Last March, when Mason Korea first took our classes online, we thought we might have online instruction for a week, and then another couple of weeks, maybe to mid-semester.... I do not think many of us imagined that most of our courses would remain online a year later.
This year of online instruction has been a tough one, for students and faculty alike. Yet student learning at Mason Korea has continued successfully, as reflections by Mason Korea faculty on their year of mostly online instruction in this issue of the Messenger suggest.
Reading these reflections, I am struck by a few themes. First, whether in person or online, excellent teaching requires care, understanding, and imagination. We need to care about our students and our subjects, to understand our students and their different needs and interests, and to imagine creative means to reach students with different needs and interests to help them succeed.
The online environment may have at first been foreign to our faculty, but these principles of care, understanding and imagination were not. Reading through their reflections, it is clear that they drew on these principles of good teaching in order succeed in a new teaching medium.
Second, the sudden shift to online instruction was for many members of both our faculty and students like diving into the cold, deep end of a pool. After a while, though, the water did not feel so cold, and they were swimming. Faculty learned how to use new technologies to enhance their instruction: video chat programs such as Zoom, screen capture and recording programs such as Kaltura, and multiuser editing platforms such as Google Docs. Further, even when the pandemic ends, they and their students will continue to make use of this new technological know-how.
Third, despite the difficulties of this substantial shift in the medium of instruction, our faculty are pleased about what they have learned from it. One member of the faculty writes of the way the pandemic provided an opportunity to teach through a "flipped classroom," something he had been considering for a while: "The pandemic forced me to give this a try, and I'm glad."
I do not think anyone goes into teaching who does not also love to learn. Our faculty took that spirit of learning into the classroom, and modeled it for our students, who also rose to the occasion. As one faculty member put it, "despite the social and economic impacts of COVID, students have shown themselves incredibly resilient and the quality of work has actually increased in many of my classes."
We are very proud of our faculty and students, who show us that one of the most important parts of education is learning how to learn. Once you have that, you are ready to take on all the other challenges that will inevitably come your way.
Robert Matz
Campus Dean