Getting prepared for post-pandemic teaching and learning

Educators should benchmark themselves against the globally-recognised ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) standards to gauge their preparedness for the post-pandemic teaching and learning landscape.

Dr Por Fei Ping, Lecturer from the School of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences, Wawasan Open University (WOU), was speaking at a recent online talk on ‘Equipping Educators for the Post-Pandemic Teaching and Learning Landscape’. The event organised by WOU, through the School and Penang Regional Centre, was attended by about 50 people.

She said the Covid-19 pandemic had compelled educators to engage students through the various online platforms, and so encouraged them to grab the opportunity to improve themselves for the post-pandemic era.

She spoke about digital access, digital skills and digital literacy for digital readiness. Digital access is access to different devices, software, tools and the Internet, while digital skills refer to the use of devices for online and offline teaching.

Dr Por focused her talk on digital literacy, which involves evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the different tools and the shortcomings of the lessons, and then designing a lesson that meets the students’ needs and market demands.

She said digital literacy is guided by the ISTE standards, and educators can use this benchmark to evaluate their readiness for post-pandemic teaching and learning. The seven standards are Learner, Leader, Citizen, Collaborator, Designer, Facilitator and Analyst.

As a Learner, educators should learn from and with others to use the potential of technology. They must set professional learning goals, build learning networks, and stay current with the latest educational research, tool and the latest pedagogy, she stated. She added that as a Leader, educators must share their vision and actively shape students to achieve that vision. “We must lead our students to join the learning process, and support student empowerment and success.”

Dr Por called on educators to also be a responsible Citizen in the digital world, and not post or share posts without filtering. “We need to be responsible in the use of digital resources, and educate our students to be ethical in using the digital tools.”

She said educators, as a Collaborator, will exchange ideas with colleagues and students, and discover new digital resources towards solving problems and achieving better student learning outcomes.

While educators as a Designer, she continued, apply instructional design principles to design innovative learning environments to accommodate different learning styles and learning needs, and create personalised lessons.
Dr Por remarked that as a Facilitator, educators facilitate learning with technology to achieve students’ learning goals, “We need to create a learning culture where students are responsible for their own learning outcomes, and are independent learners.”

Lastly as an Analyst, she said educators must analyse the data obtained from the formative and summative assessments to design lessons that meet students’ needs, and provide timely feedback to the students and parents.
Dr Por encouraged educators to upskill, re-skill and cross-skill themselves, especially in times of uncertainty so that they are versatile and ready to learn new skills beyond their job scope to be multifunctional.