Building on the exchanges initiated at the November 20th symposium, this second event held on Wednesday February 17th aims to go deeper and focus on 1- transforming attitudes toward distance/online modalities, and 2- transforming perspectives regarding the teaching and learning paradigm. Keynote speakers include Martine Pellerin (University of Alberta) and Sean Michael Morris (University of Colorado) will share their work on motivation and attitudinal shifts in innovative and digital pedagogies.

The precipitate shift to remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic came with no reliable best practices. Finding themselves suddenly distant, learners and teachers had few choices outside of improvisation. A profound lack of literacy in digital pedagogies created a crisis that affected not only the curriculum, but the community of the classroom. The natural synergy of being together in a room abruptly became an unnatural shift to turning mics and cameras on and off in the framework of a video conference. Many have supposed that out of this crisis might grow a new educational approach or institution—one that might support faculty and staff to advance educational equity, and move away from the all too common one-size-fits-all approach of online learning. To affect this transformation, we must consider a critical digital pedagogy, one that integrates digital literacies with equitable practices to create meaningful learning on both sides of the screen.

The COVID-19 crisis has led to a rapid shift to distance/online learning. Despite the crucial role of technology in the adoption of these new teaching modalities, the emergence of a new paradigm regarding pedagogical practices is at the heart of the transformation. For the first time in the history of education, the traditional model of knowledge transmission, with the teacher at the center as the expert and the students as passive receivers of it, is in jeopardy. This paradigm shift is leading to a transformation of the role of the teacher into that of a coach and that of the student into that of an active actor in the learning process. The emergence of new pedagogical practices aims at engaging students through the co-construction of knowledge, the co-creation of content, inquiry-based learning and the development of solutions as global citizens to the global challenges and issues we collectively face. New technologies are also contributing to this paradigm shift by fostering new forms of presentation and expression of knowledge.

Serving as the final symposium of the series, this event held on Monday May 10th will focus on: 1- making sense of the mass transition to distance/online learning modalities; 2- showcasing instances of reintegrated practices and examples of action research. Stephen Murgatroyd (Contact North), Pascale Blanc (HEC Montréal) and John Baker (D2L) will serve as speakers at this final event to bring together the ideas, practices and potential transformations from the former events along with current forward-looking research.

All of a sudden 1.6 billion learners around the world and their instructors had to adapt to new ways of learning during the pandemic of 2020. Some created exceptional learning, some "limped through" and some failed to adapt to the opportunities created by technology enabled learning.

What the experience of "remote teaching" (sic) revealed was a limited understanding of pedagogy or the potential of engaged, peer to peer and constructivist learning models and approaches. The presentation will provide insights into what is possible and what we saw happen and draw attention to the need to rethink learning as a process within the college / university sector and to re-examine our assumptions about assessment.

The Internet has revolutionized distance learning through the number and diversity of interactions it has made possible and the number and diversity of digital resources it has made accessible. However, the almost exclusive use of videoconferencing education to address the closure of institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that the use of the Internet, educational technologies and digital educational resources to support learning was still very limited in terms of higher education teaching strategies. However, there is a wealth of practice and research that illustrates the uses and benefits. In this presentation, we will recall some remarkable examples of e-learning and present some avenues to support the implementation of these approaches and the potential for educational transformation that they can bring about.