States are now beginning to offer the FDA emergency use authorized novel coronavirus vaccines to all priority groups. This means that many of us will soon return to our physical workplaces. Professionals and consumers be getting back to in-person commerce, and students will be crowding traditional classrooms and lab spaces again. After a year of working remotely, I also image there are quite a few people ready to get back to any public space just to see new faces! Not everyone is as privileged and equipped as I am to be able to work from home effectively and efficiently and for both me and my employer— and I recognize that. I work in the information technology and web development space. Necessary hardware aside, much of this space is literally digital. In fact, I help develop it. For many others, their professional work still requires a traditional workplace for optimal productivity. A lot of consumers and many learners still require traditional public spaces for certain commerce and educational needs, too.

Instructors teaching remotely appear to be ready to return to the traditional classroom. The most common concern I observe from educators is the incessant struggle of getting some specific subject material across to their students in a way that the students can easily process through a Zoom or Canvas “classroom” setting. The instructors have turned their classroom-based lesson plans into fully online course modules— and that is a challenge for some subjects and particular studies. I have worked with a few instructors in order to help them get extra or special resources set up on their websites. Hopefully, this has helped make their teaching experiences and their student’s learning experiences a little easier during these difficult times.

University libraries are known to students for their plentiful and available hardware resources for rental use— think laptops and scanners, etc. So in a sudden pandemic that forces us all to live, work, and learn remotely, it has become an on-going battle for learning institutions to have enough hardware resources. There is a surge in demand for basic equipment such as laptops and hotspots. A lot of students do not have these resources readily available at home and they never planned or imagined being fully online or remote learners to begin with. Not all students are privileged enough to afford or otherwise secure a laptop— or have Internet access— on a whim. Now that we can return to more public lives and get back to our previous routines a lot more safely, perhaps considerations and demands on resources will return to reasonable use as well. Or perhaps there is a new normal in mobile resources needs?

There is a lot to consider, whether it is going back to the physical workplace, pursuing in-person commerce and consumer activities again, or just filing back inside a traditional classroom to learn from a lecturer. We have to consider who all is being benefitted and who all is going to be disadvantaged in this transition. We learned many new perspectives this past year that highlight concerns of equity. We also learned that we are capable of addressing a lot of them, and with permanent resolve. Are there new options that work for everyone in our post-coronavirus society? I believe so. I think that we will see our society evolve from this crisis and we will learn to coexist in new ways that allow us to not only thrive again, individually, but for more of us to do so, together— or from home— more equitably than ever before.