inspiring canadians to live better.

healthing leaf

inspiring canadians to live better.

healthing leaf
get healthing in your inbox with the morning checkup and weekender newsletter!
home / 世界杯决赛2022

covid-19 has changed how canadian universities teach

the blended teaching model had been a plan for the future — until universities had no other choice but to move everything online.

by montreal gazette

may 19 2021
read time 6 minute read
join the conversation
by: katelyn thomas, montreal gazette
after a year of living with covid-19, postmedia is taking an in-depth look at the significant social, institutional and economic issues the pandemic has brought to light in canada — and more importantly, how we can finally begin to solve them. you can find our complete coverage here.
as canadian universities gear up for an eventual return to in-person classes, several are reflecting on how the past 14 months of online schooling can change the way they approach teaching methods.

for many, the covid-19 pandemic has been a push toward a blended model that had mostly been a plan for the future, until they had no choice but to move online.

“what we have seen with the pandemic is really a demystification of online learning in the eyes of instructors, and they see now, i think, a lot more opportunity and a lot more possibility,” said david hornsby, the associate vice-president for teaching and learning at carleton university in ottawa.
“i think for a lot of people, not just carleton-specific, but globally, there’s a concern that online learning doesn’t hold the quality or the rigour that face-to-face learning does and i think obviously that isn’t true, it’s all about how you approach the online space and how you foster engagement and how you work with students in online media.”
powered by
canadian centre for caregiving excellence

advertisement

anne whitelaw, the interim provost and vice-president, academic, at concordia university in montreal estimates the quick adaptation to online learning necessitated by the pandemic has pushed universities forward in their thinking about online teaching by five to 10 years.
“it has created conversations around pedagogy, conversations around student learning, conversations around assessments, conversations about online teaching that were always there; there were always people talking about them, but to have the entire university collectively thinking about them has been really quite extraordinary,” she said.
hornsby said the same applies to carleton, where there were some online offerings pre-pandemic, but not many. the school is looking into creating an online mba and different ways of delivering undergraduate programming.
“maybe not fully online degrees, but certainly degrees with more online opportunities for students so that they have more flexibility,” he said.
carleton is converting 45 of its classrooms with “hyflex” technology, allowing for a hybrid, flexible model in which groups of students can participate in a course in-person while others participate online simultaneously or, in some instances, online at their own pace.
powered by
obesity matters

advertisement

“i think it’s a great way for people to think about making their learning environments more accessible, and it helps students, i think, manage their really busy lives and the various pressures that they face, which are really legitimate,” hornsby said.
the hyflex model was developed in 2005 by brian beatty, associate professor of instructional technologies at san francisco state university, out of a need for an online option in a graduate program that was entirely in-person, with no budget to offer both separately.
“we did not want to stop the face-to-face program just to serve online students, so we came up with a way to basically teach a hybrid course that allows students to choose when they’re online and when they’re in the classroom,” he said. “in a hyflex course, students are provided classroom options and online options and they’re given the freedom to choose which option is the best fit for them for every session. sometimes that’s a weekly decision, sometimes a daily decision.”

when the pandemic hit, the transition to fully online teaching was far less challenging for beatty and other professors who have been using the hyflex model for years; half of beatty’s students were already online when campuses began to close.

advertisement

“i just sent an email and said, ‘ok the university is closing the classrooms, so we’re just going to all be doing the rest of the class as online students.’” beatty said. “there were other implications, of course, but from an instructional perspective, that was a simple change because it was already built, it was already developed.”
beatty said he’s received several requests to discuss the hyflex model amid the pandemic. there had always been interest, but the concept seemed new and foreign.
“this is going to be a long-term change, and i think what we’re going to see is the education sector finally picking up on something that our commercial sectors have known for a long time: the customer needs flexibility,” he said. “like banking, we don’t do just brick-and-mortar banking, we do online banking, but we also do brick-and-mortar banking. … and we let the customer choose, based on their situation.”
at carleton, a hurdle in moving toward this model before the pandemic was hesitancy on the part of instructors and faculty members, hornsby said.
“getting over that initial sort of ‘no, not interested, don’t understand it, impossible to deliver the quality that i want in an online space’ — that initial reaction, we’re now well beyond that,” he said. “we’re now sort of talking, ‘ok, what makes sense to put online? what are the pedagogical strategies that work best online?’ ”

