Key principles: Virtual learning contexts

Since the winter of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world, many instructors and learners have been teaching and learning in various virtual learning contexts, which include

• fully online courses, which were thoughtfully developed before and during the pandemic and will persist even as more learners return to campuses around the world;
• remote courses, which were developed (in many cases quite quickly) in response to institutional classroom closures due to the pandemic. Some of these courses will continue being offered online, even as learners start to return to the classroom; and
• blended courses (hybrid courses), which involve some blend of online learning components and in-person classroom activities, which are typically focused on active learning, problem-solving, hands-on application, and interactions that are more difficult to do asynchronously or virtually.

One thing that many instructors and learners are craving and missing is the human and social connection that has been interrupted in their academic, work, and social lives. There are many ways to enhance virtual learning experiences, for both instructors and learners, to help them feel more connected, engaged, and included. Before we launch into these, let’s take a moment to think about our virtual learners, what is unique to the virtual learning context, and what we hope virtual learning will look like post-pandemic.

Note

The COVID-19 pandemic marked a significant point in history for most of us and had a huge impact on virtual learning in higher education, resulting in many lessons learned and some that we are still learning. One of the biggest growth areas that came from the challenges of this time is greater awareness, understanding, and interest in humanizing learning and the importance of institutions, instructors, and learners in growing all of our capacities to support mental health and wellness, equity, and inclusivity in virtual teaching in higher education. Now that most instructors and learners have experienced virtual education, there is incredible buy-in to build capacity in delivering courses in a more flexible way. Many welcome a more fully online or blended future in education, but would like to see it done right—with humans front and centre of the experience.

Key principles: Characteristics of your virtual learners

While online and blended courses have been widely available at many universities and colleges around the world for over a decade, the number of online and blended course offerings significantly increased in the few years prior to the pandemic. The pandemic accelerated that growth drastically, as just about all learners experienced learning in virtual contexts while at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there are some important differences to keep in mind about virtual teaching in a pandemic, relative to virtual teaching before and after the pandemic:

• The pandemic was a period marked by a lot of anxiety and uncertainty for many, and isolation, loss, and trauma for some.
• Most instructors, academic support unit (ASU) staff, and learners had not planned for the pivot to virtual teaching and felt underprepared and overwhelmed.
• Many of us did not really choose to work, learn, and/or teach in these virtual contexts, but we did our best to rise to the challenges.

During the pandemic, most learners became virtual learners and with little choice in the matter; post-pandemic, learners have regained their agency, and with it, we’ll see the re-emergence of self-selection patterns. These patterns may mirror those of pre-pandemic times, in terms of who tended to select virtual learning contexts. For instance, research has shown that online learners typically

• chose the online format for its flexibility (Bolliger & Martindale, 2004; Braun, 2008; Troop et al., 2020),
• tend to be slightly older more mature learners ranging from about 25–50 years old (Moore & Kearskey, 2005),
• bring rich life experiences to the virtual classroom (Bostin & Ice, 2011; O’Shea et al., 2015), and
• have more commitments outside the classroom such as busy work schedules or family responsibilities, which can pose challenges to them (Greenland & Moore, 2014).

The pandemic shed light on and fed into some of the challenges in virtual learning, but as a result, people working in higher education have a greater awareness of the issues, tools, strategies, and resources to help mitigate some of these challenges.

This diversity in the virtual classroom can be a beautiful thing, but accommodating so many different learners, learning from home (which is not a safe or quiet place for all learners), across many time zones, with technology and bandwidth limitations has brought to the foreground some of the barriers that virtual learners face, which are often tied to and compounded by social and economic inequities. Understanding that these issues may be at play, to varying extents, for many of your learners is the first step towards mitigating the negative impact these can have on learning through your course design.

Virtual learning requires a greater degree of self-regulation, self-motivation, metacognition, and self-direction from learners (Brown, 1997; Tsay et al., 2000; Khiat, 2015; Kırmızı, 2015; Johnson, 2015) and not all learners and instructors realize how difficult this aspect of online learning can be. There are, however, many design and facilitation strategies that have a big impact on learner motivation, persistence, metacognition, and academic outcomes and success in virtual learning contexts (Muilenburg & Berge, 2005; Jaggars & Xu, 2016).

Before we get into some high impact design strategies to help build authentic connection and learning, let’s take a closer look at a few of the big challenges and affordances of virtual learning.

Key principles: Challenges and affordances of virtual learning

Some instructors, teaching assistants (TAs), and learners thrive in the virtual teaching and learning environment, appreciating some of the affordances that virtual learning offers, such as the enhanced flexibility of providing content and interactions asynchronously, which can give both instructors and learners additional time to prepare, engage, process, integrate, and reflect. While others find virtual teaching and learning to be a lonely space, missing face-to-face interactions, and frustrated by struggles related to and requirements to learn many different technologies and tools. Instructors, TAs, preceptors, and learners can experience access challenges resulting from bandwidth limitations in different regions, which segregates learners based on geographical location and social-economic status (SES). The most significant access barriers occur during synchronous learning, interactions, and assessments.

