Beyond COVID Chaos: What Postsecondary Educators Learned from the Online Pivot

Figures & data

Table 1 A brief guide to the researchers and their institutions

Author	Institution	Years of teaching experience	List of classes taught (typical class size)	Learning objectives designed by instructor or department?	Mode of assessment decision by instructor or department?	Textbook decision by instructor or department?
Chung	The Chinese University of Hong Kong	3	Theories of Global Political Economy (master’s, 35); Global Environmental Politics (master’s, 30); Global Change and Environmental Sustainability (undergraduate, 40)	Instructor; requires approval from department and faculty	Instructor	Instructor
Day	Okanagan College	30	Introductory physical geography – multiple courses (20); Cartography, GIS, Remote Sensing (20); Geographical Hydrology (15); Physical Geography of Emerging Economies (10)	Instructor	Instructor	Instructor
Doolittle	University of Texas, Austin	43	Mexico and Caribbean America (75); Environment, Development, & Food Production (90); Field Techniques (16)	Instructor	Instructor	Instructor
Housel	Sinclair Community College	25	Human Geography (20); World Regional Geography (20); Intro to GIS (15); Cartography (10); Advanced Spatial Analysis (10); Internships/Capstone (1–2)	Course coordinator; selected courses require approval from state GEO/GIS committees	Course coordinator	Course coordinator
McDaniel	Kennesaw State University	10	Introduction to Human Geography (45); World Regional Geography (45); Urban Geography (35); Population Geography (35); Health Geography (35); Geography of Europe (35); Geography of North America (35); Research Methods (35)	Instructor	Instructor	Instructor

Table 2 Terminology used in this article

Term	Meaning
Learning management system (LMS)	Software to distribute teaching content, organize learning activities, and assess and track student progress. An LMS can be used to deliver an online course or to support a campus-based course. Examples of widely used LMSs include Moodle and Canvas.
Face-to-face course	A course in which the students and faculty are present in the same physical space. Traditional lecture and seminar courses as well as field courses are face-to-face. A face-to-face-course might use an LMS to provide copies of slides and reading materials, and enable submission of assignments, but the primary contact between all students and faculty occurs in a physical space.
Online course or learning	A course or course component in which students interact with course materials, other students, and faculty primarily through an LMS.
Asynchronous course	A course in which students engage in online learning, with no scheduled meeting times with faculty or peers. Course materials are prerecorded or written, and faculty and peer interactions are through messaging or discussion boards. Prior to the pandemic, most online learning was asynchronous.
Synchronous course	A course in which students engage in online learning with “live” lectures and discussion presented through Zoom, Blackboard Collaborate, and similar apps. Video may be recorded for later review by students.
Blended courses or learning	A course that involves both an online and face-to-face component. These are typically face-to-face courses that use an LMS for assignments and discussion. A face-to-face course that primarily uses an LMS to provide copies of lecture slides and to make course announcements is not considered to be blended. The boundary between blended and face-to-face courses is becoming increasingly blurred, however.
Ambidextrous teaching	A course in which some students participate in a face-to-face environment in the classroom, and other students participate in a synchronous online environment.

Note: Intended as a guide to usage, these are not comprehensive definitions of the terms, all of which are contested in the literature. Note we have avoided the use of the term hybrid, which is sometimes synonymous with ambidextrous, and sometimes synonymous with (or a variant of) blended.

Figure 1 Modalities of postsecondary education.

Table 3 Lessons and their implementation

Lesson	Implementation
Students are open to different ways of learning	Provide as wide a range of teaching and learning options as possible under local circumstances. Encourage students to take a wide range of different teaching modes, bearing in mind that education is about learning how to learn. Consider bringing more synchronous options into traditional asynchronous online courses.
Privacy is an issue for students	Encourage, but do not compel students to turn their video on. Inform students of options to blur or superimpose a background (if available). Inform students of external monitoring and surveillance issues.
Teaching and learning across borders creates challenges for faculty and students	Ask students in which country they are located and be aware of the political and legal circumstances in that country. Inform students that online conversations could be monitored by unauthorized third parties. Consider not recording classes. Provide alternative assignments or assessment schemes for students who might be vulnerable. Ask students if they have any issues with access to course materials and provide readings and textbooks through the institution’s library if necessary.
Assessment needs to be reexamined	Use a wide range of different assessment approaches, with more open-ended questions in tests, and less emphasis on factual recall. Develop more project-based assessments. Work with other institutions to make nontraditional assessments acceptable in course transfer.
Field work remains an essential component of geography education	Encourage the development of more field work options. Consider the use of personalized field work assignments in courses. Work to have licensing bodies recognize the value of a range of different field work types. Use virtual field work as a complement to lectures and “real” field work.
Student stress levels need to be lowered	Hold conversations within departments about the number of hours students should spend on a course, and have clear communication of that information to students at the beginning of the course. Redesign course curricula to reduce material to essentials. Think about what needs to be removed when adding new tasks or material to a course.
There is a need to address inequalities among students	Encourage students to be open about their challenges. Require faculty to be respectful of students who have overcome significant barriers to be present in a course. Provide departmental support for textbook and laptop loan schemes and foodbanks. Facilitate departmental support for tutoring and mentoring schemes.
Nobody needs to be isolated from research opportunities and collaboration	Encourage research groups to welcome participation in their research by stand-alone geographers and others outside of research-intensive universities.
There are limits on what we can do	Have reasonable expectations by departments and ourselves. Have discussions within departments about equity issues, especially in relation to tasks assigned to faculty who have been historically marginalized.
There is a need to move faculty away from precarious employment	Have conversations within departments and with the Dean’s office about the role of part-time and contract faculty within the department. Respect and consider the needs of part-time and contract faculty in timetabling and course allocation. Encourage participation of faculty in institutional and departmental strategic planning. Discuss precarious employment issues with sympathetic members of governing bodies. Encourage negotiation within unionized work environments.
Tenure is under siege	Be vigilant of threats to academic freedom that could undermine teaching, especially during times of distraction. Engage in political and public discourse to explain the meaning and value of academic freedom from a societal perspective.
It’s healthy to cultivate a work–life balance	Seek an appropriate work–life balance.