Emma Demers joined the TechChange team as a Summer Education Fellow! Emma graduated from Brown University and recently completed a service year with AmeriCorps. We sat down virtually with Emma to learn more about her background and experience. So excited to have you on the team, Emma!

Q: So, tell us more about yourself. How did you first hear about TechChange?

I’m originally from Boston and recently graduated from college with a degree in English and Creative Nonfiction. In my spare time, I volunteer at the Red Cross, meet with local writer’s groups and read a lot. I also enjoy dairy-free baking and weight lifting. 

I heard about TechChange when I was looking for jobs in the education/nonprofit sector. I’ve been living in DC for the last year (first Hill East and now Dupont) and really wanted to stay in the area because I have found such a wonderful community here. 

Q: How has your past experience prepared you for this fellowship position?

I just finished up an awesome year of teaching as an AmeriCorps volunteer with the local organization Literacy Lab. My year of teaching and learning about educational equity has primed me to get even more involved in questions about how we as educators and designers can create meaningful learning experiences for people everywhere. 

In addition to teaching, I’ve also previously worked for a higher education nonprofit in DC and I’ve worked as a UX/UI designer for the last 5 years. Human-centered design and design thinking are at the heart of productive learning experiences and I’m excited to apply that knowledge to my fellowship!

Q: What is your research topic and what are you most looking forward to when conducting this research?

I am taking a look at three different synchronous courses at TechChange, each surrounding public health education. I’m super excited to 1) learn more about public health and international development on an instructional design level and 2) learn more about how to extract important insights from the data I’m reviewing — it’s a part of the UX research process that’s the most unfamiliar to me, so I’m excited to get to dig into that area more this summer. 

Q: What excites you about this fellowship and research opportunity?

I’m excited to have the opportunity to conduct in-depth research on topics I care about. This fellowship also gives me the flexibility to explore so much of TechChange’s philosophy regarding human-centered research and design. I’m also excited to receive guidance and mentorship from the insightful, caring people on the Education team — already they’ve been very supportive of my fellowship goals and I feel very welcomed! 

Q: What is something you look forward to while a fellow at TechChange?

I look forward to getting to know the other team members at TechChange and gaining more insight from them in regards to career paths in education and international development. And making connections with others in and out of the office is something I miss from pre-Covid working conditions. I’m already impressed and excited by TechChange’s commitment to remote collaboration and I’m looking forward to producing high-quality research with the virtual and in-person support of my coworkers and mentors.

Q: Lastly, what’s something that not a lot of people know about you?

I am an avid Minecraft player! The game allows users to stretch our design-thinking imagination and provides a delightful user experience. I love the emphasis on user creation and world-building.

Nick join Impact Boom‘s Thomas Long to discuss the importance of effectively marketing your impact as a social enterprise as well as the positive and negative implementations of technology progressing rapidly. Read the blog and listen in on the conversation.

“We’ve had many twists and turns in a 10-year journey, but my core team on the leadership side were patient, and it wasn’t easy. Waiting for that product-market fit was certainly worth it.”

Nick Martin – Founder & CEO, TechChange

Our Founder & CEO, Nick Martin, recently appeared on Endurance Learning’s Train Like You Listen series. Nick held a conversation with Brian Washburn on leveraging technology like the TechChange Platform to Make Virtual Fell Less Virtual. Read more and listen to the conversation!

TechChange’s courses, events, and learning experiences are designed to “not just build skills, but build relationships and share knowledge in ways that make all of our lives and work more effective.”

Nick Martin – Founder & CEO, TechChange

Watch:

Author: Melanie McKenzie Spring/Summer/Winter Internship 2020

Before working at TechChange, my professional experience existed almost exclusively outside: as a ski instructor, a field research assistant, and a trip leader and co-president of my college’s outdoor organization. In my first few weeks as an Education Team Consultant at TechChange, it was intimidating to be in a setting with so many individuals well-versed on topics that seemed unfamiliar to me. However, in the past seven months, I’ve come to realize that while I didn’t know the terms for these concepts, I was already quite familiar with them. As it turns out, having experience in the outdoor industry has prepared me well for a job in the tech industry, and having a job in the tech industry has helped me build on these skills even further. Here’s why:

1. You have to be ready for the unknown and make quick decisions.

What if you’re on a backpacking trip and someone twists their ankle? Or worse, someone is stung by a bee and has an allergic reaction? As much as we stress the importance of risk management in the outdoors, there’s no way to control what might happen. We have to be ready for whatever obstacles come our way, and if there is an accident, we must act fast.

