“Wow, she’s real!”: re-examining pre-service art teachers’ online learning experiences

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, art educators have had to abruptly overcome their resistance toward online education due to the forced transition to an online class format in K-16 education across the country. As online art educators, we also changed aspects of our courses to better meet student needs during this time. Based on these changes, this commentary examines our pre-service art teachers' learning experiences in online courses, mainly focusing on the interactions within video-conference-based synchronous classes. Curious about the relevance of Evans (Citation2016) claim that "the virtual is real" for students' online-based situated learning, we share three vignettes from our recent teaching practices: 1) our students' perceptions of a divide between the instructor's real self and the instructor's virtual self that they encountered in online classes, 2) new learning patterns exhibited by our students during the pandemic and 3) changes in the expectations of our students with regard to online class instruction and delivery.