Supportive Aspects of Online Learning and Teaching—What Does a Rapid Transition Teach Us?

Abstract

Facilitating the transition to digital teaching and learning requires more than providing access to technical equipment and digital content. For students, the challenges they encounter influence how they benefit from digital learning scenarios in chemistry. The rapid transition into online learning, as experienced in spring 2020, serves as a magnifying glass to determine supportive aspects of digital learning and teaching. This chapter explores the perspective of students on the challenges and supportive factors in the transition to online learning. It also describes a model for teaching support that addressed the needs of instructors, with two case descriptions. One case highlights the students’ perspective from an interview study with second-year chemistry students from across four countries, on how they adjusted to and resolved challenges while learning chemistry digitally. The results provide interesting insights into creating favourable pre-conditions for digital chemistry learning and teaching. The second case illustrates an example of a multi-tiered network model. This model was founded for supporting faculty in digital teaching that goes beyond generic technical tips and tricks, catering instead for discipline-specific support at the local level that also connects to and informs broader initiatives at a higher institutional level.