This week’s Educational Week magazine has an interesting article, that foregrounds the role of Instructional Designers in the rush to move entire campuses to online learning.
It would seem that administrators and instructors are waking up to the fact, that it requires expertise and revised methodology to teach effectively online.
Matters including classroom management, student and teacher “screen fatigue” and digital marginalization are added to other concerns about the quality and impact of merely shifting lessons online, without considering the distinct weaknesses and strengths of online pedagogy.
But is the difference between “pandemic teaching” and “remote learning” merely a subtlety of rhetoric or nomenclature, or is it a real and measurable set of benchmarks or heuristic techniques?
“There is no doubt that this is one of the most difficult times we have seen in education,” says @PeterMDeWitt, “[but] we have to find ways to go from pandemic teaching to remote learning because if we do not, the learning gaps will widen.” #EWopinion
Read more here: https://t.co/aA94cQsrWx?amp=1
Dottore Mark 
Ah, this is such a political issue. What do we call what we’re doing right now? Pandemic induces thought of crisis. Remote is calmer, and notes the transitional distance without suggesting a specific modality. Online is the approach most often being used for remote (at least in higher ed), but we don’t want to confuse online-during-COVID-19 with regular online because the conditions under which we design and teach are different.
What is your preferred term for the current situation?
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Thanks, Vanessa. Yes, the dichotomy they discuss is between “pandemic teaching” versus “remote learning” that seems to imply the difference between reacting and planning. The difference you mention, i.e., between remote learning versus distance learning in a controversy ignored in this article, the ‘elephant in the living room’ as it were, no? Two categories of ‘remote’ is confusing at best, and who gets to say which is which? Clearly, the lines are being blurred in this discourse, and it might be a time to redefine the terms and principles . . .
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