The Imposed Online Learning and Teaching During COVID-19 Times

This chapter was written six months after COVID-19 pandemic was declared The irruption of the virus has halted the socially constructed sense of normalcy and sparked a chain of alterities that triggers a new sense-making process of the learning processes Engaging in a trajectory of the experience, subjects have gone through a discursive process in the which novelty is semiotized and a new self emerges Universities, as open systems, are also treading their trajectory of experience In a collective endeavor, subjects have engaged in a joint semiotic process to understand the disruption in their normalcy, and the educational practices that are new for many The pervading culture of the presence has been suspended and even the traditional delivery of online learning has been recreated A new online lecturer/ student is emerging In this chapter, we will see that the interim responses that the university system has given are just steps in a trajectory of experience Like any other individuals, faculty members, and students have also needed to deal with the fears, the anxiety, stress, and pain that lockdown periods, movement restrictions have brought with them When COVID-19 resolves, as all pandemics do, Universities will hopefully learn that the culture of presence is necessary and so is the culture of online learning Both can coexist to provide students with better tools in a digitalized world © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG