Abstract:

The recent coronavirus pandemic has created an abundance of issues for education. As institutions have turned to online instruction to reduce the spread of COVID-19, numerous positive and negative consequences have arisen. Most of the educational research on the coronavirus pandemic to date has focused on how to teach online, teacher preparation, tools for online instruction, or online learning effectiveness. Other research has focused on the psychological issues associated with coronavirus and social distancing. However, little research has looked at the effects that remote teaching has had on contact-dependent courses like intergroup dialogue. Intergroup dialogue is a facilitated collaborative face-to-face conversation between two or more groups of people who have different social identities. This study investigates the impact that the pandemic and online instruction had on UCLA’s spring dialogue course. Using data collected from fifteen student reflection essays, five facilitator essays, and a group interview with the course facilitators, I determine whether UCLA's intergroup dialogue course achieves its goals in the absence of physical contact, one of the main components of dialogue facilitation. Results suggest that while there were drawbacks to online dialogue instruction, UCLA's remote intergroup dialogues did achieve its goals. These results suggest online intergroup dialogues can be an effective mode of dialogue education when in-person instruction is unavailable.

Keywords:

Intergroup Dialogue, Remote instruction, Covid-19.