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Recent announcements by the B.C. and Ontario governments emphasize that institutions of higher education should plan a familiar return to campuses over the next month. Their recommendations call for a return to normal with an eye on backup plans and transitions.
But the research my colleagues and I have done suggests that faculty and students hope for better futures. They don’t want “a return to normal.”
Over the last year and a half, my colleagues and I have interviewed faculty across Canada and sifted through surveys gathering the opinions of nearly 150,000 Canadian students. We have also surveyed faculty and administrators in the United States multiple times about their experiences with teaching and learning during the pandemic. Most recently, we have returned to interviewing faculty across Canada to learn more about their hopes and fears.
We heard that many of our students and colleagues are anxious, tired and disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Students and faculty recognize that the pre-pandemic “normal” wasn’t optimal. It was simply the status quo, the default, that students and faculty were living with.
Recent announcements by the B.C. and Ontario governments emphasize that institutions of higher education should plan a familiar return to campuses over the next month. Their recommendations call for a return to normal with an eye on backup plans and transitions.
But the research my colleagues and I have done suggests that faculty and students hope for better futures. They don’t want “a return to normal.”
Over the last year and a half, my colleagues and I have interviewed faculty across Canada and sifted through surveys gathering the opinions of nearly 150,000 Canadian students. We have also surveyed faculty and administrators in the United States multiple times about their experiences with teaching and learning during the pandemic. Most recently, we have returned to interviewing faculty across Canada to learn more about their hopes and fears.
We heard that many of our students and colleagues are anxious, tired and disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Students and faculty recognize that the pre-pandemic “normal” wasn’t optimal. It was simply the status quo, the default, that students and faculty were living with.
One idea that emerged consistently in both our work and the work of other researchers is the value that flexibility affords students and faculty. Students, for instance, appreciated flexibility in deadlines, when they were facing uncertainties in their lives outside their studies.
Faculty whose institutions supported them in working remotely expressed gratefulness for such flexibility. Some also appreciated being able to approach their courses with flexible designs that supported student learning (for example, shifting lectures to pre-recorded sessions and using real-time meetings for workshops). Flexible approaches to teaching and learning will likely help colleges and universities grapple with future local and global threats like climate change.
4. Trust and compassion
While education is an endeavour that involves establishing standards of learning and evaluation, it is also one that involves humans, with all of life’s unpredictability and variation. In approaching education with a humanizing lens, faculty and students hope that institutions and governments do not lose sight of the trust and compassion that was extended to them during the pandemic.
In practical terms, trust and compassion may translate to rethinking assessment practices that are grounded on mistrust, such as using surveillance technologies for online exams. It may mean trusting faculty to determine the best assessments for their courses. For example, a faculty member told us they felt what’s needed is “culture shift” towards trusting students, away from an “adversarial kind of relationship” that assumes everyone’s cheating.
5. Focus on equity
The pandemic has brought to light the many gaps that students of varied socio-economic and demographic backgrounds face, such as inequitable access to technology and private study spaces, as well as inequities in having their basic needs met.
Students and faculty are hopeful that institutions and governments continue to take action on addressing inequities. Some ideas offered include the purposeful design of courses to accommodate different people’s needs, and institutional supports to enable broader access to programs and resources.
Rather than regressing “back to normal,” what our research highlights is how students and faculty hope for a better future — better than the one dominated by COVID-19, and better than the status quo that existed prior.
