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I am a Licensed Practical Nurse, and an instructor at Aurora College in Yellowknife, NT. I teach theory courses in the Personal Support Worker program, as well as provide clinical instruction. My primary areas of specialty and interest lie in Mental Health, Dementia and Geriatrics, Community Care and Wound Care. I am currently a student in the M.Ed in Health Professions Education at the University of Saskatchewan. Prior to nursing, I received an H.BES and Geography from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, On.

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Nurse Educator Tips for Teaching Podcast

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Nurse Educator Tips for Teaching Podcast

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Faculty

Maintain a humanistic approach

Flexibility and adaptability

Alternate Clinical Sites

Prioritize graduating students

Utilize virtual simulation experiences to supplement applicable clinical hours

Adhere to INASCL standards when implementing simulation

Students

Academic Support

Emotional Support

Life-in-General Support

Teaching with Technology

Work with IT

Use available technology

Class communication plan

Consider asynchronous learning

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1. All Episodes

2. Preparing Faculty for Online Teaching: FAST

How can we quickly prepare faculty for transition to online teaching? What about alternate clinical sites? How can we support students? Dr. Valerie Howard answers these questions and more. Learn FAST ( Faculty, Alternate clinical sites, Students, T echnology).

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Preparing Faculty for Online Teaching: FAST

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How can we quickly prepare faculty for transition to online teaching? What about alternate clinical sites? How can we support students? Dr. Valerie Howard answers these questions and more. Learn FAST (Faculty, Alternate clinical sites, Students, Technology).

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INASCL Simulation Standards of Best Practice

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INASCL Simulation Standards of Best Practice

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The Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice™ are designed to advance the science of simulation, share best practices, and provide evidence-based guidelines for the practice and development of a comprehensive standard of practice.

The Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice provide a detailed process for evaluating and improving simulation operating procedures and delivery methods that every simulation team will benefit from. Adoption of the Healthcare Simulation Standards demonstrates a commitment to quality and implementation of rigorous evidence-based practices in healthcare education to improve patient care.

Want to read and study the standards in another language? INACSL is partnering with Laerdal Medical and international members of INACSL to translate all ten Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice into multiple languages to make this knowledge more available for our international simulation community. Explore our current language translations with more coming soon.

Onward and Upward: The Healthcare Simulation Standards Preamble

The International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation and Learning (INACSL) Standards Committee and the INACSL Board of Directors (BOD) introduce the fourth edition of the Standards of Best Practice. Since originally announced in 2011, the INACSL Standards of Best Practice have guided the integration, use, and advancement of simulation-based experiences within academia, clinical practice, and research. Healthcare professionals around the globe have and continue to champion simulation; thus, allowing the Standards to flourish. Access the full Preamble here.
Professional Development
Initial and ongoing professional development supports the simulationist across their career. As the practice of simulation-based education grows, professional development allows the simulationist to stay current with new knowledge, provide high-quality simulation experiences, and meet the educational needs of the learners. Access the full standard here.

Prebriefing

Prebriefing is a process which involves preparation and briefing. Prebriefing ensures that simulation learners are prepared for the educational content and are aware of the ground rules for the simulation-based experience. Access the full standard here.

Simulation Design

Simulation-based experiences are purposefully designed to meet identified objectives and optimize achievement of expected outcomes. Access the full standard here.

Facilitation

Facilitation methods are varied and use of a specific method is dependent on the learning needs of the learner and the expected outcomes. Facilitation provides the structure and process to guide participants to work cohesively, to comprehend learning objectives and develop a plan to achieve desired outcomes. Access the full standard here.

The Debriefing Process

All simulation-based educational (SBE) activities must include a planned debriefing process. This debriefing process may include any of the activities of feedback, debriefing, and/or guided reflection. Access the full standard here.

Operations

All simulation-based education programs require systems and infrastructure to support and maintain operations. Access the full standard here.

Outcomes & Objectives

All simulation-based experiences (SBE) originate with the development of measurable objectives designed to achieve expected behaviors and outcomes. Access the full standard here.

Professional Integrity

Professional integrity refers to the ethical behaviors and conduct that are expected of all involved throughout simulation-based experiences (SBE); facilitators, learners, and participants. Access the full standard here.

Simulation-Enhanced-IPE

Simulation-enhanced interprofessional education (Sim- IPE) enables learners from different healthcare professions to engage in a simulation-based experience to achieve linked or shared objectives and outcomes. Access the full standard here.

Evaluation of Learning and Performance

Simulation-based experiences may include evaluation of the learner. Access the full standard here.

Simfographics, Posters, Flipbooks and Physical Copies

INACSL has created a variety of graphic representations and resources to complement the Healthcare Simulation Standards and for use in your classroom, hospital, lab or at home.

Simfographics: Download these free graphics that highlight the main criterion of each standard for use in your presentations or as a teaching tool. Currently, Simfographics are available in English, but will be made available in other languages in the future.

Posters: Larger versions of our Simfographics are available for purchase in a variety of sizes. Click here to purchase.

Flipbook: A handy, pocket-size reference version of all Simfographics are available for purchase. Click here to purchase.

Healthcare Simulation Standards Print Copy: A printed copy of the full text of the Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice, including the Preamble, all 10 standards, and a Glossary, is available for purchase. Click here to purchase.

History of the Healthcare Simulation Standards

Click here to learn more about the history of the Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice.

