“How do I build a community of learners when it’s so hard to interact with each other?”

This is the question that Norman Tanchingco finds himself amid the University’s shift to online learning. As a marketing professor, Tanchingco is used to creative problem-solving—something he’s trying to practice now with regards to tackling the new normal.

His biggest apprehension with the new set-up is whether his students will be able to cope with the type of learning. “In the onsite classroom kasi, everything is equal. We are all seated at the same place, we are all receiving the same information at the same time,” he points out, lamenting that the online set-up doesn’t replicate that same environment.

Tanchingco believes that the shift to online would not only put other students at a disadvantage, but other professors as well. “As much as [the professors] would love to teach, it is very difficult for them. Because, like students, this is not the way we were taught how to teach,” he says, adding that the COVID-19 pandemic has radically shifted learning paradigms.

The first big change was adjusting the content of the syllabus to fit the new learning management system. “Hindi pwedeng you just dump all of the presentations that you had before and just put it on Canvas. It doesn’t work that way; Canvas isn’t made for that,” Tanchingco says. He emphasizes the need to make the modules short and engaging as we only have a few weeks to complete everything.

Tanchingco stresses the importance of pacing the lessons; his marketing classes typically consist of semester-long group projects, but the whole process has been condensed into a six to seven week course to fit the quarter system. According to Tanchingco, repackaging the whole thing to fit the quarterly system has proven to be a challenge.

Nonetheless, Tanchingco is excited with the prospect and the possibilities that a fully-online semester can offer. “To overcome all of this, you have to be open to it. You cannot challenge the challenges that are already there; you have to be open and excited about what [you] can do,” he shares.

What really helped him adjust his course content to fit the needs of his classes was constant communication with the students. Even before the semester started, he talked to his former students regarding their experiences with the online intersession period and adjusted accordingly to their feedback. “Based on my interviews [...] what I gathered is, [students] like synchronous. Those who have access to it, they like it naman; [and] that’s a way of building community [and] opening yourself up.”

While he understands that not every student can attend these synchronous classes, he always makes it a point to make a recording of the call available for download. Additionally, he prepares for the possibility of having tutorial or one-on-one sessions with students that have connectivity issues.

“We share the pandemic, but we don’t share the same experience of the pandemic,” Tanchingco says, insisting that everyone should strive to be kinder to oneself and to others. In general, he urges students to “give online learning a chance [since] it opens us to other possibilities that classroom learning did not give us.”

Tanchingco advises fellow professors not to resist the change that this new set-up brings to the academe. “If you really love teaching, you’ll find ways of teaching on this platform because this is the only viable platform,” he says. “I’m not really techy rin naman eh [but] if you discovered how to [teach] in the real classroom, I’m sure you’ll be able to discover it also in the online setting.” He adds that there are so many people who can help—from other faculty to the people at the Ateneo Institute of the Science and Art of Learning (SALT). SALT has provided training for adapted design learning in order to help transition the professors in the Ateneo from classroom learning to online learning.

At the end of the day, Tanchingco concludes that the online learning set-up is a two-way street: If students are given an opportunity to engage, they will engage. For him, online learning is here to stay—and the least we can do is to find the beauty in it until onsite becomes possible again. “Personally, I really look forward to [my synchronous classes], he jokes. “At least I’m talking to someone else instead of being stuck alone at home!”