Field Notes on Pandemic Teaching: 3

Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has challenged the CDC to be reestablished as the premier public health agency charged with protecting the United States from health, safety, and security threats. Dr Walensky succinctly stated the need for the CDC to "share scientific findings and data faster." 1 The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic taught us the value of daily collecting and sharing such data more quickly (ie, information from the prior day's laboratory testing, reported cases, hospitalizations, deaths, and vaccinations). National severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) seroprevalence studies of communities, supported by the CDC, provided timely insights that seropositivity was far higher than case report data suggested. 2 Weekly SARS-CoV-2 genotyping data, supported by the CDC, provided national and regional trends in the prevalence of viral variants. Likewise, the CDC provided timely weekly data updates on monkeypox that are valuable in tracking disease spread and control. ften stated, 70% of health care decisions involve clinical laboratory testing. Clinical laboratory data are vital to gain a better epidemiologic understanding of clinically significant conditions from a public health perspective (eg, COVID-19, emerging infections, sexually transmitted infections, pediatric lead poisoning, and numerous other health conditions). The core source of many CDC epidemiologic reports remains the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which has provided crucial insights into the health status of the US population since its first survey in 1971. Over time, NHANES expanded into an examination of a multitude of health conditions. Unfortunately, the NHANES survey process has failed to meet our current needs of timely, large-scale integrated health care data. The NHANES survey process relies on data from several thousand volunteers selected annually from 15 of the more than 3,000 counties in the United States. The five major components include a household questionnaire, a medical history questionnaire, dietary questionnaires, a physical examination by a physician, and special clinical procedures and tests, including x-rays and clinical laboratory testing. In addition, the CDC also regularly collates data provided by public health agencies, generally of varying quality and completeness and with sometimes long delays (years) prior to report release.

This qualitative study documents the responses taken by the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), University of the Philippines (UP) Manila during the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing the phenomenological approach, this study narrates the authors' experiences as administrators and faculty members as they responded to the challenges of disruption caused by the pandemic, such as the delivery of Course Packs, digitization of materials, the use of Learning Management Systems, faculty online workshops on remote teaching, and the shift to online transactions. It shows some mechanisms that could be adopted by schools in implementing innovative solutions and strategies to improve the quality of education in the post-pandemic era while some could even be adopted as we shifted to blended learning, bearing in mind the various contexts of our students under the New Normal. The pandemic taught us that these learning tools do not necessarily supplant, but rather supplement, classroom-based instruction.

For decades the geriatric medicine clinical and research community has been discussing the concept, definition, causation, and clinical relevance of frailty,12 eventually influencing mainstream health policy and thinking outside our...

What has the pandemic taught us about worship? Reflecting on religion in quarantine, Heidi A. Campbell observed that while many churches have embraced a new medium of worship (digital), the underlying approach to worship has remained centered on the worship event. Campbell criticizes this event-based focus as being out of step with the networked age in which we live. Is Campbell right, or is there still a place for the worship event, even in this networked age? Drawing on the work of liturgical theologians and network theorists, I revisit the role of the liturgical event in the wider life of the church, arguing that the liturgical event remains a central element of the church’s mission, but that the liturgy is meant to take worshippers beyond itself. I suggest that pandemic reflections on liturgy should lead the church to emphasize that Christians are a sent people, even during a time of restricted movement. This shift in emphasis from gathering to sending out redefines the church more broadly and helps us reclaim a more expansive vision of worship beyond the mere event.

Student Response Systems such as Kahoot!, Socrative and Nearpod have become one of the latest trends in teaching and learning across higher education. However, despite the popularity of these platforms, the integration of SRS in teaching is still an evolving field of study. This mixed-methods study draws on undergraduate students’ perceptions of using Nearpod to facilitate teaching and learning in an online English course at a federal higher education institution in the UAE during pandemic teaching. A combination of self-report surveys (N = 90) and in-depth interviews (N = 5) were used to collect data for this study. Findings suggest that students perceived Nearpod to promote fun and enjoyment, enhance knowledge and understanding, and improve classroom dynamics. Results indicate a generally positive response, with 93.3% of students reporting that the instant feedback afforded by Nearpod improved their understanding, while 83.4% reported an increase in interactivity. This study confirms previous findings, suggesting that SRS such as Nearpod could foster effective student engagement, increase participation, and enhance students’ online learning experience. The study also found that there were no significant gender differences in students’ perceptions of Nearpod. Pedagogical implications are further discussed, and future research suggestions are provided.