Citations of the Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best PracticeTM

As the copyright owner of the Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice, INACSL welcomes you to cite and use the Healthcare Simulation Standards in your presentations and publications by using the following citations:

Watts, P., Rossler, K., Bowler, F., Miller, C., Charnetski, M., Decker, S., Molloy, M., Persico, L., McMahon, E., McDermott, D., Hallmark, B. (2021). Preamble. Clinical Simulation in Nursing, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecns.2021.08.006.

INACSL Standards Committee, Watts, P.I, McDermott, D.S., Alinier, G., Charnetski, M., Ludlow, J., Horsley, E., Meakim, C., & Nawathe, P. (2021). Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice TM Simulation Design. Clinical Simulation in Nursing, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecns.2021.08.009.

INACSL Standards Committee, Miller, C., Deckers, C., Jones, M., Wells-Beede, E., & McGee, E. (2021). Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice TM Outcomes and Objectives. Clinical Simulation in Nursing, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecns.2021.08.013.

INACSL Standards Committee, McMahon, E., Jimenez, F. A., Lawrence, K., & Victor, J. (2021). Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice TM Evaluation of Learning and Performance. Clinical Simulation in Nursing, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecns.2021.08.016.

INACSL Standards Committee, Molloy, M., Holt, J., Charnetski, M., & Rossler, K. (2021). Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice TM Simulation Glossary. Clinical Simulation in Nursing, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecns.2021.08.017.

INACSL Standards Committee. (2021). Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice TM. Clinical Simulation in Nursing, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecns.2021.08.018.

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Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice™

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The Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice™ are designed to advance the science of simulation, share best practices, and provide evidence-based guidelines for the practice and development of a comprehensive standard of practice. The Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice provide a detailed process for evaluating and improving simulation operating procedures and delivery methods that every simulation team will benefit from.

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So You Want to Temporarily Teach Online?

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So You Want to Temporarily Teach Online?

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Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs

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With the possible disruption to social gatherings presented by the coronavirus, there is increased discussion around planning for the use of online learning as a continuity plan for most universities and schools. While there seems to be more fervor around this idea than in the past, this is no different than other times when online has been considered as part of an instructional continuity plan. We have seen a number of resources and ideas being shared, but many of them focus more on institutional plans or are technical how-tos. Here we want to provide an instructional planning guide that individual instructors can use.

Your first tendency may be to ask what tools you can use to deliver live lectures so students don't miss a lecture. Let's take a few steps back and do some quick planning to think through a few things before you decide to do this. This guide is aimed not at the permanent movement from face-to-face to online education but at the desire to implement an interim solution for emergency remote teaching and is specifically focused on lecture-based classes with some considerations for more active learning environments.
The Basics Basic Student Needs
Students will need to access readings and course materials and a way to submit assignments and receive feedback on their work. They also will need a way to send you questions, and they will need to know when and how you will respond to them.
Basic Instructor Needs
You need to deliver your content, for lack of a better term, to your students, and to communicate with them. There are many types of necessary communication in this situation. Students need to know what to do, how you want them to do it, how to submit it to you and how to get your feedback on their work.
Meeting Those Needs
All these needs are things that can be readily handled by a learning management system, if you have one, and most universities and schools do have one these days. As a bonus, the skills you are developing in this time of need can come in handy when you resume your face-to-face class. You can continue using the LMS to distribute handouts and other course documents and for students to submit assignments, post questions and access readings. While many instructors may be exploring the use of social media (e.g. Twitter hashtags or other options), you may find it's best to stick with institutionally supported tools and infrastructures since those will have dedicated support for you and your students as well.

If you are teaching face-to-face classes, your first impulse may be to think about your lectures. You may want to record lectures, narrated PowerPoints/slides or live sessions to make them available online. It is not hard to create some videos or narrated slideshows with technology that is often readily available. Be aware that you need to make sure these materials are accessible to all students, so transcripts or captions will need to be included. Your institution may have specific solutions for these accessibility accommodations, but automatic captioning in YouTube works well with a little effort on your part to make sure it's there. Yes, this may be a little confusing for you at first, but meeting the needs of all of your learners is paramount.

Here are some quick planning items you can implement:

Create a course site in your university's or school's LMS

Load any assignments that will be due into the assignments section (or have support staff help you with this).
For online, students require very clear instructions and prompt feedback, so make sure you provide students clarity on what to submit, how and any associated handouts for an assignment. In an LMS, you can set due dates, attach files and write a description for assignments to provide students guidance.

Load any readings that students will need into resources/files (or have support staff help you).

Create a discussion/forum section dedicated to student questions for you that you will check periodically (may want to set a meeting reminder to allocate time and remind you to do so).

Create a class communication plan so students know where to go and what to expect; address questions like:

Where to send questions

How quickly will you respond to emails; how quickly will you respond to discussion posts

How to reach you with any urgent needs or questions

What sort of regular communications you will send out to the class (e.g. weekly reviews and/or updates)

Other plans you have for how you will be available to students and how you will send out regular information and updates

Most universities often have online tutorials that will guide you through many of these tasks. There is a link provided at the bottom of this article to a resource that has been created with links to all the various resources and guides created by universities.
Synchronous vs. Asynchronous
Think about whether synchronous meetings are really needed. Disruptions that are major enough to force closures, etc., can also be major enough to significantly impact people's schedules and availability. Is it really important that students be present live, at a specific time, for a lecture? Consider recording lectures they can listen to on their own time, and then set up periodic live sessions throughout the week where students can join you for virtual office hours to ask questions and get further guidance and support. This can ensure your learners have the access they need to critical content while also having opportunities for additional support. So, for this decide:

What can be recorded
Identify how you can record this. Most live meeting tools allow you to record, so you often can use Zoom, Blackboard Collaborate, Adobe Captivate or others to just open a session/room or record a talk (share your screen if you have slides to talk through), and then it will save it somewhere and you can provide that file or link. Using the tool your university or school has means it's likely integrated with the LMS for easy distribution. Support staff can help you with this, but if your support staff are overwhelmed, YouTube is also a great user's manual for many of these tools -- most products have how-to videos on YouTube or on their websites. If you want to edit your videos, you may need a different tool like Camtasia, which allows for more advanced editing and closed captioning. Some of the synchronous video tools allow for very basic editing of video.

