Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have had to change their delivery and ways of working at incredible speed. The disruptive innovation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is having profound impacts on all stakeholders of HEIs. This study reports on the results of the project which has brought together 3 perspectives from Poland, the United Kingdom and the Ukraine. The purpose was to evaluate and compare the performance of Universities during this period. Performance is understood as assessment of support given by a University to its stakeholders in the following spheres: organisational, technical, technological, competency and social. This study will contribute to better understanding the context of value creation by Universities during the pandemic and post-pandemic period.

We took the perspective of HEI’s stakeholders into consideration (students, academics and admin staff). Their opinions and comments were collected by interviews in the form of an online questionnaire with some open questions. We intended to give them a space to share their perspectives, emotions and feelings caused by the lockdown. The questions carried out thematic analysis around the following issues: 1) organisational (planning and communication), 2) technical, (platforms available, teaching methods), 3) technological, (bandwidth, equipment), 4) competency (your own learning and comfort with online learning), 5) social conditions (your environment for study) of higher education experience within the current COVID-19 pandemic and follow up research post-pandemic. The surveys started in the middle of June 2020 and has continued till October 2020. Sampling follows the snowball method. Participants were self-selecting with links shared for the online Microsoft forms and Google questionnaires. 

We collected 396 questionnaires, 296 students, 100 university staff and academics (240 in Poland, 133 in Ukraine, 24 in UK). We would like to thank all of our participants for their contribution and candour.

First we would like to start with some qualitative analysis of students and staff responses in the questionnaire. The open questions were used to diagnose their experiences related to measures taken by Universities during lockdown. They were also asked to highlight the most and the least effective  solutions offered. We decided to use an Ishikawa Diagram to analyse the possible causes for their most and least solutions identified. We analysed the factors around the COVI19  problem in order to provide insights and possible solutions for an effective and thriving  ‘post-pandemic University’.

We grouped responses under headings showing below in the Ishikawa Diagram.

There are some obvious similarities between these countries and some differences. We draw a conclusion that in each country the situation was similar, the teaching-learning process was transferred into our Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), and staff started remote or hybrid work (both academics and admin staff). The difference was notably the mechanism of this change: in the UK it was deemed more incremental change, in Ukraine and Poland the change was more radical. The proof of this is that in the responses in Poland and Ukraine respondents indicated several solutions which aren’t coordinated and supported by the Universities (i.e. using a social media for teaching-learning process, lack of integration of different e-learning platforms). Whereas in the UK many Universities used VLEs as ‘business as usual’.

The common themes identified for research in investigated countries, was the expectation of support in different areas, not only in a teaching-learning process, but also in equipment (provision, repairs), financial aid, mental sphere, and competence development etc. The findings inferred that the expectations of the students and staff support needs were not fully met at this time. Universities were in survival mode and the change management process was lacking in many areas.

Next, we analysed the background given by quantitative analysis of University performance in the technical, competence and organisational sphere (evaluation was carried out using a 5-points likert scale). The results of research in each country have been shown on the above charts 2.

We also investigated the need of support and help provided  during the pandemic period studied. The results have been presented on chart 3.

The results of research showed that ‘University’ is mentioned the most, as the expected supporter for students and staff, both academics and admin. The importance of social support also has appeared in our results. People are looking for assistance among colleagues, thus creating a proper, strong internal social relationship is valuable for them. 

Our key conclusion from this work, at this time, is the importance of support and setting of expectations of what support is available in HEIs. We  draw a key finding that the understanding of value delivered by ‘the University’ has to change, and leave behind the neoliberal concept of value for money. We need to expand the understanding of value, taking into account the necessity of tolerance perceived inefficiencies within the university. University staff and students have had to adapt very quickly, and use all of their skills and tenacity to deal with this situation. Creating and co-creating value within universities has always been challenging, however the creativity of staff and students has pulled this sector through it. We have all had to become disruptive innovators.

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Justyna Maciąg, PhD,  Mateusz Lewandowski, PhD, lecturers and researches in Institute of Public Affairs, at Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland. 

Tammi Sinha, PhD Senior Lecturer in Operations and Project Management, Director Centre for Climate Action, University of Winchester UK. 

