One year into the #COVID19 crisis: Students and teachers share their stories
Students and teachers share their stories
In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought learning to a screeching halt worldwide, creating the most severe global education disruption in history. Students, teachers and parents from the UNESCO Associated Schools Network shared their inspiring stories on coping and continuing to learn during the lockdown. A year later, we caught up with some of the learners and teachers from all corners of the world to hear how they were doing. Watch and listen to their stories.
Teaching and Learning During COVID and Beyond
The COVID-19 pandemic is significantly impacting families, both in terms of their physical and mental well-being, as well as their financial stability. According to recent data from the American Psychological Association, parents are experiencing significantly high levels of stress. i As schooling has shifted online, children—many of whom have spent months in social isolation, while families experienced both economic hardship and health distress—are also being affected. High numbers of parents are reporting that their children are facing social and emotional health challenges, including loneliness, anxiety, and depression.ii Many children are being exposed to varying levels of trauma that may undermine their sense of safety and stability, and have long term impacts on their daily lives, including their ability to engage in learning. Distance education has not met the challenge of addressing present educational needs, even under the best of circumstances.iii In many cases, students are without devices or internet access; teachers lack experience with remote learning; parents do not have the additional time to devote towards their children’s studies; or students simply did not show up online.iv Significant disparities exist in access to technology and broadband connectivity, which are further exacerbated across the urban-rural divide. This is particularly evident among the most vulnerable students, many of whom required accommodations in ordinary times, including those with disabilities, in foster-care, or living in poverty. Furthermore, instructional capacity is an additional barrier impeding the transition to online learning, both in terms of teacher preparation programs and as many school districts struggle to provide adequate guidance to teachers on instructional delivery and tracking participation and progress. v These factors contribute to learning loss and further increase the risk that millions of students will have large gaps in educational attainment, impacting their preparation for a lifetime of learning and employment. Preliminary research is already bearing this out. The average student could begin the next academic year having fallen behind academically by as much as of seven months.vi These losses are expected to be greater for minority and low-income children, further widening racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps.vii Black and Latinx students could experience learning losses up to an equivalent of 10 months. As schools look to reopen in the fall and work to transition students back into the classroom, they will face numerous challenges, including preparing school buildings to meet new state and federal health saftey guidelines, ensuring smaller class sizes, temperature checks, increased access to disinfectants, and personal protective equipment. At the same time, administrators and teachers will need to catch students up, perhaps through reviewing skills and content that would have normally been covered during the previous academic year, investing in summer instructional programs, and opening early for students with special needs. Additionally, the social, emotional, and behavioral needs of many students will be greatly increased. Moreover, with schools not reopening uniformly and some parents uncomfortable with sending their children back to school before a vaccine is available, remote instruction will need to be strengthened. These new requirements will have to be addressed at a time of significantly shrinking budgets. Large majorities of parents, across all demographic groups, believe that schools should rethink how students learn, by developing innovative ways to teach children due to COVID-19.ii This crisis provides an opportunity for educators, communities, states, school districts, and the federal government to reexamine how students are educated and address all dynamics of learning by integrating academic achievement with social and emotional learning; trauma-informed practices; and principles of motivation and engagement. Isolation, disrupted routines, and ongoing uncertainty are highlighting the importance of emotional management, relationship building, and problem-solving. These critical skills can help students learn and cope with stress, instability, and trauma—both while distance learning and in a school setting.
Undergraduate students’ perceived stress levels in summer term 2020 - A comparison to preceding academic terms
Students perceived less stress in Summer term 2020 than before the pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic tremendously affected teaching and learning in both schools and higher education settings. In Germany, university students had to shift from in-person group learning in lectures and seminars to new forms of e-learning and distance teaching. Even before COVID-19, stress was a common experience among university students, and these changes have reinforced students’ stress levels. Based on a sample of n = 110 German university students, this study explores whether students’ perceived stress levels in summer term 2020 differed from their perceived stress levels in preceding academic terms. The results show that students experienced lower levels of stress and higher levels of joy in summer term 2020 compared to preceding academic terms. Despite limitations in the interpretation of these findings, possible explanations such as changes in academic and non-academic workload or decreased demands in university exams are discussed.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed education forever. This is how
The COVID-19 has resulted in schools shut all across the world. Globally, over 1.2 billion children are out of the classroom. As a result, education has changed dramatically, with the distinctive rise of e-learning, whereby teaching is undertaken remotely and on digital platforms. Research suggests that online learning has been shown to increase retention of information, and take less time, meaning the changes coronavirus have caused might be here to stay.
