A “New Normal”: Imagining a Post-Pandemic BC

This piece was written by Dr. Bill Moseley. Bill Moseley, Ph.D. is the Dean of Academic Technology at Bakersfield College, where he has been a technology leader and Computer Science faculty for 23 years.  He has also taught in the Graduate School of Education and Psychology at Pepperdine University for 17 years, specializing in technology innovation, distributed learning environments, and games and learning.  He is currently researching failure as it relates to the learning process.

Last night, my wife and I were eating outside of one of our favorite local restaurants, and as is often the case these days, our conversation turned to what an odd year it has been – for all of us, but especially for our kids.  For our youngest, their experience with learning has been almost exclusively online and with all of their siblings at home.  My high schooler is going on his second consecutive season of missed high school swimming, and is wondering how someone gets recruited for a college swim team without any recent official times.  Two others missed graduations when their school year abruptly ended (including our first college grad).  As we all look ahead to what is hopefully a light at the end of the tunnel, talk naturally turns to “returning to normal”.

Except, I don’t believe we will go back to any kind of normal we know.  Online food ordering, grocery delivery, and better handwashing habits are here to stay.  I also suspect that I’ll go ahead and wear a mask in places like the store for a while, and I’m in no rush to sit in a crowded movie theater, maskless, for two hours with everyone breathing and laughing and exchanging respiratory droplets (ew.). I think our relationship to learning and education will find a “new normal”, as well – and perhaps it will be slightly less influenced by by the vast array of new phobias I seem to have developed during the pandemic.

An optimist might say that out of every crisis comes an opportunity.  Here are a few things that I see approaching as we head into a less-quarantined future:

Zoom is here to stay. As much as we’d like to walk away from the Brady Bunch, Hollywood Squares view of our classes, we’ve been forced to master new learning tools and new pedagogies.  As soon as we don’t “have to” do this anymore, folks will start opting in to Zoom classes.  We’re also going to see the classroom walls expand, where we’ll teach classes that are a blend of in-person and zoom participants.

Online classes will be a bigger part of everything.  I remember the “good old days”, when lots of faculty would protest the teaching of their subject matter online.  Over time, folks like me talked many of these holdouts into dipping their toes into the online pool.  Until the spring of 2020, when COVID-19 gave everyone a giant shove into the pool. Somehow, the argument that “it just can’t be done” is a little trickier now.  Even if many faculty decide to return to exclusively face to face instruction, I’ll give anyone 50 to 1 odds that our online numbers will still be significantly higher than they were pre-COVID when the dust settles.  At Bakersfield College, we were about 14% online before COVID.  A year from now, if we are below twice that I will be shocked.

Student support is never going back.  At Bakersfield College, our student support work during the pandemic has included an AI-powered chatbot, online peer tutoring, and a live, fully staffed student information desk on zoom.  We have streamlined several processes, including a few paper processes that used to involve a scavenger hunt for signatures.  We are more flexible, agile, and accessible for students, and our plans include even more movement in this direction.

Our faculty have Leveled Up.  I’ve been at BC for almost 23 years.  During that time, I have been consistently involved in faculty training and professional development – especially when it comes to online teaching and technology-driven pedagogy.  However, during this last year, I have seen more growth in our faculty than I have seen in all of my other years combined.  Our faculty were given a serious challenge in engaging students during this pandemic and the physical closure of our campuses.  The response I have seen has been awe-inspiring.  From the veteran to the first year faculty, and even our adjuncts (who often teach and maintain another job), our instructors have embraced creativity, failed gracefully, and they have stretched themselves to embrace new ideas about teaching and learning.  Good luck putting that back in the box.

There have been so many changes in our world in the last year.  Clearly, time and experience always move us forward.  However, the weird world of pandemic teaching has boosted the evolution of education (perhaps in addition to aging us all prematurely).  I’m looking forward to the end of this thing for many obvious reasons.  But one reason, perhaps less obvious, is that I want to see what the new normal looks like.  I want to have all of these benefits and I want to see my colleagues in person.