Course Facilitation During a Time of Global Pandemic

The Covid-19 global pandemic saw many college and university faculty scrambling to quickly transition their on-site courses online owing to various city, state, and national lockdowns and social distancing efforts in order to stem the spread of the disease. Nearly 90 percent of institutions had to resort to some sort of online or remote learning in order to accommodate continued student learning amongst the lockdowns and required social distancing that was implemented. Similar methods were implemented for the following summer and fall semesters of 2020, bleeding into the spring 2021 semester. These restrictions meant that faculty could not teach their courses wholly, or in some circumstances at all, in an on-site delivery method. Instead, many higher education faculty members had to make the shift to teaching their courses completely online, or in a mixed method of delivery, on-site and online. The purpose of this study was to determine if learner-centered teaching was a key component of the quick transition of on-site to remote teaching in the Spring and Fall 2020 semesters and how this information may provide insight for future online course development.