Academic lessons from 2020 to ’21 and beyond

In September 2020, my daughter started her BA Acting at Bath Spa University. Given the social and physical nature of her subject, she felt fortunate that about half of her lessons remained face-to-face, workshopping with socially distanced, mask-wearing fellow students; that was, up until the end of the first semester. With the start of Lockdown v.3 and everything moving online, she worried about taking part in movement classes in her small room, or voice lessons – for the sake of the flatmates through the thin residence walls.  However, there are aspects of the move online that she hopes will remain post-pandemic: the digital resources shared in the VLE – insights from her teachers, demos of technique, work in progress from classmates – and also the ability to carry out rehearsals without the need to book rooms or travel to campus.

One student’s experience can be recognised and amplified by the hundreds of thousands of others around the UK, millions around the world. Similarly, teaching staff in Higher Education have faced similar journeys of necessity, fear, hope and recognition of possible advantages both during and after lockdown.

Academics have been forced through incredible transformation over the last year. In spring 2020, the need to take face-to-face programmes into online delivery was followed by autumn and the uncertainty that meant that all had to be prepared and planned for potentially one or both modes of delivery. Now, as we move into 2021, it’s most likely that the remainder of this academic year will be seen out online. It has become a time to build on the lessons learned.

Working with academics across the sector, it was clear that their first concern was over the workload implications of pivoting from face-to-face delivery into online as the first lockdown struck. The 2020/21 academic year has continued to be one of intense workload as so many have had to anticipate and accommodate both face-to-face and online in their regular teaching practice. Inherent in this move is a corresponding concern for the quality of the learning experience being provided. Academics, who perhaps had not previously had any depth of experience in online delivery, and who did not easily have access to support from learning designers or technologists, became concerned about whether they were able to engage their students effectively, if the experience was equitable to what would be provided on campus, and whether it was possible to administer fair and transparent assessments across all their modules.

As we approach a year of living with shifting levels of lockdown and varying opportunities to meet with students, it becomes apparent that a number of key lessons have been learned. Teaching teams have had to embrace flexibility and innovation, adapting their delivery and student engagement strategies dependent on national and institutional regulations. In large part, success has been driven by collaboration – teachers talking to each other, sharing successes and taking advice from discipline colleagues and T&L experts. Listening to these conversations, it’s apparent that there is some questioning of what is meant by teaching ‘contact’ when it moves online, and how ‘real-time’ teaching can be enhanced, supplemented or replaced by asynchronous opportunities to engage with learning resources and with peers. Approaches that have been in currency, but perhaps not widespread use, such as the ‘flipped classroom’, begin to make more sense when trying to engage learners online.

My daughter and so many students like her are hoping that the affordances that have been recognised by well-managed application of online learning opportunities will not be lost when lockdowns are lifted, and university teaching moves back to ‘normal’.  An imperative for the future is to implement a new normal; academics are well placed to recognise what has worked well, and to bring these approaches into their regular teaching practices, but it will be important to also draw on the resources around them. We must communicate with students – currently and as we work towards the next transition – to find out what they find hardest about not meeting in person, and what has been especially successful for them in the new delivery models.

The wealth of research-informed practice and well-defined pedagogies for online, blended and flexible teaching and learning provides a set of approaches, both established and evolving, that can lead towards future success. The role of educational developers and learning designers becomes vital, and universities will best enable their teaching staff if they invest in learning design support, either by building their internal teams or working with external partners that bring expertise in online, blended and distance education. Once lockdowns are behind us and my daughter and classmates get back into their workshop spaces, it will be wonderful if we can reflect on the positive transformations that have taken place right across the education sector through the lessons learned during the pandemic.