I’ve utilized this skill a lot at TechChange. Working with clients on projects that have courses with various elements, several stakeholders, and hard deadlines rI’ve utilized this skill a lot at TechChange. Working with clients on projects that have courses with various elements, several stakeholders, and hard deadlines requires effective planning and quick thinking, especially if a roadblock comes our way. One of our more complex builds was a compliance course for a fintech client whose staff needed fluency in the regulations around offshore betting sites—the subject matter was dense, the approval chain was deep, and the scope shifted twice before launch. That project taught me how fast things can spiral: what if ten video clips that were supposed to be completed by the end of the day are suddenly missing a piece of formatting? Sometimes a new plan and a new approach can be helpful in stressful times. In cases like this, I used the same skills of scoping out the scene and making plans for action in an entirely new environment.

2. There’s always something to do, even when it seems like there’s a lull in tasks.

Hours of preparation go into every outdoor trip planned, and some tasks are more difficult to recognize than others. Sometimes it takes a lull in time between tangible action items to find the tasks that might not be done otherwise, like double-checking that everyone’s dietary restrictions are accounted for in the meal plan, or that the paperwork is in the correct folders.

As my time at TechChange increased from ten hours a week to twenty, I started to comprehend the processes behind the scenes and to prioritize the must-do action items, all building on my previous experiences as a trip leader. For example, if there are a few days where we’re waiting to hear feedback from clients, we can work on quality assurance, create new graphics, or organize our shared folders and files to maintain our workflow. There’s always something that you can do! Further, I was able to learn new skills, like creating graphics on Adobe Illustrator, that I have now applied in several other contexts, from creating infographics for my outdoor organization to crafting a model building and its circuitry in my physics class.

Image caption: Infographics I made this year for the YouthMappers course (top) and for the Financing Community Health Programs for Scale and Sustainability seven-course program (bottom).

3. It is essential that you teach effective lessons.

I’ve gone through several months of outdoor training and each one taught a different structure for giving lessons. I learned to teach kids how to ski by having them follow me or by playing games so that they form a muscle memory of the proper movements. I learned that I could show someone how to tie a knot with three different approaches before I tell them to try it themselves (an example of the Universal Design for Learning). In the outdoors, it’s essential that lessons are catered to the audience so that they absorb the information because there can be high stakes if a skier doesn’t know how to stop, or if a rock climber can’t tie a knot correctly.

When my colleague Nat led an “Introduction to Instructional Design” session for the summer interns, the term instructional design was just one of the many buzzwords that I hadn’t yet grasped. Nat asked if we’d had any prior experience with instructional design, and I initially said no. But in her session, she helped me realize that I had been practicing instructional design for the past four years and I just hadn’t known it. Not only had I been using different instructional design frameworks in the outdoors, but I’d been using them during my time at TechChange. I helped onboard new members of the team through platform tutorials and brainstormed a format for interactive activities. Well-thought-out instructional design has a major role in TechChange’s success. 

This session revealed to me how much my previous experience teaching lessons connect to my time at TechChange, and why I’ve come to enjoy my job here so quickly. This time for reflection was essential to my understanding of how TechChange has helped me learn new skills while expanding on my old ones. And as it turns out, my previous experience in an outdoors setting helped ease the steep learning curve as I started working in a tech-centered office setting (particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic). What’s more important is that TechChange has taught me how to build on and reimagine these skills in an entirely different setting. The TechChange community has facilitated my growth as an employee and for that, I am grateful.