Tetiana Prykhodko, Head of the Program of Analysis and Research,  City Institute at Lviv, PhD student at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine 

The State University of Zanzibar (SUZA) is the only state-owned university founded in 1999, and officially commenced its academic activities in 2001. SUZA is located in Zanzibar, which is composed of two islands, Unguja and Pemba. It has more than 315 academic staff, 300 non-academic staff and 4742 registered students in the academic year 2019/2020. SUZA has 64+ academic programs from Certificates, Diploma, Bachelors, Masters and Doctor of philosophy (PhD). Currently, SUZA has nine (9) operational schools and one (1) institute.

Various projects and partnerships have been implemented at SUZA which brought significant changes in the use of digital technologies in teaching and learning. These projects are Building Stronger Universities (BSU) funded by DANIDA that helped in establishing Learning Management System (LMS) and equipping lecturers to design and develop digital modules to teach students through SUZA LMS. Another project was Science and Technology Higher Education Project (STHEP). This project helped in establishing Center for Digital Learning (CDL) which aimed to help lecturers to design and produce digital contents.

Last but not least is Partnership for Enhanced and Blended Learning (PEBL), a regional collaborative blended learning network led by the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom (UK) under the Strategic Partnerships for Higher Education Innovation and Reform (SPHEIR) initiative. Three more partnerships added value in digital technologies, e-learning and remote teaching include SUZA, Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) and Milele Zanzibar Foundation (MZF) on STEM for SUCCESS Zanzibar, Digital Education in Africa and SUZA-University of Otago partnerships.

In the 2014/2015 academic year, SUZA with support from (BSU) II project piloted implementation of e-modules through LMS for selected courses. The pilot study was done in the 2016/2017 academic year to investigate the adoption and usage of LMS as pedagogical tool among students and instructors at the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA). Previous studies depict that 70% of lecturers and 44.4% of students showed preferences to the LMS system as a tool to be used in teaching and learning. Before the pandemic, SUZA already had its working Learning Management System (LMS). About 70 lectures were already given some basic training on the use of LMS and blended learning.  In the first semester 2019/2020 around 28 courses from different disciplines were uploaded on the SUZA LMS in blended learning mode.

Digital pedagogy before and during Covid

The use of digital technologies at SUZA can be traced back since 2006 when the distribution of lesson notes in text format for students through a simple e-learning tool was implemented and then the establishment of SUZA LMS through MOODLE platform enriched the use of digital technologies. Various studies have been conducted on different uses of digital technologies at SUZA such as integration of web 2.0 in teaching-learning and the use of Open Education Resources (OER) at SUZA. Like other institutions of higher learning in developing countries, SUZA faces different challenges in integrating digital technologies in teaching and learning.

Studies shows recurring challenges such as internet connectivity, access to computers and digital devices, being unfamiliar with Moodle and integration, technophobia and limited skills in using ICT for learning, and low awareness of OER. Due to the threat of pandemic, SUZA had to make decisions about how to continue teaching and learning while keeping the university staff and students safe from a public health emergency that is moving fast and not well understood when will the crisis end. The MOODLE Crash Course (MCC) for lecturers was designed with the support of staff from University of Edinburgh and University of Copenhagen and officially launched in May 2020. The lecturers were trained online at first, and then shifted to blended learning mode when the campus reopened in June 2020. The content of the MCC is illustrated in Fig 1 & 2:

Fig 1: MCC for academics: Course Structure 

Fig 2: SUZA LMS Walkthrough

A rapid assessment of the experiences of COVID-19 crisis exposed SUZA to many significant short and long-term challenges including: limited resources for institutions, personal and academic challenges for institutions and students, and demand for improved infrastructure to support online, distance and blended learning models. Also the pandemic triggered various changes at university teaching and learning and revision of E-learning policy and guidelines. Lecturers themselves were struggling to maintain the same depth of engagement they wish to have in a classroom setting. Covid crisis led to the need to adapt teaching methodologies, due to the impossibility of having face to face classes.

Generally, the higher education community at SUZA as a whole reacted promptly to the disruption caused by the pandemic and that the emergency solutions adopted were considered as successful in the majority of cases. However, as a consequence of the outbreak, lecturers and students had many struggles as mentioned. The main questions that still cling: will academics and non-academics continue to view online learning as a threat in terms of online assessment? How can they avoid a dip in the quality of education they are providing and the quality of learning which was  affected by the shift from face-to-face to unplanned online teaching?