An effective blended online teaching and learning strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic
Effective blended online teaching & learning strategy
The shift to distance teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic brought about a real challenge for both instructors and students. To face these difficulties in teaching undergraduate Chemistry courses at the University of Santo Tomas, a blended learning strategy in the context of teaching and learning of Physical Chemistry 1 and Analytical Chemistry for Chemical Engineering students were employed. Here, we present an online strategy that facilitated the transition from traditional face-to-face learning to full online instruction. This is a five-component blended learning strategy referred to as Discover, Learn, Practice, Collaborate and Assess (DLPCA). In DLPCA, the asynchronous part of the teaching was achieved through broadcast of pre-recorded lecture videos on YouTube to allow students to study and progress with learning at their own pace. The synchronous part of the teaching was conducted using video conferencing platforms, such as Zoom or Google Meet. The DLPCA strategy was presented and discussed to the students prior to its implementation. The analysis of the teaching and learning experience based on three indicators (i) student’s learning experience, (ii) student’s academic performance and (iii) instructor observations showed that DLPCA had a positive impact on students and instructors. The identified challenges were stability of internet connection and instructor’s familiarity with readily available internet-based teaching tools, such as video conferencing software. Instructors must also find means to improve their interaction with students and maintain student interest and engagement during online classes. The survey also indicated that most of the students are satisfied with the DLCPA strategy. Hence, this strategy is considered a manageable and effective alternative that can be adapted to full online instruction to other undergraduate Chemistry lecture courses. Overall, the findings and insights in this study will add valuable resources for further hybrid instruction in the post-COVID-19 time in higher education.
Lorico D.S. Lapitan Jr., Cristina E.Tiangco, Divine Angela G. Sumalinog, Noel S. Sabarillo, Joey Mark Diazc
A Literature Review on Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Teaching and Learning
A report on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on online teaching and learning of various papers.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created the largest disruption of education systems in human history, affecting nearly 1.6 billion learners in more than 200 countries. Closures of schools, institutions and other learning spaces have impacted more than 94% of the world’s student population. This has brought far-reaching changes in all aspects of our lives. Social distancing and restrictive movement policies have significantly disturbed traditional educational practices. Reopening of schools after relaxation of restriction is another challenge with many new standard operating procedures put in place. Within a short span of the COVID-19 pandemic, many researchers have shared their works on teaching and learning in different ways. Several schools, colleges and universities have discontinued face-to-face teachings. There is a fear of losing 2020 academic year or even more in the coming future. The need of the hour is to innovate and implement alternative educational system and assessment strategies. The COVID-19 pandemic has provided us with an opportunity to pave the way for introducing digital learning. This article aims to provide a comprehensive report on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on online teaching and learning of various papers and indicate the way forward.
Mapping moments in my teaching and learning. Kathryn Coleman, Drawing on paper. 2018
A cartographic drawing of mapped movements in the studio.
The changes we need: Education post COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused both unprecendented disruptions and massive changes to education. However, as schools return, these changes may disappear. Moreover, not all of the changes are necessarily the changes we want in education. In this paper, we argue that the pandemic has created a unique opportunity for educational changes that have been proposed before COVID-19 but were never fully realized. We identify three big changes that education should make post COVID: curriculum that is developmental, personalized, and evolving; pedagogy that is student-centered, inquiry-based, authentic, and purposeful; and delivery of instruction that capitalizes on the strengths of both synchronous and asynchronous learning.
The Student Experience Survey (SES) provides a national architecture for collecting data on key aspects of the higher education student experience. The SES focuses on aspects of the student experience that are measurable, linked with learning and development outcomes, and potentially able to be influenced by institutions. The SES measures five aspects of the student experience: Skills Development, Learner Engagement, Teaching Quality, Student Support, and Learning Resources. The five aspects of student experience or focus areas in the SES comprise of related items representing feedback from students about their higher education experience regarding outcomes, behaviours and satisfaction. In order to report meaningfully on these varied aspects of the student experience, each student is adjudged to have rated their experience either positively or negatively for each item and, based on the item responses, each focus area. Scores presented in this report for both items and focus areas represent the proportion of students responding positively. Detailed information on how the scores are calculated are in Appendix 3. The survey items and response frames are reproduced in Appendix 2. Originally developed as the University Experience Survey (UES) in 2011, the SES was renamed in 2015 to facilitate the inclusion of students from non-university higher education institutions (NUHEIs). Prior to 2020, other than minor changes in wording to ensure the survey instrument was relevant to all higher education students, the survey questionnaire has remained relatively unchanged from the 2014 Student Experience Survey. In 2020, a new international student module was added to measure broader aspects of the international student experience including living and accommodation experience and reasons for choosing to study in Australia. A detailed list of the new international student items can be found in Appendix 2.
QILT - Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching
Factors Contributing to Teacher Burnout During COVID-19
As teachers returned to the classroom for the 2020–2021 school year, they faced new and challenging environments, instructional approaches, and roles as educators. The current study is one of the first empirical studies that identified factors contributing to teacher burnout due to COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) and instruction during fall 2020. Controlling for demographics, the results found significant predictors for teacher burnout-stress those being COVID-19 anxiety, current teaching anxiety, anxiety communicating with parents, and administrative support. The results are important for schools and researchers to consider when it comes to the impact of COVID-19 on teachers.