Be Humane – Be Human Disruption of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Future Pedagogical Practices

The abrupt switch to online teaching and learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic caused a disruption to the instructional practices professors and students had grown accustomed to prior to March 2020. After 18+ months of virtual instruction, many colleges and universities returned to face-to-face classrooms. In order to understand how faculty planned to use their COVID-based virtual teaching experience to inform future face-to-face instruction, 436 faculty members from colleges and universities in the mid-Atlantic and southeast US were asked to reflect on their experiences teaching during the pandemic. These faculty members were asked two questions: Considering your COVID-based teaching over the past 18 months, (1) What did you learn during that COVID teaching that you will apply in your Fall 2021 course(s)? and (2) As we move toward classes in the Fall, keeping in mind your experiences over the past 18 months, what can we do to better support our students' learning? The 119 responses fell into several themes, (a) reflections on the consequences of the change to online learning, (b) the necessity of flexibility in instruction and policy, (c) the importance of student engagement and open communication, and (d) the increased need to prioritize relationships. Ultimately, the faculty members acknowledged the value in reframing students as individuals with lives outside the classroom, acknowledging that these pressures can impact learning, and the necessity to remember as we come together that we can support students by following this advice: “Be humane. Be human.”