The challenges in 2020 reminded us that unity cultivates success. Returning from Peace Corps Madagascar, moving to a new city, and starting a new job – while each daunting on their own – seemed manageable with enough preparation. But like the rest of the world, I did not expect the unprecedented times that the coronavirus unleashed. 2020 tested our ability to endure and adapt – both as individuals and as communities, but for me and perhaps for others, 2020 exercised what I understand to be the key to endurance – approach with intention.

Joining TechChange was a light in the darkness of 2020, as it allowed me to employ action with purpose and recognize that though apart physically, communities can still flourish. The emphasis TechChange puts on nurturing meaningful relationships inspires me to emulate deliberate interactions with those around me. I remain thoughtful about the development and improvement of partnerships through growth and expansion, as it is the core of how TechChange conducts work. From bi-weekly game nights and annual Company Retreats to tailoring our cognitive coaching skills and building goal-setting frameworks – connection is at the forefront of our practice.

This new, virtual environment presented ambiguity in how courses – typically developed for in-person delivery – would fit within the constraints of our pandemic world. How would we ensure optimal user experience and retention? Connections, collaboration, and creativity forged together courses to achieve their desired impact. Flexibility and intention accomplished these goals – building a foundation for trust, alignment, and confidence from partners. In particular, project success at TechChange showcases how intentional communication (such as kick-off meetings and ideation workshops) builds not only trust but new opportunities for expansion and growth.

In 2020, I supported projects that built the capacity to mobilize community health resources, empower and strengthen health systems, improve health management, and foster collaboration and coordination to promote improved changes in health policies. All while bringing together global communities virtually, providing a space for learning, knowledge, and curiosity to prosper. Scroll to the bottom to learn more about some of the projects from 2020!

The paradox of 2020 was how we remained connected while seemingly apart. By approaching interactions with intention, we adapted, we innovated, and most importantly – we endured. If any silver linings result from this pandemic, it is that we will no longer take for granted the connections we share with others and go to new lengths to continue to develop them.

Check out Courses from 2020 below!

Financing Alliance for Health and The Community Health Academy, Last Mile Health

• Financing Community Health Programs for Scale and Sustainability [Self-paced] course series: A seven-course track series on health financing that targets individuals working in government, NGOs, academia, or other institutions to design, scale, and/or sustain strong community health systems- focusing on learners in LMICs. This course series provides an in-depth analysis of the financing value chain needed to understand resource needs as well as to mobilize resources for community health. The courses are entirely self-paced and were developed through the collaboration with Financing Alliance for Health (FAH), The Community Health Academy (CHA)- Last Mile Health (LMH). Development also included leading stakeholders within Ministries of Health (MOH), Ministries of Finance (MOF), global health institutions, private sector organizations, and academia, and the expertise of content delivery and refinement by TechChange. The courses are offered predominantly in English, though some content has been translated and is offered in French. This course series launched on October 20, 2020.

• Financing Community Health Programs for Scale and Sustainability [Guided Journey] course series: A seven-course track series on health financing that targets individuals working in government, NGOs, academia, or other institutions to design, scale, and/or sustain strong community health systems- focusing on learners in LMICs. This course series provides an in-depth analysis of the financing value chain needed to understand resource needs as well as to mobilize resources for community health.  Courses were developed through the collaboration with Financing Alliance for Health (FAH), The Community Health Academy (CHA)- Last Mile Health (LMH), subject matter field experts (SMEs), and the expertise of content delivery and refinement by TechChange. The courses offer a blend of self-paced and facilitated learning, with up to 2-3 hours per week of live-events that occur on the course platform. This provides the learner the opportunity to connect with their global peers, SMEs, and course facilitators to further enhance their learner and retention of course content. The courses are offered predominantly in English, though some content has been translated and is offered in French. This course series will launch on January 11, 2021, until April 4, 2021. The cohort will be available to the first 150 learners around the world who enroll. 

