Disorienting Dilemma: The Shift to Remote Teaching

In his recent article, Daniel (2021) argued the emergency shift to remote teaching sparked by COVID-19 does not provide a “sufficient basis for success in the long term” (p. 9). Similarly, Bates (2020) reported on the sweeping shift to online learning across nations in response to COVID-19 and asserted “half-measures are not going to work . . . . Just moving your lectures online will only work once. What do you do for the next semester, and more importantly long-term?” (para. 30). Building longer-term instructor capacity for sustained transformation requires intentional planning and reflection to change teaching practices.

From the outset of the shift to remote teaching in Spring 2020, we saw an opportunity to gradually evolve our training and support from an initial focus on survival skills for remote teaching to a more forward-looking, sustained shift in teaching practice. As we worked with instructors in Spring 2020, we developed insights on struggles and opportunities that would inform a more intentional approach to helping them develop the skills and techniques for more lasting instructional practices that would have value beyond the pandemic. Recognizing that faculty would need to learn multiple new skills and pedagogical approaches to adapt their courses to remote and blended modalities, we decided to focus from the outset on the potential to help faculty transform or reimagine their teaching practice both during and beyond the pandemic.

To this end, we developed a blended course in our university’s learning management system (LMS) to help instructors to reflect on their current teaching practice, identify challenges and new possibilities in blended or remote teaching, build capacity in a range of modalities (e.g., blended, remote synchronous, remote asynchronous), and engage with other instructors across disciplines teaching in a similar modality. We emphasized human connection and interactions as key to our blended learning philosophy. Similar to Kezar et al. (2018), we found this articulation through instructional materials, communications, and synchronous discussions to be foundational for the overall CoT approach. Additionally, the course included a range of on-demand resources, including instructor interviews highlighting instructional strategies, planning documents, teaching strategy tip sheets, and video tutorials for relevant technology tools and resources. The course was available to all instructors across the university during Summer 2020. We scheduled multiple synchronous webinars and live discussion sessions, but participants were able to work at their own pace to plan their courses for the Fall 2020 semester. Participation was incentivized by offering technology tools and resources to support blended and remote teaching for those who completed the course. Additionally, many course completers requested a student partner to work with them as a synchronous or asynchronous teaching assistant for remote courses.

Through this professional learning course, we developed a CoT framed by blended teaching. CoTs catalyze innovative practices that may challenge and change instructional perspectives and practice (Kezar et al., 2018). In the course, we embedded multiple reflection prompts, opportunities for connections with colleagues and consultations with teaching and learning staff members, and design activities that challenged participants to apply what they were learning in the context of their own teaching. These strategies align with recommendations on how to stimulate a CoT. Specifically, three critical characteristics of CoTs include a clear and engaging philosophy, exemplifying new practices, and faculty relationships to sustain new practices beyond the community (Kezar et al., 2018). We examined how the blended teaching practices we taught instructors, particularly as a result of participating in a course focused on blended learning design and faculty interaction, encouraged them to reflect on their practice more broadly and if that led to transformation that could influence any future teaching.

Transformative Learning

According to Mezirow’s (1991) transformative learning theory (TLT), learning typically occurs when individuals gain skills or knowledge, whereas transformative learning occurs through questioning how one thinks. Such transformation often leads to deeper and more sustained changes in perspectives (Brookfield, 1995). Reflection on assumptions and values that guide instructional practice can lead to shifts in teaching paradigms and perspectives (Mezirow & Taylor, 2009).

Integral to transformative learning is what Mezirow (1991) coined the “disorienting dilemma.” The disorienting dilemma is a moment that may cause individuals to reflect on or question their current thinking. The critical and urgent need to shift to remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic created a ripe environment for challenges that may spark disorienting dilemmas that might cause instructors to critically reflect upon their assumptions and change how they think about and approach teaching. The rapid shift to remote and blended teaching during the pandemic served as a large-scale disorienting dilemma, as described by Mezirow (1991) for instructors at our institution and around the world.