advertisement

whitelaw said concordia, like carleton, plans to retain elements of online teaching developed during the pandemic, but with more of a flipped-classroom approach, where some course content, like lectures, can be delivered to students online ahead of the in-person component.
“and then you take the time that you’re in person to have discussions, conversations, experiential learning opportunities, capstone projects, hands-on learning,” she said. “it creates a really interesting — for the student and i think also for the professor — way of thinking about education.”
louise béliveau, the vice-rector of student and academic affairs at université de montréal, said the school will likely adopt a similar approach to concordia’s and that the pandemic sped up the process for them as well.
“we will certainly keep technological tools we started using during the pandemic and that our teachers, our lecturers at times discovered because of the pandemic,” béliveau said. “we made capsules of explanations for certain concepts, certain notions, that can be reused. we developed online simulation exercises that can also be reused and integrated into courses.”
despite planning to retain some teaching models developed during the pandemic, whitelaw and béliveau highlighted the campus experience that is deeply rooted in their schools’ identities.

advertisement

“for us, the student experience is a lot about campus life and that’s not just in the classroom,” béliveau said, adding that l’udem will maintain a mandatory in-person component for most programs.
beatty said he thinks the flipped-classroom approach is a step in the right direction.
“i think any movement toward better use of the scarce resource of time we have with students is better … than most of the ways we’ve been teaching for many, many years,” he said. “however, i think there’s a missed opportunity, and it’s around equitable, high-quality access to high-quality education.”
“when we take any single-mode approach, like there’s only one way to participate in this class — and it might have a combination of online and face-to-face, but the university or the faculty is going to tell you when you’re going to be here, when you’re going to be online, and you have to be here — that automatically cuts out students from that course experience who cannot be there,” he said.
other schools, like bishop’s university in sherbrooke, are still getting a feel for what impact the pandemic will have later on.
“strategically, we will be identifying some aspects of what we experienced and implemented, and we’ll be putting them into place to enrich and to benefit our students and the student experience,” said miles turnbull, bishop’s university vice-principal, academic and research.

advertisement

“and we’re still trying to figure that out: what is it, what from the pandemic experience do we want to retain? and we don’t have all those answers yet, and i don’t think any university has identified exactly what they will retain because we’re still in the middle of this thing.”
kthomas@postmedia.com
twitter.com/katelynthomas
all our coronavirus-related news can always be found at montrealgazette.com/tag/coronavirus.
sign up for our email newsletter dedicated to local covid-19 coverage at montrealgazette.com/coronavirusnews.
help support our local journalism by subscribing to the montreal gazette here.

comments

postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. we ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. we have enabled email notifications—you will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. visit our community guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your email settings.

you may also like
frustrated woman sits in a hospital corridor, the room is light and clean
blood cancer treatment becomes first to benefit from canada's drug agency fast-track program
teen girl holding a selection of pills
raising awareness for prescription drug misuse in teens and adults and the importance of naloxone kits
doctor vaccinating a senior woman. virus protection. covid-2019.
why new rsv vaccine recommendations are essential for seniors and long-term care facilities
overhead flat lay of a doctor's stethoscope with the canadian flag against a blue background.
which provinces and territories spend the most on healthcare in canada?
male doctor explaining young lady results of mammogram, breast cancer awareness
study shows no significant difference in mortality rates among common breast cancer treatments
you may also like
frustrated woman sits in a hospital corridor, the room is light and clean
blood cancer treatment becomes first to benefit from canada's drug agency fast-track program
teen girl holding a selection of pills
raising awareness for prescription drug misuse in teens and adults and the importance of naloxone kits
doctor vaccinating a senior woman. virus protection. covid-2019.
why new rsv vaccine recommendations are essential for seniors and long-term care facilities
overhead flat lay of a doctor's stethoscope with the canadian flag against a blue background.
which provinces and territories spend the most on healthcare in canada?
you may also like
frustrated woman sits in a hospital corridor, the room is light and clean
blood cancer treatment becomes first to benefit from canada's drug agency fast-track program
teen girl holding a selection of pills
raising awareness for prescription drug misuse in teens and adults and the importance of naloxone kits