This first event examined the essence and meaning of distance and online learning and provided opportunities to share challenges and pedagogical approaches that best facilitate learning. Recordings of each program session (and related materials) are posted on the virtual platform.

Why move toward a distance modality? Possibly to leverage distance learning as an opportunity to respond to current needs and to make it a common way to access training. This presentation is intended to provide those involved in distance education -- professors, teachers, tutors, advisors, instructional designers, and management personnel -- with insights into the issues that arise when initiating distance education activities, as well as to foster reflection geared toward changing established distance education practices.

Like most complex technologies, in-person educational systems have evolved to include a wide range of counter-technologies - including methods of teaching (pedagogies) - that were invented to overcome the problems caused by in-person educational systems, most notably in terms of their adverse effects on learner autonomy and intrinsic motivation. Distance teaching creates new motivational problems of its own, especially with regard to social relatedness. However, it can solve some problems that are foundational and endemic in in-person learning, particularly in its support for learner autonomy. Unfortunately, these benefits are rarely fully realized because we too often needlessly transfer pedagogies that solve problems for in-person teaching, many of which can be positively harmful outside their original context. In this presentation I will reveal some of the central Faustian Bargains of in-person and online learning, and will suggest practical approaches to thinking about how and when to use both.

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.