Topic Area: Online Teaching & Learning
Presented by: Paul Bylsma
Abstract:
Higher education was severely disrupted by the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID). In order to safely resume educational activities, classes were moved online or were subject to severe protective measures. As a result, something about post-COVID higher education simply felt different. In this paper we use affect theory, a perspective that emphasizes an embodied ontology and an epistemology defined by feelings and intensities, to explore the elements that make in-person interactions significant. We conduct an affective analysis to show how post-COVID higher education demonstrated instances of proximate ambivalence, or the simultaneous proximity and distance of any particular object. Though this analysis critiques the attempted substitution of in-person learning with online learning, we also use lessons learned during this analysis to demonstrate the prevalence of proximate ambivalence in in-person learning. We argue that post-COVID higher education was cruelly optimistic in its attempt to re-create education as it existed before the pandemic and its ultimate failure to do so. We further show how the affective lens used to critique online learning is also useful in identifying areas for improvement to access and engagement in in-person learning.