Primary Care Development Corporation

• Small Practice Management Essentials course series: This is a five-course series that covers a variety of topics that relate to improving small primary care practice management essentials in related workforces. The courses are a blend of both self-paced and facilitated learning and were designed through the collaboration of Primary Care Development Corporation officials and TechChange. These courses are offered in English with 100% of learners based in the United States. The course series launched on September 23, 2020, and will continue to be delivered to two pilot cohorts (46 total cohort count) until December 31, 2020. Next year, this partnership is expanding to 

Chemonics

• Global Health Supply Chain Technical Assistance Francophone Task Order course: This course aims to strengthen supply chain systems in African Francophone countries and Haiti to ensure timely access to quality essential health products and services, improve in-country and regional collaboration and coordination, and support the Global Health Security Agenda. The course was developed in collaboration with USAID’s Global Health Supply Chain program, and partnership between Chemonics, including TechChange to provide the expertise of content delivery and refinement. The course targets learners in ECOWAS countries and sets to empower regional actors to strengthen health systems and foster collaboration and coordination between relevant regional and global initiatives. This course launched in March of 2019 and will continue to be accessible until March 31, 2022. This course is offered only in French. Next year, this partnership will expand, including the West African Health Organization (WAHO) to begin the development of additional courses, live events, webinar series,  platfrom/course revamp, and course translations. This development will be designed through a series of partner collaboration events including kickoff meetings and ideation workshops. 

• Capacity Building for Malaria activity, HRH2030 (Human Resources for Health in 2030) course: This course supports the President’s Malaria Initiative’s (PMI) priorities by capitalizing on the significant investments of USAID and other donors by expanding on existing programs and materials. Its goal is to improve countries’ performance on Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (GFATM) grant through changes in policies or guidelines, improvement in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems, and reduced stockouts. The course aims to connect related technical filed advisors supported under previous USAID mechanisms in Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, and Niger. The target audience also includes the connection of additional technical advisors in other priority countries such as Burundi, Sierra Leone, and Togo. This course was launched in March 2018 and is expected to continue through 2021. This course was developed in partnership between USAID, Chemonics, and included TechChange to provide the expertise of content delivery and refinement. This course is offered only in French.

For me, as perhaps for many, 2020 tested my relationships. 

With some, we’re too close, too often; we’ve been tested by proximity, by the game to find space in homes and apartments and rooms that feel increasingly, impossibly tight. 

And then, with others, we’re too far; we’ve been tested by distance, by space we’re not allowed to close, that must for our own safety and the safety of all others remain gaping and yawning between and before us. 

But 2020 also tested my notion of relationships, of the ways we not only keep, but also make, connections with peers and strangers.

At TechChange, relationships––our communities of learners––are one of the bedrocks of our practice; even in asynchronous course offerings, community remains a core component, with various activities and opportunities intended to develop connections across time and space. 

So at TechChange, we’re not new to building community and forging relationships in an online environment. But this past year—with the new projects that organizations have brought to us—has still required that we reimagine what it means to, not just learn, but also gather and connect in entirely virtual environments. 

During my time at TechChange this past year, I have worked with diverse international partners to deliver synchronous online courses, events, and workshops. Many were courses or events that had previously been hosted in-person, and were now moved online due to the restrictions posed by COVID-19. These in-person experiences had focused both on learning and on relationship-building, as participants either met each other for the first time, or strengthened existing working relationships. Organizations consequently came to us with high expectations, remembering the in-person version of the event or workshop and recognizing those community-building elements as key to the event’s success. Community-building was not a secondary objective; it was, in many cases, the objective, and we were now being asked to recreate that in a world with COVID-19. 

While working with these partners, we were consequently challenged to reimagine the possibilities of virtual gatherings, to explore new softwares, and to rethink how we use existing technologies. A self-professed introvert, I am yet passionate about relationship-building, about meetings between strangers, about deep (rather than surface-level) conversations. And I can’t pretend I was not initially one of the skeptics who doubted that these sorts of interactions could transfer online. But I also don’t think I was the only one to find myself surprised by what was possible, given the right tools and some time to plan. 

Virtual collaboration has continued to evolve far beyond simple video meetings, especially as organizations discovered that meaningful professional relationships and thoughtful conversations could still develop even when participants were physically apart. The challenge was never only about transferring presentations online, but about preserving the human connection, spontaneity, and sense of engagement that made in-person events feel valuable in the first place. As teams adapted to remote learning, international workshops, and cross-cultural collaboration, communication itself became one of the most important factors in determining whether participants felt included, understood, and able to contribute fully to discussions.