Critical pedagogy and praxis

The sudden shift online as a result of Covid-19 facilitated a migration to what can be described as more digitally responsive pedagogical approaches, a process facilitated by previous work done at the university on adapting existing pedagogies into more active and student-focused ones. The vehicle for this pedagogical shift was the MOODLE crash course described prior. The university drew on this past experience in response to Covid-19 shifts online, drew on regional and international partnerships and networks already in place, and drew on the specific contexts in which SUZA operates. All informed the pedagogical approaches currently being advanced. Pedagogy is positioned as the practices of teaching, and their manifestation in the student-teacher.

The team at SUZA drew on past institutional work and current research to shift these pedagogies and to stimulate a reflective praxis: a conscious, skilled activity that can be understood by researching from the inside. Freire defines praxis in a more critical way as: ‘reflection and action directed at the structures to be transformed’. This is especially relevant in periods of transformational change, which in Covid-19 timelines is persistent. Schools at SUZA were enacting transformational change in a highly condensed time frame. Critical pedagogy can extend to the interrogation of these knowledge structures being increasingly created and mediated through the digital, echoing Freire’s position that “liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information.” This is reflected in SUZA’s approaches to pedagogy and course design. The online platform spaces are places of interaction, not merely repositories of information, a position that reaffirms SUZA’s focus on active, student-led approaches.

The next steps in the face of such uncertainty are several. First, continued work needs to be performed to begin to address the technological divides that impact our student and teaching community. How, in the face of three months of campus closures (March-June 2020), can we ensure continuity of education when little to no-technology exists for some to do so? How do we reconfigure the campus space to provide a safe and accessible space for those without technology to access their education? What role do regional and international partnerships play in this? Secondly, how do we approach these uncertain times as potentially a time of pedagogical transformation and renewal? From the crash course to past work in this space, how do we maintain the momentum to rethink how we teach with technology?

Additionally, the pandemic has reminded educators on how teaching should be student-centered learning, not just how to teach online. The pandemic has definitely steered institutions of higher learning into a new framework for how educators instruct and how students learn. The key question is can educators do better than what they usually do? Thirdly, how do we maintain a critical perspective in all these transformational changes occurring at the university, in the HE sector, and throughout the region? To teach our students to critique their spaces, to critique how Covid-19 can accelerate divides and amplify marginalisation, to teach how technology can both liberate and isolate if a good pedagogy is not enacted. 

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Maryam Jaffar Ismail, former Dean (2014-2020) of the School of Education at the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA). She is a senior lecturer and a teacher educator with over 20 years’ experiences in the field of Second/Foreign Language Education(S/FLTE). She has extensive experience in higher education management, consultancy and capacity development. She is now the President of Regional Education Learning Initiative (RELI) Tanzania and a member of Digital Education in Africa.

Said A. S. Yunus is an Education technologist at the School of Education (SoE) of the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA). He teaches various courses at Diploma and Undergraduate levels. His research interests include technology integration in teaching and learning in higher learning, use of technology in teaching and learning, technology use in language teaching, Big Data and Learning analytics in education, emerging technologies in teaching and learning such as Flipped classroom, Open Educational Resources (OER) and MOOCs in Kiswahili teaching.

Michael Gallagher is a Lecturer in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh, and a member of the Centre for Research in Digital Education. His research interests include critical mobilities studies in digital education in development contexts and the implications of such thinking for educational mobility. Previous published work includes critical perspectives on educational technologies; the mobilities of digital education students; and futures educational research.

The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated major changes to research, teaching and professional working in Universities. In the UK more generally, there was surprise at the degree of public support for lockdown, and the Prime Minister’s directive to “join together” to beat the virus. Commentators have observed, however, that despite the constant suggestions that we are all in this together, the pandemic has affected people very differently. For example, the UN has observed that while the virus may not discriminate, but the impacts on individuals certainly do. 

We wanted to investigate how far this picture of uneven impacts may be affecting university staff. So, to capture staff experiences as they changed how they worked during this period, we launched a programme of research at UCL which involved a series of staff surveys and follow up interviews, Moving to Online Teaching and Homeworking (MOTH). This research was led by Allison Littlejohn with Martin Oliver, Lesley Gourlay, Eileen Kennedy, Tim Neumann, Kit Logan, John Potter and Jennifer Rode. Our aim was to understand how the crisis might be exacerbating pre-existing structural inequalities that impact adversely on staff, as well as posing challenges and opportunities for teaching and research.

