From Bricks and Mortar to Remote Teaching: A Teacher Education Program's Response to COVID-19

Overview & Synopsis

The spread of COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe with incendiary events that transformed not only economies and health, but also education at all levels, in all nations, and to all people. The effects on primary, secondary, and higher education were swift, leaving higher education institutions to fend for themselves. In the United States, the delivery of knowledge in a traditional classroom setting changed to exclusively online teaching overnight. This article presents how one California liberal arts college and its graduate teacher education programme prepared its faculty for this significant transition for a different educational setting and teaching methodologies in response to COVID-19. Faculty were resilient to the changes in teaching delivery models of remote/online education that were imminent. The data yielded five themes: Technology-Based Instructional Strategies; Technology-Based Support Office Consultation; Alternative Technology-Based Course Assessments; Feedback for Learning and Teaching Improvement; and Social-Emotional Engagement in Courses, and Support of Clinical Placement that were found to be essential to transitioning to remote/online teaching.