The Shift to Virtual Learning During the COVID-19 Crisis
For generations, formal schooling has been affected by natural disasters, war, and other disruptions (Jnr & Noel, 2021). However, there had never been a disruption that simultaneously affected so many students worldwide as the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 5, 2020, the first school district in the U.S. closed with an expectation that students and teachers would shift to virtual education for a two-week quarantine period (Baker, 2022). By March 25, all U.S. public schools were closed due to the risk of COVID-19 transmission among students and staff. Schools scrambled to continue providing essential services, like meals and social services, for their students. By the early weeks of May, most students and teachers had transitioned to remote learning platforms.
Estimates indicate the COVID-19 pandemic impacted as many as 1.5 billion students’ learning (UNESCO, n.d.). The closures affected all levels of learners, from pre-school to graduate students, as schools relied on limited information to make decisions that would impact the health and safety of their communities.
Emergency Remote Learning
The shift to virtual learning due to the pandemic was notably different than pre-planned remote learning experiences such as distance learning college courses or virtual academies. ERL during the pandemic relied on an immediate switch to online platforms by educators, many of whom had little to no experience with virtual teaching or learning. A survey of 325 K-12 educators in New England revealed that, before the COVID-19 pandemic, 68% had never tried remote teaching, 66% had never tried online teaching, and 55% had never tried blended learning (Trust & Whalen, 2020). As a result, the surveyed teachers felt “overwhelmed and unprepared to use online or remote teaching strategies and tools, and they struggled to adapt their pedagogy to fluctuating situations, such as students’ unreliable Internet access, changing personal needs, and unclear or shifting educational or governmental directives” (p. 191). Because educators had variable levels of technology training, competence, and support, this made the shift to ERL incredibly challenging. Educators had to learn how to access and use the technology while concurrently assisting students also transitioning to ERL (Ferri et al., 2020).
Additionally, educators had to be mindful of the technological constraints of their students. The digital divide, already prevalent in many communities across the U.S., was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic as students from historically under-resourced areas grappled with slower internet connections, inequalities in personal technological equipment, disruptions to internet access, and a lack of technical expertise and technological support (Beaunoyer et al., 2020). To address these concerns, districts and universities lent out devices to students, and internet providers connected communities with discounted residential services or created high-speed internet community center hubs (Anda, 2020; Guzman, 2020; Harris, 2020; Nalan, 2020). In the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where broadband internet access is one of the lowest in the country (Johnson, 2020), school districts invested millions of dollars to erect new Wi-Fi towers and dishes to serve their communities (Anda, 2020; Varma, 2020).