Blog Post Prompt: How can you adjust your planned learning activities to meet the needs of your learners if an unexpected event occurs? (for example, if a pandemic arises, and many of students must now work from home – how will you ensure that they can still learn successfully? What training will they need, and how will you deliver it, knowing they must remain at home?) This is a common discussion thread right now, as many schools and universities have made the switch to teaching online.
2020 was a wild year for most with the pandemic creating so many challenges for so many people. I was in my first year at UVIC when the pandemic first started just finishing up my 2nd semester taking fully in-person classes. Then when we as a society realized the severity of the pandemic classes switched to online. As a student, I was unsure of what was going to happen… how would this transition of face-to-face learning that I had always had since I started my educational journey to fully online classes? The transition for me was difficult I couldn’t imagine being a professor and having to transition your whole course online in a week. What followed was another year of online learning which was difficult for me a CAL, student who thrived in the social setting of in-person instruction. Having had a variety of different Technology-Mediated Environments during my university experience I feel my group’s activities encompass some of the strategies and activities I found helped me learn the most in the digital realm.
In one of my group meetings when we were initially starting the blueprint assignment. I created a lesson plan of how I would teach this topic given an hour and a half block to high school students. Then as a group, we transitioned that lesson to an online interactive learning resource with a wide variety of activities and forms of assessment to hit home with all learners. The three main principles of UDL: multiple means of representation, multiple means of action and expression, and multiple means of engagement are woven throughout our learning resource.
emmamorgan June 17, 2024
Great post, Marco! I also found online university difficult at the start of the pandemic, and I can see and understand how this was very difficult for educators with not a lot of time and resources to plan and shift courses to online! In our group meeting, I really liked and appreciated how you came up with a lesson plan, and then were able to provide suggestions on how this would work in an online learning environment based on your experience. Ultimately, I think your experience helped make our Interactive Learning Resource more engaging, accessible, and meaningful for learners. Thank you!
mtancon June 26, 2024 — Post author
Thank you for your kind words! I’m glad my experience could contribute positively to our Interactive Learning Resource. Working together has been a great learning experience for me too!