How do you want to make yourself available to students for questions or support with more complex needs than a discussion board may provide?
We recommend virtual office hours. You may decide you want to answer any questions asynchronously or in one-on-one appointments via phone or video chat.

Student-to-Student Communication
Now, let's think about the ways in which students informally support each other in their learning and how you can make some avenues readily available for them. In face-to-face settings, if a student feels confused, they can turn to a classmate and say, "Hey, I didn't understand ... did you?" These sorts of informal social learning supports are crucial to student learning (not just socially but to comprehension and retention as well). Consider how you can integrate some ways for students to connect with each other. Here are some quick and easy solutions to implement:

Create a discussion/forum for students to pose questions for each other and provide each other support.

Provide a link to a live session that's open 24-7 for them to use. For example, Zoom rooms have links and can be open for anytime access. You could create a Zoom room for your class, post that link and tell students it's there for them to use and connect with each other as they need.

Once you have done all that, in your LMS, you can then:

Create a page with a table on it that quickly summarize for students each week -- what they'll read, any assignments due, any recorded lectures and any live sessions -- with links as necessary to these things).

Make sure your class roster is added to your class site -- typically support staff can help with this.

Download your class roster with emails to have on hand for quick reference if necessary (usually, you can save your class roster in a spreadsheet format with this information -- it takes less than one minute to do).

Communicate your plan to your students:
Do a quick walk-through of your plan and the course site for students -- this can be done either in person if you still have some in-person sessions or can be done as a recorded video you share out with your class.

Implement a transition plan with your class, if you have time -- start having your students access readings, etc., in the course site and hold some virtual office hours for class.

Connect with support staff at your university or school to help you ensure your content is accessible.

Keep in mind that online learning may be new to your students, too, so weekly summaries or regular notes keeping them up-to-date, summarizing the past week, providing guidance for the week ahead and any other important communications will help orient them as well. These can be handled as a course email or course announcements in the LMS.
Beyond the Basics
The above steps are geared toward helping you set up a functional, temporary online learning environment for your class(es). The recommendations above are not designed to take the most advantage of the online learning environment and some of the tools and other affordances. Nor does this account for various systemic and/or equity issues that may arise from a sudden shift to online, such as whether students will have reliable internet access. While some of these affordances would take more significant planning and development than you are likely wanting to invest in right now, there are others you may want to consider.
Interactive Learning
Many live meeting tools have features like breakout rooms that allow you to break your class into small groups and go from room to room to talk with each group. If your class is more engaged in active learning, you may find using this feature helpful. Some of these tools also allow you to do polling during a live class or post quiz questions. Often, these tools also have a screen-sharing feature that allows you and students to share your screen. This can be useful if students are working on projects and you want them to share and talk through them or have them give presentations. If you will be online for a time when you planned for group work or sharing, be aware of your options and plan accordingly.

Many of the resources in the link below have more about using these live online environments.
Collaboration
Part of your in-class plan may involve student collaboration on creating a project or working on a paper together. Today, even for in-class work, students are often using tools like Google Docs to work together. If you have some assignments or activities where you want students co-creating some sort of assignment or submission together, consider having them work in Google Docs, Google Sheets or some other sort of online collaborative software and allow them to submit assignments in that format.
Flexibility
Flexibility will be key to ensuring students are not put at a disadvantage by a sudden move to online. Consider implementing flexible deadlines for when anything is due and flexible methods for how students will complete an assignment or demonstrate their learning. Using asynchronous recorded talks instead of requiring synchronous meetings can provide everyone important flexibility as well. In addition, assume at least some students will use phones or tablets for accessing class and completing and submitting their work. There are times that leads to difficulty with viewing, submitting or accessing live sessions. Make sure you record any live sessions and make those recordings available or use methods that allow students to reach you by phone and email, not just by video chat. (Torrey Trust, from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has put together a Google slide deck with more on UDL considerations and a host of great ideas.)

You may find that a number of students rely on the physical university infrastructure, such as computers at the library, and will not be able to access remote solutions, especially on such short notice. Be available by phone and email and actively invite students to reach you any way they can and share if they are having difficulties so you can monitor and adjust accordingly.
Access to Additional Resources
Students are probably going to need access to additional resources -- like the library -- to complete their work for your class. Identify what your library plans to do and what they have available and create a section in your course site with links to online library resources as well as links to other types of resources students may need to access at a distance.
Preparing Your Own Space
Finally, it's important for both you and for your students to get the right equipment. You may already have most of these, and you do not need costly options for any of these to be functional:

Laptop, desktop or tablet.

Headphones or earbuds -- the biggest impediment to online communications is poor audio quality, so make sure you have a headset or earbuds; this is important to eliminating audio feedback loops, background noises, and other disruptions.

Microphone -- may already be built into your device, computer, camera or as part of a separate headset.