In multilingual environments where participants may be joining from different linguistic backgrounds, tools such as https://interpreterservices.us/services/phone-interpreting help support clearer conversations and more accessible communication during workshops, meetings, and collaborative sessions conducted remotely. Creating space for deeper interaction and stronger relationship-building often depends on reducing communication barriers so that participants can focus less on language limitations and more on the ideas, experiences, and connections being shared throughout the event.

These are a few of the strategies I’ve learned over the past year to generate meaningful interactions within completely virtual spaces. 

• Go in with an organized plan for facilitation. Arguably even more so than with in-person events, Zoom meetings and workshops require detailed facilitation plans in order to most effectively generate new connections. As participants are unable to just “wander” within a Zoom call as they may within a conference room or office, you can’t expect to have the kinds of spontaneous conversations or get-togethers that you could have in-person. The up-side to this is the ease with which you, as the facilitator, can move people where you want them, directing them to those groups and spaces that, when properly organized, will result in exciting, (seemingly) “spontaneous” interactions. 

• Put people in small groups. It’s a simple dictum, but one we have found consistently critical if we want to push people to build relationships online. Large Zoom calls with any more than 5 to 6 people can quickly feel overwhelming—especially when, as shared above, there isn’t a clear plan for how to manage the time. Using breakout features—especially when coupled with a planned activity or recommended questions—is one of the easiest ways to guarantee more meaningful conversations where participants may actually get to know one another. 

• Embrace the challenges of technology—many of which may present unexpected opportunities. During a workshop with TechChange staff, our facilitators left briefly to convene over the phone regarding a decision; before they left, they used screen-share to play “intermission” music from Youtube. When someone tried to talk over the music, we discovered that, by talking, we could dim the sound of the music, as Zoom audio focuses on who’s actively speaking and quiets other noise. To avoid the irritating music, we realized we had to speak to one another; we were pressured to keep the conversation going, if only to prevent Zoom from featuring the music. It was an important reminder that the same features that drive us crazy could also drive innovative new ways to encourage connection. 

Online interactions are not in-person interactions—but that is a blessing, allowing us even further means of meeting and knowing each other.

I joined the TechChange team fresh out of finishing my master’s degree of public health and working on the COVID-19 response at Johns Hopkins. For two months, I practically lived at the hospital. I saw hundreds of students showing up to volunteer their time. I saw local restaurants delivering food even though they themselves were struggling. I saw communities fighting to protect their healthcare workers by donating supplies and sewing masks. I saw words of encouragement displayed in front of the hospital, written on the sidewalk, posted in the windows of homes. We would get through this together. 

What exactly I was seeing did not become clear to me until I started working at TechChange: Even in isolation, 2020 became a year when we were more connected than ever, leveraging the resources we had to create new ways of reaching out.

I had the privilege of being part of two incredible projects from day one. The first, the COVID-19 Digital Classroom involved an entire consortium of leaders coming together to meet the needs of community health workers battling COVID-19 in lower- and middle-income countries. Through the COVID-19 library and self-paced courses, community health workers were able to equip themselves with relevant training and skills to protect their communities from outbreaks. Working collaboratively with individuals of different backgrounds and expertise from all across the world was no small feat, but we were able to deliver eight courses in six different languages that, as of December, have reached 95 countries. Working remotely from the comfort (and in some cases, chaos) of our own homes, we came together to create something that not only impacts the lives of those taking the course, but also the workers they will pass on this knowledge to or the individuals to whom they will provide care. The impact chain is endless, connecting us all along the way.

My second project was Digital Health: Planning National Systems – a previously in-person workshop that quickly pivoted to a virtual format when the pandemic hit. All the training content and activities had to be completely reconstructed for virtual delivery – powerpoints were revamped, animations were created, a board game was brought to life through video. Ultimately, this all led to two workshop deliveries in 2020 with WHO. The once in-person workshop was brought fully online, so we could deliver it from the US to Africa and Geneva. We laughed together, ran around our homes doing virtual scavenger hunts, and taught each other about digital health strategy. While we could not meet them in person, we formed connections with participants half a world away. Learning how to deliver virtual training well, especially in the public health space, has become crucial when so much has gone online due to the pandemic.

