Covid-19: Learning Designers
Learning Designers became the "first responders" to enable the great pivot online for education, with the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic. This research looks at the response of the Digital Learning Design Unit (DLDU) at DCU, which was set up to facilitate the speedy transition to classes online.
Academics who were involved in online education before the pandemic, highlighted the differences between the emergency online approaches as a result of the pandemic and the careful design approach for an online course pre-pandemic. One of the earliest articles on this topic “The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning” coined the now well known phrase “emergency remote teaching”: “
Well-planned online learning experiences are intentionally different from courses offered virtually in response to a crisis or disaster. Colleges and universities who pivoted during the COVID-19 pandemic should understand these differences, when evaluating this phase of emergency remote teaching. Given this, this research looks at the role of learning design and the learning designers who were a key in the greatest pivot online ever.
In response to emergency remote teaching, emergency remote learning design developed. The case study of DLDU described in this article offers one example of learning design during the time of Covid-19.
Learning Design in The Time of COVID-19: The Digital Learning Design Unit Story
Read more the author: Dr. Orna Farrell, School of Policy and Practice, DCU Institute of Education