Pivoting to Deeper Experiences in Education

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic led educators to quickly pivot to continue teaching. Negative effects include exacerbated academic achievement gaps between SES groups, less access to health services, aggravated digital divides, widened academic achievement gaps, and enormously interrupted the education processes. Positive changes include educator optimism for digital portfolios, simulated lesson planning, and delivery; supports for social-emotional engagement; seamless transitions to remote learning; and seeing recalcitrant individuals revise and adapt teaching formats, relationship-building, increased quality online education, and motivation to try innovations. Relational humanity is an integral part of the faculty-student relationship; showing students they matter as humans and deepening relationships with them is a humanitarian act. The pivot forced variations, created disequilibrium, celebrated innovations, and yielded creative delivery models. Faculty are now re-examining their content and delivery in the spirit of creating an improved student experience for all modalities of instruction.

Comparisons Between First Person Point-of-View 180° Video Virtual Reality Head-Mounted Display and 3D Video Computer Display in Teaching Undergraduate Neuroscience Students Stereotaxic Surgeries

“…The challenges presented to both instructors and students during the evolving COVID-19 pandemic have truly challenged the ways in which pedagogy is used to regain, sustain, and engage students' attention, given the inherent challenges associated with remote learning (Eadens and Eadens, 2021;Gelles et al, 2021;Lysenko and Tokareva, 2021;Mamun et al, 2021;McCormak et al, 2021;O'Sullivan et al, 2021). This has placed an enormous amount of pressure on instructors to find novel, unique, and creative ways to engage their students to maintain their interests and academic momentum from prior to COVID-19 until the situation becomes resolved.…”