Transitioning face-to-face courses to online format
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Date
2023
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Unesco
Abstract
There are many reasons for instructors to switch from in-person to online courses. The transition may be planned (because, for instance, of student demand for an online version of a course or a remote audience for the course) or unplanned (e.g., as the result of an emergency preventing face-to-face, on-campus learning, sometimes when the course has already started). Regardless of the specific scenario, however, one thing is clear: Instructors moving courses from face-to-face to online delivery cannot simply do the same things they would have in a traditional classroom. For online courses to work, journalism instructors need to rethink the way they teach and organize courses and reassess their methods of evaluation, oftentimes with no previous training on the matter (Delaney and Betts, 2020). Indeed, the key in this transition is adaptation, rather than mere replication. Accepting change and embracing new opportunities may make the whole experience less daunting for instructors and students (see Bazluki and Milman, 2019). While there is no one-size-fits-all way to teach – online or otherwise – the challenge of transitioning to remote classes goes better with a five-fold approach in which instructors get some clues from their own students, focus on learning outcomes rather than specific activities, adjust their procedures, organize and manage their lessons, and clearly communicate with students about the course. Each of these steps is further developed below.