Webcam -- may already be built into your device or computer.

Internet -- this all does require reliable internet service; a wireless hotspot on a high-speed network may also suffice.

Backdrop -- make sure what students see behind you for any live or recorded video is clean and professional.

Finally, we want to thank and recognize the myriad professional instructional designers who are doing a lot of heavy lifting during this time supporting their universities' planning and implementation processes.

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Practical advice for instructors faced with an abrupt move to online teaching (opinion)

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With the possible disruption to social gatherings presented by the coronavirus, there is increased discussion around planning for the use of online learning as a continuity plan for most universities and schools. While there seems to be more fervor around this idea than in the past, this is no different than other times when online has been considered as part of an instructional continuity plan.

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Should Teachers be Trained in Emergency Remote Teaching? Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Should Teachers be Trained in Emergency Remote Teaching? Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Trust and Whalen offer recommendations for future educators to be better prepared for ERT. See Implications on p. 193.

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Rabe A., Sy M., Cheung W., & Lucero-Prisno, D. (2020). 

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COVID-19 and Health Professions Education: A 360°View of the Impact of a Global Health Emergency

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COVID-19 and Health Professions Education: A 360°View of the Impact of a Global Health Emergency

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In early February, Leonardo Rolla had about two weeks to work out how to start teaching online. A mathematician at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Buenos Aires, Rolla also teaches maths for two terms each year at New York University (NYU) Shanghai in China. He had been visiting family when the outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus forced universities in China to shut down, and he could not return to Shanghai.

For Rolla, who had never taught an online class, the transition required many hours of work and a great deal of patience. He had to learn the technology and identify the best teaching tactics for his advanced linear-algebra class of 33 students. Part of the problem was that his students are in a time zone 11 hours ahead of him.

With technological help from colleagues at NYU Shanghai, he developed a strategy for teaching remotely from the other side of the world. Each day, using a program called Voice-Thread, he records several short videos of himself explaining maths concepts, adding up to 15-30 minutes collectively. During their day, the students watch the videos on a website and, in turn, insert videos they make of their assigned theorem proofs, for example, or a question, a comment or a critique of a classmate's proof. Together, Rolla and his students produce an interactive, if asynchronous, class recording.

Working together

Rolla has one crucial tip: seek constant feedback from students. "I am the director of this movie," he says, "but we are all in this together." He asks his students precise questions to demonstrate what they have just learnt and how each concept builds on their existing base of knowledge. He also asks for feedback to improve the course. When students asked for more concrete examples of complex, abstract theorems to make sure they understood the concepts, he obliged. "The biggest risk is that you become a talking head explaining things that students are not following," he says, "and they give up and just pretend." His video-based approach has earned high praise from students and colleagues.

Although Rolla is pleased to have met the technical challenges of teaching remotely, he notes that he had one significant advantage: he had already taught this group of students. If he hadn't, he says, he would have scheduled a few live sessions to meet them. "The hardest part is that it takes a lot of time," says Rolla, "at least three times as much work as a traditional lecture, and that's once you're familiar with the tools." He estimates that since February, he's been spending 35 hours weekly preparing his online teaching content.

Tips for the transition

As faculty members worldwide face online teaching, they must consider how to maximize value for their students. Here are five tips for pivoting to remote instruction.

Don't convert your entire lecture to video. "Students don't want to watch slides without a teacher's face or voice," says Kyungmee Lee, a lecturer in technology-enhanced learning at Lancaster University, UK. If you normally teach a 3-hour class, summarize its essence in a video no longer than 30 minutes, says Lee. Justin Reich, a digital-learning researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, agrees that it is best to be succinct. "Strategically reduce your goals," he says. Instructors need to identify a few specific things that they want their students to learn, and focus on those.

Don't rely on live video. Don't use live conferencing for every facet of the course, says Lee. You can't guarantee the quality of your feed, especially amid concerns that some online conferencing platforms, such as Zoom, will be overloaded and could crash.

Invite student engagement and feedback. The best online instructors, Reich and Lee agree, set up their courses so that students can pursue self-paced enquiry - exploring the topic under their own initiative. For example, you can give students a range of links for further reading. Ideally, they will be able to choose content on the basis of their own interests, but you need to ensure that your expectations are clear, says Lee. It's also important to find out what students most care about, adds Reich. "The most common misstep is not listening to your students," he says. Asking students what they hope to get out of the online course, and how you can best serve them, offers instructors ideas for teaching and gives students ownership of the process, he says.

Check in with students often. "If you can't see a student's face, it's impossible to tell if they understand the material," says Lee. Consider interactive elements such as short quizzes. Students might also miss on-campus social interaction, so it helps to engage them with opportunities to talk to one another during a live session, says Lee. She groups students into teams of five so that they can support one another. If students have a question about content, they ask their group first, and come to her only if they still can't get a satisfactory answer. "Make sure students support each other. Don't try to do everything yourself," she says.

Identify and support struggling students. Research suggests that almost every student experiences some type of 'performance penalty' - they earn a lower grade than they might have otherwise, or fail to complete the course - when they switch to remote learning, even under the best circumstances, says Reich ( C. M. D. Hart et al. Educ. Finance Policy 13, 42-71; 2017). "It's worse for the most vulnerable students." To identify those students, instructors can ask whether class members have adequate Wi-Fi and access to devices, and how concerned they are about the transition to online learning. Reich says that the most successful virtual teachers conduct frequent assessments, and check in by phone, text or e-mail with each student - most often with those who are struggling.

