Silver Linings – Increasing Connection and Building Community in a Pandemic World

Learning is social, and a significant piece of the experience is connection, belonging, and instructor presence (Darby & Lang, 2019). Learners are not passive containers waiting for delivery of disembodied content. To make meaning, learners require engagement with peers and instructors who help shape their understanding and support their development of new ways of perceiving the world. Establishing learning communities and connections came with relative ease in the face-to-face pre-COVID world, but that is not our current reality. The declaration of the pandemic in mid-March left us scrambling to meet student needs as we retreated to the isolation of our homes and our classes moved to the online world. We had little experience with online teaching, nor were we versed in the fine arts of Moodle or video conferencing. We did the best that we could and learned much along the way. Summer teased us with the promise of a break, but knowing what lay ahead and feeling alone, we were relieved to see the professional development opportunities offered by our colleagues in Educational Technologies. With their rally cry, we formed our own learning communities and met in virtual summer camps to think outside the box and learn new pedagogical approaches to teaching in a pandemic. We implemented what we knew as fall arrived. There were challenges and there were successes and, in this presentation, we share our experiences in developing a learning community with colleagues, with students, and with the wider community who welcomes us for field learning opportunities. We also invite participants to share their experiences so that we can continue to learn from one another as we navigate these new seas.