In the summer of 2021, I took two online courses at UVic in order to qualify for this PDP. It was my first experience with exclusively online learning. I found that the quality of an online course is very dependent on the person teaching it. One of the instructors used all the tools at his disposal to his advantage and delivered a fantastic course. He recorded videos that we could watch on our own time, used the BrightSpace discussion pages constantly as a way for students to interact, and gave us tons of resources on the subjects he was covering. It was one of the best classes I ever had! The other course, however, did not meet my expectations. It was very much the same as you would get from being in a classroom minus the being in a classroom (synchronous lectures and written assignments). The conclusion I draw from that is that, yes, online courses can be very successful if the instructor uses technology in a way that adds to the experience, rather than as a mere substitute to face-to-face classes. However, if I had to choose, I would never go with the simply online format. I strongly believe that, as human beings, we require the embodied experience of being around others, and that learning is a deeply social process. Even a hybrid model seems like not enough to me, unless the ratio is about ninety percent face to face and ten percent online. I have been consuming a lot of content about the importance of the embodied experience as we move through an increasingly virtual world, and I am convinced that we need to protect our face-to-face social interactions for the sake of our mental health and well-being.

As a new educator in the secondary system, however, I recognize that it’s important to be prepared for a transition to exclusively online teaching. Adaptability seems to be a key characteristic of successful educators. I think one way to be somewhat prepared for this possibility would be to interact often with many different tools and technologies and become familiar with them, so if and when the time comes we don’t have to add that learning to the burden of having to move everything online.