Methods

We employed a faculty survey and semi-structured interviews to understand faculty experiences in shifting their teaching to a remote or blended context after engaging in a blended learning course to help them prepare for the 2020–2021 academic year (see Appendix A for survey and interview protocol). We surveyed faculty as they completed the voluntary blended learning course framed as a CoT offered to all instructors in Summer 2020. The survey focused on understanding their experience with blended and online teaching as well as the major issue(s) they encountered in redesigning their courses for the Fall 2020 semester. At the end of this survey, selected volunteers agreed to participate in an interview to explore their perspectives more fully. Though the interviews with this subset of participants and the themes that emerged are the primary focus of this article, the quantitative findings below offer important considerations for the context of these interviews.

Summary of Survey Results

Of the 440 instructors that voluntarily completed the blended learning course, 99 responded to the survey at the end of the course for a response rate of 23%. In terms of faculty’s previous experiences teaching in different modalities, 78% of respondents indicated that they had only taught traditional face-to-face courses. Overall, 9% had experience teaching fully online, 4% in a blended format, and 7% in both fully online and blended formats. Not surprisingly, 69% of respondents indicated that the degree of challenge in adapting a course for blended delivery was either very challenging (60%) or extremely challenging (9%) (see Figure 1). When asked if they were able to solve their most significant (instructional) challenge as a result of engaging in the CoT, 55% reported yes, 5% reported no, and 39% reported that they weren’t sure. This suggests that more than 90% of respondents solved, or made progress toward solving, their most significant teaching challenges after completing the blended learning course.

Figure 1.The Percentage of Challenge in Navigating Course Adaptation

Note. Figure 1 illustrates the number of responses in each category (n = 93).

In addition to better understanding the complexity of the challenges participants encountered, we sought to learn which experiences and/or instructional resources from the voluntary blended learning course helped instructors the most. Respondents selected course features from their learning experience and ranked the perceived usefulness as compared to other course features, with a value of 1 being most useful (see Table 1). The highest ranked responses focused on accessing videos and tutorials along with different aspects of connecting with one another, including discussing ideas with peers, consultations, and seeing examples from their peers. This suggests that the range of supports and resources available were important to meet instructors’ differentiated learning needs as they developed their fall courses.

Interviews with six instructors who completed the blended learning course helped us to understand more fully the challenges they experienced and how their thinking and practice evolved as they shifted their courses to remote and blended modalities. We used open-response survey question data to strategically select six interview participants who reflected a broad range of disciplinary focus and comfort level with blended and online teaching. These six instructors represent multiple departments across the university and a broad range of experience and comfort teaching in digital spaces. Beginning with a priori codes structured around reflection, dialogue, empathy, changes in thinking, changes in practice, and teaching context derived from a previous study of transformational learning (Wargo, 2021), we each individually coded the transcripts. We met to discuss areas where our coding diverged to reach consensus. Below we share a brief synthesis of themes that emerged from across these six participants.

Themes Across Cases

Several themes emerged from the interviews with our participants after they completed the blended learning course. These themes correspond with essential CoT elements, including connecting with other instructors within and beyond their departments, a willingness to experiment in their teaching, an increased empathy for and vulnerability with students, identifying new teaching approaches, and an increased level of confidence to extend transformed practices beyond the pandemic. The themes reflect the sense of transformation in both teaching approaches and understandings of student experiences. Below we address each theme with examples from participants. We aligned the themes to the CoT characteristics discussed above to highlight the specific transformations noted by participants.

An Engaging Philosophy: Faculty Connections and Conversations

While faculty typically enjoy sharing ideas with their departmental colleagues, the connections both within and beyond departments proved instrumental in our participants navigating the shift to remote and blended teaching. These conversations, ranging in depth, topic, and discipline, mediated the sharing of instructional concerns, questions, and instructional strategies across the institution. For instance, sparked by some instructors’ participation in the course, the history department created a COVID teaching listserv where instructors posed questions about teaching practice and shared effective instructional strategies.

