COVID-19 has altered the global acceptance of online learning in the instructional design and technology field. Higher education has utilized instructional designers and related roles since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic, higher education transitioned to remote learning. Due to this transition to remote learning, higher education administrators, staff, and students now use instructional technology on a regular basis for their work and studies respectively.
Prior to COVID-19, universities placed certain courses and programs in an online format, however 2020 was the first time in history when a high number of university students around the world were taking their courses in a fully online setting.
Higher education now needs more instructional designers to help establish the best frameworks for online courses for current and future use by higher education faculty. Adoption of online courses is prevalent during this time and will remain prevalent if online learning is proved to be a successful alternative to in person, instructor-led courses.
Online courses are important in higher education settings, because they help make college more accessible to individuals in varying living situations. Online learning makes a college education more easily obtainable for students such as non-traditional students, the reason for this being that non-traditional university students often have families that must remain stable and functional. Asynchronous online courses allow students to live anywhere and to take their courses on their own time.
On the other hand, issues have been presented to higher education administrators, staff, and students during the transition from primarily in person, instructor-led courses to online courses at higher education universities around the world. These issues are primarily related to the digital divide that exists at an international scope, but they are also related to the challenges faced by higher education faculty in converting their courses to an online format and reaching students in this new, unfamiliar setting. “There is ambiguity and disagreement about what to teach, how to teach, the workload of teachers and students, the teaching environment, and implications for education equity” (Ali, 2020). This is why there is a new need for instructional designers and instructional technology specialists in higher education.
Despite the equity issues that come with online learning, remote instruction in higher education has been accepted in many places, in an effort to increase the containment of COVID-19. “The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the delivery of online higher education” (Chandrasinghe et al., 2020). Online learning has been made possible due to the many features of modern technology.
A positive result of the current adoption of online learning as the primary educational setting is a positive transformation in the capability of education. An updated instructional approach was designed for medical studies in Sri Lanka (Chandrasinghe et al., 2020). This approach consisted of the following: an online learning activity for students from various educational stages designed to increase student engagement, an online audio and video conferencing platform, and social networking (Chandrasinghe et al., 2020). The results from this instructional approach are as follows: “online teaching with a novel structure is feasible and effective in a resource-limited setting” (Chandrasinghe et al., 2020); “students agree that it could improve clinical interest while meeting the expected learning outcomes” (Chandrasinghe et al., 2020). Of course, there were also concerns during the execution of this educational experience: “most widely raised concerns were the poor internet connectivity and limitation of access to the meeting platform” (Chandrasinghe et al., 2020). This is a major gap in the system of modern technology.
Ensuring accessibility for students with auditory, visual, mental, and physical disabilities is another factor in remote learning for higher education students. Instructional designers and instructional technology specialists at universities must ensure that online instructional content is accessible to all students.
Additionally, ensuring accessibility for students in a country who do not speak the native language of their country, but instead speak a foreign language, is a factor to consider as well. On this topic, students learning a new language during the COVID-19 pandemic are in an unforeseen, challenging circumstance. Language teachers have also been faced with the challenge of teaching language to their students from afar. A language such as Arabic “requires as much practice as possible” (Wargadinata, 2020). Therefore, online language courses must have the capability to allow students to practice repetition of language learning as well as the capability to provide students with different means of interacting with their fellow students to aid language learning. “Online learning provides a new approach to increasing student independence” (Wargadinata, 2020); “with this approach, students can process language information using peer interaction, responses, and responses provided by the teacher online” (Wargadinata, 2020). Learning Management Systems should include opportunities for discussion among students, and higher education faculty and facilitators of online courses should also direct students to participate on social networking websites with their peers.
Similar to the necessity of interaction for language learning in higher education, interaction is important when learning any educational subject. International university students were not as accustomed to remote learning prior to COVID-19 as they are currently. Positive interaction with both peers and educational content involves the affective, or feeling, learning domain. Learning objectives of online courses in higher education should involve the affective domain, because affectivity aids motivation as well. “The achievement of the academic goals of university students is directly related to the diverse motivations, above all, the emotional ones that are recurrent forms of reacting to events, mainly, the external ones” (Garay, 2020). In this reference, “external events” refers to the impact of COVID-19 on higher education students in regard to personal matters such as family and financial matters. Remote learning has positively contributed toward helping certain higher education students achieve academic success, however it has also had a negative contribution toward other students. Higher education students have varying learning styles, some of these styles aligning more with the instructional methods of online learning but other styles not aligning with the instructional methods utilized in the general design of many online learning courses.