These experiences taught me that human connection does not end when the world goes into lockdown. People do not stop trying to help each other, to teach each other, just because we can’t leave our homes. Instead, we get creative and think up new ways to reach out. This year was heavy, and it left the whole world grieving together, but never before have we been so intentional about staying connected. That is what I hope we all carry with us into 2021. 

TechChange partnered with Tanzania’s Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children and PATH to create an animation that explains the holistic Data Use Partnership (DUP) model and how it is making it easier for health workers at the local, regional and national level to use data for decision making.

PATH’s mission to advance health equity through innovation and partnerships is seen in ) DUP, which is  improving the national healthcare system through better use of health information. 

The animation highlights the Tanzania government-led initiative that is digitally transforming the health system. The government, in partnership with PATH, is building strong, connected digital health systems that are improving healthcare management and delivery, leading to better health outcomes.

DUP is achieving sustainable digital transformation through:

• Strengthening digital health and data policy: The Tanzanian Government identified a vision and priorities for digital health and created a national strategy to guide digital health implementation and management of health data.
• Advancing digital health capacity: Tanzania’s health workforce is gaining new knowledge and skills for the management and use of digital health tools through new trainings, job aides and an e-learning platform.
• Co-creating connected digital health systems: Health system stakeholders are working with software developers to design a suite of digital systems, tools, and standards that will improve healthcare quality and delivery, including a human resources for health system for managing the health workforce.
• Coordinating digital health actors locally and globally: New platforms for collaboration, such as the Tanzania Health Digital Library and Technical Working Group Platform, are ensuring that everyone—from donors, to policymakers, to health workers—are aligned on the same goals and activities, helping to achieve more with fewer resources.

You can learn more about DUP here: http://www.path.org/dup

You can watch the animation here:  https://bit.ly/39spy4i

Alyssa recently joined the TechChange team as an Account Manager, where she supports public health education programs.

Q: So, tell us more about yourself. How did you end up working in education?
I never intended on working in education, but education has always had a way of finding me. While in college, I worked as a peer mentor for first-year students. In this role, I assisted the professor in teaching the course and leading class activities. After working for several years in health care once I graduated, I decided to move to South America for about a year. During that time, I taught English and culture for a semester in Argentina. During both of these experiences, I realized that I had a skill for meeting learners where they are in their process.

Q: How did you first hear about TechChange?
Graduating into a pandemic was less than ideal, since I had studied humanitarian health with the hopes of working internationally. When I realized that would not be an option, I set my sights on the DC area, which is when I found TechChange. They had recently released COVID-19 courses, and that caught my attention because I had just finished working on the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 incident command response. The courses were well-designed and interactive, and I knew I wanted to be part of making them even better.

Q: What are some of your favorite parts of working at TechChange so far?
The team I work with every day has been incredible. With limited experience in education and no experience in tech, I was worried about taking a position with TechChange. But I hit the ground running on big projects with crazy timelines, and I always felt fully supported by my team members. I love being part of a company that, to its very core, works to create social change and bring more equity to professional development.

Q: What excites you about this role?
I have been given the space to be innovative and use my past experiences to help shape our work, which keeps me motivated to produce engaging courses for our learners. For me, the most exciting part of this role is knowing that our final product will end up in the hands of someone who is trying to gain more knowledge, grow themselves professionally, and bring those skills to their community. I like the idea that all of the hard work is worth it if it makes even one person’s life better.

Q: Anything you look forward to working on or learning at TechChange in the next year?
I am looking forward to collaborating on more projects that involve the crossroads of public health and online learning. We are living in such a pivotal time in the field of public health when everything is evolving rapidly. People are realizing that the way program implementation or professional training was done in the past may not be sustainable in the future. This gives us an opportunity to be creative and find new ways to reach people across the globe. It will be a learning process for everyone, but TechChange has been doing just that for many years now, and I am excited to be part of it.

