The Lived Experiences of Novice College Faculty During COVID 19: An exploration of pedagogy and online communities during a pandemic.

Abstract

During March of 2020, a novel strain of the Coronavirus began to close college campuses across the United States. But the teaching and learning did not stop, even though faculty and students were sent home to engage in remote teaching in order to avoid accelerating the spread of the pandemic on their campuses. In this study, interviews were conducted with 13 novice college faculty members at small colleges who had never taught online or blended courses prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of these novice faculty at small colleges across the United States and to bring their unique stories to light. Participants’ experiences of teaching during the phenomenon of the pandemic and the impact on their subsequent views and approaches to teaching were explored through the phenomenological inquiry method. Themes emerged relating to faculty connections and disconnection during emergency remote teaching; gaps in their online teaching skills and student readiness; and an overall sense of the acceleration of institutional change and faculty remote teaching skills.