One participant found that discussing best practices with colleagues from a similar discipline was most beneficial to implementing different instructional strategies in her course. Another participant felt the virtual meetups embedded in the blended learning course catalyzed new connections with colleagues from across schools and departments. One foreign languages instructor noted, “It was great because even if you take something from Economics, then faculty from Economics, or from the School of Education, or from any other school or department . . . can explain it to you.” This sharing of cross-disciplinary perspectives created new pedagogical opportunities and fostered a greater sense of community among instructors. Interestingly, one participant felt the remote context made him closer and more connected to his colleagues because it required him to meaningfully collaborate with others in order to effectively navigate the transition to teaching in a different modality. This illustrates the importance of intentionally including experiences in the blended learning course that encouraged participants to connect and support one another as they engaged in their course design. For these participants, ongoing connection and conversation proved to be an engaging philosophy of their CoT.

Exemplifying New Practices: The Value of Experimentation and Course Correction

As they worked through the blended learning course, participants explored new teaching techniques and were guided through making instructional decisions, factoring in their course structure and goals as well as their instructional modality (e.g., remote, blended). The shift to remote and blended teaching amplified the experimental nature of course design and delivery, which required instructors to more frequently make adjustments and course corrections during the semester. Learning to teach in a new modality necessitated a more flexible approach to teaching as instructors negotiated which strategies worked for their students in the digital space. According to one participant,

I need to change things way more often and way more than I used to do . . . not every day, but like three times a week . . . a new recall exercise, a new small group exercise, a new big group exercise, different ways to approach the readings, et cetera.

One participant noted how the shift also forced him to rethink assessment practices in order to be more attentive to students’ progress online. According to this participant, students seemed to need more time and increased opportunities to revise assignments than in previous years.

Even though shifting to remote and blended teaching was overwhelming, participants reported gaining confidence and having pride in their work. There was an overall sense that the willingness to take risks and try new strategies resulted in increased competence—even if a lesson flopped. One participant said,

[If] it didn’t work so well, I learned something from that. And I mean, there was this thing about where you felt out how to create a flipped lesson, which I tried. And like I said, it didn’t work quite as well as I had hoped it would work.

Participants found that negotiating this transition began with feelings of anxiety but that through the process of trying new instructional strategies, they added more strategies to their tool kit and took pride in that. One participant commented,

So it went from complete and utter panic to, hey, I created something kind of cool and I really look forward to when I get to teach ballet again because I have some really neat, different lessons that aren’t just in class dancing together lessons . . . . I went from terror to a little bit of pride.

This type of course correction is based on a willingness to be flexible in response to students’ needs. Faculty embodied and exemplified the practices of experimentation and course corrections in such a way that will carry on to future teaching. As a result, a transformation from panic to pride was accompanied by feelings of increased confidence and competence in being able to negotiate teaching in the digital environment.

Relationships to Sustain Empathy, Vulnerability, and Student Engagement

From the outset of the pandemic, faculty expressed a heightened sense of empathy for students with a focus on supporting them during the challenging context of remote learning. Interview participants recognized the value of establishing community around the shared experiences of teaching and learning during a pandemic—both with their students and fellow instructors. In this way, faculty members shared in the uncertainty and frustration of the moment while making efforts to connect with students to better understand their situations. Communicating and sharing their own realities and challenges of teaching and learning in an unusual or unbalanced environment enabled them to empathize in a transparent way with their students. According to one participant,

I think that because of the pandemic, because of the fact that we’re all isolated, students feel like they feel better if they can actually tell that their professors are also . . . struggling, that’s like the more humane or personal aspect of blended learning.

For several participants, affirming the disorienting nature of the pandemic established a new level of vulnerability—for both students and instructors. Camaraderie with fellow instructors along with empathy for the student experience provided ways to better understand students’ struggles and reframe the teacher-student dynamic to include more self-disclosure. As one professor noted,

I had to get over that a little bit . . . and learn that it’s OK not to be the authority figure. Having to be a lot more real with students, there’s so much we can learn without being, you know, the be all and end all.

Reframing student engagement around empathy for the shared experiences they encountered in teaching and learning in a remote context was a new or different mindset for several participants.

