Introduction

TALON, the Teaching and Learning Online Network

In March 2020, higher education experienced a monumental shift as COVID-19 forced universities across the world to move their teaching online. Driven to capture this pivotal moment in history, TALON, the Teaching and Learning Online Network, spoke with faculty, education professionals and students about their experiences. Voices from the Digital Classroom: 25 interviews about teaching and learning in the face of a global pandemic showcases the voices collected. The collection presents a time capsule of the early days of the pandemic; a period of rapid change where bedrooms were turned into makeshift offices, kitchen cabinets became Zoom backgrounds and FlappyBird advanced to the ‘go-to’ icebreaker game.

Most of us working from home wrestled with similar experiences, trying to embrace the ‘new normal’ while juggling distractions, and a never-ending flood of emails and online meeting requests. Two years later, it is already hard to remember these early days of emergency remote working and instruction. Revisiting the void that opened overnight and the scramble to fill it with structure is a treasure trove of great intentions desperately trying to find a foothold on a slippery slope flooding with new tech to build a foundation for learning and teaching to continue.

The voices presented in this book highlight how instructors and students alike navigate the emerging and rapidly changing educational landscape. This makes the book an interesting read for all those who have had similar experiences as well as those interested in education who want to find out more about teaching and learning in pandemic times.

The TALON voices

The voices included in this book were collected between July and December 2020. They were conducted by TALON team members, mainly the Graduate Assistant Researchers. In total, 27 interviews were held, of which 25 are included in this book.

The interviews conducted at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, between July and September 2020 Series 01 Voices, focused on the following questions:

• The biggest challenge experienced when moving to remote teaching?
• The opportunities created by digital education?
• Your most used software/tool?
• Your favorite resource for teaching online?
• What do you expect Higher Education to look like in 10 years?

The later interviews, Series 02 Voices, conducted between September and December 2020, expanded on these questions and prompted interviewees to further reflect on the changes experienced as well as the benefits and challenges of remote education:

• How has your teaching changed in 2020/21?
• What are the opportunities created by digital education?
• Are you seeing challenges with remote teaching?
• Which is your most used tool for remote teaching?
• Can you point out your favorite resource for remote teaching?
• What do you expect Higher Education to look like in 10 years?

All voice interviews were transcribed and edited for this book, presented in the order in which they were conducted. Each interview is presented as it unfolded, structured according to the questions posed. With the themes of the conversation emerging and experiences being ‘raw’ at the time, it means there are moments of inaccuracy due to a literal lack of terminology, and an overwhelming number of new directives, protocols, and tools. For example, some of the interviewees had difficulties recalling exact names of software and tools that were introduced rapidly and in vast number. Others misremembered names of IT support services and technology resources that were created on the fly by institutions to support faculty and students. It was a conscious decision to leave these inaccuracies in the text to capture the atmosphere at the time.

In a short epilogue each interviewee has revisited the conversation a year later adding an update or extension to the original discussion. There are many moments in these personal reflections that provide deep insights on ‘what worked’—and ‘what didn’t’—providing an overview of what can be learned from the time when higher education was turned digital overnight.

Additional Voices

Included in the book are additional voices to complement the stories told. These include a Foreword by Alex Spiers, Senior Learning Technologist at The London School of Economics and Political Science, in the United Kingdom, and an Afterword by Richard Parker, Honorary Fellow at the University of Calgary. Spiers, in the vein of the TALON Voices, provides reflections on digital learning based on his role as Technology Enhanced Learning Manager leading the digital transformation strand of a project aimed at transforming education delivery with and through digital innovations. He poses important questions about the role of technology in education while advocating for a conscious use of technology to create the education system we want rather than the one we think we need. Parker, similarly to Spiers, takes his personal experience as a starting point to explore the possibilities of digital technology, not just in academia but also in other institutional settings. He outlines how a center for seniors adapted its offerings and how this has created new opportunities and connections, prompting questions about what might be possible regarding technology-enhanced learning for different age groups and across generations.

Julian Salinas, Photographer, and Frances Motta, Graphic Designer, outline how they have ‘translated’ the digital material into print format. Salinas describes how the recorded Zoom interview videos became portrait stills that capture the moment of the interview as well as the personality of the interviewee. Motta outlines how she developed the design for a book that discusses the struggle with virtuality to support the translation of digital content into print format. Their voices highlight the challenges and opportunities of projects where digital information needs to be transformed for long-term preservation and expanded discussion hinting at the new hybrid era we are about to enter.

Concluding Outlook

Developed from the TALON voices interviews conducted at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Voices from the Digital Classroom: 25 interviews about the teaching and learning in the face of a global pandemic outlines online education experiences by faculty, education professionals and students. The voice contributors bring forth unique, international perspectives on software, technology-enhanced teaching, online learning and remote classrooms. This makes the book a historic cache of information to delve into.

The aim of the book is to provide you, the reader, with a platform for critical thought, resources and inspiration as well as a sense of connectedness to the challenges, successes and perspectives in the arena of digital higher education.

We hope that the voices provided transform into wider conversations about the areas of online education that have been accelerated by the pandemic, and raise questions about access, connectivity, equity and diversity, testing and evaluation, wellbeing and many more. TALON advocates for a future of higher education that considers the many and not the few—in the spirit of the continuing heightened sense hybridity across academia. Thus, it is important that we learn from the past because we are truly all in this together. As Lisa Silver (S02:E11) said:

“... I think there’s always an opportunity to do things better.”