Teaching Pre-Service Teachers about COVID-19 through Distance Learning

Abstract

In March 2020, almost all universities in the US switched to online learning. We as educators faced the reality of switching to online teaching using Zoom. This paper describes the challenges we had during the six-week period of online teaching a science content course for elementary pre-service teachers during the quarantine period, and the strategies we used to overcome those challenges. We briefly describe the course, then we describe the revisions we made to the course, the challenges we faced with online or virtual teaching, and the opportunities we provided the students. Finally, we reflect on what we have learned from this experience.