The COVID-19 Pandemic: The Hallmarks of Online and Hybrid Teaching in the Engineering Classroom

The coronavirus disease has caused a worldwide pandemic impacting higher education. Scientists are gaining an understanding that the virus has a propensity to travel via a person's respiratory droplets and is more likely to spread when people are nearby. As a result, the U.S. government issued a stay-at-home order during the spring semester of 2020. The institution was one of the few schools that reopened its doors for the 2020-2021 calendar year. The shutdown and reopening drastically altered course pedagogies as the traditional seated classrooms morphed into online and hybrid or blended courses. The problem was that the transition did not align with the original instructional design. The instructional strategy became uncoupled and was no longer compatible with the learning objectives and student outcomes. A personal experience narrative was performed to describe the nature of the teaching experience as the pandemic intervened in the classroom. This paper provides the hallmarks of best practices and lessons learned when implementing online education into the structural engineering courses at a small, Midwestern liberal arts, private institution.