According to Hechinger & Lorin (March 19,2020)  of Bloomberg Businessweek, in the US, the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the 1.5 million, U.S. university educators in the $600 billion-plus industry suddenly into teaching online. They point out that 70% of the educators have never taught an online course before.

The immediate reaction to address this extreme level of educator unpreparedness is to focus on their technology competency. In this discussion session, Faridah Pawan and her co-facilitators, Chao Ran Wang and Renee Jui Hsin Hung (Indiana University) discuss the importance of shifting the focus to pedagogy as pedagogy — not technology — drives effective online instruction. In other words, online teacher education should be enhanced by technology—not dictated or subsumed by it. They reference the 2017 book, Pedagogy & Practice for Online English Language Teacher Education by Pawan, Wiechart, Warren & Park. 

The discussion was conducted April 20, 2020, upon the invitation of the Center for Teacher Education Research at Beijing Normal University, Beijing, P.R. China.