"We should not bring a 'sink or swim' approach to online teaching," says Reich. "It's not the right attitude for a pandemic."

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Five tips for moving teaching online as COVID-19 takes hold

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Universities are closing worldwide, forcing instructors to turn to remote teaching. Here's some expert advice on how to embrace the digital classroom. Universities are closing worldwide, forcing instructors to turn to remote teaching. Here's some expert advice on how to embrace the digital classroom.

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https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning

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Well-planned online learning experiences are meaningfully different from courses offered online in response to a crisis or disaster. Colleges and universities working to maintain instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic should understand those differences when evaluating this emergency remote teaching.

Credit: frankie's / Shutterstock.com © 2020

Due to the threat of COVID-19, colleges and universities are facing decisions about how to continue teaching and learning while keeping their faculty, staff, and students safe from a public health emergency that is moving fast and not well understood. Many institutions have opted to cancel all face-to-face classes, including labs and other learning experiences, and have mandated that faculty move their courses online to help prevent the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19. The list of institutions of higher education making this decision has been growing each day. Institutions of all sizes and types-state colleges and universities, Ivy League institutions, community colleges, and others-are moving their classes online. Bryan Alexander has curated the status of hundreds of institutions.

Moving instruction online can enable the flexibility of teaching and learning anywhere, anytime, but the speed with which this move to online instruction is expected to happen is unprecedented and staggering. Although campus support personnel and teams are usually available to help faculty members learn about and implement online learning, these teams typically support a small pool of faculty interested in teaching online. In the present situation, these individuals and teams will not be able to offer the same level of support to all faculty in such a narrow preparation window. Faculty might feel like instructional MacGyvers, having to improvise quick solutions in less-than-ideal circumstances. No matter how clever a solution might be-and some very clever solutions are emerging-many instructors will understandably find this process stressful.

The temptation to compare online learning to face-to-face instruction in these circumstances will be great. In fact, an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education has already called for a "grand experiment" doing exactly that. This is a highly problematic suggestion, however. First and foremost, the politics of any such debate must be acknowledged. "Online learning" will become a politicized term that can take on any number of meanings depending on the argument someone wants to advance. In talking about lessons learned when institutions moved classes online during a shutdown in South Africa, Laura Czerniewicz starts with this very lesson and what happened around the construct of "blended learning" at the time. The idea of blended learning was drawn into political agendas without paying sufficient attention to the fact that institutions would make different decisions and invest differently, resulting in widely varying solutions and results from one institution to another. With some of that hindsight as wisdom, we seek to advance some careful distinctions that we hope can inform the evaluations and reflections that will surely result from this mass move by colleges and universities.

Online learning carries a stigma of being lower quality than face-to-face learning, despite research showing otherwise. These hurried moves online by so many institutions at once could seal the perception of online learning as a weak option, when in truth nobody making the transition to online teaching under these circumstances will truly be designing to take full advantage of the affordances and possibilities of the online format.

Researchers in educational technology, specifically in the subdiscipline of online and distance learning, have carefully defined terms over the years to distinguish between the highly variable design solutions that have been developed and implemented: distance learning, distributed learning, blended learning, online learning, mobile learning, and others. Yet an understanding of the important differences has mostly not diffused beyond the insular world of educational technology and instructional design researchers and professionals. Here, we want to offer an important discussion around the terminology and formally propose a specific term for the type of instruction being delivered in these pressing circumstances: emergency remote teaching.

Many active members of the academic community, including some of us, have been hotly debating the terminology in social media, and "emergency remote teaching" has emerged as a common alternative term used by online education researchers and professional practitioners to draw a clear contrast with what many of us know as high-quality online education. Some readers may take issue with the use of the term "teaching" over choices such as "learning" or "instruction." Rather than debating all of the details of those concepts, we selected "teaching" because of its simple definitions-"the act, practice, or profession of a teacher" and "the concerted sharing of knowledge and experience,"-along with the fact that the first tasks undertaken during emergency changes in delivery mode are those of a teacher/instructor/professor.

Effective Online Education

Online education, including online teaching and learning, has been studied for decades. Numerous research studies, theories, models, standards, and evaluation criteria focus on quality online learning, online teaching, and online course design. What we know from research is that effective online learning results from careful instructional design and planning, using a systematic model for design and development. The design process and the careful consideration of different design decisions have an impact on the quality of the instruction. And it is this careful design process that will be absent in most cases in these emergency shifts.

One of the most comprehensive summaries of research on online learning comes from the book Learning Online: What Research Tells Us about Whether, When and How. The authors identify nine dimensions, each of which has numerous options, highlighting the complexity of the design and decision-making process. The nine dimensions are modality, pacing, student-instructor ratio, pedagogy, instructor role online, student role online, online communication synchrony, role of online assessments, and source of feedback (see "Online learning design options").

Online learning design options (moderating variables)

Within each of these dimensions, there are options. Complicating matters, not all of the options are equally effective. For example, decisions around class size will greatly constrain what strategies you can use. Practice and feedback, for example, are well established in the literature, but it's harder to implement this as class size grows, eventually reaching a point where it's just not possible for an instructor to provide quality feedback. In the case of synchrony, what you choose will really depend on your learners' characteristics and what best meets their needs (adult learners require more flexibility, so asynchronous is usually best, perhaps with optional synchronous sessions, whereas younger learners benefit from the structure of required synchronous sessions).

