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From “lo” to COVID19 – a changing landscape in education

Updated on 5 min read
Can you think back to a time without the Internet? Being an eighties teen, I definitely can remember a home without internet, life without cell phones, and education with technology limited to calculators and typewriters. Have you ever wondered what the first communication was between computers?  lo.  Yes, lo was the first transmission in October 1969!  The actual word was login but the system crashed after the first two letters were transmitted.  Sometimes a crashing failure is actually the beginning of a whole new world!  We are currently in our own beginning of a new educational world with the COVID19 pandemic.
It is amazing to think that in just 50 years, we have gone from the first communication between computers to a nation dependent on the Internet to provide education during the COVID19 pandemic.  Friday, March 13, 2020, opened my eyes to just how different our educational landscape was becoming. We were in the first week of the Spring Quarter at Louisiana Tech.  I had just met my EDCI 425 Science Methods students the day prior, and I was looking forward to a great quarter with a fabulous group.  Ding. Outlook alerted me to a new email.  The email was from Dr. Guice, President of Louisiana Tech, and provided a COVID19 update.  Beginning Monday, March 16, 2020, we were transitioning to online course delivery.
As we now enter our final week of the quarter, it is time to reflect on the experience. As I read the email from Dr. Guice, my first concern was communication.  I had only met once with my class and didn’t have a communication plan outside of those provided by Louisiana Tech.  What if they rarely checked their school email?  What if they don’t sign onto Moodle?  What if the Tech infrastructure was temporarily down?  I quickly set up a Group Me for our class and sent out an email providing the information to join the Group Me, my cell number, as well as meeting information for the next week. Our course Welcome page on Moodle was then updated with the information.  Within minutes, students were joining our class Group Me, and by the end of the day, all of the students had joined.  What a relief it was to be able to quickly shoot them a text as needed.
Next, my focus turned to providing course materials to my students and providing edtech assistance to anyone needing it.  The SciTEC crew was a huge help building STEM buckets for my students with materials to get us through the majority of the quarter. Creativity was at an all-time high throughout the College of Education from transitioning face-to-face activities to the online environment to setting up home classrooms to exploring new technologies to integrate into newly created activities.

The following weeks were primarily filled with providing edtech assistance, brainstorm sessions with faculty, troubleshooting, teaching, tutorial creations, weekly campus chats, and webpage creations. The assistance, brainstorming, and troubleshooting has continued throughout the entire quarter and will continue throughout the summer.  Collaboration with and assisting faculty has been a huge benefit of this time working from home.

Though my course was already built as a blended environment, there were numerous adjustments needed to transition to fully online. Once communication and materials were addressed, I turned my attention to active learning and building strategies to catch ah-ha moments.  Active Learning was created through the design of lessons as well as the integration of tools such as Google Docs, Google Slides, Goosechase, and Zoom breakout rooms. One of the greatest moments in teaching is the ah-ha moments and building relationships with students.  This was accomplished through regular and varied communication, social media, and flexibility.

The tutorials I created were used to expand existing pages and create new pages on the Hub website with a focus on tools being used during the transition to online learning. The LaTech COE Hub is a new addition to the College of Education focusing on creating an environment to support and strengthen teaching and learning across all stages of education for both instructors and students by providing active learning opportunities. Some of the focused tutorial topics included Zoom, Moodle, Microsoft 365, and Google.

The Hub partnered with the Center for Instructional Technology (CIT) to provide weekly Q & A Cafe chats each Friday.  These chats are virtual meetings held online as a Zoom session for faculty and staff to discuss online teaching strategies as well as to share experiences while moving courses online.  We also provided a walkthrough of Microsoft 365 tools as well as cheat sheets for possible active learning tools such as Kahoot, Wizer.me, and Goosechase.  The Q & A Cafe chats were provided throughout the Spring Quarter and we will resume again in the fall.  For the summer, the HUB and CIT will partner to provide a virtual conference, EdTech 2 Go. 

Another resource provided by the College of Education CIL department was ConnecTechEd.  ConnectTechEd provides assistance to parents and students from our CIL  professors.  Four Zoom sessions focused on core subjects were offered each week throughout the Spring Quarter, and we will resume in the fall.  The actual format of ConnecTechEd in the fall has not been decided. 

As we look toward the summer, plans have already begun for programs to provide virtual experiences that once were face to face.  One such program is the GEAR UP camp sponsored by SciTEC in the College of Education.  Louisiana GEAR UP camps are provided through a partnership with LOFSA and the Board of Regents.  Imagine moving a face to face camp for middle-high school students to fully virtual.  We are still working out the details and testing various tools, but it is bound to be an experience for all involved.

Just how different is our educational landscape since the COVID19 pandemic?  Every administrator, teacher, student, parent, and staff member will enter Fall 2020 with new experiences learned through failures and successes during the COVID19 pandemic.  From these experiences, our educational landscape will begin to evolve into a new world of education.

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