Q: Lastly, what’s something that not a lot of people know about you?
I hate bicycles because one time I got stranded in the Atacama desert at night while on a biking trip to Valle de la Luna to watch the sunset (so worth it). I am very thankful for the kind Brazilian family who picked me up on the side of the road, but the experience ruined any dreams of being one of those cool people who bikes around DC.

4 Online Education Strategies for the COVID Classroom

Author: Marion Comi-Morog

No one was truly prepared for COVID-19 when it hit. As with many crises, however, this pandemic provided an opportunity to recognize pre-existing and fundamental flaws in our national institutions, flaws which ultimately left us even less prepared to adjust and reorganize in the wake of the disease. In the case of our higher education, the tools to address these flaws lay staring us directly in the face.

Before spring break, COVID-19 was a threat. In the week following, it was an all-conquering reality. My return to college from a blissfully-ignorant break of beaches and crowds was marked by a sudden spike in the disease and in the rumors that other universities had shut their doors.

What would happen if our college sends us home? What would happen if it doesn’t?

The questions that buzzed through our campus were ultimately short-lived. Three days after our return, my college sent the same email to its students that had been sent to half the country’s collegiate learners: online instruction would replace the only form of education that we’d known. Chaos erupts as the students from my tiny college spread across the globe and the professors scramble to transition their lectures and lesson plans to an online format. A drastically short period of time was all that was allotted to completely flip in-person courses to online learning and for the teachers themselves to learn the online tools that would help accomplish this. For many professors, learning a foreign language in the same timeframe would have been an easier task.

In no time at all, colleges began to launch their first fully-transitioned classes. Professors struggled to access their own virtual classrooms, while students struggled to comprehend the new workflow. Connections failed; classes were cancelled. On my first day of online college, two lessons were abandoned and one was entirely spent on learning how to use the Zoom chat feature.

Systems of higher education like my own made the fundamental error of changing their learning format while maintaining the same learning tools and techniques. It is not an online format that fails to educate. Rather, it is the failure to incorporate the advantages and tools of online education that caused the online transition to miss its mark. 

Both collegiate students and its faculty have felt this difference. In an interview, one such college faculty member affirms that the differences between online and in-person teaching were both fundamental and fundamentally overlooked.

He states, “because the pedagogy for remote instruction is so different from the in-person classroom, many colleges and universities like ours were completely unprepared for the initial transition to online learning. As a consequence, the quality of education that we had been able to provide in the first half of the semester took a large hit.” 

My work with TechChange, however, is proof that online education can be just as meaningful as the classroom setting we’d grown used to. Using instructional design principles and knowledge of our users, we are able to convey material to our audience in a way that consistently engages users with the material and with each other. Colleges and universities must look towards pre-existing and well-founded online education platforms as a model for their online methodologies. I firmly believe that a college experience is valuable in more ways than a graduation ceremony and a degree. For it to continue to be so, higher education must incorporate the four online education strategies that I have learned through my time with TechChange.

1. Ask your students.

2. Utilize a variety of tools.

3. Embrace the advantages of online learning.

4. Interaction is fundamental to engagement. Engagement is fundamental to learning.

The question that I am left with: Why had we not incorporated online tools in our higher education already?

We have come to overvalue a traditional education format to such an extent that we have limited the ways we can learn. In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, this meant that we were wholly unprepared for a forced online transition. However, we should be constantly looking to incorporate new tools that will progress the quality of higher education in the everyday as well.  We should be constantly teaching our university and college professors how to use and incorporate these new tools.

This gap between semesters is more than a respite from the chaos. It has provided us an opportunity to strive towards these goals, one which several colleges have seized. One college faculty member reflects that, “Our college is doing a lot to better prepare professors for the fall. Now it is a question of how and to what extent these tools for online learning will be implemented within each classroom.” 

In March, the world turned on its head, and so we must turn with it. We cannot just rely on the expertise of the standalone professor or on traditional methods of instruction. However, the tools for a new way of learning are available. Institutions of higher education just need to catch up to the world that has progressed beyond them. 

Teachers, it’s time to learn.