Reimagining Expectations and Rigor in the College Classroom amid the Global Pandemic: Lessons from the Field

ABSTRACT

The prolonged COVID-19 pandemic has placed postsecondary institutions in unfamiliar territory. Undoubtedly, postsecondary education must adapt to the realities of the pandemic, finding new ways to define academic expectations and rigor. Currently, COVID-19-related conversations among educators often default to focusing on students' race and economic and psychological vulnerabilities. While students' contexts must be taken into account, these dominant default discourses can also signal a dangerous lowering of faculty's expectations for some students, creating inequitable opportunities and outcomes that have unintended impacts on student learning. The purpose of this paper is to encourage faculty to reimagine rigor in the college classroom without compromising student learning. The authors intend to highlight some of the lessons learned in their own efforts to enact high expectations for students during these difficult times as they taught online synchronously and asynchronously in a non-certificated teacher education program in a community college in California and an educational doctorate program in America's southwest.