As colleges and universities continue to struggle with pandemic-era challenges, a new reality is slowly dawning: This is no short-term crisis. Schools are trying to figure out how to teach and house students safely, how to provide faculty and staff safe places to work, and how not to go broke. Urgent short-term fixes are beginning to blend with long-sought improvements to the higher-education enterprise, and that\u2019s all for the better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More meaningful instruction is a critical part of the current conversation. Long-slogging innovators are now guiding colleagues suddenly desperate to figure out how online teaching can feel right\u2014not just as a mode of transmitting information but also as a platform for real exchange of ideas, the creation of community, and stoking curiosity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it takes time to develop the rhythm of teaching outside the classroom, the lab, and out of the box. By the tens of thousands, talented and creative old-school teachers are now being led by COVID-19 beyond the digital shallows where most had lingered, and they\u2019re learning about teaching and learning in hopeful new ways. Expect much celebration of new approaches and best practices in months to come, and a renaissance of vitality in the \u201cclassroom,\u201d whatever shape that newly deconstructed thing might take.<\/p>\n\n\n