Nineteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

The global pandemic that unfolded in the United States in March 2020 forced educators to change the ways they teach and communicate with their university students. The massive administrative and curricular changes introduced at the university level have impacted teaching and learning globally. This is a witness account of the unprecedented scale of adjustments forced upon American universities as a result of the pandemic. A centerpiece of global pedagogy has become online learning. I have been using the Canvas online platform for 10 years, working at the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando. UCF is one of the largest and most innovative and inclusive public universities in the United States. In March 2020, we have switched from face-to-face teaching to online learning. This sudden change created many challenges for university teachers. The lockdown forced us to re-design university learning. As an education reform expert, I feel that the times of upheavals and revolutions created the perfect opportunity for educational reforms from within. In this paper, I show that the COVID-19 pandemic caused a perfect storm for rethinking higher education. It forced us to question the need for huge educational investments in university infrastructure. Overnight, many educational ideas became obsolete. Today, we can streamline university operations and revolutionize teaching methods.