Twenty-third International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly and unprecedentedly impacted many areas of life, work, family, and teaching and learning at all levels. The global pandemic outbreak shocked the world and brought it to an unprecedented standstill; that included education! This change caused widespread, devastating disruption in all aspects of human life, creating unexpected turbulence in society and the economy. Beyond the health and economic sectors, the education system was most affected, dramatically shifting the approaches of those charged to teach and expected to learn. To ensure the safety of faculty, staff, and students and to comply with the requirement of social distancing, thousands of P-12 schools, colleges, and universities had to cancel all face-to-face classes, including labs and other learning experiences and mandated that courses be moved online to maintain instruction. The onset of the pandemic outbreak caused a shift in fundamental learning experiences. At its height, students across the globe were obliged to take all their classes remotely. In addition to teaching and learning, institutions at levels moved various other critical academic activities online. In this study, we consider how, given the challenges of online instruction, combined with the time and support it takes for faculty, both higher education and P-12 classroom, to become proficient in teaching online, fundamental learning experiences instructors provided to their students were not optimally implemented.