Overall, in some places such as Beijing, China, surveys have found that students in Beijing generally were satisfied with the online courses provided by their universities (Demuyakor, 2020). Technology is advanced today, and now online learning is becoming more advanced every day, as innovators in technology and instructional design are working diligently to provide high quality education for students around the world while simultaneously following the safety measures necessitated by COVID-19. “For many online education researchers and practitioners, the COVID-19 crisis is being considered as a unique opportunity to support both students and institutions by filling the gap left by conventional (face-to-face) education” (Vlachopoulos, 2020). In the face of this adversity, technological feats are being made, and research on learning is being conducted. Thus, the field of instructional design and technology is gaining even more complexity. Higher education is in the process of permanent transformation.
Lastly, ensuring accessibility for students living in different locations than the location of the university itself is essential to remember as well. Online courses must be asynchronous, and should not have any synchronous components, for university students who live in a wide range of time zones.
In Indonesia, a group of EFL students of UIN Malang noted important barriers in online learning for higher education students such as themselves (Demuyakor, 2020). “The three barriers are lack of personal touch in e-learning, lack of technology and internet connectivity for both students and teachers; and physical barriers for both students and teachers, e.g., eye strain” (Demuyakor, 2020). In order to preserve an educational environment that is both equal and equitable for all students, these barriers cannot be ignored.
Nevertheless, educational technology, made possible by the complexity of modern technology, has great capability to extend to underdeveloped and ill-resourced countries. “The intention, deployment, and use of technologies for learning have fostered educational attainment, equality and social justice irrespective of space, distance or time via the various e-learning platforms provided by HEIs [Higher Education Institutions]” (Maphalala & Adigun, 2020). Online learning has been introduced and adopted globally due to COVID-19. This has been an opportunity to analyze the effects of online learning and to observe the strengths and weaknesses in its design. This has also been an opportunity for instructional designers and educational technology specialists to troubleshoot different formats for higher education courses. Social networking also serves a purpose in its creation of online learning communities within higher education courses where students may interact with their peers. Engaging courses are necessary in an online setting, and online courses should ask the students enrolled in these courses to engage with their fellow students. Since the beginning of COVID-19 school shutdowns, “[about] 46 nations in five distinct landmasses have announced school terminations and [about] 26 of these nations have completely shut down schools across the country” (Octaberlina & Muslimin, 2020). Learning is a life-changing experience, and higher education has not been threatened because of the resilience of educators and the capability that online learning has to influence the success of university students around the world.
Thanks so much for learning with me!
~CLL
References
Ali, W. (2020). Online and Remote Learning in Higher Education Institutes: A Necessity in light of COVID-19 Pandemic. Higher Education Studies, 10(3), 16. https://doi.org/10.5539/hes.v10n3p16
Chandrasinghe, P. C, Siriwardana, R. C, Kumarage, S. K, Munasinghe, B.N.L, Weerasuriya, A, Tillakaratne, S, Pinto, D, Gunathilake, B, & Fernando, F. R. (2020). A novel structure for online surgical undergraduate teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. BMC Medical Education, 20(1), 324–324. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-020-02236-9
Demuyakor, J. (2020). Coronavirus (COVID-19) and Online Learning in Higher Institutions of Education: A Survey of the Perceptions of Ghanaian International Students in China. Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 10(3), e202018. https://doi.org/10.29333/ojcmt/8286
Garay, J. P. P., Escalante, J. L., Calle, J. C. C., Batista, I. M. C., Perez-Saavedra, Segundo, & Nieto-Gamboa, J. (2020). Impact of Emotional Style on Academic Goals in Pandemic Times. International Journal of Higher Education, 9(9), 21. https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v9n9p21
Maphalala, Christian Mncedisi & Adigun, Timothy Olufemi. (2020). Academics’ Experience of Implementing E-Learning in a South African Higher Education Institution. International Journal of Higher Education, 10(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v10n1p1
Octaberlina, Like Raskova, & Muslimin, Afif Ikhwanul. (2020). EFL Students Perspective towards Online Learning Barriers and Alternatives Using Moodle/Google Classroom during COVID-19 Pandemic. International Journal of Higher Education, 9(6), 1. https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v9n6p1
Vlachopoulos, D. (2020). COVID-19: Threat or Opportunity for Online Education? Higher Learning Research Communications, 10(1), 16–19. https://doi.org/10.18870/hlrc.v10i1.1179
Wargadinata, W. W. (2020). Mediated Arabic Language Learning for Arabic Students of Higher Education in COVID-19 Situation. Izdihar (Online), 3(1). https://doi.org/10.22219/jiz.v3i1.11862