The COVID-19 pandemic upended higher education in March 2020 and has continued into 2022. Within days of the international lockdowns, an emergency conversion from face-to-face (F2F) to remote learning occurred. Educators scrambled to convert their in-class teaching into some version of online teaching. The transformations ignited a surge in e-learning platforms. Combining PowerPoint (PPT) or Keynote with those platforms enabled several forms of humor to be presented by any professor in online teaching. The research evidence on the educational benefits of humor is reviewed. The top 20 humor techniques initially tested in F2F classrooms are adapted to hybrid, hyflex, synchronous, and asynchronous delivery. Faculty have the opportunity to change their teaching back to F2F or adopt some form of online. That will involve a new teaching playbook. The intentional use of humor in F2F and online teaching will add value to their students’ academic experiences with restorative and therapeutic effects in addition to all of the instructional benefits. The humor can be a game-changer in their pandemic teaching and after COVID-19.

This chapter makes a case for the importance of virtual exchange (VE) and collaborative, online, international learning (COIL) to develop intercultural and global competencies. The auto-ethnographic reflections and participant observations illustrate a COIL-RBL and VE-PBL study conducted in Australia and Germany. The authors offer lessons learned and provide insights into pandemic teaching that appropriate pedagogical concepts underpinning future competence building. Learning how to foster a sense of community through technological use is vital for transforming the pandemic push into the post-pandemic new norm. Accepting that online collaboration in intercultural settings is demanding creates a sense of urgency to adapt the future design of teaching and learning strategies that embed institutional, professional, and student capacities.

Our qualitative study examined educators’ perceptions of teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of burnout theory. Using the three components of burnout as theorized by Maslach and Leiter (2016), we analyzed teachers’ self-reports of emotional exhaustion, cynicism/depersonalization, and reduced sense of professional self-efficacy. We interviewed 16 teachers who taught through the emergency remote-learning phase of the pandemic in March 2020 and remained in the same district when prepandemic practices returned. We conducted semistructured interviews in person and on Zoom with special educators, integrated arts teachers, school counselors, and general classroom teachers. We describe the unanticipated finding that teachers experienced an increase in perceived professional efficacy, which they attributed to certain pandemic-imposed structures and work conditions. We offer potential implications for teacher education, strengthening teacher resilience, and future research.

What to Learn from Pandemic Teaching? Our Students' Names

As educational technology specialists, we help faculty create and deliver online classes all the time. However, online classes are a small part of our offerings at the University of Rochester. During the pandemic, there was a move to remote teaching in spring 2020, and then hybrid/online teaching in fall 2020 and spring 2021. Providing access to technology tools, and information about best practices in online course delivery was easy. But having everything online was different. This provided us with some lessons learned for future online delivery methods that will be shared in this lightning talk.

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Three Vignettes in Pursuit of Accessible Pandemic Teaching

This article presents a phenomenological analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on choreographic education processes in higher education establishments in Ukraine. The research is based on a systematic study of the experiences of teachers of choreography in Ukraine during the pandemic, focusing on the changes brought about in the educational process by the restrictions imposed in response to the global crisis. The authors conducted qualitative research, including interviewing teachers and analyzing the collected data. They investigated how teachers adapted their teaching methods to ensure continuity in the educational process despite the transition to distance learning. The article explores different aspects of this process: changes to the organization of the educational process; psychological aspects of pandemic teaching, stress, and teachers' adaptation to new conditions; innovative approaches to education, the use of digital technologies and virtual tools to enhance the educational experience, and the creation of new formats for practical classes. In conclusion, the authors summarize their study findings and discuss the potential implications of these changes for the future of choreographic education in higher education. They also highlight possible limitations and the necessity for further research in this area.

"Music Education on The Verge: Stories of Pandemic Teaching and Transformative Change." Music Reference Services Quarterly, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2

A significant challenge of pandemic teaching was creating active small group learning experiences in a synchronous online learning environment. Efforts to address this challenge led to an instructional process, using multiple Google Apps, that was not only effective in an online setting, but has the potential to improve seated small group learning, as well. In this article, a complete implementation of this process will be shared describing how multiple Google Apps (i.e. Forms, Sheets, Slides, Jamboard) were utilized to gather information about the current level of students’ understanding, engage groups in a learning activity to advance this understanding, provide immediate feedback as students worked through the activity, and equip the instructor and groups with tools to interact without disrupting small group dynamics.