We had 421 responses to our initial survey, which included asking about the challenges and opportunities of the shift to online teaching and researching at home. We also asked participants to share images that they considered communicated their experience. We sent out follow up surveys throughout the summer, and invited 32 participants to take part in in-depth interviews to explain their responses in more depth. 

What the findings showed us quite clearly was that the impact on staff was not the same for everybody.  Although respondents who identified as men and women reported caring responsibilities, caring appeared to manifest differently. Women found it more difficult to focus on research because of the caring labour they were doing – caring for children and adult dependents, for students, for colleagues. These activities lead to reduced time for research and to publish research papers with potential consequences for long-term career progression. 

Staff with physical and/or mental health challenges – either pre-existing or as a result of the pandemic – also experienced the lockdown differently, with reports of headaches, eyestrain, aching back, shoulders or wrists health impacts from 7.7% of survey respondents. Those with more space were more positive about the move than those with fewer rooms to work in, and staff on fixed term contracts experienced anxiety about the impact of the pandemic on their careers. 

The research we conducted showed very clearly that University staff experience is not uniform. This is an important message to those making decisions about how to support staff at universities during this crisis and beyond.

As for the move to teaching online, once again, experiences greatly differed. A slightly higher number rated their feelings as positive or very positive than those who rated their feelings as negative or very negative. Most people, nearly 40%, were undecided. 

A number of themes emerged, however. In terms of the challenges they described, the biggest issue were the lack of interaction and engagement with students online, technology problems, time and resource demands and the need for professional development. 

It became apparent from the survey, that the most reported challenges that concerned teaching involved using live video systems like Teams or Blackboard Collaborate, and the key problem was the lack of visual cues, impacting interaction and engagement from students. This made online teaching more difficult and stressful for staff. 

This was borne out in the interviews. Staff said that students would not switch their cameras on,

so, I was talking to a picture of myself on the screen (interview participant).

Staff really missed the energy from students they were used to in traditional teaching, and without this teaching online was stressful and exhausting. 

What made the difference for those staff who were more positive about online was prior experience. Those participants were also much happier with student engagement, and saw the move online as an opportunity presented by the pandemic.

I feel positive about the probability that one of the outcomes of the COVID crisis will be more widespread general understanding about productive ways to use technology to support learning, not least among academics, but also, I hope among education administrators and managers (survey participant).

This research has given us insights into how university staff have experienced the pandemic. But it has told us more than that. A defining feature of the data was the central role that emotions played in every aspect of the move to online teaching and homeworking. Participants regularly described their anxieties about colleagues and students, the extra time they were putting into tutorials,  pastoral  care for students who experienced extra difficulties during the crisis and the impact this was having on themselves. This has led us to revisit the theme of emotional labour in teaching, and how we can make sense of the care that participants show in digital education. This is an aspect of online teaching that is seldom discussed. Our question, therefore, is what is the role of technology and the move to online and home working in supporting the caring labour of University staff?

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Dr Eileen Kennedy is a Senior Research Associate based at UCL Knowledge Lab, UCL Institute of Education. Her research focuses on ways of enhancing and sharing practice in online and blended learning. Eileen works with two ESRC-funded research centres: the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE) and the RELIEF Centre. With CGHE, Eileen is exploring the transformative potential of digital technologies for higher education. With RELIEF, Eileen is researching ways of using digital education (particularly in the form of MOOCs) to build inclusive prosperity in the contexts of mass displacement.

Professor Allison Littlejohn is Director of UCL Knowledge Lab, UCL Institute of Education. Allison works in the field in Education, specialising in Digital Higher Education. Her expertise is in applying learning theories to complex interventions for professional learning that capitalise on digital technologies. The context of her research spans the energy, health, finance, education, and international development sectors across various countries.

This year, in many ways, we have all become richer with the transition of campus-based teaching to online teaching. However, it has also been a challenge for most educators and students, as explained in The Evaluation of online teaching in spring 2020 (published in Danish September 18^th, 2020, to be translated to English this fall). Much of traditional teaching had to be quickly changed, which often resulted in digitalization of the regular campus-based teaching without regard to the changing conditions of communication.