Research on types of interaction-which includes student-content, student-student, and student-instructor-is one of the more robust bodies of research in online learning. In short, it shows that the presence of each of these types of interaction, when meaningfully integrated, increases the learning outcomes. Thus, careful planning for online learning includes not just identifying the content to cover but also carefully tending to how you're going to support different types of interactions that are important to the learning process. This approach recognizes learning as both a social and a cognitive process, not merely a matter of information transmission.

Those who have built online programs over the years will attest that effective online learning aims to be a learning community and supports learners not just instructionally but with co-curricular engagement and other social supports. Consider how much infrastructure exists around face-to-face education that supports student success: library resources, housing, career services, health services, and so on. Face-to-face education isn't successful because lecturing is good. Lectures are one instructional aspect of an overall ecosystem specifically designed to support learners with formal, informal, and social resources. Ultimately, effective online education requires an investment in an ecosystem of learner supports, which take time to identify and build. Relative to other options, simple online content delivery can be quick and inexpensive, but confusing that with robust online education is akin to confusing lectures with the totality of residential education.

Typical planning, preparation, and development time for a fully online university course is six to nine months before the course is delivered. Faculty are usually more comfortable teaching online by the second or third iteration of their online courses. It will be impossible for every faculty member to suddenly become an expert in online teaching and learning in this current situation, in which lead times range from a single day to a few weeks. While there are resources to which faculty can turn for assistance, the scale of change currently being required on many campuses will stress the systems that provide those resources and most likely will surpass their capacities. Let's face it: many of the online learning experiences that instructors will be able to offer their students will not be fully featured or necessarily well planned, and there's a high probability for suboptimal implementation. We need to recognize that everyone will be doing the best they can, trying to take just the essentials with them as they make a mad dash during the emergency. Thus, the distinction is important between the normal, everyday type of effective online instruction and that which we are doing in a hurry with bare minimum resources and scant time: emergency remote teaching.

Emergency Remote Teaching

In contrast to experiences that are planned from the beginning and designed to be online, emergency remote teaching (ERT) is a temporary shift of instructional delivery to an alternate delivery mode due to crisis circumstances. It involves the use of fully remote teaching solutions for instruction or education that would otherwise be delivered face-to-face or as blended or hybrid courses and that will return to that format once the crisis or emergency has abated. The primary objective in these circumstances is not to re-create a robust educational ecosystem but rather to provide temporary access to instruction and instructional supports in a manner that is quick to set up and is reliably available during an emergency or crisis. When we understand ERT in this manner, we can start to divorce it from "online learning." There are many examples of other countries responding to school and university closures in a time of crisis by implementing models such as mobile learning, radio, blended learning, or other solutions that are contextually more feasible. For example, in a study on education's role in fragility and emergency situations, the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies examined four case studies. One of those cases was Afghanistan, where education was disrupted by conflict and violence and schools themselves were targets, sometimes because girls were trying to access education. In order to take children off the streets and keep them safe, radio education and DVDs were used to maintain and expand educational access and also were aimed at promoting education for girls.

What becomes apparent as we examine examples of educational planning in crises is that these situations require creative problem solving. We have to be able to think outside standard boxes to generate various possible solutions that help meet the new needs for our learners and communities. In some cases, it might even help us generate some new solutions to intractable problems, such as the dangers girls faced trying to access education in Afghanistan. Thus, it may be tempting to think about ERT as a bare-bones approach to standard instruction. In reality, it is a way of thinking about delivery modes, methods, and media, specifically as they map to rapidly changing needs and limitations in resources, such as faculty support and training.

In the present situation, the campus support teams that are usually available to help faculty members learn about and implement online learning will not be able to offer the same level of support to all faculty who need it. Faculty support teams play a critical role in the learning experiences of students by helping faculty members develop face-to-face or online learning experiences. Current support models might include full-course design support, professional development opportunities, content development, learning management system training and support, and multimedia creation in partnership with faculty experts. Faculty who seek support typically have varying levels of digital fluency and are often accustomed to one-on-one support when experimenting with online tools. The shift to ERT requires that faculty take more control of the course design, development, and implementation process. With the expectation of rapid development of online teaching and learning events and the large number of faculty in need of support, faculty development and support teams must find ways to meet the institutional need to provide instructional continuity while helping faculty develop skills to work and teach in an online environment. As such, institutions must rethink the way instructional support units do their work, at least during a crisis.

The rapid approach necessary for ERT may diminish the quality of the courses delivered. A full-course development project can take months when done properly. The need to "just get it online" is in direct contradiction to the time and effort normally dedicated to developing a quality course. Online courses created in this way should not be mistaken for long-term solutions but accepted as a temporary solution to an immediate problem. Especially concerning is the degree to which the accessibility of learning materials might not be addressed during ERT. This is but one reason that universal design for learning (UDL) should be part of all discussions around teaching and learning. UDL principles focus on the design of learning environments that are flexible, inclusive, and student-centered to ensure that all students can access and learn from the course materials, activities, and assignments.

Evaluating Emergency Remote Teaching

Institutions will certainly want to conduct evaluations of their ERT efforts, but what should they evaluate? First, let's consider what not to evaluate. A common misconception is that comparing a face-to-face course with an online version of the course constitutes a useful evaluation. This type of assessment, known as a media comparison study, provides no real value, for at least three reasons:

First, any medium is simply a way to deliver information, and one medium is not inherently better or worse than any other medium. Second, we need to better understand different media and the way people learn with different media to design effective studies. And, third, there are too many confounding variables in even the best media comparison study for the results to be valid and meaningful.