The following table provides a summary of some of the challenges and affordances or benefits of synchronous and asynchronous approaches to

• course content delivery (e.g., synchronous video lectures vs. asynchronous self-paced modules),
• interactions (e.g., synchronous video discussions vs. asynchronous discussion forums), and
• activities and assessments (e.g., synchronous timed tests or oral tests vs. take-home open book test).

Challenges and affordances of synchronous aspects of virtual courses table (PDF)

Challenges and affordances of asynchronous aspects of virtual courses table (PDF)

Strategies in action: Making the most of asynchronous delivery

Moving the laboratory into a virtual classroom

In this video, Dr. Cynthia Pruss, Queen’s University, outlines her experiences and lessons learned in moving a core undergraduate laboratory to the online space. She explains the important features of the course as it originally was run and how she ensured the online experience remained as equivalent as possible. She also reflects on how the process went and how students reported they engaged and enjoyed the course. This course is a higher resource and tool-intensive example.

Highlights include

• how a high degree of student support (office hours, questions and answer sessions) was organized and maintained,
• how early course surveys allowed for minor improvements as the course was running,
• how “live” science was translated into remote learning,
• how authentic online peer review was incorporated into the course,
• testimonials from students, and
• recognition that this is a high resource, tool-intensive experience where many collaborators worked together.

Teaching intro archeology via storytelling and videos

In this example, Dr. Barbara Reeves, Queen’s University, discusses how she converted her face-to-face course in introductory archaeological methods and techniques to an asynchronous online course. Using the proverb, “necessity is the mother of invention” she invented her own way to get over resource and time constraints. This is a limited resource and tool-conservative example.
Highlights include:

• creating “content storybooks” to support learning which included photos of graduate students and faculty ‘in action in the field’ so that students could imagine where they might be in a few years;
• releasing storybooks on a timed schedule to allow learners to focus deeply on a topic before moving on and to encourage active engagement with the course;
• how short, weekly assignments, weekly emails, and office hours increased engagement;
• videos created of the professor in the field (sometimes literally!) explaining course content and context;
• testimonials from students;
• how something as simple as a “punny” shirt or presence of a pet on course props can bring a lot of humor and enjoyment to students; and
• how she might re-adapt the material to bring it back to the physical classroom

Strategies in action: Making the most of synchronous delivery

Students mastering content through synchronous presentations

In a fourth year undergraduate neuroscience course, Dr. Susan Boehnke organizes her students (under 80 students) into groups of three. Students are tasked to complete an in-depth critical analysis of a scientific paper and prepare a 15-minute synchronous group PowerPoint presentation. The presentation is done over video-conference software and is followed by a 20-minute Q&A session where each student in the group is required to individually answer several questions from the instructor to demonstrate their knowledge and mastery of the content of the presentation and related concepts from the core course materials. This is good practice for a future thesis defence, or other such oral examinations.

Highlights of this approach:

• Flexibility: students are randomly assigned partners based on how they rank which weeks they would prefer to present; this forces them to learn to work with others who are not always their choice.
• High quality products: being in a group for the presentation allows students to produce a more complex product compared to if they worked alone. 2 to 3 students is ideal for this assignment.
• Targeted use of synchronous time: students only meet synchronously once during the semester; the presentation dates are known at the beginning of the semester and once students are in their groups and they have ranked their preferred presentation dates, the instructor organizes a specific time on that date to present.
• Balanced grade distribution, fairness, and reduced anxiety: most of the student’s grade is in the group mark; however, they must also be successful in individually answering questions in the live session. This can help high-performing students distinguish themselves from individuals who may have been carried by the group – a common source of anxiety and frustration from students.
• Real time connection: The students get to experience an almost one-on-one teaching and learning experience with the instructor, which is not very common in this type of learner’s context. The students get instant feedback on their presentation and can learn how rigorous scientific questioning works (and prepares them for graduate school, if that is their chosen path).

Students generally love the assignment as it is academically challenging and allows them to delve deeply into the discipline in small groups, but also allows them to control a part of their own grade.

Credit: Dr. Susan Boehnke, Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queen’s Univerisity

In conclusion, virtual courses have many affordances and challenges, but there remains lots of room to innovate, be creative, and be yourself with your students. If you are stuck in deciding how you might best use this method of teaching, viewing your course as a learning space that can be a combination of both synchronous and asynchronous could be helpful.

Consider the various course elements that are shown in the figure

Even if your course cannot have synchronous elements, think about how you can make the higher-order thinking elements of your course ‘more human’ and more caring. The next sections of the module will explore these ideas in more detail.

References and credits

The sections “Virtual Learning Context,” “Characteristics of Your Virtual Learners,” and “Challenges and Affordances of Virtual Learning” are derived from original Fostering Engagement: Facilitating Online Courses in Higher Education, Unit 1. a  by K.E. Wilson and D. Opperwall.

The original work is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license, except where otherwise noted. This derivative work, “Virtual Learning Context,” “Characteristics of Your Virtual Learners”, and “Challenges and Affordances of Virtual Learning” has been adapted from the original through modification of text, images, and headings and retains the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license.