Virtual social distancing: A digital ethnography of online learning

Abstract

As the COVID-19 pandemic surfaced in November 2019 and the economy shut down in 2020, our work routines and social lives were disrupted and diminished. For academics, this crisis resulted in a paradigm shift that transformed our workplaces, workspaces, and our daily interactions with students from a physical to a virtual classroom, prompting our research. This Digital Ethnography was comprised of participant-observations of 27 remote university courses conducted via the online learning platforms of D2L/Brightspace, Blackboard, and Canvas and operationalized via Zoom, Google Meet, and MS Teams by professors at three Mid-Atlantic universities over the 2020-2021 academic years. A total of 405 graduate and undergraduate students participated in real-time virtual synchronous and hybrid classrooms with their respective instructors. Our findings resulted in a collective learning arc beginning with discomfort and lack of ease and familiarity with the technology; through a period of acceptance, participation, and engagement; culminating in savvy tech workarounds, such as “ghosting” by some, and trust and success achieved by others.