Researchers who conduct media comparison studies are looking at "the whole unique medium and [giving] little thought to each one's attributes and characteristics, to learner needs, or to psychological learning theories."

Other approaches to evaluation can be useful in this move to ERT. The success of distance and online learning experiences can be measured in a variety of ways, depending on how "success" is defined from a given stakeholder's perspective. From the faculty point of view, student learning outcomes would be of primary interest. Did learners achieve the intended knowledge, skills, and/or attitudes that were the focus of the instructional experience? Attitudinal outcomes are also possibly of interest, for students and for faculty. For students, issues such as interest, motivation, and engagement are directly connected to learner success and so would be possible evaluation foci. For faculty, attitudes toward online instruction and all that it entails can affect the perception of success.

Programmatic outcomes such as course and program completion rates, market reach, faculty time investments, impacts on promotion and tenure processes-all of these are relevant issues related to the offering of distance courses and programs. Finally, implementation resources and strategies are possible areas of evaluation inquiry, such as the reliability of selected technological delivery systems, the provision of and access to learner support systems, support for faculty professional development for online teaching pedagogies and tools, policy and governance issues related to distance program development, and quality assurance. All of these factors can influence the effectiveness of distance and online learning experiences and can serve to inform learning experience design and program development and implementation. These recommended areas of evaluation are for well-planned distance or online learning efforts and may not be appropriate in the case of ERT. Evaluating ERT will require broader questions, especially during initial implementations.

Next, let us recommend where you should focus your evaluation related to ERT efforts. The language of the CIPP model will be used for structure. CIPP is an acronym representing context, inputs, process, and products (see table 1).

Table 1. CIPP evaluation terms

"Assess needs, problems, assets, and opportunities, as well as relevant contextual conditions and dynamics"

"Assess a program's strategy, action plan, staffing arrangements, and budget for feasibility and potential cost-effectiveness to meet targeted needs and achieve goals."

"Monitor, document, assess, and report on the implementation of plans."

"Identify and assess costs and outcomes-intended and unintended, short term and long term."

In the case of ERT, institutions might want to consider evaluation questions such as the following:

Given the need to shift to remote instruction, what internal and external resources were necessary in supporting this transition? What aspects of the context (institutional, social, governmental) affected the feasibility and effectiveness of the transition? (context)

How did the university interactions with students, families, personnel, and local and government stakeholders impact perceived responsiveness to the shift to ERT? (context)

Was the technology infrastructure sufficient to handle the needs of ERT? (input)

Did the campus support staff have sufficient capacity to handle the needs of ERT? (input)

Was our ongoing faculty professional development sufficient to enable ERT? How can we enhance opportunities for immediate and flexible learning demands related to alternative approaches to instruction and learning? (input)

Where did faculty, students, support personnel, and administrators struggle the most with ERT? How can we adapt our processes to respond to such operational challenges in the future? (process)

What were the programmatic outcomes of the ERT initiative (i.e., course completion rates, aggregated grade analyses, etc.)? How can challenges related to these outcomes be addressed in support of the students and faculty impacted by these issues? (product)

How can feedback from learners, faculty, and campus support teams inform ERT needs in the future? (product)

Evaluation of ERT should be more focused on the context, input, and process elements than product (learning). Note that we are not advocating for no evaluation of whether or not learning occurred, or to what extent it occurred, but simply stressing that the urgency of ERT and all that will take to make it happen in a short time frame will be the most critical elements to evaluate during this crisis. This is being recognized by some as a few institutions are beginning to announce changing to pass/fail options rather letter grades during ERT.

Also, given the continued evidence of problems surrounding student evaluations of instruction under typical higher education experiences, we recommend that the standard, end-of-semester teaching evaluations definitely not be counted against faculty members engaged in ERT. If an institution's policy mandates that those evaluations be administered, consider amending the policy, or make sure that the results are clearly qualified with the circumstances of the term or semester.

Final Thoughts

Everyone involved in this abrupt migration to online learning must realize that these crises and disasters also create disruptions to student, staff, and faculty lives, outside their association with the university. So all of this work must be done with the understanding that the move to ERT will likely not be the priority of all those involved. Instructors and administrators are urged to consider that students might not be able to attend to courses immediately. As a result, asynchronous activities might be more reasonable than synchronous ones. Flexibility with deadlines for assignments within courses, course policies, and institutional policies should be considered. For a high-level example, the US Department of Education has relaxed some requirements and policies in the face of COVID-19.

Hopefully the COVID-19 threat will soon be a memory. When it is, we should not simply return to our teaching and learning practices prior to the virus, forgetting about ERT. There likely will be future public health and safety concerns, and in recent years, campuses have been closed due to natural disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes, and the polar vortex. Thus, the possible need for ERT must become part of a faculty member's skill set, as well as professional development programming for any personnel involved in the instructional mission of colleges and universities.

The threat of COVID-19 has presented some unique challenges for institutions of higher education. All parties involved-students, faculty, and staff-are being asked to do extraordinary things regarding course delivery and learning that have not been seen on this scale in the lifetimes of anyone currently involved. Although this situation is stressful, when it is over, institutions will emerge with an opportunity to evaluate how well they were able to implement ERT to maintain continuity of instruction. It is important to avoid the temptation to equate ERT with online learning during those evaluations. With careful planning, officials at every campus can evaluate their efforts, allowing those involved to highlight strengths and identify weaknesses to be better prepared for future needs to implement ERT.