A New Paradigm of Practice: Fresh Approaches and Expanded Confidence in Digital Pedagogical Tool Kits

The shift to remote or blended learning surfaced uneven experiences when transitioning preferred face-to-face pedagogies to the digital environment. In general, instructors reported shifting from a fairly routine set of teaching practices to a more diverse and flexible approach. This fresh expansion of teaching and learning strategies went beyond the experimental nature of being more adaptive and flexible in their instruction, as noted in Theme 1. In many cases participants reported the need to expand their teaching practice beyond their typical approach. For example, courses with highly experiential or kinesthetic elements were the most tangible obstacles to overcome. In essence, previous teaching skills did not align with the new digital context. In the words of one dance instructor,

The whole issue of trying to teach partner-dancing—10 feet apart—it’s been very, very awkward. So, yeah, I second guess myself a lot . . . and I admit things like, oh, wow, that was going to go a whole lot better in my head than it’s actually going.

This process of changes in thinking, changes in practice, and reflection proved to be transformative in multiple disciplines. When considering more didactic approaches, similar change patterns emerged.

Participants whose primary teaching strategies included lecture, discussion, or other aspects of dialogue found the discomfort of switching modes to be a catalyst for more reflexive change. One participant’s experience illustrated such change:

It was just annoying for me because I didn’t have the answers. So this caused me discomfort that I had to reconcile, reflect . . . . It caused me discomfort at the beginning. And then by having to do it, I really was able to articulate some ideas and I admit that I had to change course.

Changing course mid-semester was yet another disorienting dilemma causing immediate reflection on the efficacy of instructional practices used within the modality. In the words of one participant, “Certain methods I had been using in lectures maybe don’t work as well in Zoom.” This led to additional pruning of typical activities and methods in order to preserve the essence of the learning experience for students in the remote or blended digital environment. In this way, participants expanded the breadth of their pedagogical methods through the blended learning course while practicing critical reflection to drive instructional decision-making. This reflexive practice created an on-ramp toward extending these strategies beyond the pandemic teaching environment and can potentially establish a new paradigm of practice, characterized by enhanced self-reflection and confidence. These points are addressed in the next section.

Discussion and Application

In our context, transformative learning framed by a CoT may promote lasting changes in practice, as several of the interviews suggest, that stem from changed assumptions and values. These changes included increased experimentation in their teaching, a greater focus on empathy and authenticity with students, and increased confidence in adjusting instruction to meet students’ needs. Though consistent with Kezar et al. (2018), this result is tempered by the uncertainty of remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and the various levels of professional learning undertaken by our participants. We noted a general value and appreciation for content-based learning experiences within the course while observing a clear preference for community-based learning experiences through dialogue and shared ideas. Similar to Kezar et al. (2018), we found our participants going beyond simple modification or adjustment of their course activities and instructional strategies. Instead, through a community of peers, they embraced specific changes in practice and underlying beliefs. Based on our findings and ongoing work in digital learning, we recommend four design elements to consider when pursuing faculty development as a potentially transformative learning experience. These recommendations are specific to our context and are grounded in our university’s mission, our unit’s values, and the response to critical needs during the pandemic. However, we believe the following design elements can be helpful for faculty developers more broadly as they design professional learning experiences with an eye toward transformation.

Conclusion

This study expanded our view of faculty development to focus on formal learning experiences and faculty communities as pathways to transformative learning. Creating faculty learning communities with transformation in mind could become a fundamental element of faculty interaction and learning in the post-pandemic landscape. Attention to the three characteristics of CoTs along with the design suggestions put forth in this article could provide the structure for faculty developers to design for transformation in their own institutional contexts.

We see areas for continued inquiry into how disorienting dilemmas and transformative learning contribute to the resilience of both faculty and students. In fact, transitions to post-pandemic teaching may be yet another disorienting dilemma and transformative experience for higher education. However, the general increased attention and focus on higher education teaching and learning of all types contribute to positive change facilitated by the need to transform and the willingness to adapt.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors have no conflict of interest.