Teaching Online on Borrowed Time: Hong Kong Protests, Pandemics, and MOOCs

Abstract

Pandemics create their own time warps, and science as well as science fiction tell us that our subjective perception of time and our biological rhythms miss their usual beats during outbreaks. Lockdowns disrupt routines, eliminate schedules, and limit interactions with people outside the household. COVID-19 creates its own sense of time at the intersection of pandemic chronology and the digital time that now occupies so much of our lives on screen. Some measure time as the progression of COVID-19 across borders, in their own country, community, family, or their own bodies on Google maps and through social media. Waiting for a future vaccine, others tick off the days it takes to get tested, find out results, remain in quarantine, repeating the process periodically. Screen-time sets the agenda for the socially distant. Plugging into the digital world creates another sense of time in which we become more attuned to the global clock that takes us out of our own time zones more frequently. For teachers and students in many parts of the world, this means online education and a dramatically different pedagogy associated with these pandemic times.