This type of teaching was called emergency teaching, which is important to keep in mind when planning and implementing teaching in coming semesters. Going forward, the path from emergency education to a ‘new normal’ needs to be critically and reflexively explored. There was rarely time among educators to reflect critically on the didactic choices they made in haste. The teaching had to be provided immediately but now we need to take time to reflect on our decisions since autumn teaching is already organized and currently being implemented. It may still be in a ‘state’ of ‘crisis’, but it is important that the solutions planned and implemented this spring may not necessarily be able to draw the ‘new normal’. Surveys about students’ experiences of ‘emergency teaching’ tell about serious consequences, which result in low motivation, great frustration and explicit need for more interaction. 

Management is aware of the challenges posed by the digital transformation from technical, organizational, educational and strategic perspectives. 

Using a communication theoretical approach, we can open up an important discussion, focusing on the communicative possibilities when we are physically present (f2f) compared with net-mediated communication in its broadest sense. There are, so to speak, more communicative connectivity options compared to net-mediated communication, both with synchronous and asynchronous communication. Teaching is in this theoretical frame defined as a specific form of communication, whose underlying intention is to effect change by the students, who direct their attention toward the communication. It is the engineered context, which brings about the possibility for the activation/continuation of learning processes, hence knowledge construction. 

Together with the communicative perspective related to teaching, we can discuss the concept of ‘good teaching’. By good teaching we mean teaching in the presented theoretical framework, where students and educators have the opportunity to communicate. That is, both ways, and not just one-way communication. It is thus about focusing on the social dimension through communication (dialogue, plenary/group discussions). It is about providing the opportunity for social sparring and reflection – and the opportunity to ‘check’ one’s professionalism with fellow students and educators. It is about being able to immerse oneself professionally and actively participate in the social community. Being with others on campus is part of student identity building and their development towards professional people.

Increased online learning risks instrumentalizing teaching to reduce it to a more or less rigid template, where time and activities are set and spontaneous discussions are tight. This may mean that the development of independence, autonomy, co-determination skills and academic bildung are given more difficult conditions in which to develop. We must pay close attention to when online teaching is more often suited to more factual knowledge and the lowest taxonomic levels, where to reach the higher levels of analysis, synthesis and creativity as well as deeper professional discussions, it is more difficult to get it to work online.

We need to think about what is teaching quality and use the knowledge/research that is in the field – so that we can offer students a variety of teaching and learning environments that provide students with the best conditions to learn what is required according to curricula. That may include online teaching, but in a critical reflected format and not with an approach, where emergency teaching becomes the ‘new normal’. The digital tools and platforms are important to have access to, but indeed not enough. The attention for a didactical part is crucial, when redesigning courses into online environments and mixed f2f and online teaching environments. It requires renewed concrete attention to support the educators’ didactic development. It also requires support for students and educators when it comes to developing the opportunities for unfolding communication and knowledge sharing.

This is an invitation to discuss the communicative and educational perspective on the currently developmental digital transformation.

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Helle Mathiasen is professor at University of Copenhagen, Department of Science Education, Denmark. Her primary research interest lies currently within the field of communication forums: Internet and computer-mediated, various forms of face-to-face communication forums as well as hybrid forms. This field is joined with the concepts of learning, teaching, pedagogy and didactics. The current focus of her research is on the themes of the organization of teaching, communication environments, and learning perspectives

It is no longer our classrooms as creepy treehouses, but our universities have become creepy.  This paper argues that in the post-pandemic, we are faced with the creepy university.  The new normal of medical surveillance, social surveillance, involuntary publicity, and worse, combined with imposed technological choices and related issues, transforms and expands the creepy treehouse phenomena to encompass the whole university.  The post-pandemic university is creepy. Beyond that level of creepy, it is surrounded by various zombies perpetuating its creepiness. 

Contemporary ‘neoliberal’ universities in the post-pandemic are a shambling, groaning mess of dead bureaucratic impetus driven by the pandemic institution’s expired demands. The trajectories of the pandemic shamble onward through the action and inaction of non-faculty governance. Combined with that is the zombified information of dead lectures with their im/precise and de/contextualized knowledge published to various media sites by universities, professors, and students alike. They are the life of the occasionally found document, speaking their situated pandemic knowledges only when stumbled-upon. The post-pandemic university is full of mobilized knowledge that is perpetually escaping through a spectrum of fantastically good to fantastically horrible possibilities. As such, creepiness exudes, choices forced, choices unforced, have remade elements of the university outside of itself, dragging along as part of its new zombified self. 