Notes

1. See, for example: "Information for Ohio State University Students, Faculty and Staff," The Ohio State University, Wexner Medical Center; "President Eisgruber Updates University on Next Steps Regarding COVID-19 to Ensure Health and Well-Being of the Entire Community," Princeton University; and Everett Community College. ↩

2. "Coronavirus and Higher Education Resources," Bryan Alexander blog, March 17, 2020. ↩

3. Laura Czerniewicz, "What We Learnt from 'Going Online' during University Shutdowns in South Africa," PhilOnEdTech, March 15, 2020. ↩

4. "Teaching," Merriam-Webster. ↩

5. Robert M. Branch and Tonia A. Dousay, "Survey of Instructional Design Models," Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), 2015. ↩

6. Robert M. Bernard, Philip C. Abrami, Eugene Borokhovski, C. Anne Wade, Rana M. Tamim, Michael A. Surkes, and Edward Clement Bethel, "A Meta-Analysis of Three Types of Interaction Treatments in Distance Education," Review of Educational Research 79, no. 3 (2009): 1,243-89. ↩

7. Lynn Davies and Denise Bentrovato, International Institute for Educational Planning (2011). "Understanding Education's Role in Fragility; Synthesis of Four Situational Analyses of Education and Fragility: Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Liberia,"↩

8. See "UDL On Campus," ↩

9. "Guidance for Interruptions of Study Related to Coronavirus (COVID-19)," Federal Student Aid, Information for Financial Aid Professionals (IFAP), March 20, 2020. ↩

10. Elin Johnson, "As Fires Rage, More Campuses Close," InsideHigherEd, October 29, 2019; Jenni Fink, "Florida Universities Cancelling Classes, Closing Campus Ahead of Potential Category 4 Hurricane Dorian," Newsweek, August 29, 2019; and Perry Samson, "The Coronavirus and Class Broadcasts," EDUCAUSE Review, March 3, 2020. ↩

Charles B. Hodges is a Professor of Instructional Technology at Georgia Southern University.

Stephanie Moore is an Assistant Professor of Instructional Design and Technology in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia.

Barbara B. Lockee is a Professor of Instructional Design and Technology, and Provost Faculty Fellow, at Virginia Tech.

Torrey Trust is an Associate Professor of Learning Technology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

M. Aaron Bond is Senior Director, Professional Development Network and Faculty Digital Fluency at Virginia Tech.

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the difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning

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The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning

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Well-planned online learning experiences are meaningfully different from courses offered online in response to a crisis or disaster. Colleges and univ

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“In contrast to emergency remote teaching, online learning is bound by many standards to ensure optimal learning. Online learning provides opportunities for:

Community building among students and with the instructor

Opportunities for learner engagement with the material through realistic practice

Spaced repetition, real world context, and feedback

Opportunities for faculty members to support learners.

(Schlesselman, 2020, p.1043)

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"..is not to re-create a robust educational ecosystem but rather to provide temporary access to instruction and instructional supports in a manner that is quick to set up and is reliably available during an emergency or crisis" (Hodges et al., 2020, p. 5)

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ERT "is a temporary shift of instructional delivery to an alternate delivery mode due to crisis circumstances" .

When COVID-19 caused schools across the globe to switch to online learning in early 2020, teachers were unprepared for the shift from face-to-face learning. Emergency Remote Teaching ensued, in an effort to bring education to students through online platforms as quickly as possible, “with many teachers scrambling to figure out how to shift their pedagogy” in a matter of days (Hodges et al., 2020, para. 5).

As such, “This global pandemic exposed a significant gap in teacher preparation and training for emergency remote teaching, including teaching with technology to ensure continuity of learning for students at a distance” (Trust & Whalen, 2020)

Consequently, “Emergency Remote Teaching has emerged as a common alternative term used by online education researchers and professional practitioners to draw a clear contrast” from true online learning (Hodges et al., 2020, para. 4).

This is because “While technology provided the ability for schools and colleges to transition to teaching online during the spring 2020 semester, what was provided for the remainder of the semester was emergency remote teaching, not online learning” (Schlesselman, 2020, p.1042).

So what is the difference?

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Remote Teaching from the Student Perspective

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Remote Teaching - The Student Perspective

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Schlesselman, L. S. (2020). Perspective from a Teaching and Learning Center During EmergencyRemote Teaching

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Technology

Connectivity

Accessibility

Mental Health Challenges

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Schlesselman L. S. 2020. Perspective from a Teaching and Learning Center During

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Have you been required to switch to remote teaching? Tell me about it! What worked for you? You can post a response below!

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UHN: List of Resources for Teaching and Learning in the Time of COVID

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UHN: List of Resources for Teaching and Learning in the Time of COVID

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Remote and Online Teaching

Quick Tips

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LibGuides: Teaching and Learning in the Time of COVID-19: Remote and Online Teaching

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"The Objective of Education is Learning, not Teaching" 

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"The Objective of Education is Learning, not Teaching" 

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(Ackoff & Greenberg, 2008 as cited in Schlesselman, 2020, p.1042 )

Online learning focuses on achieving learning objectives rather than simply covering content. Online learning also creates a safe environment that addresses the needs of all learners, including accessibility” (Schlesselman, 2020, p.1043).
As such, in order to be an effective educator and use Emergency Remote Teaching it's important to remember "The objective of education is learning, not teaching" (Ackoff & Greenberg, 2008 as cited in Schlesselman, 2020, p.1042 )

There are a number of recommendations that follow that can assist educators of all disciplines to be effective when ERT is necessary.