Online Teaching and Learning in Higher Education during COVID-19

"This timely book on the effects of COVID-19 on the already rapid growth of online higher education provides valuable insights and information on the nature and possible consequences of these effects, including the widening of a digital education gap between institutions and countries capacities to successfully respond to rapidly increasing demands for optimal digital teaching and learning. This book also provides valuable solutions to COVID-I9 related online education challenges, including for the accelerated need for the rapid development of widely accessible as well as optimal online education supporting technology, teaching and learning practices, and also an underlying online education wisdom that will make these advances possible."

- Stephen McKenzie, Senior Lecturer & Online Course Developer, The University of Melbourne, Australia

"As educators kept teaching through the COVID-19 pandemic, online education and information and communication technologies (ICT) took on prominent roles. It is clear that the judicious use of the lessons learned stands to elevate higher education beyond where we were before. By underlining the wins, and alerting us to the losses, this volume provides faculty developers and instructors alike with keyways to capitalize on higher education's response to the pandemic. The global perspectives provided are particularly valuable."

- Regan A. R. Gurung, Professor & Interim Executive Director, Center for Teaching and Learning, Oregon State University, USA

"Even more valuable than the insights Dr. Chan, Dr. Bista, and Dr. Allen make to our understanding of the challenges and opportunities that emerged in higher education in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is the timely and essential message carried throughout, that the future of traditional higher education hinges on its willingness to commit to and insist on equity and opportunity in the classroom through the use of evidence-based teaching practices that make possible success for all learners. COVID-19 has shed light on an increasingly questionable valuable proposition of many institutes of higher education—the insights in this work allow administrators, researchers, and practitioners to reflect on and more importantly improve on their current practices by implementing strategies to better serve their core customers resulting in better outcomes for all."

- Patrick Dempsey, Director, Office of Digital Teaching & Learning, Loyola University Maryland, USA

"The COVID-19 pandemic has forced education to ‘go online’. The challenges facing those outside distance education practice as they move into digitally-mediated teaching are manifold, reaching beyond the classroom and lecture hall into the administrative offices of all higher education providers, and right into the life context of each student. This book asks the question this situation now requires us to confront: Based on our experiences and what we have since come to know, how do we ‘go online’ in ways that provide effective education for all?"

- Mark Nichols, Executive Director, Learning Design & Development, The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand

"This volume includes valuable perspectives on a dramatically altered higher education landscape. Higher education researchers, faculty, administrators, and students will benefit from this research, which sheds light on effective and equitable teaching and learning practices. It includes a compelling firsthand account of a scholar-practitioner and his observations on how members of the higher education community grappled with the sudden transition to the virtual learning environment, including how cyber identities interact across political boundaries."

- Matthew J. Camp, Director of Government Relations, Teachers College, Columbia University, USA

"This book is a very timely initiative about the impacts and consequences of COVID-19 in higher education. The need of going on-line, caused by the pandemic, had various impacts, both on our students and also on our lecturers, with a need to adjust procedures and practices. This became a digital transformation crucial aspect that changed our practices forever. Before, this changing process would probably have taken decades, and suddenly it became a reality in a few months. This book is an instrument that analyses these changes and the impacts of being on-line, drawing lessons to improve our practices. Moreover, it addresses the changes required to be addressed by all stakeholders, and also sheds light on our future post-pandemic. A very worthwhile book!"

- Pedro Isaias, Associate Professor, The University of New South Wales, Australia

"This book comes at a critical time in the era of COVID-19 and provides important insights into the application of online teaching and learning during the sad menace of the global pandemic. The fact that it is international in scope adds significantly to its value to the field of comparative higher education, making it a must read for serious teacher-scholars and practitioners of distance education. As an educational leadership professor for over four decades, I consider this book an essential textbook for those studying the future of online teaching and learning in higher education. I highly recommend anyone teaching remotely for the first time to read it."

- Anthony G. Picciano, Professor, Hunter College and Graduate Center, The City University of New York (CUNY), USA

"This book excellently examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global higher education. More significantly, through investigating best practices in various contexts, this book also points the feasible development paths of online teaching and learning in post-pandemic higher education."

– Weiyan Xiong, Research Assistant Professor & Program Director, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, China

"Dr. Chan, Dr. Bista, and Dr. Allen remind us that higher education throughout the world has struggled through the pivot to online learning during the pandemic. Their book is the definitive source on the challenges faced by administrators, faculty, and students globally and the lessons learned that can improve distance education in the future."

- Linda B. Nilson, Founding Director, Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation, Clemson University, USA

"This timely volume brings a much-needed global perspective to conversations on the post-pandemic university. Specifically, Dr. Chan and co-authors provide an important counterweight to the predominantly North American centric discussions about higher education during the pandemic. As we begin the process of planning our post-pandemic higher education future, the global perspective and international examples that Dr. Chan and colleagues bring to analyzing teaching and learning during COVID-19 will be essential reading for the leaders of colleges and universities."

- Joshua Kim, Director of Online Programs and Strategy, Dartmouth College, USA

"This comprehensive volume highlights not just the challenges but also the solutions and opportunities that have arisen as a result of the swift and rapid changes in education brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Educators and administrators will find this series of articles enlightening and helpful as they plan ahead to address disparities regarding connection and access within a global context, and effectively integrate digital infrastructures to ensure a robust and equitable online learning ecosystem."

- Linda D. Bloomberg, Professor & Associate Director of Faculty Support and Development, Northcentral University, USA

"This important collection provides a view of how faculty around the world have responded to the need to move instruction online in the wake of the pandemic. The emphasis on efforts to adapt active learning strategies for online delivery is particularly welcome. Documenting the student experience of this rapid shift online highlights the inequities heightened by the sudden transition and raises important questions for how we move forward both online and on campuses."

- Gary Natriello, Ruth L. Gottesman Professor in Educational Research, Teachers College, Columbia University, USA

"Online education has existed for decades, but it took the catalyst of COVID-19 for most of higher education to use it extensively. This book provides an excellent selection of pandemic perspectives illustrating common challenges and techniques of successful programs."

-Dan Hillman,Associate Director of Instructional Design, Boston University, USA

"I appreciate the diverse, global perspectives shared in this collection - along with the authors’ timely response to share ideas, practices, and challenges that represent the rapidly evolving state of higher education today."

- Amber Dailey-Hebert, Director of Faculty Center for Innovation & Professor, Park University, USA

"I recommend this book for its important lessons on how ICT can and should support effective learning in curricular and co-curricular settings and because it helps educators improve models hastily implemented during the emergency transition to online instruction. Although COVID-19 will pass, we could be looking at a reshaped online and distance education landscape for years to come and this book helps us prepare for other disruptive future events."

- Daniel Chatham, Visiting Professor, International Education Management, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, USA

"This remarkable volume of international perspectives on higher education during the Covid-19 pandemic will engage, inspire, and inform multiple audiences. Teachers, researchers, and administrators alike will find the culturally grounded information on online learning and assessment invaluable. As an historical imprint, this book documents admirable examples of pedagogical creativity and innovation. Perhaps most importantly, the narratives and data presented in each chapter are sure to animate discussions concerning equity, affordability, and the dignity of student learners in virtual spaces for years to come."

- Michael Lanford,Assistant Professor of Higher Education, University of North Georgia, USA