A creepy treehouse is when a faculty member chooses a technology they prefer because of their history with it and forces the students, against their comfort, to use that technology in the classroom. The technology almost always has elements that creep the students out, such as invasions of privacy, surveillance, cultural difference, or otherwise. The creepy university is the future of the university. 

It is evidenced by the pervasiveness of the pedagogical form of life we find in our digital university environments, especially in Zoom environments. The Zoom Zombie, a person who is there, but not there; there is only the appearance of presence.  Zoom has become the killer app of the university’s remote administration, and shortly after it; it was introduced as the killer app of online lecturing.  Anyone who has participated in enough classrooms has seen classroom zombies, students who are completely turned off.  Similarly, Zoom zombies are prevalent both in online Zoom classrooms and in other meetings. The manifestation of this human response as not being ‘there’ in the face-to-face classroom has been extended to not be there in zoom meetings.

Nevertheless, Zoom Zombies are not the only elements of zombification of the university.  Neoliberal zombies are present along with their professional representatives.  But that is another argument. I want to present a few other forms of zombies. One is the professorial zombie, the professor or instructor who is physically and mentally exhausted, overburdened with their increasingly excessive responsibilities such that their capacity to act beyond the minimum necessary is limited. Their passion has waned, as has their reasoning combined with their capacity to perform their job due to increased workload and stress. The professorial zombies’ numbers are increasing, and they are not increasing equitably or fairly.  As one would expect, this zombification affects some minorities much more than others, and with that zombification, an increasing number of faculty are lost. Zombified faculty exist; you probably meet them every day. They learned to blend in, to hide their zombified state long ago, likely in graduate school.

Another type of zombification mentioned above briefly is the lesson or teaching period as zombified knowledge.  The knowledge produced and shared by the faculty is usually distributed online, out there and dead, but alive.  It might be outdated, it might have errors, it might be well done or not well done, it might be produced by the university, by the faculty member, or recorded by the students, but in any case, this knowledge is on the internet available for people to use and see.  Zombified knowledge almost certainly exists out of the context of the whole course.  It certainly exists outside of the maintenance and correction by the professor in the course. It is knowledge mobilized, not autonomously but by the public who find it, learn it and use it. It represents the university, much as the faculty member is some representation of the university. 

Teaching, as almost everyone knows, is a performance that relies on its audience for feedback. When we consider the zombies defined above, we can quickly see that the form of online education became creepy long ago. The university is full of zombies, and the zombies are creeping along stuck in their modes of existence, unable to do anything but what the zombie has done. This situation creates the creepy university, the post-pandemic university because it will take years to recover from the pandemic. It will follow many faculty until they retire, stories will linger even after all of the retirements, and the university’s relations to its members will never be the same. The post-pandemic university is one of overwork, surveillance, bureaucratization, automation, and in each of those a lack of consent by those participating in the form.

As more people are forced to participate in more uncomfortable and creepy experiences, more people become zombies. The professor becomes a face on a screen, perhaps a recording, the students are becoming a recording, or otherwise performing as a recording, a zombie. The online university needs to reconsider technological choice and inclusion more deeply to become a creepy university full of zombies.

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Jeremy Hunsinger is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University.  His research is in critical internet studies and the politics of knowledge. He has been teaching university students online and off for over twenty years.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to present unique challenges for the higher education sector around the world.  The reduction in funding, rapid redevelopment of learning resources to suit online delivery and rapid upskilling of academics to teach using new platforms have all contributed to the stress on Australian academics, but what effect has this change had on our students?

When COVID-19 reached Australia, strict measures were rapidly implemented at a Federal level to suppress the spread of the virus. Strict bans on gatherings of greater than 50 people were imposed, essentially putting an end to any face-to-face class delivery in 2020. The transition from a face-to-face delivery to a completely online delivery was rapid, but like all academics we were presented with two choices: asynchronous delivery (where the learning content is pre-recorded, allowing students to progress at their own pace) or synchronous delivery (where the content is delivered in line with the student progression through the unit).

The scramble to convert face-to-face classes to online

We had been using a flipped classroom format for a few years prior to COVID-19, so we were in a slightly better position than other units, however face-to-face workshops and practical laboratory classes, which relied on students working on problems in small groups, had to be transitioned to online equivalents.  The burden of pre-recording these face-to-face sessions was too great, so we opted for the synchronous delivery, where classes would be delivered live. This decision gave us the benefit of having extra time to redesign content to suit an online delivery, but consequently meant we only had one chance to get it right. 

