+ full-time	1,220 total
Geography department pre-COVID modalities
	Face-to-face	Face-to-face	Face-to-face	Face-to-face	Face-to-face Blended/hybrid Fully online	Face-to-face Hybrid Fully online
Anticipated Fall 2020 modalities	Hybrid	Mostly online	Remote learning	Mostly online, some hybrid, a few face-to-face	Online and remote learning	Mostly online, some hybrid, a few face-to-face
No. of faculty (2020)	7 full time 2 part time	Approx. 30 (including adjuncts)	8 (including contract)	28 full time 2 part time	2 full time 5 adjunct	15 full time
No. of geography majors (2020)	76	Approx. 200 undergraduate, approx. 40 Phil/PhD	NA	573 undergraduate, 5 MA, 21 PhD	22 geography, 17 geospatial technology	77 geography, 41 geographic information science, 28 geospatial sciences

Table 2 What undergraduate students at Okanagan College liked and disliked about online teaching

What students liked	What students did not like
Issues raised in all three classes Liked working at home Not having to commute Going back and looking at recorded lectures	Issues raised in all three classes Hard to work at home Harder to communicate with professor Hard to do labs in isolation Lack motivation Missed learning community Missed social aspects of class
Issues raised in two classes Sticking to original schedule Not feeling pressured to speak in class Got help when they needed it	Issues raised in two classes Poor Internet access Eye strain due to looking at a screen all the time Lack of exercise Hard to work in groups Missed deadlines due to lack of routine Changing deadlines
Issues raised in one class Tried something new Labs worked well Ability to screenshot slides	Issues raised in one class Not used to online teaching Inadequate device

Notes: The results are based on students in three classes answering a bonus question on their final examinations. The classes were a first-year physical geography lab class (seventeen students, twelve responses); a second-year class in cartography, GIS, and remote sensing (eighteen students, eighteen responses); and a second-year class in geographical hydrology (twenty-one students, thirteen responses).

Table 3  Recommendations for consideration by geography departments

Short term

Examine first- and second-year course content and focus on the most interesting and relevant aspects to maintain recruitment into geography major programs. This might require changes to upper level courses to address deficiencies created by changes in lower level courses. Undertake systematic faculty and student satisfaction surveys on a recurring basis to provide information for adaptive course management to enhance student and faculty experience. Incorporation of the student voice is an effective tool in course design (Tasch and Tasch 2016). Identify locally relevant key indicators for performance of faculty and students that will provide data on the success of face-to-face and remote teaching during the pandemic, with continuation of the surveys into post-pandemic time. Provide enhanced services and accommodations for disadvantaged students. These could be wraparound or stand-alone services and include the provision of computers, Internet, and housing. Be inclusive. Digital spaces could potentially make it more difficult for faculty to see inequalities, prejudices, discrimination, disparities, racism, and sexism issues, so inclusive face-to-face learning environment principles should be followed in digital space. Design courses and programs that support the mental health and well-being of students and faculty. Initiatives could involve better orientations, flexible deadlines and grading practices, and greater emphasis on kindness, consideration, and inclusiveness in the learning environment. This could be done through more student involvement in course design and implementation. Use the pandemic as a learning focus. Viewed through the various lenses of different subfields of geography or through the key concepts of a particular geography course, geographers can contribute to our understanding and mitigation of the multiscalar impacts of COVID-19 (Chung, Xu, and Zhang 2020). This can “convey the qualities of geography that capture its distinctive benefits as a subject of study” (Bednarz, Heffron, and Huynh 2013, 19). Use the analytics functions of course learning management systems. This will provide an opportunity for faculty to measure student engagement, identify any issues, and follow up with affected students. Provide community-based (service) learning. Like the New Zealand earthquakes of 2010, the pandemic has revealed opportunities for communities to be “new spaces of learning” (Pawson 2016), where students’ research on local pandemic-linked socioenvironmental disruptions can inform planning for recovery of community well-being. It is well documented that geography students and communities benefit from work in the community (Jurmu 2015; Kim 2018). Encourage students to learn independently from faculty. Provide a space that enables students to reach faculty when they need to, but encourage students to work independently. Initiatives like flipped classrooms could provide an opportunity to decenter the role of the instructor and empower students for self-motivated learning (Graham et al. 2017). Identify new ways of building student engagement. This might involve looking at experiences outside of education, such as gamifying learning activities. Such approaches are known to work well in geography classes (e.g., Kim and Shin 2016; Sim et al. 2020).

Longer term

Use the emergency teaching experience to enhance teaching and learning in the conventional classroom. The pandemic has revealed problems that existed prior to the pandemic. Many of the initiatives we suggest here would make sense regardless of the pandemic’s trajectory. Plan to provide more blended or all-online courses. Some students like online delivery, and the Sinclair Community College and Kennesaw State University experience demonstrates the effectiveness of online geography programs. Undertake strategic planning. Although institutional budget challenges might negatively affect departments, there is a rare opportunity to realign qualifications and departments to the needs of society, the economy, and the planet. Departments should identify and secure a niche within their institutions, recognizing the fact that institutional response to the pandemic could produce shifts in institutional mission. Such changes were already underway (Nellis 2017) but will likely accelerate.

Tasch, J., and W. C. Tasch. 2016. Redesigning physical geography 101: Bringing students into the discussion. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 40 (4):565–84. doi: 10.1080/03098265.2016.1201800.

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar

Chung, C. K. L., J. Xu, and M. Zhang. 2020. Geographies of Covid-19: How space and virus shape each other. Asian Geographer 37 (2):99–116. doi: 10.1080/10225706.2020.1767423.

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar

Bednarz, S. W., S. Heffron, and N. T. Huynh, eds. 2013. A road map for 21st century geography education: Geography education research. Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers.

 Google Scholar

Pawson, E. 2016. Classrooms without borders: New spaces and places of learning. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 40 (1):14–30. doi: 10.1080/03098265.2015.1116062.

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar

Jurmu, M. 2015. Incorporating an introductory service-learning experience in a physical geography course. Journal of Geography 114 (2):49–57. doi: 10.1080/00221341.2014.918638.

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar

Kim, M. 2018. Project-based community participatory action research using geographic information technologies. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 42 (1):61–79. doi: 10.1080/03098265.2017.1335294.

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar

Graham, M., J. McLean, A. Read, S. Suchet-Pearson, and V. Viner. 2017. Flipping and still learning: Experiences of a flipped classroom approach for a third-year undergraduate human geography course. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 41 (3):403–17. doi: 10.1080/03098265.2017.1331423.

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar

Kim, M., and J. Shin. 2016. The pedagogical benefits of SimCity in urban geography education. Journal of Geography 115 (2):39–50. doi: 10.1080/00221341.2015.1061585.

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar

Sim, D., E. Boyle, M. S. Leith, A. Williams, A. Jimoyiannis, and P. Tsiotakis. 2020. Learning about Europe through educational gaming. Journal of Geography in Higher Education. Advance online publication. 10.1080/03098265.2020.1803816.

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar

Nellis, M. D. 2017. Transitions in U.S. higher education: Implications for geography learning. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 41 (2):155–65. doi: 10.1080/03098265.2017.1293018.

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar