Emergency Remote Teaching: A Paradigm Shift in Educational Crisis Management

COVID-19 has highlighted Online Education blessing in disguise. Virtual Learning Apps, Digital Initiatives, and Software technologies have been recognized as instrumental for bringing great educational revolutions in the overall education system. Indeed, the quick transformation of face-to-face teaching to an online arrangement gave birth to a novel concept of Emergency Remote Teaching as a new normal in the education system globally. This teaching is quite different from a well-planned online teaching experience and is usually called Moving instructions online. Many professionals of educational technology have pointed out that there exists a clear-cut difference between online learning, MOOCs, and the present trend of CORONA education by converting face-to-face courses to Online learning instruction. As and when a crisis or emergence occurs, educational institutions to be shut down, emergency remote learning may be a good substitute of face to face learning. Unlike Online Learning, Emergency Remote Teaching is temporary. 

This particular teaching is concerned with the present online teaching scenario during the COVID pandemic what we are doing in existing situations with educational concerns. It is a substitute and unplanned method of teaching students in form of a virtual class from a distant place via software technology that simply gives equivalence to a face to face classroom teaching. This is a temporary shift of face-to-face class into an alternate delivery mode in an emergency or crisis in response to something beyond human control. It is concerned with remote teaching solutions for learning endeavors for educational institutions that work otherwise be delivered face to face teaching and that will return to that format once the crisis or emergence has been subsided. The prime objective of this system is not to construct a robust educational system but rather to provide temporary access to teaching-learning endeavors and instructional support in a matter that is quick to set up and is reliably available during emergence or crisis. (Hodges et al. 2020) The foremost characteristic of this ERT is despite suspended classes without stop learning and meant to be temporary. It is only an alternative mode of Face to face learning. Curriculum and Syllabus are converted to an online environment without focusing on Online Pedagogies. Live lectures, recorded lectures, voice-over PPT. Moocs, e-texts, handouts, and videos. Staff development may be further processed via webinars. Classes will go on with Synchronous Mode. 

The focus is on highlighting some popular and successful strategies and tools to cope with Emergency Remote Teaching Solutions that work otherwise be delivered face-to-face and return to that format once the crisis or emergence has been abated. The very first strategy is the use of Synchronous online hours to support student learning by providing direct (synchronous instruction) through Face-to-face Dialogues and Discussions, Conversations through Telephone and Mobile, Live Audio/Video Seminar or lecture. For this, there are available tools that can be used with a little effort. Google Meet, WebEx, Zoom, and Skype platform, etc. are a good example of this.

 

The second foremost requirement of an online learning system is engagement and interaction with a high level of participation. In this mode, this is highly recommended that teacher must engage or interact regularly with students, individually or as a group through Email, by posting a welcome message or announcements on the course page, or by engaging students in online group discussions or chat sessions, by creating Polls and Surveys or designing Interactive Learning Exercises. Tools for this task, Email. LMS like MOODLE, Google Classroom, Edmodo, and Canvas, etc. eXe learning software for Interactive Learning Exercises can be used. 

As an asynchronous instruction, the third strategy consists of providing recorded lectures and assignment explanations in form of Audio, Video, and E-Text. Posting of Course Material and Open Educational Resources. Tools for these tasks are Podcasting, Audacity (audio only), Screencast-o-Matic, and PowerPoint (with audio), etc. There are some good OER that can be accessed. Thus by using Synchronous and Asynchronous, we may monitor students while delivering instructions. Interaction and engagement.

If we talk about Challenges and Roadmap for Emergency remote teaching; of course, due to COVID 19 crisis of quick unplanned, and rapid transformation has generated a lot of tensions in form of no training, insufficient bandwidth, less preparation, bad and dissatisfied user experience leading to unsuccessful sustained growth and needs a new and advance model of education. In my presentation, hopefully, a new model of education is visualized which is going to be the new normal after COVID 19 crisis. If we see the present system of this Corona Education, there seems to be a Lacking reconstruction of a sophisticated educational ecosystem. We may say it Structured Course System. But we may propose an alternative plan of course eco system at the beginning of the semester. Further, there may be lacking resources and limited technology that may not yield good results that are similar with face to face learning. By arranging good technical infrastructure, and high internet bandwidth speed, the problem can be sorted out. Learners may not have good access to the computer, laptop, mobile, or a reliable internet connection. For this by adopting a BYOD policy or Bring your device, we may sort out this problem. It may be possible that full faculty support would not be there and students may not have a choice. Faculty and Students must have the readiness to opt for Emergence Remote Teaching by giving them consultations and guidance. Faculty is also not in a position to adapt quickly to technology for teaching online systems with less professional development. This quick adaptation may result in a stressful situation among faculty. There must be provisions of adequate training to have expertise on digital tools and technology.  Evaluation of course outcomes may not be possible because of quickly converting the course to be delivered online in an unplanned manner. Institutions and teachers must have an alternative mode of assessment need-based.

The concluded statement consists of the fact that every institution must have a college emergency learning plan where all instructional materials, courses can be redesigned to fit with the requirement of the online environment. Some other aspects include assessing the system’s current digital infrastructure (internet, device access), student and teacher digital capabilities, and budget availability that must be considered while adopting emergency remote teaching.

References:

• Hodges, C., Moore, S., Lockee, B., Trust, T., & Bond, A. (2020). The difference between Emergency remote teaching and learning. Retrieved from https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning
• Murphy, M. P. A. (2020a). COVID-19 and emergency e-learning: Consequences of the securitization of higher education for post-pandemic pedagogy. Contemporary Security Policy, 41(3), 492-505.
• Rush, S. C., Partridge, A., & Wheeler, J. (2016). Implementing emergency online schools on the fly as a means of responding to school closures after disaster strikes. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 45(2), 188-201.
•  Barbour, M. K., LaBonte, R., Hodges, C., Moore, S., Lockee, B., Trust, T. & Kelly, K. (2020). Understanding pandemic pedagogy: Differences between emergency remote, remote, and online teaching. State of the Nation: K-12 e-Learning in Canad
• Bozkurt, A., & Sharma, R.C. (2020). Emergency remote teaching in a time of global crisis due to CoronaVirus pandemic. Asian Journal of Distance Education, 15(1),  i-vi.

(Prof. Vandana Punia, Dean Faculty of Education, Human Resource Development Centre. Guru Jambheshwar University Of S&T, Hisar. She is also the Course Coordinator of National Resource Center, Pedagogical Innovations and Research Methodology.  (MHRD, Govt. of India).