We quickly transitioned weekly workshops to live-streamed sessions delivered via Zoom. Laboratory classes were conducted live, with a facilitator in the lab completing the various procedures while students watched at home on their devices.  This entirely online mode of teaching was vastly different to what the students were expecting when they enrolled in their degree. We became interested in how the transition to online teaching affected the student experience.  Based on attendance numbers in our online sessions during the first few weeks of delivery, we were aware a significant proportion of the cohort were not engaged. This posed a few key questions. Why did so many students choose not to participate? Did the transition to online learning influence their decision and cause a reduction in motivation?

The student perceptions of online learning

We employed a mixed methods approach involving voluntary student surveys to explore student perceptions of how COVID-19 has influenced their study¹.  The study, which is still in progress, consists of two anonymous online surveys.  The first survey (delivered midway through the March semester) identified a number of problems in our delivery, which directed some interventions that were implemented for the start of the July semester, the effects of which will be measured in our follow up survey (the data from which is yet to be analysed).  The surveys consist of a series of both closed and open-ended questions on their perceptions of the first year biology course.

In the first survey we found that 63.3% of respondents chose not to attend the live-streamed workshop, despite that the majority (72.1%) of the respondents identifying the value of these sessions. When questioned on the reasons why they choose not to attend, 31.6% of respondents cited “Lack of motivation” as their primary reason, other reasons included , “Connection issues” (26.5%), “Prefer to watch recordings” (18.4%) and “Clashes with other units” (17.5%). 

We conducted a thematic analysis of the qualitative data collected from the survey. This analysis mirrored similar themes as the quantitative survey. Amongst the qualitative data, 35% of responses aligned with the “Lack of motivation” theme, many of these responses (15.7%) further highlighted themes of anxiety and stress amongst the cohort. In some cases, this stress was associated with a lack of guidance in the degree of depth various topics will be examined at. A student reported:

I honestly just really hope that I’m teaching myself everything that I need to know, I get really anxious and stressed that I’m not performing to the best standard that I can…From, a very stressed and anxious first year.

In other cases, the level of anxiety and stress was attributed to a feeling of isolation, which can be summarised by the student comment below:

“I felt disconnected from other students and teachers. More support and social inclusion would be helpful”

Our conclusions from the initial survey was that isolation could potentially be having a significant impact on the performance of our students. The lack of social interactivity appeared to have broken an important component of the educational process – communication. Some of the problems were at the institutional end; we had underestimated how much we rely on simple face-to-face communication to answer student questions. In the fully online environment, simple questions that could easily be resolved at the conclusion of a classroom session, now had to be postponed and asked via email or by forum post. This does not only include communication between staff and students, but also between the students themselves. However when we surveyed students that did attend the online sessions live, it appeared these sessions may have another valuable benefit. They promote a sense of community.

When we surveyed the students that did attend online workshops live, 66.2% reported as being highly engaged during the session. When questioned “What did you enjoy most about the online workshops when attended live”, 25% of respondents reported that they “Provided a sense of community”, while 24% stated that the workshops “Were more engaging when presented live”; with the ability to ask questions in real-time was also highly reported at 28% (Figure 1).

The outlook for 2021

At the time of writing this post, Melbourne (the capital city of Victoria) is still under lockdown.  University campuses across metropolitan Melbourne remain closed for all students, except those that must satisfy key qualification requirements.  There are strong indications that strict social distancing policies will remain into 2021 across Australia. What does that mean for the university campus, where hundreds of students move in and out of a single lecture theatre or teaching laboratories at the conclusion of the session? The solution could be running more sessions, with classes running late into the night. Or is the writing on the wall for the end of face-to-face classes?  I believe online education will remain the primary offering of many Australian universities, potentially only allowing students to attend an on-campus class two or three times a semester. If this were to happen, serious consideration needs to be made into fostering a community spirit and engagement amongst students, for both their mental wellbeing, but also to maximise their performance and learning.

¹ Our research was conducted as approved by the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (MUHREC) as per project 2020-25523-49505.

Photo by United Nations COVID-19 Response on Unsplash

Dr Thomas Hiscox is an education-focussed lecturer within the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University, where he teaches in units across first, second and third years.  Tom is also the coordinator of the first year biology program, which has an enrollment of  approximately 1600 students annually.  His research is focused on the development and recognition of key employability skills by students during their undergraduate degrees.