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What does post-pandemic mean, and to what does the prefix post refer? Post means after, of course, but not often does it indicate linear progression. Usually, post manifests as a long, messy transformation. A second definition pertinent to this study comes from Alexander (2013), who states that for many people, pedagogy means just teaching, without any bigger picture. Put another way, pedagogy is what instructors do in classrooms but not why they do it, that is, the action itself divested of its justifications, values, theories, evidence, and especially of the relationship with the wider world that makes teaching an educative rather than merely a technical process (Csibra & Gergely, 2006; Gergely et al., 2007). In this context, the study seeks to enhance pedagogy, not teaching, and to discover the most suitable learning model for post-pandemic pedagogy.
From its emergence, the Covid-19 pandemic grew quickly into a truly global phenomenon (Evans et al., 2020; Megahed and Ghoneim, 2020; Murphy, 2020), for the last year sending academic institutions worldwide the message “Move education online as quickly as possible,” thus forcing a rapid transition to online and remote education (Alshammari et al., 2020; Wargo, 2020).
And, indeed, the pandemic’s spread has led to profound changes across the globe, and the education sector has been far from immune. University life as we have known it has ceased to exist, while physical contact between people has been generally banned in order to contain Covid-19’s spread. Among the many precautionary actions taken, one was closing public and private universities’ physical classes and transferring instructional activities to virtual platforms. Many academic institutions have opted to cancel all face-to-face (F2F) education, including laboratories and other learning experiences, and mandated that faculty members move their courses online; at this writing, the list of institutions making this decision continues to grow (Almetwazi et al., 2020; Hodges et al., 2020; Siripongdee et al., 2020).
No doubt humanity worldwide is living in a precarious time. As in education, daily life behaviors are changing, driven partly by online technology, into what is called the “new normal.” Traditional ways must necessarily become new norms, and thus, the language of the new normal has also begun to emerge.
In education, e-learning strategies have so far been the immediate response to Covid-19’s demands, while in the long term, the blended learning (BL) environment will likely be the most appropriate response for balancing all stakeholders’ interests. Combining face-to-face lectures with technology gives rise to BL and flipped classrooms—learning environments that can increase students’ learning potential. Students can learn anytime, anywhere—in the process, developing new skills for lifelong learning. Previous research refers to BL as the new traditional model, or the new normal, in course delivery, indicating that BL approaches might be fruitful (Asarta & Schmidt, 2020; Eom, 2021; Graham, 2013; Krishnamurthy, 2020; Norberg et al., 2011; Shih & Kuo, 2021). Indeed, BL forces us to consider digital technology’s characteristics in general, and information communication technologies (ICTs) models more specifically (Dhawan, 2020; Dziuban et al., 2018; MacCallum et al., 2017; Parsons, 2014). With these givens, this study’s goal is to discover BL’s post-pandemic directions. Thus, the study addresses several questions. What are the general characteristics of BL in terms of time, place, space, and technology? Where on the BL continuum do instructors want to place their instructional model, and what model(s) will they follow to implement it? What are the BL planning scenarios and strategies for reopening physical schools? What issues and challenges arise in blending?